4 ms·

I don’t fully understand these kind of businesses especially in the “tech” space. I wonder if they paid for this article but I honestly don’t see the growth in

I don’t fully understand these kind of businesses especially in the “tech” space. I wonder if they paid for this article but I honestly don’t see the growth in these companies. They can be great businesses but not ones that would be posting in TechCrunch.

mcmcmc 2y ago
Not all tech businesses have to be hyperscalers slave to investor profit seeking
- bobxmax 2y ago
  People don't typically read tech news to hear about slow growing bootstrapped lifestyle businesses.
- infecto 2y ago
  Right but TechCrunch is fairly well known to be pay to publish and this felt like a puff piece for the company. Just surprising because I don’t think the economics would work out in a business like this. Like I already said, it’s a fine business but fairly local and not too much if any of a most.
  - mst 2y ago
    I was reading it thinking "their PR firm is earning its fees." I enjoyed the article anyway, but still. (every time there's a freakout on rightard twitter about "you will eat the bugs" the article about insect protein that triggered it pretty much always includes a reference to a company that closed a funding round not long ago - I am honestly impressed that their respective PR companies managed to get basically the same story published so many times)
calmbonsai 2y ago
To your credit, it wouldn't be the first time TC did a pay-for-play. Also, TC has been beyond irrelevant for years. Now, it's even worse. It's a negative-signal attached to all those desperate enough to use it.
- infecto 2y ago
  That’s was probably the confusion I had. I figured every lengthy piece like this one was paid for but then I was thinking I don’t understand how this would benefit the company u less they are raising money and at that point I don’t see the economics playing out to take funding.
  - mst 2y ago
    I would guess they're hoping that it'll get in front of some potential customers and augment their primarily word-of-mouth marketing strategy as a result. I did appreciate that the "hired a car" story included a comment of "and this is worth doing because it gets us customers," the lack of pretense there was nice.
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
I got some "ad" vibes, but nothing specific comes to mind. Maybe more like "this is a fluff piece." Better worth the time to publish if someone is paying you.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  techcrunch is a good source because they exchange writing fluff pieces for access, if you read them with that in mind you can get good info there are a few outlets like this, like theinformation
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  It's absolutely a fluff piece. Think about it. The title brags about how awesome the business is for the riders. Did they speak to a single rider? Nope. That's because every single rider would rather that instead of being given 25 cent foot warmers, a few-cents cup of coffee, a couple cents of electricity, and a place to piss: be paid a livable wage, be paid for their time (there are a number of circumstances where the app delivery companies will leave the delivery person with nothing, even though they did work), get paid time off, worker's comp if they're injured while working, protection from discrimination, wage law protections, and all the other myriad of things that these companies can't afford because their business model doesn't work if you pay people working for you a fair, livable wage. It seems like every other SV company works this way. Amazon is of course the shining example, where they've outsourced almost all of their warehouse labor to third party companies, and those companies purposefully try to burn out / annoy the employees so they don't stick around long enough to claim the benefits Amazon brags about on their hiring pages. The drivers? Employed by "DSPs", most of which are very short-lived. Again, on purpose/by design. Can't get sued for workers comp if you're employing people through a third party company that (oops!) dissolved 6 months ago. Google Books gave the Books employees very visibly different IDs and they were third-class citizens on campus, not even allowed to leave the area around the Books warehouse, if I remember right? Google won't even pay their shuttle drivers enough; there was an article a while back where the reporter interviewed a shuttle driver who was having to live in a camper van in the Google parking lot because she couldn't afford any housing anywhere near a reasonable drive from the Google office. I knew a massage therapist who worked at a Google office and she snorted when I asked her if she got all the fancy benefits management, engineering, and marketing get. FFS the article brags about how "prudent" they are for their labor cost-cutting; overseas outsourcing a lot of their labor, for example. I bet damn near every non-management position is part-time so they get out of paying any benefits. This stuff is being done to deflect criticism when labor rights activists go to city hall or Albany. Grubhub et al hire lobbyist who throws some cash at legislators to get meetings with them, strolls in, shows them a nice presentation with all these pictures of smiling riders, and the legislator thinks "gosh golly they're treating these people so nicely." Ditto for public committee hearings. The delivery riders and drivers don't have the ability to trek up to Albany and even if they did, there's no way in hell a legislator would make time to meet them.

mcmcmc 2y ago

Not all tech businesses have to be hyperscalers slave to investor profit seeking

bobxmax 2y ago
People don't typically read tech news to hear about slow growing bootstrapped lifestyle businesses.
infecto 2y ago
Right but TechCrunch is fairly well known to be pay to publish and this felt like a puff piece for the company. Just surprising because I don’t think the economics would work out in a business like this. Like I already said, it’s a fine business but fairly local and not too much if any of a most.
- mst 2y ago
  I was reading it thinking "their PR firm is earning its fees." I enjoyed the article anyway, but still. (every time there's a freakout on rightard twitter about "you will eat the bugs" the article about insect protein that triggered it pretty much always includes a reference to a company that closed a funding round not long ago - I am honestly impressed that their respective PR companies managed to get basically the same story published so many times)

calmbonsai 2y ago

To your credit, it wouldn't be the first time TC did a pay-for-play. Also, TC has been beyond irrelevant for years. Now, it's even worse. It's a negative-signal attached to all those desperate enough to use it.

infecto 2y ago
That’s was probably the confusion I had. I figured every lengthy piece like this one was paid for but then I was thinking I don’t understand how this would benefit the company u less they are raising money and at that point I don’t see the economics playing out to take funding.
- mst 2y ago
  I would guess they're hoping that it'll get in front of some potential customers and augment their primarily word-of-mouth marketing strategy as a result. I did appreciate that the "hired a car" story included a comment of "and this is worth doing because it gets us customers," the lack of pretense there was nice.

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

I got some "ad" vibes, but nothing specific comes to mind. Maybe more like "this is a fluff piece." Better worth the time to publish if someone is paying you.

whimsicalism 2y ago
techcrunch is a good source because they exchange writing fluff pieces for access, if you read them with that in mind you can get good info there are a few outlets like this, like theinformation
KennyBlanken 2y ago
It's absolutely a fluff piece. Think about it. The title brags about how awesome the business is for the riders. Did they speak to a single rider? Nope. That's because every single rider would rather that instead of being given 25 cent foot warmers, a few-cents cup of coffee, a couple cents of electricity, and a place to piss: be paid a livable wage, be paid for their time (there are a number of circumstances where the app delivery companies will leave the delivery person with nothing, even though they did work), get paid time off, worker's comp if they're injured while working, protection from discrimination, wage law protections, and all the other myriad of things that these companies can't afford because their business model doesn't work if you pay people working for you a fair, livable wage. It seems like every other SV company works this way. Amazon is of course the shining example, where they've outsourced almost all of their warehouse labor to third party companies, and those companies purposefully try to burn out / annoy the employees so they don't stick around long enough to claim the benefits Amazon brags about on their hiring pages. The drivers? Employed by "DSPs", most of which are very short-lived. Again, on purpose/by design. Can't get sued for workers comp if you're employing people through a third party company that (oops!) dissolved 6 months ago. Google Books gave the Books employees very visibly different IDs and they were third-class citizens on campus, not even allowed to leave the area around the Books warehouse, if I remember right? Google won't even pay their shuttle drivers enough; there was an article a while back where the reporter interviewed a shuttle driver who was having to live in a camper van in the Google parking lot because she couldn't afford any housing anywhere near a reasonable drive from the Google office. I knew a massage therapist who worked at a Google office and she snorted when I asked her if she got all the fancy benefits management, engineering, and marketing get. FFS the article brags about how "prudent" they are for their labor cost-cutting; overseas outsourcing a lot of their labor, for example. I bet damn near every non-management position is part-time so they get out of paying any benefits. This stuff is being done to deflect criticism when labor rights activists go to city hall or Albany. Grubhub et al hire lobbyist who throws some cash at legislators to get meetings with them, strolls in, shows them a nice presentation with all these pictures of smiling riders, and the legislator thinks "gosh golly they're treating these people so nicely." Ditto for public committee hearings. The delivery riders and drivers don't have the ability to trek up to Albany and even if they did, there's no way in hell a legislator would make time to meet them.