I didn't know that, thanks for sharing. A quick Google search reveals that in that same year Amazon led a $575 round in Deliveroo. Seems like I picked the wrong example, and in this case Amazon correctly identified the opportunity but failed in the execution. Makes me just realize how much credit the DoorDash team really deserves.
> In the first 3 quarters of 2020, Doordash has $131 million loss on $1.9 billion revenue
If a startup starting from 0 can pull that off, Amazon should have been able to do (even) better with their customer base and logistics know-how + infrastructure.
How is losing money a positive? Amazon should have been able to lose even more given more of an investment? Amazon realized its bound to be a big loser and left it.
Even the most conservative investors will look at a loss as a percentage of revenue and not in isolation. Decades of business experience have shown that a low loss ratio in a fast growing business is a good investment opportunity.
Amazon has built a delivery network that is almost on par with DHL and others. I would say that's not only a pretty good starting point to get involved in restaurant delivery, but would also increase the utilization of the delivery vehicles (think Uber Eats).
Recently I switched from Google Fi to AT&T for similar reasons. After I transferred my number out of Google Fi, there was a questionnaire from Google asking why I switched, and interestingly, among all the selections (coverage, price, etc.), there was not an option mentioning customer service.
Currrently the markets seem to value Tesla's self-driving technology at about $0.
I happen to think that Tesla has about the same chances of winning self-driving as Waymo, so it should be valued, today, at least $80 billion + whatever the value of car and energy business is (let's say $30 billion).
And those are valuation today, when neither company has demonstrated a working product.
When they actually start a robotaxi service, even in very limited way, the valuation will skyrocket because the consensus is that this is a market that favors natural oligopoloy (2-3 national providers) and the revenue potential is in hundreds of billions, which would lead, eventually, to a trillion-size valuation.
Tesla has a market cap of $42bn, so an EV of under $60bn. If you believe Tesla will be the first to market with their autonomy network, it's hard to see that as anything other than a bargain. They'd potentially bankrupt Uber if they're still paying for drivers while attempting to catch up.
It would be a hell of a moat; anyone who wants to compete has to burn a ton of cash to develop autonomy and buy a massive fleet.
I don't think the market has priced it in; I think it has pretty much disregarded Tesla's claim of leadership.
It's not obvious to me that Uber stock is not also priced for a future where autonomous driving solves a lot of their current problems, do you disagree?
For food scene, yes there are a lot fancy restaurants with long queues, but there are also many authentic Chinese / Korean restaurants here. It's just these restaurants are not well known and mostly serve local people, and usually you cannot find them easily on Yelp due to low ratings / reviews.
> you cannot find them easily on Yelp due to low ratings / reviews
I know right! There was one time I went to one restaurant with a good rating, and the line up was so long we ended up just waddling over to an inconspicuous Japanese place next door, to discover some pretty decent traditional style service and food.
I did find a number of chinese/korean restaurants that clearly cater to actual chinese/koreans, but the cultural density is so low that unfortunately they've mostly fell short compared to the quality you can get in the various chinese/korean neighbourhoods in Toronto.
Ive been toying with the idea of doing like some period of time of only eating at 3 start and under restaurants on yelp and seeing how it goes. i thought it it would be interesting to write about it
