China's Mobike eyes Singapore launch

[specuvestor]

What is crazy is there’s actually someone buying it at $3.4b

I’m not surprised there’s people selling weird stuff on eMarket places. I’m surprised there’s buyers

[opmi]

Sometimes strategic acq seems crazy in the beginning - YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitch etc.

But some acq are just crazy. Hahaha.

Only time will tell who are the crazy ones.

[CY09]

When Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, many people were wondering how much EPS could be added as they couldn't see much synergy and it was then quite a high price for a comic studio, which only had a limited audience reach

10 years on, Disney made many critics eat their words by helping make these comics into movies and immersing them into most consumer's experiences.

[specuvestor]

^^Agree. Anyhow park model makes sense for the individual. Doesn't make sense for other stakeholders. It should be at least near some bicycle parking lots unless we want to look like some other cities. We even have parking lots right under HDB flats.

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-as...tor=SEC-23

As discussed, theft is serious problem.  OTOH it's not an issue with Uber. The model is drastically different. I think sharing economy is picking up, but rental disguising as sharing does not

I don’t think the model makes sense. Like Webvan it only makes sense when money is cheap.

When PE is pitched to Chinese farmers, it tells you something. But interest rate is rising. Collapse of bitcoin tells something about animal spirit

The tide is going out and we’ll see some butts

[Big Toe]

When YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc was a start up, it is not difficult for us to see them attain profitability as scaling up their operations costs very little. Bike share is completely different, you have hardware, software and huge maintenance/regulatory costs. The internet/software startups pay none of that. The last time I checked, their bike share rival was burning about USD 100M monthly to sustain/expand their operations.

Just to give you an idea, shared bikes need to be redistributed regularly so that bikes can be found where it is most needed. Here's the dumb part, the trucks used for the job can usually carry 12-20 bikes and costs between $50-$80 per trip. So it costs the bike share company a few dollars to redistribute each bike and they charge next to nothing to the users.

In Singapore, each illegally parked bike will cost the company $500 if enforcement catches up with them. And my best estimate is that each bike wont last more than 20 rides before it needs servicing or is completely broken. There is no penalty for misuse and when there are no rules and no enforcement on the riders, things tend to get out of control.

My best estimate is for the bike share company to break even solely based on rental charges, it need to charge at least $8-$10 an hour.
It is higher than east coast bicycle rental kiosk because it has far far higher running costs. The only reason why the valuations is high is solely because the chinese internet giants are too hungry for customer acquisition, to complement their current ecosystem. Bike share is at the right place at the right time. It's a great job that pays millions to help burn billions.

[Wildreamz]

When YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc was a start up, it is not difficult for us to see them attain profitability as scaling up their operations costs very little.  Bike share is completely different, you have hardware, software and huge maintenance/regulatory costs. The internet/software startups pay none of that. The last time I checked, their bike share rival was burning about USD 100M monthly to sustain/expand their operations.

..

Actually the price paid for many of the above acquisition were considered outlandish by industry observers at that time, including on this very forum.

IMO, there is a lot of change going on in transportation right now; the sharing economy companies (Uber, Grubhub, Meituan etc.) autonomous driving (Baidu, Waymo etc.), electrification (BYD, BAIC, Tesla etc.), mobile payments (WeChat Pay, Alipay etc.). Bike sharing is part of the puzzle; they may simultaneously provide data (insights on local transportation hot spots, routes etc.), existing user base (which may be a gateway for online wallet and other services, such as advertisements) etc. etc. Since we are not the VC, we do not have all the insights, give it a few years and we will know if the price paid is justified.

For the record, I think the WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram acquisition were genius moves (that wasn't immediately intuitive to outsiders) that really paid off.

[Big Toe]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/31/palihapi...lloon.html

Cant agree more that venture Capital created a bizarre ponzi Balloon.
Most disruptive companies/start-ups/unicorns cant stand on their own 2 feet without massive fund raising. (note, most not all, there are of course exceptions)
I have seen how valuations is based on ridiculous matrix, the more they lose, they more they get for the subsequent funding rounds.
It is amazing how greed can knock the smartest people senseless.
It is unlikely to end well when the music(funding) stops.

[weijian]

What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.

Internet 1.0 bought in some of the current giants/well knowns like Alphabet, Amazon, Ebay, Paypal, Youtube etc. Internet 2.0 bought in Facebook, Twitter and co for the social sharing economy. Internet 3.0 currently has a few winners from the sharing economy like Uber or Airbnb. It's hard for the money not to go crazy under these circumstances. If i were one, i probably will be crazy as well.

That said, if all these is viewed from venture capital's standpoint, it is not exactly crazy in some sense as well. Equity investing of listed companies generally try to reduce Type1 errors (ie. investing in a dud) to improve performance. But for venture capital, they have to reduce type2 errors (not investing in a home run). So while the former tries to avoid losing so as to win, the latter tries to avoid the error of omission.

No one wants to have the future feeling of regret of missing out on the real deal if the chance once presented itself but they didn't hold onto it. It would haunt for the rest of their life.

[Big Toe]

Good point but there is one clear difference in venture capitals invested in almost anything 3.0 and hyping up the valuation every few months. In all Internet 1.0/2.0 winners, there is some indication of how it is going to work out, where the revenue is coming from once there is mass adoption. And user acquisition cost is extremely low.

Internet 3.0 is a completely different animal. A few are clear winners and is viable(Grab is slowly but surely taking a greater share of your fare). Most wont work out no matter how you look at it and not it's not just bike share alone. The whole serial start up entrepreneur raising funds for one start up after another and associating higher valuations each round feels very much like a ponzi scheme. Bit coin has little or no value but at least it does not value itself higher and higher for each subsequent trading session.