joshjkim

17 ms·

91.
by joshjkim 11y ago
Sam and the board are happy and pleased with her performance because she played the part of the suit pushing an over-corporate monetization-focused agenda and then eventually was offered up as a "sacrifice to the reddit ideals", a
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Super good article about this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/reddit-is-a-shrine-to-...
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by joshjkim 11y ago
I agree here - this puts pressure on the company to make sure their drivers are (1) more efficient (2) make more $$ and (3) stick around for a while which then goes back to (1) more efficient, and generates a cycle of improvement that benef
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by joshjkim 11y ago
I would also add administration and execution cost - this is a LOT of paperwork to file. There are businesses the help you do this, but for now it's pretty expensive.
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by joshjkim 11y ago
That's right - one thing I would add that is actually very non-negligible for on-demand logistics are (1) reimbursement for mileage (2) more robust insurance policies. IRS calls for $0.56/mile - if you assume an average delivery i
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by joshjkim 11y ago
On-demands who are classifying drivers as employees: Instacart, Shyp, Munchery. On-demands who are not: Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash (not exhaustive, just the big ones that come to mind). One thing I noticed - 2/3 of the big YC comp
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Ask HN: Weird that the “Uber $470M losses” not picked up by top tech press?
12 points by joshjkim 11y ago|2 comments
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Yes, I think it's good that people are becoming more aware - Uber interestingly had politics block their business much earlier than most, but looking at FB, Google w/r/t data + anti-trust, the decade of tech lobbying is well,
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by joshjkim 11y ago
you = right. I was thinking on a per unit basis, but if you think on a conversion basis your $1k-$2k makes a lot of sense, even if you start with my #s - if you assume $50-$100 per driver, and that Uber actually only converts 5% (which is g
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by joshjkim 11y ago
It would be profitable, but assuming the situation your describe, it would primarily come down to (1) driver churn and (2) costs associated with any adverse legal rulings/judgments. 1. Cost of recruiting drivers is relatively high - pr
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by joshjkim 11y ago
This is from an old post but I think you'll find interesting: Note on Uber: I think Uber is a great business and has a significantly net-positive impact on society, and I reserve judgment w/r/t whether TK and the other Uber e
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Instacart Drivers/Shoppers = Employees(arstechnica.com)
1 points by joshjkim 11y ago|0 comments
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Side note: the $0.56 is an IRS number, and therefore federal, so could even be used as a proxy for all US =)
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by joshjkim 11y ago
You can estimate how much this will cost Uber in CA as follows: $0.56 multiplied by total miles driven by UberX drivers over all time. It’s almost as simple as that, since damages were given out almost entirely on those grounds. I'll l
105.
by joshjkim 11y ago
lotsa folks don't think that many unicorns will actually IPO - here's a good read that summarizes the potential issues: http://abovethecrowd.com/2015/02/25/investors-beware/
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Trados is a famous one: https://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/Display.aspx?SectionName=publicati... Basically, Trados got sold, preferred got their liquidation preference and common stock got zero dollars. Common stockholder sued
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by joshjkim 11y ago
My experience is in line with yours - investors always assert liq pref when they can, have never seen them give much on it. I've seen preferred throw common a few cents on the share, but usually it's zero.
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by joshjkim 11y ago
+1 - I would say this reports deviates almost zero from any priced round I've done. All get 1X liq. pref, usually not-participating. In fact, the only times I've seen participating or more than 1X preference is during a down-round
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Here's what I do: take lyft, and tip your drivers well!
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by joshjkim 11y ago
Not a rebuttal but rather an extension that has been on my mind for some time: how does PN's theory of the self-preserving and self-perpetuating (are those different?) nature of a corporation fundamentally differ from the nature of any
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by joshjkim 12y ago
This is great, though one key practical challenge: in most cases only founders will really be "taxed" in a meaningful way, so it requires that founders want to and decide to do something that loses them some serious $$ (as noted i
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by joshjkim 12y ago
The article misinterprets the Gurley/Andreessen warning call - high overall burn INDUSTRY WIDE is a fair cause for concern and indicator of sub-optimal investing/operating, both for individual companies and for the VC industry as
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RIP Lee Kuan Yew(economist.com)
2 points by joshjkim 12y ago|0 comments
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Doordash Raises $35M at $600M val(fortune.com)
1 points by joshjkim 12y ago|0 comments
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by joshjkim 12y ago
(Another theory as to why financial services become larger as economies develop: as markets advance and become more and more sophisticated and fluid, capital gets rapidly deployed in industries where productivity is high such that the price
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by joshjkim 12y ago
Here's an alternative theory: Lower productivity in an economy causes a larger finance industry, not the other way around. The financial industry is the “marketplace” where people (supposedly) figure out the best places to deploy capit
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by joshjkim 12y ago
Totally agreed - I think especially with healthcare, cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and St. Louis have nationally elite medical centers (Cleveland Clinic, University of Pittsburgh and WSL, respectively) along with all the healthcare serv
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by joshjkim 12y ago
Very interesting article. I've actually been kicking around the idea that the midwest will see a braindrain-reversal in the next 20 years, similar to China + India + etc. (where elite educated foreign professionals/entrepreneurs w
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by joshjkim 12y ago
One additional clarification: I'd say that I think continued growth is super important, I'm just not sure you need to be the biggest - see the UK, see Singapore, see South Korea, see Canada (all US allies, to be fair haha).
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by joshjkim 12y ago
A few things missing here, posed as a question: Why should we want the US to be the largest (or one of the largest) economies in the world and/or maintain its position as a global superpower? Maybe I’m missing something , but I didn’t

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