Re:After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
by OnlineGladiator on Thursday November 28, 2019 @03:45PM
(#21660069)
It's a little more nuanced than that. If you didn't happen to be an expert on both robots and restaurants (as you can imagine, this is an extremely niche group) you would actually think it is an innovative solution. In fact, before the Vision Fund even existed, I was surprised how many investors were looking into this exact space (food trucks for pizza that cook the food during delivery). However, once you dig into the details, it quickly unravels into another valuation-inflating scheme for Softbank.
Re:After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
by paggle on Thursday November 28, 2019 @03:54PM
(#21660115)
Not really. One of the characteristics of American car culture is that the land that your car occupies as it travels, or makes short deliveries, is not charged “rent.” So unlike a food truck or restaurant, where you need to pay rent for setting up the thing, if you cook and deliver food from a moving vehicle your land costs, which are some of the biggest costs of a restaurant, can be just misappropriated from the public.
Re:After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
by perl4ever on Friday November 29, 2019 @09:12PM
(#21668078)
That doesn't make sense to me, even trying to absorb your point of view. A moving car has to park somewhere a lot of the time. And parking costs money that ultimately pays for scarce land, so whether or not the money-making is actually happening on the move doesn't have much to do with whether the user is free-riding.
Re:After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
by paggle on Saturday November 30, 2019 @03:17PM
(#21671944)
Right but you can park a car in a cheap area and then drive it through very expensive neighborhoods in downtown San Francisco cooking and delivering food while a non-motorized food vendor would need to pay through the nose for that space to prep and sell.
Re:After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
by perl4ever on Saturday November 30, 2019 @07:09PM
(#21672901)
Well, you're considering the alternative for locating that car, but why is that the correct comparison rather than the alternative for using that (moving) spot on the highways? Looking at the latter, maybe that business is providing more to society than other drivers in the same area.
Also known as a food truck.