Sonder's sales channel was and is primarily airbnb itself which could easily turn it off if they determined them to be a threat. So it's a business highly dependent on future competitive partners (see Airbnb plus). Their company was called Flatbook but the service and reviews were so terrible and so full or irate customers who had been scammed that they had to try and erase it from the internet and reimagine themselves as Sonder. You can still find a few places with flatbook review if you search ex. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sonder/@45.5198842,-73.587... . Anyhow miles of bad service, scams, and very serious negative reviews. Since they used Airbnb as the primary sales channel on a grand scale they would just wipe property listings once the reviews were negative and replace with new fresh listings. I do believe they have professionalized their service recently however I am surprised they were trusted with a large investment and shows you the poor judgement of VC. Their product message was cloned rather than originated, they have a history of scam level of service, their revenue channel is largely dependent on competition, not to mention their business is neither innovative nor defensible, the product is not great for cities and community. Really SV at its worst.
Progress is defined by enabling people to do more. Do we really want to go back to making energy with coal? It creates lots of jobs. Jobs that can replace with new better ones. I truly believe we are in a crisis of vision. We have food and many material things met but we haven't moved on to pushing for more progress that creates the new jobs politically.
Yes but the lack of jobs is a political problem. It's a problem of vision and goals. Just like a housing crisis. These can be resolved by changing the rules and goals of the group.
UBI is lazy tech guilt thinking. Not to mention it's arrogant. The idea that we've solved all that needs to be done is remarkable. Just look around you. Do you think we are in a place without problems that need resolving? Or work to be done? It's truly a problem of goals of humanity that lead to this disaster of demoralizing pay people to exist UBI thinking. Pay people for education first. We aren't even doing this!! Pay people to resolve climate change. Pay for more research. Pay for xyz that drives humans to new levels while enabling them to valuably contribute to our society. I'm going to write further on this but the UBI mindset is nothing more than lazy arrogant tech people who have no historical frame.
What percent of ios users never create a passcode / pin ? I'm just thinking that if face id is defaulted on it would be better than the crowd that never create a pin. I agree it is better to have a pin enabled than faceid and even better both.
Curated odesk/elancer/freelancer is area of strong need. Original thesis around fixed price generic development was a false offering that did not work well for clients or them - logical that they dropped this. Marketing of top tech talent is also a fraudulent statement according to many who have worked with them. They would do better to pursue the real opportunity with out the misleading marketing.
Reality is California is terrible at the mega projects - look at LA metro as an example. We are out of practice and the graft level is through the roof. Any public funds are likely far better spent on smaller projects that are chosen for the outsize benefit.
SF to LA is already solved by airlines and the freeway. The benefit of a rail will be marginal and temporary when cars become good at driving the freeway autonomously.
The human mind wants freedom and to have options. That's why the grass is always greener. Spend a month traveling and being back at home will sound ideal. Get stuck in an office and traveling sounds perfect. Finding the right balance is the key. In my case though I have had the freedom at times to be anywhere I still gravitate to keeping a home base.
Personal experience. It's fairly obvious if you have been using the service for any length of time in cities like SF, NYC, LA, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, really any large city that has banned or curtailed the legal offering of the service. The result is you have a lot more people offering properties where it is banned leading to awkward situations for customers. The listings are not permanent and get removed as soon as they receive a bad review. There are no checks on host providers at all. I actually think it is not any better than craigslist at this point.
The hogging of VC funds by airbnb, uber, and many other not startups is super unhealthy for the startup ecosystem. The public markets will eventually punish these companies for valuations that lack transparency. Airbnb is on the way out with their current short term renting business in most large cities. It's illegal and the quality of service is suffering dramatically. Supply side quality is on the way down. Demand side quality is terrible too. To justify their valuation they are opening up the gates to terrible customers. I get it, they may go into other markets with all this money like the long term rental business or tours business or airline flights.. maybe hotels? Reality is they are not going to be great or better at any of these things than the current companies in those markets and certainly not by any significant degree to own the market.
Agree completely that our space program needs a new significant mission to stay relevant. However, I don't think going to space matters as much as it did last century. During JFK's reign catching up in space with the soviets was more than about going to space, it was about being able to defend the country. Today I think our new Moon Mission should be about solving climate change. That's an issue the country and world need to come together on to solve.
Did you try the move office and find route feature ? Those 36 are the buildings in San Francisco where we have instant book (many properties per building). There are about 400 buildings but most are not automated in booking as of now.
They focused on themselves (what the city could do with their money) rather than the people voting and what mattered to the voters. Really terrible ad fail. Worst this year.
Text as UI success I believe is tied to how connected the related task is to the messaging tool you are in and how easy the platform makes it for the user. There are a number of tasks that could be good text candidates in a slack interface such as project management, time calendaring, tools used by the slack team. I think it's silly to jump to the conclusion that text is the future of ui. I would agree that text is making a come back for relevant tasks within popular messaging tools.
It's never wise to boast as a startup regardless of your funding and prior success. I get the vibe that they expect success. This is such a terribly bad mindset to approach a new venture with. Starting with that much funding is as much a liability as a guarantee of winning a market.