The EU is a political entity which happens to be reconsidering its independence from the US. The UK very much is not and is kowtowing favours hoping to get a good deal.
The EU and UK have no good options at the merger level. If they block the sale, it trashes the start-up ecosystem. If they let it through, an American company buys a local one.
The fundamental problem is the paucity of new-firm formation in the EU and UK, the scaling barriers they face that American compeitors don't, and the increased culture of risk-taking in America that lets its firms pay more for acquisitions. The last can't be addressed. The first two probably can by the EU. (The UK is not a viable sovereign entity in these regards.)
Dude worked at a bank - respectable white collar job acc. to his Dutch friends and family. He picked up a passion for coffee and wanted to open his own shop. His loved ones all thought he was nuts to leave a stable job for a maybe.
I'm sure there's a degree of that in the US, but we have a lot more "just try stuff" in our cultural myths than the Europeans tend to. Guy felt like his options were keep a job he hates or be disowned by everyone he knows.
We're still on a startup board, correct?
Myth is the important word here for most people in the US. Unless you are already fairly wealthy or have wealthy parents your options are incredibly limited in the US because of the lack of a social safety net.
Unlikely, in the case of Deliveroo, but I went through this exact process and it took about a month or so to get sign off and to be allowed to sell my own company to a foreign buyer (health tech)
There’s also monopoly and competition regulation that could stop a sale.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-security-and-investment...
This makes zero sense to me for a logistics company specializing in local to local deliveries. Being bigger in a given geographic area grants some benefits of scale and efficiency but being in Seattle and Bangkok there's really no difference than two separate apps. Just with the nature of the business you probably want this to be as local as possible so the profits aren't siphoned out of your community.
And dictating terms to local restaurants and delivery workers, with the threat of shutting them out of the largest market.
If they changed to another platform then I'd simply move to that platform. Of course these companies did deliveries far before techbros decided to "disrupt" the industry.
I’d find it too depressing to run any kind of family business that involved food delivery.
It doesn't take great effort for a restaurant to do good without being on these apps. But some owners want to pay 15-20% of their gross revenue to a megacorp for the rest of their lives rather than invest a few hundreds or thousands in getting their own customers. We see the same thing in a ton of industries.
Likewise even though Uber in Japan is (almost) all taxis and not actual Uber drivers, most global tourists have Uber and not something like Go that’s specific to Japan. So they are profiting off almost all the taxi rides from Western visitors.
Next door in Mesa, there is a significant designated Asian Quarter. So there is a high concentration of Asian restaurants and grocery stores. On a few occasions when ordering DoorDash from one of the big Chinese places, someone from the Chinese service delivered it instead; all receipts were printed in Chinese and sometimes I apparently received someone else’s order entirely.
I believe they did this on purpose to promote use of that native service for this set of restaurants. Unfortunately I don’t feel like reaching out to them or installing their weird Chinese language app, so I decided to simply steer clear of those most authentic restaurants instead.
There is already a tipping UI in the app, but it is not intrusive, nothing as aggressive as what you'd experience in the US where you're inclined to pre-tip even before the delivery happens.
As for the capitals, yes it is becoming a thing but from my personal experience it is limited to touristy places
Back when I used Deliveroo, tipping always led to worse delivery success rates so I gave up.
They suddenly became really bad recently, which is unfortunate as they generally had the edge on Uber Eats (total charlatans!)
What does this mean? If you don't tip on doordash in the US, your order just arrives a few minutes later than usual since the auction starts at a lower price and drivers will reject the lowest prices
That’s an understatement. Your order sits on the shelf for while before someone picks up if you don’t tip, sometimes more than 30 mins, until DoorDash forces some poor underpaid driver to pick it up sometimes with incentives, but mostly threats on their livelihood. In some cases, drivers do pick it up, don’t deliver, eat your stuff, or drive in other directions to focus on other orders. Orders without tips do extremely poorly these days.
Then what's the delivery fee?
Note the implications: If every driver in your area accepts orders at the same price, doordash will absorb the entire tip from every order. I dunno why people make up FUD instead of just doing an image search for what the driver's UI looks like.
Edit: while it is true that base pay does go up if an order gets declined, it doesn’t ALWAYS go up and if it does, it takes a while to get it to a reasonable rate. That is when your order just sits there.
On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service (though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise). Please tip accordingly. These people work their asses off and are generally from a very low income background. If you have problems with that, go to the grocery store.
I stopped automatically tipping in New York City and the Bay Area. They earn a minimum wage now [1]. If they go above and beyond, sure, I'll tip. But if they just do their job, there are now regulations that have them get paid.
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/news/018-24/mayor-adams-first-a...
It's more that they're regulated, the price of the delivered food is already high, and I'm not putting a premium on their labour above e.g. the folks who prepared the food.
Different contexts. Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. And delivery drivers in New York and California are making well above the minimumw age. And most importantly, a restaurant tip is split between skilled servers and skilled kitchen staff. It's going to multiple people, each of whom have developed a specialised skill that adds value to my experience. None of that is true for someone carting my food to my home.
Absent regulation, I think tipping drivers and delivery staff is good. With regulation, the tradeoff has sort of been made for me.
I live in Oregon and employees here make a minimum of $14.70/hour and $15.95 in the Portland Metro area before tips. California and Washington have slightly higher minimums, seemingly state-wide. There are other states listed that are not as generous.
I tip but am sympathetic to my relatives who don't. Many places expect you to pay and tip, then take your drinks and food to the table, bus your tables, etc.
Absolutely with a roommate.
From wikipedia.
> 8/10 food delivery service CEO who I bumped into last week, I used to hang around with his brother ages ago, we were in a queue together.
> We got to talking about KPIs, as I recall he was quite business-savvy, I mention my startup accelerator is rubbish and he says I should check his out
> I jump at the chance, both for the accelerator and possible Series A.
> We go, I do A/B testing on my landing page, he goes treadmill at his standing desk and then a few minutes on Slack for some reason.
> He asks what am I doing after this, I say I've got a pirated copy of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 I've been meaning to watch.
> He says he has wanted to see that, I maintain my spaghetti and ask him to come, he accepts.
> Go to mine, I crack open my cheapest wine, we are watching the movie and talking a bit.
> He is apparently a bit of a lightweight and wine goes straight to his head, we get to talking about product market fit.
> Oh god just typing this hurts.
> He mentions his investor never financed a Series B. I say something along the lines of "what an idiot".
> He goes in his wallet looking for his business card, we stand there for about five seconds
> He pulls away, then I for reasons unknown need to fill a non-existent void...
> "You know, I could give you the old Deliveroo"
> the old Deliveroo
> I said it jokey and cheeky but there was no way that didn't sound weird, I may have sort of winked a bit, oh god.
> He looks at me like I am a FOSS contributor and pulls away and says "err yeah just gonna go toilet"
> This occurred roughly around when Darryl from The Office is singing the "You're a nerd" song
> He returns and I put my hand on his laptop in an attempt to salvage.
> We make awkward small talk for what feels like an eternity, man this is a long film
> Eons pass and the film finally ends. I walk him to my door and go for a handshake, he effectively pats me on the shoulder.
> I am too ashamed to even post about the meet on LinkedIn, and just lie in bed alone.
> the old Deliveroo
colesantiago•1w ago
1. Sold to a foreign buyer
2. Shut down
3. Relocated to the US
4. Are stagnant
The UK is up for sale (at a discount)
fakedang•2h ago
The UK is up for sale.
graemep•2h ago
British companies have bought plenty abroad too:
pydry•2h ago
mytailorisrich•2h ago
Bilal_io•2h ago
carlosjobim•2h ago
darth_avocado•35m ago
When Manchester United is owned by US billionaires, everything else is up for grabs.