SoftBank Is Selling Wag Stake Back to Company | Hacker News Reader

SoftBank Is Selling Wag Stake Back to Company

wsj.com

22 pointskgwgk9 comments

I wonder if Softbank's horrific investments, and the fact that companies are staying private for so much longer due to Softbank style investments, have saved the American economy from a 1999 style dotcom bubble?

Saved from a bubble? Or created a bubble? Or prevented the bubble from popping?

I find it unlikely SoftBank saved us from a bubble. Did they create one? Possibly. Did the prevent it from collapsing? That implies there is a bubble -- which, who knows?

Did they try as hard to manage their reputation as they did to advertise? I saw a lot of cute ads of a dog moving around a map, with a stop to poop, but also saw posts about something bad happening to peoples' dogs, and both customers and dog walkers getting ripped off, and for me, the posts cancelled out the ads, which otherwise would have enticed me. Their reputation is also important for recruiting dog walkers, and the bigger the pool of walkers, the less they have to pay. I'm not sure it's worse than alternatives, because screening animal caretakers is a difficult problem. If it wasn't, I wonder what they could have done to calm peoples' fears.

> I'm not sure it's worse than alternatives, because screening animal caretakers is a difficult problem.

The big issue is that once you find an animal caretaker that you like through Wag, it is in both your interest to cut out the middle man, and pay the person directly. It will be cheaper for you, and the caretaker will actually get more money.

This is happening with Uber and Ola in India too. A lot of the times when I have taken a cab from the airport, the cabbie has given me his card or number and suggested that for long rides I directly call them. Last time I needed a cab, I directly called the guy and he arrived a full hour before the time and had a better cab ride than I got when I go through the app with cancellations and peak hour pricing and other crap.

Thats the problem. The companies that cannot justify their own valuations are very quick to take the VC route to grow at the speed of light. For many, all of a sudden their balance sheets are riddled with negative numbers with no profit to be seen whatsoever. Their products alone have the equivalent impact of a rolling tumbleweed.

I think SoftBank is starting to become sober from funding these dreadful, unprofitable startups like Wag and the infamous WeWork.

Has SoftBank finally looked in a mirror and seen its emperor's new clothes?

Ongoing related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21754492

Non-Paywalled https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/softbank-sells-stake-back-to...

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