Inside the Great 15-Minute Grocery Delivery Rush

[weijian]

I used to naively think that one needs to have a viable business model that can become profitable one day (or at least a clear path to profitability). Of course, that was just first level thinking.

Inside the Great 15-Minute Grocery Delivery Rush

My gut is that all these guys are angling for market share, so they can say they have the most customers and get bought by Amazon. It’s all about customer acquisition at any cost, and they don’t care if it costs them a fortune because at the end of the day it’s a race for market share.”

https://commercialobserver.com/2022/02/i...very-rush/

[specuvestor]

It's the same as dotcom to burn money to get market share / mindshare. Hence increasing cost (rather than profit) per acquisition was one "positive" metric. But what is peculiar about this bull run is that there is a very orderly rotation that's going on. So the easy money or euphoria doesn't fund these ventures until all pop together.

Small mid cap tech and risky assets already started to bust in November 2021 but big cap held up until recently. Even like say crypto currency you have bitcoin and then ICO bubble + bust and then other crypto like Ethereum taking over the "leadership". I think raising rates and ending QE is not a problem but hopefully Powell Fed don't make similar 2018 mistake of being overly enthusiastic. His track record including "transient inflation" is not exactly reassuring.

[CY09]

IMO the 20 approx trillion of money engineered by ECB, JCB and Fed has created multiple bubbles. One in crypto, one in the start up segment where companies value themselves on metrics such as customer acquisitions/GMV and not on net profit margins and lastly housing bubble in major cities.

It is quite difficult to see how can the 3 central banks destroy the 20 trillion they have created. A gradual tapering will take years and before they can unwind, I expect another recession which forces them to QE again. To me, they have to cut the nonsense they are doing and unwind within these 5-7 years window, otherwise they have little headroom to navigate in bad times. However, the very act of them unwinding aggressively at 3 trillion per year will cause another recession.

The unprofitable start ups will fail and unemployment will occur (gig and software workers will be left floundering). The original reason why crypto was founded was also partly due to ppl being against central banks indiscriminate QEs

[Choon]

Reads like what has happened / is happening in China - internet and retail giants competing to set up last-mile convenience shops and group-buys in recent years.

But Amazon seems to have (wisely) shown restraint by not participating in this frenzy.