Tag: future

The Uber IPO – Imaginary Profits Only

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Last Friday night, I did a TV interview on ABC regarding Uber’s long awaited IPO. An IPO is when a company first becomes a publicly traded stock that anyone can buy and hold. To put it bluntly, Uber is a terrible investment for anyone who didn’t already own the shares in it before it went public. But I do think this IPO is very instructive from a technology business strategy and investment perspective, so I thought I’d lay it out in clear terms why I don’t think Uber has a bright future as a publicly traded stock. So get ready for some finance meets tech nerdocity below.

The Valuation: Uber was priced at $45 USD per share giving it a valuation of  around $82 billion USD. This means Uber is a more valuable company than Ford and GM combined. It closed its first day of trade down 8% at a price of $41.60. To be clear, the founders, early investors and many employees ended the day very rich indeed. And yes, they have a terrific service many of us enjoy more than we ever did taking the traditional taxi cabs. It might also be that many investors, hungry to get their hands on ‘high tech’ stocks like Uber will irrationally push the share price up – especially given most tech companies stay private for much longer these days.

  • Amazon IPO 1997 – 2 years after it was founded
  • Google IPO 2004 – 5 years after it was founded
  • Facebook IPO 2012 – 8 years after it was founded
  • Uber IPO 2019 – 10 years after it was founded

Even though retail investors have far less access to high growth companies these days, I can’t help but think Uber will never be achieve the long term profitability serious investors will require. Here’s why:

Profit: Uber currently loses $10 for every $30 ride transaction. The more it grows, the more money it loses. And this problem can’t be fixed easily. It’s not like other software businesses, because every ride has a real and unavoidable marginal cost. The difference between it and companies like Google and Facebook is that new users come with very little cost increase, if any. Uber, on the other hand, doesn’t.

Cost Cutting: The main opportunity for Uber to cut costs is to simply remove its drivers and replace them with autonomous vehicles. It seems pretty clear to me that Uber regards its drivers as ‘holding places for robots’. The problem however, is that as soon as Uber can reduce operating costs by employing autonomous cars, so can Ford, GM, Tesla, Google and every other car manufacturer in the world. All of whom already have autonomous car projects and eyes on the market of transport as a service.

Adjacent Businesses: Again Uber has done well to create offshoots including Uber Eats, but just like the example above, as soon as autonomous cars and drones become possible for local eateries, and much cheaper, I don’t see why any of them would hand over that margin to Uber when they could simply do it themselves. It also should be said that if they become a ‘logistics company’ then they better get good at competing with Amazon.

Low Barriers to Entry: Of all the large technology businesses going around, Uber is the least complex – evidenced by the increasing number of its competitors around the world, including Ola and Didi. The low barriers to entry aren’t just because of the simplicity of the software model, but counter to popular belief, there isn’t a dramatic network effect. A network effect is present when a service gets better when more people use the same service, like Facebook. In real terms, users just need enough cars on the service they choose and most savvy drivers operate on all the rideshare apps simultaneously. In my view, it’s only a matter of time before we see ridesharing drivers cut out the middleman and develop their own app so they won’t have to pay extortionate fees to a third party like Uber. This just might make the difference for the work to be fair economically for the drivers.

Legal Issues & Regulation: On top of all its general business challenges, Uber is fighting dozens of legal cases. It is also highly likely government regulation will further impact its business model as its drivers become legally recognised employees. While tech used to be everyone’s darling, there has been a clear sentiment shift recently to question their ethics and impact on wider society.

If there is anything the Uber float points out, it’s that a business that’s good for consumers, doesn’t always result in a good business.

Food, Data and Modernity

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

People are driven by scarcity. Things of value, with limited availability, drive a strong desire for more. Information used to be like that. We had very few channels for accessing knowledge. It used to be difficult to find esoteric content. But once we found it, it was usually of high quality. But information in today’s world has done a complete turn around. Now it’s easy to find on any topic, but much harder to rely on the quality.

It’s as if we are so thrilled to find information on our topics of interest and existing opinions that we rarely stop and consider what we’re feeding our minds. We are bingeing – we are becoming addicted. And sometimes, it’s an all you-can-eat buffet of informational bullshit.

While information can be wonderful and powerful, it’s a lot like food, If we consume the wrong stuff, it can have a massive impact on our well being. We’re now entering the era of ‘digital obesity’: a world full of people consuming the wrong information in copious quantities. Often facilitated by those who profit from the distribution of bad content.

It’s not the first time we’ve faced a problem like this.

Up until about 100 years ago – very few people had more food than they could eat. But once food became heavily industrialised and super cheap, we indulged in excess calories. For the past 70 years, humans in developed economies had access to much more food than they needed. The net result is more shocking than surprising. Around the world today, there are more people who eat themselves to death than starve to death. The problem of course is that we’ve been programmed over the past 200,000 years to eat as much as we could, whenever food became available, to simply stay alive. Our DNA evolved to cope with periods of feast and famine. Today, it’s just a feast, for most people in developed economies. Now the biggest health problems facing our species are the results of over-eating.

The good thing is now we’re aware of the downsides of having too much to eat, we’re adapting. We’re re-educating each other on what good food looks like, how to resist the junk and how to resist eating more than we need. So many processed foods are calorie-dense and nutrition-poor that they trick the mind to crave the wrong stuff.

Maybe it’s the same with ‘processed’ information? We are getting sugar rushes with every click, but we are not providing our minds with the nutrients it needs to grow and sustain itself.  We also need to learn to leave some information on the table. It seems the shift from scarcity to excess (in many forms) is an endemic problem of modernity. We’ll have to keep adapting to resist the excess, and find the quality. While it’s not our fault we’ve reacted this way, if we are at least aware of it, we can make a concerted effort to feed our society and our brains the nutritious content our mind really needs.

The Other 1 Percent

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Ferrari sales in Australia are up 17% on last year. While new car sales are down 3 percent. A new Gulfstream private jet has a 2 year wait list. By all accounts the one percent are doing well. But there’s another 1 percent out there which doesn’t get nearly as much attention.

This is the 1 percent who take the time and effort to invest in themselves. The few who understand the gift technology has given us to transform. This is the 1 percent who:

  • Re-educate themselves on changes in their industry
  • Turn up to the free learning event on hot topics like  E-sports, Blockchain or Artificial Intelligence
  • Learn anything, for free, on-line
  • Do night projects
  • Start a side business
  • Tap into the world’s best thinkers who publish their ideas for free
  • Read the book and not just the blog post
  • Listen to podcasts instead of FM banter
  • Aren’t concerned about keeping up with the Kardashians

All of which have the very low price tag of allocating spare time differently.

These people realise that even though there are income disparities, an eroding middle class, and change which will disrupt jobs – they’ve also been given a choice. A choice to change and adapt with the market as it moves on. A choice to be the person who invests small and frequent amounts of time to know more, become more and reduce their income risk when that change finally hits. This other one percent are thankful for the dignity of choice to ‘upgrade our skills’ we’ve all been given, and they’re taking it.

And the others? Well, they just watch the next season of that tv show they watched last year, with those people fighting each other to win some cooking battle, get voted off an island or marry someone they don’t even know. They opt out of their life and start living someone else’s.

Sure, it’s tough when the rules of business, life and the market change. But it would be tougher if we didn’t have all the choices we do to do something about it.

The Secret Innovation Budget

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Research & Development and Marketing traditionally lived in different worlds. R&D for innovation purpose happened in secret, in the lab, while Marketing was mostly just advertising. The advertising itself? Well, that was generally about convincing people to buy what the company could already make. It was rarely about the future and what the brand might become. Smart companies however, have merged these two disciplines. It’s a ‘trick’ any firm big enough to have a marketing budget might want to embrace. Yes, the marketing budget should really be an innovation fund, and vice versa.

In times of great change we idolise the new. The wonder created by what was once the realm of science fiction, are todays most shareable artefacts online. Cool stuff we see for the first time like an Amazon drone delivery, a Google driverless car, or an Uber air taxi get viewed millions of times, voluntarily, without media expense. These companies are telling the market, we are inventing the future. If you’re a large corporation today, and you’re not inventing the future, during such a revolutionary time, then you just might be inventing your own demise.

But here’s a few questions worth asking:

  • When was the last time you had something delivered via drone?
  • When was the last time you took a ride in a driverless vehicle?
  • When did you last hover above traffic in your air taxi?

If you’re like most people, you haven’t, yet. That’s not to say that these things aren’t on the way – they certainly are, but in truth these companies have purposely talked up the technology many years before any of them were actually functional, let alone a commercial reality. This is where the trick part comes in. The time lag between the concept phase and the reality of these innovations being in market is a great brand building exercise for the firms smart enough to do it. Cleverly, their R&D has become their advertising. They’ve earned free global media attention and further ensconced themselves as innovators.

The perception this creates in the market isn’t just nice to have. It can also have a massive economic impact on the firms financially. Just compare the unit sales, price earnings ratios and valuations of firms serving the same set of customers:

Automobiles:

  • Tesla makes 245k cars per year, and has a PE ratio of infinity (no dividends yet), and a market cap of $48 billion.
  • Ford makes a 7.9m cars per year (one per 4 seconds) and has a PE ratio of 9.3x, and a market cap of $34 billion.

The market has clearly voted on how it values innovation.

So could an old world industrial company use innovation as a brand communication tool? Could they be seen as on the cutting edge of technology and reap the valuation benefits? Of course.

But it requires some shifts in attitude.

It requires the firm to set lofty goals in their innovation efforts, it can’t be incremental. They also need the courage to share these innovation dreams with the market and own them publicly. It also requires the vision to shift investment from traditional marketing and advertising budgets into innovation arenas and moonshot product developments. All of which can not only become an exponential product improvement, but be an effective form of advertising in the interim. But mostly, it will send a strong message and provide a new confidence to the firms customers, employees and investors that they have a chance at inventing the future too.

There’s only one real world

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s very hard to understand the consequences of something when you can’t touch it, feel it and experience it in the physical form. Many of our virtual experiences seem displaced from a physical reality. It’s as if it didn’t really happen, that it’s only information and information isn’t real. Digital privacy fits neatly inside this parable.

I’m sure you’ve heard the following statement when it comes to online privacy:

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The next time you hear that, ask the person who said it to hand over their phone. Ask them to tell you the password, unlock every app inside it and to let you browse through at your leisure. I’d be surprised if any adult in the free world would feel comfortable with this. I know I wouldn’t. It’s not because I have anything to hide, it’s because privacy and secrets are not the same thing. And some things in my life, like everyone, are private. The phone is not a phone – it’s a digital manifestation of the physical self. It’s the most personal device humans have ever owned in history.

To gain access to it, our governments and tech companies have conspired to conflate privacy and secrets to be the same. It suits both of these actors. Governments get access to all that we do – just in case a terrorist is hiding inside their gigantic digital dragnet, or someone tries to use crypto currency to dodge tax. Simultaneously the tech giants get to continue their business of Surveillance Capitalism. And the externality of both these things, is that basic human decency, respect and freedom is compromised for all.

If there’s one thing we need to get better at as a society, it is understanding the physical consequences of informational actions. If you’d keep something private in the physical world, then we should have the ability to do that in digital realm too. If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, we shouldn’t say it on-line. And if you think that your online life is different to your physical life – then it’s time to start remembering that all these things interact in the one physical world we live in.

A New Retail Dynamic

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Whenever we go on the internet to check out how much something costs, we expect that it could change by the day, the hour or even the minute. Heck, it feels like they put the price up if we dare to look at something twice – especially that flight for a weekend getaway.

We’ve been trained in digital forums to know that prices are in a constant state of flux – dynamic. They vary based on demand (which is now trackable) to maximise the sellers’ profitability. Everything on the internet just moves that bit faster – the programmable nature of the forum creates a naturally turbulent environment we have to navigate, especially when it comes to commerce. While it can be frustrating and annoying, it also creates a sense of anticipation. It makes us act quickly, and come back frequently to see what else might seduce us. We have to make sure we’re not missing out, or that we paid too much.

While prices in the physical world do change, they’ve never been as malleable as they are on the web. Sure, grocery prices to change every week, car yards to have offers every month, and most retailers have sales. But no traditional retailer changes price by the minute, or even by the hour. Maybe it’s time they started.

It’s worth remembering the constraints retail had in a pre-internet world. Changing the prices in a grocery store required weeks of planning, long paper trails, the changing of pricing tickets on shelves, and the printing of physical retail catalogues. Most retailers had similar constraints when it comes to changing prices in stores. It turns out the low frequency of price changes in stores was in reality, a technology limitation. While local retailers could slash the price on a slow selling item with a sharpie, or a fresh fruit retailer could discount a pineapple before it rotted, larger retailers with many stores had a much tougher time changing prices.

But now that many stores have digital pricing displays on shelves, why haven’t they leveraged the possibility for totally dynamic pricing on the shelf? Answer: Legacy Thinking.

The only constraint that now exists is in their minds.

Crazy idea for free

Imagine if retail stores had prices that changed constantly, maybe even by the second. The moment I mention it to people, they think I’m crazy and that this would be ‘unfair’ to consumers. They says it’s something a store just couldn’t do. How could a store just change its prices every other moment? Answer: The exact same way the internet does. How cool would it be to reduce a price dynamically in front of a consumer to entice a purchase as they walk past an item they picked up and put down again – to send out a post on social media on a quiet day and announce a half price sale for just the next 30 mins? Or to announce at a random time on a Saturday the store will have a radical price reduction. Maybe an unexpectedly busy time would require the prices to go up to thin out the crowd in a too busy fast food restaurant?

Sure, there’s massive flaws in this idea, there’d be winners and losers, people complaining and people gaming it to their advantage. But surely it would generate traffic, attention and conversation that harkens a market bazaar of yesteryear where literally anything could happen.

Maybe it’s this kind of crazy that retail needs.

The unexplainable gig

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Today I was in a little talk circle among a few friends at the PauseFest event. We all made some introductions to each other and then proceeded to discuss what we did for a living. Then something weird happened. None of us had simple answers.

It turns out all of us are ‘projecteers‘. We do a number of small projects and tasks for a variety of customers. We create, think, write, speak, consult, write code and build strategy for people and companies who need it. The cool thing is that none of us could explain it because: all of us have so much variety in what we do. Of course, those who need to know get it. While this is a small audience, it’s also the only audience that matters.

It got me thinking about how much of an advantage it is that we can’t explain our ‘jobs’. You see, the more difficult it is to explain what you do to a person, the more difficult it will be to explain it to a Robot or an Artificial Intelligence that might replace us. The biggest advantage any of us can have in the future will become to have a gig, career, or job which is difficult to explain.

So here’s the next question it presents: How do we increase the complexity of what we do to make ourselves unexplainable? My answer is simple – make sure what you do involves the most complex thing the universe has ever created – humans. The more interactions with people and projects our gigs involve, the more complex it becomes. Breadth of interaction is the insurance policy of the future.

And if your gig is streamlined and simple, it might just be time to start adding some complexity and variety.