
How Blue Apron Became a Massive $2 Billion Disaster - smn1234
https://observer.com/2020/02/blue-apron-disaster-silicon-valley/
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_bxg1
> Exactly who it was that was both upwardly mobile to pay for this service
> while also having a barren kitchen, nobody really knew—but by the divine
> math of Silicon Valley gamblers, your existence made this an idea worth
> several billion dollars and potent enough to “disrupt” the grocery business.

I mean. My partner and I are both software engineers, she loves to cook, and
these meals make up a hearty portion (for two people) of healthy, really
diverse and flavorful dishes that come to around the same price per person as
going to Chipotle. We eat them three nights a week and are really very happy
with it.

I'm not surprised to hear that they overestimated their market (who doesn't
these days?), but there definitely is one.

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SpicyLemonZest
A subscription service doesn't seem like the right way to deliver that,
though. It seems like their competitor Plated had the right idea; grocery
stores have highly optimized the process of distributing cooking ingredients
to people, so the right way to sell meal kits is to become part of a grocery
store.

~~~
_bxg1
Sure, I've no doubt grocery stores have a better economy-of-scale around this
sort of thing, but the article seemed to be invalidating the entire product,
so I was speaking against that.

I will also say that the recipes are a huge factor, and the delivery is a non-
zero factor. We haven't gotten the same recipe twice and they consistently
impress with bold and unexpected flavors, and fewer trips to the store (and
fewer ingredients going to waste from expiration) is really nice as a pair of
working adults.

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jefflombardjr
> prepackaged amounts of just enough salmon, green beans, butter and lemon for
> one meal, no leftovers—was for you.

Maybe I’m not their target customer, but I feel like meal prep services are
the opposite of convenient.

1\. Instead of prepping food, with Blue Apron, I now have to unwrap and prep
food. 2\. I now have to cook more often because of no more leftovers. 3\.
Instead of food waste I know have plastic and packaging waste. Food waste I
could at least throw in city compost and not feel too bad about.

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jjeaff
Is there a lockout period for these large VC investors when they do an IPO?

Or do they get to dump as much of the stock as possible in these IPOs? And if
so, I think there needs to be a big compilation of large shareholders of these
IPOs and how much money they are making off the IPO. We might see some
interesting patterns.

For example, if certain VCs sell their shares at the very beginning, is that a
sure signal that everything is going to fall apart soon?

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erikpukinskis
There are no sure signals on the stock market. To the extent such a signal
briefly exists, it will quickly be priced into the market. You just have to
look at the details on each specific offering and try to find an “unsure”
signal that you have confidence in because of some special expertise you
developed that not everyone in the market has.

~~~
jjeaff
Yes, but it would be nice to use those signals to know which VCs are crooks so
they can be publicly shamed.

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ganeshkrishnan
The losers in this bang bust of pretending to be billion dollar industries are
always the stock market investors which includes mutual funds and hence the
common people.

Keep pumping money until we can list it on the stock market. Find the sucker
investors and wash our hands off the investment. The greater fool is
ultimately the retail investors on the stock market.

Big vcs have already made their mark-up. It's up to the mom and pop investors
to pickup the baton and run

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SpicyLemonZest
I don't really buy that there's a bang bust here. Even in the narrow reference
class of 2017 VC-backed unicorn IPOs, many other companies did perfectly well.
There's no investing strategy that won't see some failures.

~~~
jjeaff
Do you have some examples? So far, I'm seeing Snap, Cloudera, MongoDB, and
SendGrid.

Snap-down, Cloudera-down, Mongodb-up, SendGrid-acquired but was up.

I would expect in a bull market for most to be up, not half.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Okta and Mulesoft are also very far up (Mulesoft until acquired), and
Stitchfix is up a little bit.

