Absolutely. Also, Tesla doesn't really have the network effects that other industries have (like search). Companies with similar cultural cache are also catching-up like BMW...

That aggressiveness gets noticed and picked up by lots of different outlets -- from tech aggregators to mainstream business publications looking for "punchy" topics. E.g. look at who appears on CNBC programs.

Unfortunately, people have made that into a marketing strategy -- I'm not sure it is something to really hold against Mattermark in particular.

I think that's an excellent comment about instagram, i wonder if pinterest would also be useful -- since the images of the candies are so enticing.

Following your model, then 'innovation' at the big five will slow down and there will be greater incentive for people to create new start-ups... and the cycle will continue.

"It's different this time", but, it's different this time. As the Information Age advances, entrenched players can use their information advantage to outcompete. For example, Facebook has analytics on every small startup that gains traction, and can due much better due diligence than the startup's own investors, and so can buy the most promising ones out for cheap.

The companies still have to be willing to sell, and there's greater and greater liquidity in the market. While the ICO fad will fade, there will be new financial innovations to take the place of ICOs.

I would argue there isn't really a network effect for lyft or uber or any ride-sharing company for that matter. There might be brand and price effects for the companies to battle over amidst both riders and drivers.

I'd say there is a network effect for ride-sharing in aggregate, neither Lyft nor Ueber has been good at locking drivers and riders in with loyalty programs to try to keep people solely on their platform.

More drivers means faster pickups for riders, and more riders means less downtime for drivers. Drivers doing more rides per hour means they can be paid less per ride, lowering the price of a ride and further increasing demand. Sounds like a network effect to me. Offerings like Lyft Line and Uber Pool multiply both of these effects.

This is interesting, it's like First Round trying to create a curated social-news site to draw people in like YC's Hacker News.

It's GMV (Gross merchandise volume or GMV is a term used in online retailing to indicate a total sales dollar value for merchandise sold through a particular marketplace over a certain time frame. - wikipedia) not revenue (fulfilling the order through their service). Companies use it to inflate the topline (revenue) figures.

> Companies use it to inflate the topline (revenue) figures.

So, correct me if I am wrong, this implies Instacart is inflating the topline figures?

Moses won't come down the mountain with stone tablets telling you what Instacart's "real" topline revenue is. You as a potential investor have to decide what you care about and how you want to compare it to other companies. Imagine Whole Foods sells an apple for $.70 that it bought for $.60 and paid a shipping company $.05 to ship it to them, and Instacart delivers that apple, with the customer paying them $.75. Whole Foods will count that as $.70 of topline revenue; the shipping company will count it as $.05 of topline revenue. You can see Instacart as being like Whole Foods, for $.75 of topline revenue. Or you can see that as Instacart being like the shipper, for $.05 of topline revenue. Neither of these is the objective truth; you have to judge which is more reflective of Instacart's future potential, whether their business is more like a seller or a shipper.

It is typical to include cost of goods a company onsells at a markup in their revenue figures. It's just worth noting in this case as they are effectively just a delivery service so it might be unclear.

I re-read the article. It says -

> Adopting an asset-light model, Mehta first built an app that let customers shop from established retailers--charging a delivery fee and, at least initially, a slight markup. Instacart kept a cut for itself and paid the shopper.

So the implication is that they are not selling stuff at markups now.

> It's just worth noting in this case as they are effectively just a delivery service so it might be unclear.

In that case, wouldn't revenue be the "delivery service fee" instead and not the value of what was delivered?

Looking at the article their revenue streams seem to be: delivery fees, Instacart Express Membership fees, partnerships with stores and advertisement fees. In which case using GMV seems odd.

So, the original question stands.

Yes - In my view revenue (and probably most accountants would also say this) is the delivery fee only. If you think about it, most marketplaces have this same issue. This isn't unique to Instacart, Enron did the same thing...(our accounting prof used them as an example). It's just not useful for analysis of the company.

Edit: Most marketplaces can charge you the "full price" to keep the transaction on the platform; however, they are only paid a small portion of that transaction as revenue -- e.g. Fiverr/Upwork/etc. don't keep the full amount the service provider charges their client, only a (hopefully) small fee.

https://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/ #6 Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) vs. Revenue "In marketplace businesses, these are frequently used interchangeably. But GMV does not equal revenue!" The rest of A16Z's explanation is worth reading.

This. Airlines are not a favorable model. Airlines irrationally invest, deal with fuel costs they have to partially hedge, can't store capacity... the list goes on.

Transportation / Logistics (energy is shifting away from carbon-based, populations are shifting to cities -- especially in developing countries).

Food. Moving from traditional livestock to other more efficient sources of protein (plant and insect).