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Comment by rafram | Hacker News Reader

You laugh, but the concept of this funny YouTube video was the actual business model of a SoftBank-backed startup that raised half a billion dollars [1]. The crucial flaw in their otherwise ironclad plan was that the pizza had a tendency to fly around and lose all its toppings when the truck went over a bump in the road.

[1]: https://gizmodo.com/zume-softbank-ai-pizza-delivery-stellar-...

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I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme disguised as some silicon valley-esque startup to not trigger alarm bells with institutions

I don't see how one would do that. Mind expanding? You won't turn out dividends and salary sounds highly taxed

> I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme disguised as some silicon valley-esque startup

considering some of the half baked shenanigans I've seen conducted in SF that actually raised funding back when I was there. this would explain a LOT...

I'm pretty sure it was not: there's much more effective ways to launder money than a high profile startup

That would be a perfect cover up considering it’s not that unheard of with their investor: https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/c4d82a

isn't all of softbank a money-laundering scheme? it's just kingdom of saud buying influence in the west.

Your second sentence contradicts your first.

Im kinda with the other reply, sneak. Isnt softbank a Japan/asian based cartel? From the first articles I can find they just cost saudia some money (not to say it wasnt laundered ... maybe they bought some softpaintings?)

It's really not that deep

That's fun, this was also the premise of a Donald Duck story in the italian mickey mouse weekly

https://inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2629-3&search=paperino%...

Seems like you could install pretty good motion isolation systems in the trucks with that kind of money...

Should have pivoted to calzones.

They need that tech tanks use to keep their gun level, that multi axis gyroscope thing. This is the sort of tech crossover that could make military spending more acceptable.

His cellphone uses GPS and connects to other computers over the internet using TCP/IP, but I guess you're waiting on pizza gyroscopes to see any valuable tech crossover relative to this project.

Imagine the things achieved if the money being spent wasn't focused on military applications.

I imagine military applications for "know where something is in world" and "have network of computers communicate in a damage resistant way" are no more costly to develop than non-military applications.

Hard to say. Would the research even have occurred if there weren't military applications? At the end of the day, there are only a few ways to get politicians to fund research:

* War (physics, chemistry, computer science, psychology)

* Fortune-telling (astronomy, economics, political science)

* Immortality (medicine, fine art, humanities)

To illustrate just how capable that tech was even back in 1986, look at 1:45 of this Bundeswehr video demonstrating a Leopard tank carry a keg of beer and not lose a drop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2mcO6l-0cY

It’s actually a stein of beer, carried on the end of the barrel of the tank’s main gun, for others that like me did not understand. It’s cool.

Seems like it would have been a better option to do the final cooking which is around 7-8 min in the oven at the delivery doorstep.

Neapolitan pizza needs to cook for like 3 minutes tops, but getting an oven hot enough for that on the back of a truck would probably be a challenge.

Why would it be a challenge? An Ooni oven can do it in a much smaller space.

They didn't raise half a billion dollars, they were valued at half a billion.

From the article:

///

Most notably, the company enjoyed a generous infusion from Japanese investment firm SoftBank, which injected a whopping $375 million into the startup in 2018. By the end of its lifespan, Zume had raised as much as $445 million.

///

They actually nearly raised half a bil.

Yeah, the headline’s wording implies valuation, but that’s actually the amount they raised. Who knows how they managed to spend it. That’s a lot of Bali offsites and kombucha on tap.

My current company was somewhat involved with them as a supplier I think, before my time. They never had robotic pizza trucks, they were just regular pizza trucks with an app. They hired so many engineers they loaned some out to my company because they had no idea what to do with them.

Here's the thread that debuted this on HN in 2016 titled "Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics"[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980694

Should have had the oven on shock absorbers.

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