Really interesting criticism of the siphoning economy (which has boldly misnamed itself the sharing economy): Companies like Airbnb, Uber and Lyft have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital in the belief that the money they spend now will buy them lasting competitive advantages for years to come. But what if that’s exactly backwards? What if all those nine-figure war chests are really millstones that will only weigh them down as newer, nimbler entrants swim circles around them? Every dollar they have to return to investors is a dollar that doesn’t go to users of the platform — users who, by the nature of the sharing economy, often feel they’re the ones who created the value in the first place and deserve to partake in it. ‘Those companies won’t be able to get out from under that structure,” Burnham said. “That is an opportunity for the next generation of sharing economy companies. The key is to raise less and raise it at a valuation that allows a return for your investors without having to have a thick platform that extracts a lot of rents for your investors.” From those Communists at Forbes. Commenting on the people who want to become billionaires off precarious labor and marginal people while buzzing about sharing.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 19:18:49 +0000
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