
Saudi sovereign-wealth fund backs Travis Kalanick’s new startup - giacaglia
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudis-back-travis-kalanicks-new-startup-11573122604?mod=rsswn
======
jSully24
My immediate reaction is "WeWork for chefs".

After looking over their website it looks like a real estate company providing
kitchen space, WeWork for chefs.

I posted this link several weeks ago, so perhaps the "not-com" bubble" is not
bursting?
[https://www.theatlantic.com/article/600232/](https://www.theatlantic.com/article/600232/)

I do think this idea is actually pretty good. However I don't see a way this
will gather the necessary hockey stick growth for typical startup gains that
garners this much investment.

But, I've been wrong plenty of times before...

~~~
rsynnott
This sort of thing has been around for a while:
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-
dark-kitchens-pop-up-feeding-the-city-london)

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
As a first approximation, running from any startup that is backed by the Saudi
sovereign-wealth fund (and Softbank Vision fund which is mostly just another
name for the Saudi money) is likely a good investment strategy.

Basically, any company that has great prospects is going to be able to get
money from other funds with a lot less baggage. In addition, founders who take
that money likely have ethical issues and will happily screw the investors
(see WeWork CEO).

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Animats
Doordash is in that business, with Doordash Kitchens. On a smaller scale;
though. They have a small food factory in Redwood City, CA, cranking out
hamburgers and variations on chicken with rice. Doordash "dashers" drive up
and pick up the food.

~~~
CaptainZapp
It must not be running so great. Considering that Door Dash sees a need to
steal tips[1] from their workers.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/20/20825937/doordash-
tippi...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/20/20825937/doordash-tipping-
policy-still-not-changed-food-delivery-app-gig-economy)

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groby_b
Leveraging synergies - let's put chopped up people right back into the food
chain!

And Kalanick is _just_ the person to make that happen.

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Ididntdothis
The size of these investments is just crazy. When I worked at a startup from
1999 on we were fighting for a few million here and there and money came in
small steps. Now it seems a lot of them immediately get hundreds of millions.
Seems there really is just way too much money floating around looking for
investment opportunities.

~~~
netsharc
It seems so. I really need to make that dumb app I've had in mind! The idea
isn't original but hey it seems people will throw money at it anyway.

As a bonus it won't abuse the underemployed nor will it fuck travellers,
homeowners and destroy cities by messing with their housing market.

~~~
maest
Repeat founders have huge advantages when it comes to raising funds,
regardless of how "dumb" their idea seems to sideline observers.

I believe this is partially beacause investor's don't have very strong priors
about what works and are happy to delegate that decision to someone with a
track record. Incidentally, this model also explains why VCs tend to herd
around the same investments - it's notorious how, once you get one VC
interested, they all suddenly become interested.

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blobbers
CK was recruiting in the bay area a few months ago. Did anyone go to their
recruiting pitch nights in SF or PA? Apparently Travis was going to be
speaking.

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3x3m3
Huge indicator that he still hasn’t learned the value of being ethical in
business.

~~~
sky_rw
Well he made billions from UBER and is now getting $400 million in funding for
his new business, so maybe it's you that hasn't learned the value of being
_unethical_ in business.

~~~
jaimex2
This. The man knows how the game is played.

His goal is to make money, not make the world a better place. This goes for
every company, some just stay in sheeps clothing longer than others depending
on how much power they have.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
>This goes for every company

Fuck that. That's not the world I live in. It may go for many companies, even
most. But to really believe this is (nearly) universal, you must be in a
bubble I want no part of.

------
teddyuk
It is going to be a disaster, you can’t go from running a multi billion
company to being lean and nimble - he should just find a nice golf club and
work on his putting

~~~
rrix2
He did a lot of things poorly, but running a small and nimble company wasn't
one of them, tbh. His house of cards only really started to fall when Uber
grew like crazy.

~~~
sytelus
His house of cards fell when his mom died. While he was still devastated from
the loss, board members approached him for leadership change and he just
signed it off like that. Board members were extremely surprised because they
though it would start of negotiation at some high unachievable goal and then
drive to something low. Instead he just threw it all away. He had all the
legal rights and means not to do that.

Personally, I think he is a good person and amazing enterprenuer. Yes, I've
seen that can driver video and legions of article how Uber is losing money. I
think people don't understand the herculean task of disrupting this entire
space of 100 year old business backed by government sponsored monopolies and
their extremely rich benefiting donors. This guy comes out of nowhere with
nothing and puts up a fight in 700 cities across the world and wins. I believe
if he was allowed to continue leading he would have disrupted entire logistics
space and Uber would be bigger than Amazon. Unfortunately VCs and their media
darlings don't want to wait for another decade and wants to milk the cow until
it dies off.

~~~
rrix2
I worked at Uber 2014-2019 and things started to feel unstable long before his
ouster and long before all the chaos preceding it. His mother's tragic passing
and his subsequent resignation were when the cards finished falling, but they
started long before that.

he wasn't scaling as fast as the business since 2015 or so and refused to
trust responsible lieutenants to run the company more reasonably. He would
walk the engineering floor getting his nose in things and making changes which
caused outages and regressions on New Year's Eve (our biggest day for the next
six months) and no one including the CTO had the guts or ability to put him in
his place. IMO he should have got rid of Jeff Holden and been head of product
himself, which I think is the role he wanted to be in and the role he would be
most impactful in. Holden certainly wasn't interested in the Uber product of
2015 as much as he cared about the Uber product of 2035. Playing CEO again
with CK seems like a waste of money if they expect another Uber. I don't
really care since it's the Saudi royal family's money being wasted though.

I don't know or care enough about him to comment on his personal ethics or
whether he was the only person in his position who could have had his level of
impact as you are probably implying. All I saw was him and the rest of the
leadership team doing whatever they could to meet growth metrics while the day
to day in engineering was awful and unsustainable and using the same things
you say, as excuses to not do better.

I also don't think the business would be in any better position today if he
was CEO than what Dara has done. Uber was never a 120bn$ company. It could
be/have been but I don't think that Dara is any more responsible for the
downfall than Travis or the board or the media darlings. The battleground
cities Uber is fighting to maintain service (NY license cap, LADOT MDS
standard) in are fighting back from Travis's bully behavior in those 700
cities, not Dara's. This is the natural next stage of fighting these
regulations and monoplies and IMO Travis would struggle at least as much as
Dara in this new battleground.

~~~
jjeaff
On the positive side, I think starting a ridiculous business in the US is one
of the best ways to waste money.

While a few whales will end up taking and stashing the money away in overseas
accounts, lots of it will go for bills to legitimate business and probably
mostly to employee salaries.

So at least we get that money distributed among the populace a little bit.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/LoUF1](http://archive.is/LoUF1)

------
hourislate
If you have to rent a kitchen/building to open a restaurant, chances are you
will go out of business or at best break even.

Restaurant/Food business is brutal.

Also, is this really any different than the Food Hall concept?

~~~
ReptileMan
Depends on the price. From what I gather they buy crap properties and renovate
them.

But honestly I would go the other way - I would target the prosumer segment -
create some nice spaces with a dinner table that serious hobbyists can rent by
the let's say 3 hours slot, since they don't have real estate (and power) in
their homes.

50 square meters that are filled with everything from wok to latest modernist
toys.

------
whalesalad
Interesting that the website for CloudKitchens (his new gig) has a lot of
stylistic similarities with Uber -- especially the Uber from a few years back.

~~~
IGotThroughIt
> especially the Uber from a few years back

Would you say you liked it better then compared to now?

~~~
whalesalad
I don’t have a horse in this race. I just found the resemblance pretty
striking.

------
Marter34
That's super interesting. Life and art mix pretty well. This comes out right
after an episode of SV making fun of entrepreneurs taking money from a
dictatorship

~~~
novok
I think they wrote that episode when softbank with saudi money was dominating
the VC industry and telling people to take their money or else (they will fund
their competitors).

The entire 'or else' scope in the episode was a shout out to softbank. Same
with russ hanneman being a shoutout to mark cuban.

------
sschueller
Did people already forget the reason Travis "left" Uber?

How long until the ex WeWork CEO gets funding for his next startup?

~~~
paggle
The early investors in Uber are very thankful that they had faith in Travis
Kalanick.

~~~
groby_b
This is true for Ponzi schemes as well.

------
authoritarian
Quote from BI "It's the first known investment by the kingdom since the murder
of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year."

Not something I'd want myself or my company to be associated with. As usual, I
suppose it shows what's really important to these people. $$$

~~~
criddell
Whose reputation will it hurt more? The Saudi's or Kalanick's?

~~~
loeg
The Saudi's rep is already poison. This news hurts Kalanick's. He may be
awful, but he hasn't had any journalists tortured and beheaded.

~~~
vuln
No he just harasses rape survivors and calls them liars.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/rape-victim-files-new-
lawsui...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/rape-victim-files-new-lawsuit-
against-uber.html)

~~~
wefarrell
That was an executive who Kalanick fired because of what they did.

~~~
wavefunction
They were fired three years after "what they did," and they included Kalanick
in the original communications so it seems more that they were fired upon
being publicly caught.

------
0zymandias
Travis was deeply flawed as the CEO of Uber. It was clearly beyond any scale
he had ever operated at. But he was also a force of nature and willed a new
industry into existence.

Since Travis left, Uber has stopped innovating. Dara was a safe bet but
perhaps too safe. Uber is about as exciting as Expedia now.

I am not surprised that Travis is having another huge success. Hopefully, he
has learned a lot from his experience at Uber.

~~~
rrix2
I think it's far too early to call CK a success.

