Although Uber is losing money in India, it is growing rapidly, and Khosrowshahi’s frenetic schedule involved numerous meetings with Indian politicians and regulators, including one that evening with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Local policy experts had been briefing Khosrowshahi on his talking points. He was advised to refer to Uber’s drivers as “micro-entrepreneurs”—a term that, as Uber India’s chief business officer put it, “warms a politician’s heart.”
Uber’s board hopes that Khosrowshahi will be able to repair the company’s image. “He is a relationship guy,” David Krane, the managing partner of GV, formerly Google Ventures, which invested in Uber, told me. “He is much more patient.” Arianna Huffington, who is on Uber’s board, brought up Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor: “He dealt with plagues and invasions and betrayals, and he always managed to remain imperturbable.” She has joked with Khosrowshahi that he shares the same qualities.
here's the only paragraph of the article that's critical about the entire business model (rather than just the corporate culture):
One former Uber employee told me that people in the San Francisco office were concerned—but not for the reasons the headlines implied. “The elephant in the room was whether the business model even works,” he said. Uber was spending billions of dollars to subsidize rides in order to keep rates low and passengers coming back. Its competitors were doing the same thing. The only way Uber could become profitable was to both increase the volume of rides and raise the price of each one. But as long as Lyft or another rival was offering discounts, increasing fares was impossible, because consumers would simply switch to the cheaper app. And as long as venture capital continued to flow into ride-hailing, Uber’s rivals would continue to offer discounted rides. “How do they reduce the subsidies for the rides and not lose volume is the big math puzzle,” the former employee told me. In 2017, Uber grew substantially, but it also reported $4.47 billion in losses.
Khosrowshahi is set to make a hundred and twenty million dollars if he meets certain objectives, including taking the company public in 2019 at a valuation of a hundred and twenty billion dollars.
^*tugging collar*
The fear that Silicon Valley companies will be overtaken by foreign competitors is part of a larger debate in the industry. In January, Michael Moritz, a partner at the venture firm Sequoia Capital, published a controversial editorial in the Financial Times, arguing that American businesses, in their eagerness to offer work-life balance, are at risk of losing out to Chinese tech firms, where “the pace of work is furious,” the offices are spartan, and “nobody complains about missing a Little League game or skipping a basketball outing with friends.” The Indian Minister of State for Civil Aviation made a similar argument to Khosrowshahi during a meeting in New Delhi, suggesting that Uber build an engineering center in India. Local engineers, he said, worked for less than engineers in San Francisco, and they wouldn’t complain about putting in long hours or demand on-site massages and organic food.
To Kalanick, the autonomous-driving unit was the jewel of the company. When Khosrowshahi took over, he considered closing the program, since it could potentially cost billions of dollars. He decided not to close it after talking to Eric Meyhofer, the head of the division. “If you walk around here—this isn’t five people in a garage building some little robot car,” Meyhofer, who co-founded Carnegie Robotics, at Carnegie Mellon, before joining Uber, told me. “This is all about building autonomous ride-sharing, at scale, as a product. This is our future.” The question now, Meyhofer said, isn’t whether the company can make a self-driving vehicle but whether it can make one quickly and cheaply enough to solve Uber’s revenue problems.
the article, just like the bloomberg one that horan also criticized 2 months or so back (linked on page 8 of this thread), is well worth a read i think - even if there's not enough scrutiny on the business model the palace intrigue stuff is always interesting to me. for the average reader it probably gives a false impression but for people more aware of how bad the finances are its more like a character study in obliviousness and corporate rhetoric.
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
one of the biggest myths in U.S. business-related media is that the "developed" West can meet other countries' growth in labor productivity by pushing workers to work longer hours. the truth remains the same: skilled workers in the "developed" countries are paid more and have fewer kids and that's going to drive down labor output per total GDP, but treating those as the big problems to be solved to squeeze out more of it, that's untenable, because acknowledging it goes against the myths of capitalist ideology.
as long as the media advances the notion that people just need to work more hours, the mass amount of silent overworked will just think to themselves individually, "yeah, people should work as many hours as I do". Tell them they need to work the same hours for significantly less pay or divide their existing paycheck to try to pay for twice as many kids' post-high-school education, and it's a different story
the tesla news is gonna be coming thick and fast soon i think. im convinced at this point that they'll be in big trouble before uber, and i doubt theyll be around by 2020. i mean, the brand-name might get snatched by someone, but they'll be done. i doubt ill be able to keep up with the news when it really falls apart.
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/tesla falling well short of manufacturing targets again
apparently tesla just spam car production at particular times to try to boost their stats?
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/
With pressure escalating during one of the worst weeks in its almost 15-year-history, Tesla Inc. raced to manufacture and deliver as many Model 3 sedans as it could to report to rattled investors. The carmaker still probably came up short.
Tesla’s Fremont, California, delivery hub was packed with people Saturday evening as the last hours of the quarter drew to a close. Red couches and tall white tables were set up outside, a DJ played music and a truck selling Vietnamese food was on hand. Behind the scenes, a company that’s struggled to figure out how to mass manufacture cars had implored workers to get production on track and disprove their doubters.
But the skeptics are getting louder after the last few days. The electric-car maker led by Elon Musk has come under regulatory scrutiny for the second crash this year involving Tesla’s driver-assistance system Autopilot, the latest of which resulted in a fatality. Moody’s Investors Service last week downgraded the company’s credit rating further into junk, saying production problems and mounting obligations could necessitate a more than $2 billion capital raise soon to avoid running out of cash. Tesla shares plunged as much as 5.7 percent in early trading Monday.
people still fucken bought the bullshit btw. stocks are up over the last 5 days or so. "the cult is alive". im waiting for the Q1 report which should be out in about 3 weeks?
A U.S. judge in Philadelphia has ruled that limousine drivers for Uber Technologies Inc are independent contractors and not the company’s employees under federal law, the first ruling of its kind on a crucial issue for the ride-hailing company.
U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson on Wednesday said San Francisco-based Uber does not exert enough control over drivers for its limo service, UberBLACK, to be considered their employer under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The drivers work when they want to and are free to nap, run personal errands, or smoke cigarettes in between rides, Baylson said.
Good to know that being able to take a human break while working cancels out the right to any other decent working conditions.
There’s one color, though, that some of Tesla’s former safety experts wanted to see more of: yellow – the traditional hue of caution used to mark hazards.
Concerned about bone-crunching collisions and the lack of clearly marked pedestrian lanes at the Fremont, California, plant, the general assembly line’s then-lead safety professional went to her boss, who she said told her, “Elon does not like the color yellow.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/california-opens-investigation-into-tesla-workplace-conditions
Tesla pushed back against the story in a lengthy blog post on Monday, calling it “an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla.” The United Auto Workers union has been trying to organize Fremont workers for more than a year.
actually not that much compared to apple, google. although im sure they do a lot of lobbying at a local or state level that apple and google dont have to do.
good bloomberg article on teslas problems. note that tesla usually times PR stunts just before releasing financials, but they dont seem to have anything this time around.
gee dont give him any fresh ideas haha
Tesla is holding customer deposits for two vehicles that aren’t even in production yet: an electric Tesla Semi ($20,000 deposit) and a next-generation Roadster (either $50,000 down or the $250,000 retail price paid up front to reserve a limited edition). Even customers interested in installing an array of solar roof panels or the company’s Powerwall home battery must hand over $1,000 to place an order.
Tesla doesn’t break out deposit numbers by car, but the vast majority comes from $1,000 reservations for the Model 3. When Musk first introduced the lower-priced sedan in March 2016, fans stood in long lines at Tesla stores. Two years later, the slower-than-expected pace of production means that most of the more than 400,000 reservation holders are still waiting. And new people appear to be joining the queue: As of April, the company reported “net Model 3 reservations remained stable.”
There’s an additional source of free money from loyal believers: An unknown number of customers have paid up for vehicle features—$3,000 for “Full Self Driving” capability, for example—that Tesla thus far hasn’t figured out or released to anyone.
lmao that is some of the most pathetic shit i have ever read
cars posted:Tesla is holding customer deposits for two vehicles that aren’t even in production yet: an electric Tesla Semi ($20,000 deposit) and a next-generation Roadster (either $50,000 down or the $250,000 retail price paid up front to reserve a limited edition). Even customers interested in installing an array of solar roof panels or the company’s Powerwall home battery must hand over $1,000 to place an order.
Tesla doesn’t break out deposit numbers by car, but the vast majority comes from $1,000 reservations for the Model 3. When Musk first introduced the lower-priced sedan in March 2016, fans stood in long lines at Tesla stores. Two years later, the slower-than-expected pace of production means that most of the more than 400,000 reservation holders are still waiting. And new people appear to be joining the queue: As of April, the company reported “net Model 3 reservations remained stable.”
There’s an additional source of free money from loyal believers: An unknown number of customers have paid up for vehicle features—$3,000 for “Full Self Driving” capability, for example—that Tesla thus far hasn’t figured out or released to anyone.lmao that is some of the most pathetic shit i have ever read
it s eerily similar to the anticommie jokes about buying a car in ussr
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/spotify-earnings-q1-2018.html
ilmdge posted:Spotify stock plunges after reporting earnings for the first time
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/spotify-earnings-q1-2018.html
i read this as spotify reports having earnings for the first time, i assumed their ipo was some time ago and they had finally starting turning a profit. like thousands of disgruntled investors complaining "they're actually earning money? fuck that thats some old economy shit"
spotify q1 loss: 169 million euros https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/spotify-earnings-q1-2018.html (~200 million USD)
ilmdge posted:Spotify stock plunges after reporting earnings for the first time
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/spotify-earnings-q1-2018.html
cars posted:Tesla is holding customer deposits for two vehicles that aren’t even in production yet: an electric Tesla Semi ($20,000 deposit) and a next-generation Roadster (either $50,000 down or the $250,000 retail price paid up front to reserve a limited edition). Even customers interested in installing an array of solar roof panels or the company’s Powerwall home battery must hand over $1,000 to place an order.
Tesla doesn’t break out deposit numbers by car, but the vast majority comes from $1,000 reservations for the Model 3. When Musk first introduced the lower-priced sedan in March 2016, fans stood in long lines at Tesla stores. Two years later, the slower-than-expected pace of production means that most of the more than 400,000 reservation holders are still waiting. And new people appear to be joining the queue: As of April, the company reported “net Model 3 reservations remained stable.”
There’s an additional source of free money from loyal believers: An unknown number of customers have paid up for vehicle features—$3,000 for “Full Self Driving” capability, for example—that Tesla thus far hasn’t figured out or released to anyone.
lmao that is some of the most pathetic shit i have ever read
its kind of cool that his company for cars, which are real physical objects, has the exact same business model as that star citizen videogame where they were selling virtual spaceships for thousands of dollars before the game was released
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/8gm40m/how_the_conference_call_went_you_cant_make_this/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRy1hz40rac&t=1840s
lol this is funny, are you trying to get Will Arnett for your screenplay? oh shit, that's real
lo posted:its kind of cool that his company for cars, which are real physical objects, has the exact same business model as that star citizen videogame where they were selling virtual spaceships for thousands of dollars before the game was released
boiler goon (2018)
littlegreenpills posted:lol this is funny, are you trying to get Will Arnett for your screenplay? oh shit, that's real
This is like an episode of Silicon Valley lmao pic.twitter.com/2w464qB2zr
— the hippo account (@InternetHippo) May 3, 2018
During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me. GoogleX is the company’s “moonshot factory,” devoted to projects, such as self-driving cars, that are difficult to build but might have monumental impact. Hooli, a multibillion-dollar company on “Silicon Valley,” bears a singular resemblance to Google. (The Google founder Larry Page, in Fortune: “We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.” Hooli’s C.E.O., in season two: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better place better than we do.”) The previous season, Hooli had launched HooliXYZ, its own “moonshot factory,” whose experiments were slapstick absurdities: monkeys who use bionic arms to masturbate; powerful cannons for launching potatoes across a room. “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred many times to specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper said. “His message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ ” (Teller could not be reached for comment.)
Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
lo posted:that star citizen videogame where they
wereare selling virtual spaceships for thousands of dollars before the gamewashas been released
and are still doing that after seven years
i have a lot more faith in star citizen than tesla though
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/59jxak/biohacker-ceo-aaron-traywick-was-found-dead-in-a-floatation-therapy-tank posted:Aaron Traywick, the controversial CEO of the biohacking company Ascendance Biomedical, which encouraged people to conduct medical research outside the confines of pharmaceutical companies and academia, died Sunday in Washington, D.C., police confirmed to VICE News Tuesday. He was 28.
Traywick was found dead in a spa room in a building on Massachusetts Avenue downtown , according to police. Andreas Stuermer and Tristan Roberts, who worked with Ascendance Biomedical, said a family member told them that Traywick was discovered in a flotation therapy tank. While the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. is now investigating Traywick’s death, the agency doesn’t have any evidence to suggest foul play at this time, police said.
“Aaron was a passionate visionary. He seemingly never tired as he brought people together to work on some of the most imposing challenges facing humanity,” Roberts said in a statement. “While many in the biohacking scene disagreed with his methods, none of them doubted his intentions. He sought nothing short of a revolution in biomedicine; the democratization of science and the opening of the flood gates for global healing.”
Ascendance Biomedical rose to prominence thanks in part to its workers’ willingness to publicly experiment on themselves. Traywick once dropped his pants on a conference stage to inject himself with what he said was a potential herpes treatment, and sat next to Roberts as he live-streamed injecting himself with a compound designed to alter his genetic code and cure him of HIV.
But in recent weeks, Traywick — who had no medical background — had lost touch with his colleagues at Ascendance Biomedical. Disagreements over the company’s direction and philosophical differences over how to best distribute its creations split the small startup.
“We all lost touch with him. It was radio silence,” Stuermer, a researcher, told VICE News, which profiled the company earlier this month. “It was more than four weeks ago."
Stuermer is also hopeful that the scientists who once worked at Ascendance Biomedical will continue their work.
"The future is difficult to predict. He was willing to go where lots of people were afraid to go,” Stuermer said of Traywick. “I don't have the perfect answer to this, but stuff will go on."
