xkjkls

57 ms·

601.
by xkjkls 8y ago
I'm not sure Tesla's public market story is over. It's somewhat absurd for a company to announce a plan that would require $40 billion in capital to be raised to finance it, and offer no details on where that is coming from.
602.
by xkjkls 8y ago
There's hundreds of public companies focused on long term goals. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Starbucks, etc. Why is Elon Musk special compared to these others?
603.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Why does that not affect other CEOs? I don't see Jeff Bezos complaining about being a public company.
604.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Still needs to find someone with %50 billion though
605.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Long term believers also expect to be paid one day too.
606.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Define "short term financial issues". I don't know about you, but if I'm someone owed a loan or payment for supplies at a specific date, I expect to be paid in full, regardless of whether I believe in their long term vis
607.
by xkjkls 8y ago
(First, I don't see any really legitimate possibility that Saudi investment funds are going to pony up $40 billion to take Tesla private, that being said...) I don't see any possible reason why CFIUS would reject this deal. CFIUS
608.
by xkjkls 8y ago
It really depends on what you consider the "hard" part about making electric cars to be. Do you think that the design and engineering of an electric car is the difficulty? Or is it manufacturing millions of them at scale? If the f
609.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Apple only has 19% market share.
610.
by xkjkls 8y ago
I’m talking a social media platform. Video games are fundamentally different because the goal is to get a small number of highly engaged users. Social media drives value from having huge networks of large numbers of people. There are people
611.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Well, then it is fundamentally less useful then?
612.
by xkjkls 8y ago
I was referencing the guy above who suggested WhatsApp become a commerce platform, and why that is hard. WeChat definitely does many of those things, but that’s far from it’s only monetization Model
613.
by xkjkls 8y ago
What is the Cash app then?
614.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Huge differences in engagement. Video games end up with small numbers of people who spend insane amounts of time with their product. Social media is large numbers of people spending small amounts of time. Because the customers aren’t nearly
615.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Ok, but if you’re kicking off those that are unwilling to pay, you’re automatically decreasing the value of your app every time you try to charge people. You can make money — for a time. If the purpose people joined in the first place “I ca
616.
by xkjkls 8y ago
The problem is that in order to maintain their position as an app everyone can communicate on, they need everyone paying the subscription fee. Once people realize not everyone is on the app, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There’s a
617.
by xkjkls 8y ago
http://vator.tv/news/2017-01-13-how-does-line-make-money That seems to indicate that 22% of Line's revenue was from stickers, which was lower than the highest section: advertising. Those are 2017 numbers, and I&#x
618.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Sure, but it is analogous to what investors are valuing it with regards to their stock for.
619.
by xkjkls 8y ago
If WhatsApp decided to move to payments, it is the closest analog.
620.
by xkjkls 8y ago
There were always alternatives, just carried certain other costs. SMS was a major competitor, and as its prices have declined significantly internationally, the friction with using it would as well. Being the first mover is not a infinitely
621.
by xkjkls 8y ago
> Just before WhatsApp was bought by Facebook, they were asking for that $1 per year (I remember paying it) and they had 450 million users, in spite of plenty of chat alternatives being on the market ever since the 90s. How many of those
622.
by xkjkls 8y ago
And I feel like a lot of the desktop/work-type queries DuckDuckGo compares the best at. Try any query requiring some kind of serious recency bias or locality on DuckDuckGo. Completely useless.
623.
by xkjkls 8y ago
It's much noticeably worse at locality. Trying to find the happy hours times for a bar around the corner? Good luck on DuckDuckGo.
624.
by xkjkls 8y ago
For whom is that the primary business model, instead of an addition though?
625.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Anyone acting like DuckDuckGo provides even close to as relevant results as Google is lying to themselves. This also doesn't mention Maps, YouTube, YouTube, or AdWords/AdSense which make up 95% of Google's non-Cloud revenue.
626.
by xkjkls 8y ago
I think it depends on the business. I can see myself wanting to talk to my local pub and gyro shop down the street from it similarly to how I might talk to family and friends. Do I want to talk to GEICO the same way? No.
627.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Their stock just took a 20% dive because their main cash flow engine up to this point, the FB app, is showing stagnating engagement. Unless they want to take even great stock hits, which would lead to: greater difficulty to hire, greater di
628.
by xkjkls 8y ago
How many of their current users would actually be paying $1 a year? Over the long term how many more? Most of these products want to be free. If I'm paying $1 a year to WhatsApp and see my friend using a different app without being cha
629.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Pay what though? $1 a year? $10 a year? $100? They have to find a way to justify the $19 billion purchase price. Almost all charging schemes are only going to get certain fraction of people to convert, and they need to be finding ways to re
630.
by xkjkls 8y ago
Engagement is not nearly the same. There are 1.5 billion WhatsApp users, but how many would actually convert. I'd find it hard to see numbers higher than the low single digits.

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