Nov 22, 2019

StorySherpa: Uberemployee

By Yury Molodtsov • Issue #66 • View online

Uber Fined $649 Million for Saying Drivers Aren’t Employees

New Jersey has demanded that Uber pay $649 million for years of unpaid employment taxes for its drivers, arguing that the ride-hailing company has misclassified the workers as independent contractors and not as employees.

In California, a new law could require that workers be designated as employees, allowing them to gain access to basic protections like minimum wage and unemployment insurance.

The thing is, along with the rights come certain responsibilities and Uber can utilize that position. So you’re an employee – you can’t drive for Lyft then. What company would the drivers choose you think?

There are people for whom Uber is the only source of income and there are people who ride on the side or between jobs to smooth the transition. Calling the former employees at least would make some sense but I’d suspect that we need a third classification option between those two.

www.nytimes.com • Share

Downtown Josh Brown

@ReformedBroker

This is the single most important development for investors over the past week. If it holds up or spreads, a lot of our assumptions about the new economy are in for a drastic rethinking.

https://t.co/t8fJJ6WCQy

5:14 AM - 16 Nov 2019

Charlie Zvibleman

@CharlieZvible

Beginnings of regulatory capture? Drivers won't be able to switch btwn apps. Drivers will choose Uber bc highest liquidity. Small players quickly out of bus. Consumer px rise. Yes, elasticity but does UBER become monopoly in many mkts as Juno's of the globe can't guarantee wage? https://t.co/QkaaXiNe5J

10:03 AM - 16 Nov 2019

Government officials around the globe targeted for hacking through WhatsApp

Senior government officials in multiple U.S.-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp to take over users’ phones, according to people familiar with the messaging company’s investigation.

So on one had you’re doing a pretty stupid thing by conducting the state business in a purely consumer app, but on the other hand – the app is actually good and even if there are any alternatives provided by the state intelligence or something – they suck, so don’t expect the government official to use them.

www.reuters.com • Share

China’s Internet Is Flowering. And It Might Be Our Future

Yet another report on the role of mobile in China, this one is pretty detailed and helpful for people who haven’t been there. The most striking part is the interconnection between online and offline thanks to the QR codes and programs that can only be opened by scanning them. The fact that iOS didn’t have that in-built for years led to their non-existence in the US.

The resulting miniprogram, called HeyTea Go, is opened by scanning a QR code and lets customers place orders without having to stand in line. Simultaneously, it created technological opportunities for the company, like online marketing and the collection of data about its patrons.

www.nytimes.com • Share

Internet disrupted in Iran amid fuel protests in multiple cities

There have been protests in Iran due to the surge in fuel prices and nowadays the first thing the governments wants to control (or disable) is the Internet.

Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory confirm disruptions with multiple fixed-line and mobile providers in Iran, amid protests against rising fuel prices. The outages have partial (update: now near-total, see below) impact at the time of writing affecting multiple cities including Tehran.

netblocks.org • Share

Facts Museum

Birdbox

Instagram explained that they’re removing the likes for the sake of users but it also means nobody except for Instagram itself will have data on the individual accounts’ performance.

That’s a great position to be in if they, let’s say, want to build their own advertising platform and influencer marketing marketplace. Instagram is the primary source of income for a number of people but the company itself doesn’t directly benefit from their success and might be tired of that.

Blake Robbins

@blakeir

What if Instagram is removing 'likes' as a first step to create their own influencer marketing platform?

Instagram/FB will now own the most valuable data (engagement/likes) and I imagine they will want to sell that to advertisers.

6:54 AM - 13 Nov 2019

Another proof that smaller venture capital funds have a better opportunity at getting outsized returns.

Tomio Geron

@tomiogeron

Mucker is set to make $280M on $3M investment from a $20M fund - one of the LA firms reaping big returns in Honey/PayPal deal. story by ⁦@Katie_Roof⁩ ⁦@ychernova⁩ https://t.co/b0HW4D56J5

6:14 PM - 20 Nov 2019

Matthew Ball

@ballmatthew

WORLDWIDE REVENUES

Film Box Office
2018: $41B (+5%)
2015: $39B

Video Gaming
2018: $138B (+50%)
2015: $92B

This has not yet sunk in.

10:12 AM - 24 Sep 2019

Every tech startup that got enormous eventually becomes an incubator for the next generation of founders.

Andrew Chen

@andrewchen

State of ex-Uber startup ecosystem:

- over a dozen folks working in VC (85%+ women, btw)
- dozens of new startups w a global footprint. Food delivery in Pakistan, scooters in Singapore, logistics in UK, etc etc
- a16z has backed 4 so far - Virtual Kitchen Co is the latest

8:10 AM - 18 Nov 2019

Accel bought a minority share of 1Password, the most popular password management app for $200M. According to the 1password founder that deal basically took 6 years since they started talking about it – the company is bootstrapped and profitable, so they weren’t pressured to raise anything and likely had to do that because their competitor Dashlane raised $110M to go after enterprises.

Blake Robbins

@blakeir

Accel has mastered the strategy of leading the first large institutional rounds of profitable companies:

Qualtrics ($180M)
Lynda ($103M)
Galileo Financial Technologies ($77M)
Atlassian ($60M)
Squarespace ($38M)

11:02 AM - 14 Nov 2019

There’s a chart that didn’t import here иге