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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): 'Fast & Furious 6'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Fast & Furious 6’

If you had told me when I initially saw the original The Fast and The Furious at age twelve that it would inspire a massive franchise, now dubbed The Fast Saga, I wouldn’t have believed you. Nevertheless, it did just that, spanning eight sequels and one spin-off (thus far). I’ll be racing a quarter-mile at a time from the beginning of this franchise to its current finish line of F9. This time…

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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SoftBank’s Vision Fund Is a Graveyard of Broken Tech Startups

Uber and WeWork have been disastrous not only workers and consumers, but for the investors responsible for pumping large sums of money into unprofitable tech startups. The companies are two of the biggest fish going belly-up after massive buy-outs from their largest investor, SoftBank’s Vision Fund. But they aren’t the only dubious investments SoftBank has made.

To understand the role Softbank has played in propping up tech companies, we assembled a list of other dumpster fires the Japanese conglomerate hopes to put out by pumping them full of money.

DoorDash

SoftBank was a lead investor in DoorDash’s $535 million Series D funding round, and involved in its most recent $600 million Series G funding round that raised the company’s valuation to $12.6 billion. Why is DoorDash so valuable? The startup follows in the footsteps of other companies like Uber that classify workers as independent contractors to keep costs low, but it goes one step further by stealing their tips. DoorDash has promised to change that policy, but has done nothing concrete about it yet. Instacart had a similar payment model that caused half its drivers to make below minimum wage after expenses, until backlash forced it to change. It’s hard to imagine DoorDash’s numbers are significantly different.

In California, app drivers scored a significant win with the passage of Assembly Bill 5, which will force companies to reclassify drivers as employees. But DoorDash, Lyft, and Uber are promising to oppose this legislation by backing a $90 million ballot initiative that exempts their drivers from being paid a living wage.

Fair

Fair is a Santa Monica-based car subscription service company that gets 45 percent of its business from Uber. The startup’s unprofitable business model is “flexible” car ownership for drivers who want a car but can’t afford to buy, lease, or enter a predatory agreement through a monthly fee. Last year, Fair purchased Uber’s car leasing subsidiary, which Quartz reported was turning some drivers into “modern-day sharecroppers.” And yet, somehow, Fair is valued at upwards of $1.2 billion.

The company’s CEO, Scott Painter, might’ve seen the writing on the wall WeWork, because it was only a few days after its implosion that he sent a memo announcing an immediate 40 percent staff cut—including his brother, Tyler Painter, who served as the company’s CFO. Earlier this week, Scott Painter resigned.

The layoffs culled over 500 people and were an attempt to rein in costs for a company that has no path to profitability, but was nonetheless able to raise nearly $1 billion from SoftBank and its Vision Fund, and over $2 billion in total from other investors and creditors. Fair’s business model relies on expanding car ownership—bad news, given that scientists are saying we need to drastically reduce car ownership to have any hope of curbing carbon emissions.

Katerra

You have almost certainly never heard of Katerra. The start-up pitches itself as a high-tech innovator that wants to make construction efficient again. The Information reports, however, that the company has struggled to actually follow through: it has backed out of at least six apartment and hotel projects in the United States this year and laid off over 100 employees.

Katerra has raised more than $1 billion from Softbank’s Vision Fund at a valuation of $5 billion with revenues around $850 million last year. There’s reason to suspect that Katerra is yet another SoftBank investment that will be written down—by comparison, Aecom, one of the world's largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms is profitable, worth about $5 billion, but brings in $20 billion in revenues.

Luckily, this company may be an investment that fails before it can do any real damage to the wider economic system with its VC war chest. There’s not much evidence that its patchy pitch can work: cut out middle-men, cut out unions, automate building materials production, ???, profits. That’s good news, because it means it won’t get a chance to kill competitors and suppress wages in the name of monopolies…no wait, we mean efficiency.

Oyo

Oyo is India’s largest hotel chain and the third-largest in the world. To date, the Vision Fund has invested about $1 billion into the company, but Oyo’s most recent $1.5 billion Series F funding round secured a $10 billion valuation. Since Oyo is currently unprofitable, you might ask how that $10 billion valuation was reached. Well, the company’s 25-year-old CEO and founder Ritesh Agarwal took out a $2 billion loan in July to buy back shares from early investors. Now, part of that loan ($700 million) is being used to inflate the valuation to $10 billion.

Oyo is on track to become the next WeWork. Nikkei Asian Review reported last week that the company's aggressive, failed expansion into Japan has turned into a "nasty labor dispute." Oyo planned to sign 75,000 rooms by March 2020, but by September had only signed 4,000; Oyo had hired 500 employees, but under contracts that would only bring them fully on-board as the expansion progressed. Once the expansion failed, Oyo reneged on its employment contracts, going so far as to ask staffers to take 40 percent pay cuts if they wanted to be employed directly.

Right now, Oyo is accused of colluding with popular Indian booking platform MakeMyTrip to engage in anti-competitive practices that favored Oyo. There’s no evidence that Oyo has a profitable business model—a running theme among Vision Fund companies. Oyo's pitch is that it is a tech company that turns existing hotels into franchises, provides an algorithm to analyze "supply and demand for rooms in real time," and lets hotels maximize their earnings by continuously adjusting rates.

Oh, we almost forget to mention: Oyo is also trying to enter the co-working industry.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund Is a Graveyard of Broken Tech Startups syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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thrashermaxey · 5 years

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Which teams have the best (and worst) odds of winning a Stanley Cup in the next five years?

It’s Future Week here on The Athletic’s NHL pages. So today, let’s head into that future. How does five years sound?

If you said “way too far to predict with any accuracy, you idiot”, then you’re right. But we’re going to do it anyway, by trying to figure out which NHL teams have the best odds of winning at least one Stanley Cup at any point in the next five years.

It’s a deceivingly tough question, one that touches on everything from current rosters to prospect pipelines to coaching to cap management. I tried to tackle it three years ago at Grantland, with mixed results (more on that in a bit). Today I’m going to try again, because I do not learn from my mistakes.

But first: You may have seen Monday’s Future Power Rankings, a piece that ranked the 31 existing teams in terms of where they’ll be in three years. It was basically an attempt to project what the league will look like in 2020-21.

So is this the same thing? Not really, although there will be some obvious overlap. If you’re well set up to be among the league’s best teams in three years, you’re basically hitting the sweet spot of a five-year window. And if you’re headed toward being a mess in a few years, you’re probably not in great shape on either end of that. We’ll be referring back to the Future Power Rankings several times as we go.

But today’s ranking isn’t necessarily about the future, and it’s not meant as a ranking of which teams will be in the best shape a certain number of years from now. We just want to win Cups here, and for our purposes, a win in 2019 counts just as much as one in 2023. That means that an old team without many prospects can still rank well if their window remains open right now. And a team that’s an utter mess today still has time to turn things around. Five years is a long time.

So with that in mind, let’s move on to figuring out which teams are the most likely to win the next five Stanley Cups. As with any attempt at projecting the future, some of these rankings will turn out to be wrong; it’s hard enough to predict what’s going to happen in the NHL tonight, let alone half a decade from now. If you’re the sort of person who gets irrationally upset over that, feel free to track me down and scream at me about it. Just remember that you have to wait five years first.

Grab a cup of coffee and settle in. We’ll start at the bottom, and with what should be the only sure thing in this post. Maybe.

32. Seattle Something-or-Others

If the Golden Knight taught us one thing, it’s that anything can happen in the NHL. If they taught us a second and more important thing, it’s that having a clean slate of cap room turns out to be far more valuable than we may have realized.

So why don’t I think Seattle has much of a chance to match the Knights’ success? Partly because I view that Vegas season as a perfect storm that’s unlikely to be duplicated. And partly because I suspect that the other teams are going to smarten up in terms of how they handle expansion. They may even over-correct, hurting themselves in the process. But either way, Seattle is going to have a tougher time fleecing teams right out of the gate.

But mostly, I feel good about this pick because Seattle won’t join the league until 2021. That eats up three of our five years, which means their odds have to be the longest of anyone in the league.

At least I’m pretty sure they should. And I’m never wrong about an expansion team, as long as you ignore literally everything I’ve written since 2017.

Odds of a Cup in five years: 3%

31. Los Angeles Kings

I suspect that Kings fans won’t be overly surprised to see their team bringing up the rear among the 31 established franchises. The Kings’ rebuild hasn’t even started yet; we’re not even sure they realize how badly they need one. There’s talent coming through the system, but with an uninspiring NHL roster and a long-term cap situation clogged with big deals for declining veterans, there’s a ton of work to do in Los Angeles. They might get there, but by the time they do, most of our five-year window should be gone.

Odds of a Cup in five years: 4%

30. Chicago Blackhawks

On the one hand, this feels like an easy one. The ‘Hawks were bad last year. They’re worse this year. And with a cap situation dominated by long-term contracts to aging stars who, for the most part, just aren’t ever going to be the players they once were, there’s little reason to think that things will get any better. The prospect pipeline is OK but not much more than that, and among the young players on the roster, only Alex DeBrincat really looks like a potential star. They’re basically the Kings, in just slightly better shape.

So it’s an easy call. Almost too easy. These are still the Blackhawks, just three years removed from a mini-dynasty, and the rush to bury them feels at least a little like wishful thinking. I’m still going to do it, because I have to bury a few teams for this to work. But if Stan Bowman rediscovers his magic, the Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews duo ages gracefully, and Artemi Panarin shows up at their front door on July 1 holding a sign that says ADOPT ME, I’ll be muttering “I knew it” while Blackhawks fans gleefully shove me out onto an ice floe.

Odds of a Cup in five years: 6%

29. Ottawa Senators

Here’s where things get tricky. On the one hand, the Senators’ young players have looked good this year, and there’s reason to be optimistic that Thomas Chabot and Brady Tkachuk can both be difference makers. Mix in some decent prospects on the way and a handful of core pieces still left over from the conference final run two years ago, and on paper I should probably be more optimistic, even without that 2019 first-round pick to build around and Mark Stone and Matt Duchene still unsigned.

The big question is whether they can really win a Cup with Eugene Melnyk as owner, given his financial constraints and non-stop parade of distractions and controversies. I’m just not convinced that they can, with the recent implosion of their arena plans reinforcing that. Melnyk continues to insist he’ll never sell. But if and when new ownership arrives, feel free to move the Senators up at least a few slots, and maybe more.

Odds of a Cup in five years: 7%

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

from All About Sports http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DownGoesBrown/~3/sFu-bTe4bO4/which-teams-have-best-and-worst-odds-of.html

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automotia · 7 years

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Mercedes Ireland has warned that the new car market here is dysfunctional

IRL/GB

Mercedes Ireland has warned that the new car market here is dysfunctional

According to a Mercedes Ireland executive, fake registering and not UK imports, is the greatest threat to the health of the new car market here.

Mercedes Ireland has said that Ireland could be heading for a major financial implosion and has indirectly criticised their major competitors for fanning the flames of what could be serious devaluations in used cars.

Ciaran Allen who is the sales manager of Motor Distributors Limited (MDL), a privately-owned importer for Mercedes-Benz cars in Ireland said that manufacturer-controlled operations are distorting the Irish new car market, and potentially laying the foundations for a major financial crunch for car buyers.

Formerly, MDL was a much bigger operation in Ireland with franchises for Volkswagen, Skoda, Audi, and Mazda but all of these have departed mainly in the past twenty years or so to be controlled by their own factory-backed Irish operations. The Mercedes executive went on to say at a Mercedes event in Wicklow:

“If you had asked most people, they would say that the biggest threat to the Irish car market is the Sterling exchange rate, and the level of imported cars”

“We would say that the greatest threat to the industry is actually the levels of pre-registering and hire-drive sales, which are effectively the major factory-backed operations paying their dealers to inflate the market.”

It would seem that instances of last-day-of-the-month sales are rising, and making up an ever-growing proportion of total market sales. Last-day sales are often inferred to be pre-registered cars, or cars sold by importers and dealers to themselves in order to inflate sales figures, gain market share, and reach sales figures that generate bonus payments for them. Mr Allen went on to say:

“We are a private company, and we have to live in the real world”

“You will not beat the laws of supply and demand, and what you’re looking at are failing businesses – it’s just that they’re kicking the can of that failure down the road.”

Mercedes figures reveal that new car sales are mostly being taken up by pre-registered cars and bulk hire-drive sales, which are cars sold at massive discounts to car hire firms.

Those figures seem to show that in January of this year, usually seen as the key buying month for new cars in Ireland, as much as 22 per cent of the total sales figure was taken up by sales in the last three days of the month. For February, March, and April, that figure seemed to expand to more than 40 per cent of sales.

The figures show the rising tide of cheap UK imports, and on the other hand, dealers and distributors selling cars to themselves to generate volume figures – cars which then have to be sold on at a massive discount, further distorting values.

This further puts pressure on used car values, which could present serious problems for those dealers which have guaranteed the future value of cars sold on Personal Contract Purchase, or PCP plans.

“Five years ago, we spoke of a business model built on a house of cards. Now that house is higher, and more unstable. In the financial crash of 2008, people were wondering how someone with a €30,000 salary could get a €3-million mortgage. Well, this time around they’re going to be asking how you can have some car brands registering 600 to 800 cars on the last day of a month’s trading, and that can be considered normal business. This reckless trading is the most consistent threat to the car industry.”

A collapse in used car values has been predicted for some time now and some even wonder if this will trigger a general economic downturn in the motor sector. In the United States, there is certainly concerns being raised over multi-trillion dollar debt in the car market but Ireland’s credit-based car sales does not really have the sheer volume for that kind of effect.

Individual buyers will most likely take an eventual hit though, as the resale values start to slide, and dealers working on narrow margins may well find the banks from which they have borrowed tapping on the windows.

The larger manufacturer-backed importers can rely on the global muscle of their parent firms to weather any storms but smaller companies. MDL’s smaller, local structure means that it simply cannot compete with the pre-registering power of the big companies.

Mercedes is currently batting above its weight in Ireland, with Allen claiming that, if you strip out the hire-drive element, the brand is outselling both BMW and Audi, and plans further expansion (and some price cuts) in 2018. His biggest worry remains the state of the market in Ireland.

“If a country has a population of four-million people and a car market of, for argument’s sake, 100,000 and you’re trying to artificially push that volume to 150,000 – well, that can’t go on for ever”

“When the market is jumping up at rates of 20 per cent or more, then it can absorb that kind of sales dumping. But now we are starting to see those actions coming home to roost.”

IRL/GB

Full History Check Irish & UK Check Finance Check

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): 'Fast & Furious'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Fast & Furious’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): 'Fast Five'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Fast Five’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (or Implosion): ‘Furious 7’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion) -- ‘F9: The Fast Saga'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion) — ‘F9: The Fast Saga’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): 'The Fast And The Furious' (2001)

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘The Fast And The Furious’ (2001)

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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#2000s #2001 #20th Anniversary #action films #action movies #cars #crime thriller #F9 #Fast and Furious #franchise #Franchise Expansion (or Implosion)#Ja Rule #Jordana Brewster #Michelle Rodreguiz #Paul Walker #street racing #the fast and the furious saga #Universal Pictures #Vin Desiel

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘The Fate Of The Furious'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘The Fate Of The Furious’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) To say video game adaptation adaptations are not a…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): 'The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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#2000s #2006 #action films #action movies #cars #crime thriller #F9 #Fast and Furious #franchise #Franchise Expansion (or Implosion)#Japan #Justin Lin #Lucas Black #reboots #street racing #the fast and the furious saga #Tokyo #Universal Pictures #Vin Desiel

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat' (2021)

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat’ (2021)

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) To say video game adaptation adaptations are not a…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion) -- ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw'

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion) — ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw’

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) If you had told me when I initially saw the…

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thecomicon · 3 years

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Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat' (1995)

Franchise Expansion (Or Implosion): ‘Mortal Kombat’ (1995)

Franchise Expansion (or Implosion) is a column that looks at franchises that have new installments or releases forthcoming. In looking at a franchise, each entry in a franchise will be given a review and then be examined as part of the bigger franchise. (i.e., Was this sequel a worthy expansion of this franchise or was it an implosion of sorts?) To say video game adaptation adaptations are not a…

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