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if you squint hard, there's two new banks competing together in this picture. One of them is disrupting the other. https://t.co/AZVSlonJNM https://t.co/kAmSMmwiSC
Meanwhile Dollar General is growing like crazy, and Aldi's efficient system is eating up any of the slack. https://t.co/ltHlXIFU26
Amazon already has a wallet system, but they seem to be focusin on logistics and went with cobrand instead of bank: https://t.co/sKU65Awxm6
"Why isn't a Keedoozle-like grocery store chain started in 2016? The tech is here." https://t.co/w2inJvdUxp
As cost declines, and the scale/access to tech increases, more places are able to jump in on fintech bandwagon. But: https://t.co/Q2BdNZaMM6
If you don't include the needs of the community in your calculations, you will never succeed. Think deeply: https://t.co/Kqcrvgtmfq
I nailed amazon Go: Trialing an inverted vending machine w/ smaller pop-up shops and streamlined foraging mechanic:https://t.co/cD2kYIdRky https://t.co/I1IE89YQFi
Gonna be fun watching them do staged roll-out of go. They're taking a slow approch to do testing & optimization: https://t.co/7azR4izEZ9
Another way to look at problem space of disruption in grocery: "is it fun / more compelling than existing system?"https://t.co/iLBXUJJ5Ns
Amazon isn't going to build these things, but I do think they are going to license the technology to other stores. https://t.co/rBg90F1hy5 https://t.co/wuCRDNykg9
"I read Brad Stone's history of Amazon, The Everything Store, over the holidays, and recommend it" — @timoreillyhttps://t.co/Y4DdGNLCuP https://t.co/MMjOypbeit
An economy optimized for abandoned malls?"…mall and shopping center stalwarts are closing stores by the thousands"https://t.co/auAK98jwjH
Shopping centers: edifices which we worship the gods of information and advertising. These gods have gone digital.https://t.co/yKgy7tkBAz
Why are shopping centers abandoned?https://t.co/vEiHq1eolc
Shopping turning into vanity touristesque fronts for online distribution?Software ate catalogs first...https://t.co/TRZuKVeavx
When you stop and think about the problem space, it's informavores searching for tastey treats. All the way down...https://t.co/PAyYzTkqLA
I'm not sure if @A16Z see what they are doing...2021: ~Pinterest, the worlds largest catalog, has no products. 🤔https://t.co/U1MJIha1Ff
The world's largest catalog, has no products.https://t.co/BeQGRp8ylh
Why do we even have storefronts anyway? https://t.co/CM17ERvMsI
I, for one, welcome our new robotic milk delivery swarms.https://t.co/XH52c0jQ0s
“used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but we know it is not enough. […] We sell a bunch of junk.” https://t.co/5IKe4jImJW
"Amazon is buying a customer — the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale."https://t.co/zvwk013IaX
A dysphemistic take against Amazon: a centralized monopoly supply chain system?🤔But do we avoid strange attractors?https://t.co/lyDzrY52sR
The delivery logistics of amazon... in 2015 ...were better than any grocery store I've ever seen.https://t.co/28abgtKiTu
"More route options means a higher chance of finding a statistical outlier that is an unusually short route."https://t.co/omkngy7OzZ
Amazon AWS is centralized moat & aim to be captive platform.IBM & Walmart's aim is to decentralize the ecosystem?https://t.co/JUT629iYXW
Alexa, what other big players are trying to fight in the cloud computing ecosystem? Ok, Google? Cortana? Oh...https://t.co/vy8NnX4Skf
"tone is quasi facetious but you do not realize Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars." https://t.co/OflZAZSXGM
I'm guessing ~5 years before the food industry is pulled into a larger supply chain proxy war between big players.https://t.co/bYDERTCCqd
Also, if you don't plan on playing this game, at least watch the commentary: https://t.co/7HVQjJBPFl
Redecentralize; but for the supply chain and distribution networks? Yes please.https://t.co/seTrvU0ZDe
Flip all the things.https://t.co/YWn8Or3bjp
"First drop your nickles in the slot, then turn the knob [...] Lift the door and help yourself" Automats of 1912https://t.co/b2N82oVWY3 https://t.co/Y81EqDVwhP
What forces lie behind Japan's vending machine tradition?High land costs and labor shortages.https://t.co/kOFBsTN7W1(h/t @ahiijny)
This may help food desert problem in rural areas that hit poorer people more. Back when I lived in Fairlee VT, it was cheaper to drive +40 miles to buy stuff from West Lebanon once a week than pay 30% markup at local stores. https://t.co/9C1ZhoKi5c
There is one in Fairlee VT now! It is so new it still shows an empty lot where the store exists. You can see in the user submitted photos though that there is one actually there.https://t.co/1Dg0DXo33l
Someone making a good living in the area was likely commuting to West Lebanon area anyway for their job. They probably had good gas mileage cars. But the poorer folks had beaters & were nickle+dimed by the local stores. They all had a flat 30% markup like they colluded on price.
At the time I was keeping track of every receipt I made and obsessed over prices in stores. I could tell you who used what distributor/vendor + schedule just by how pricing data mapped across the different days. Watched energy drink sales flicker on & off based on foot traffic.
Dollar General is becoming the rural area store of choice because, as far as I can tell, no one else gives a fuck about the poor people in the woods. Very few are trying to crack that market because it is ridiculously hard to turn a profit. https://t.co/idDSbhYpuv
Watch as Dollar General is used to symbolicly shit on the lower class. These narratives echo around the hivemind if you listen. Stuff like @hermicity_dao was geared to solve the problem of food deserts in rural areas; everyone cried "first world problems".https://t.co/bgK6XM5g3P
It makes me really mad.https://t.co/LSwwdYVoxc
If you squint, 90% of the grocery system is actually a secondary effect of land developers trying to turn a profit off of commercial space. That dynamic didn't occur in the boonies. There's was no money to be made leasing grocery store space. Now there is: https://t.co/AYQD4iEWpV
"an organization that found a way to make helping poor people in food deserts profitable, undercutting local shops that take advantage of disparity"- VS -"a CEO discusses profiting off the back of the poor and damaging local business"Scapegoating Bait?https://t.co/T5lfk1KP6q
If I was a big corp & wanted to squash a thriving (potential) competitor, I'd be trying to steer the public conversation into one that demonizes the threat.The way to do that? Co-op a couple dominate narrative via astroturfing & subtle influencer effects.https://t.co/br697oO4nP
Oh look, here's another article that's been trending in my news feeds that is framing a different small efficient grocer as being deceptive?... published at roughly the same time-frame as that WSJ one.https://t.co/JZU5CdUASC
Here's the really upsetting thing: this could be a stand alone complex. https://t.co/DPAe5RW7N8Lots of people have a vested interest in big firms and might all be simultaneously be weary of these barbarian's at the gate. No conspiracy needed.
One of the signals I use that something fishy is going on is that there are rumblings from the kind of well trafficked places that post scaremongering warnings. Oh look here's two now.https://t.co/I95HaEnfYPhttps://t.co/N2pa2aTIoi
Again, I'm not saying that his is a direct conspiracy, but I'm not one to underestimate the power of influencing people by dropping hints in key places. I have a handful of people I don't read because I found evidence of this:https://t.co/tJX24KB8z9
Take my perspective with a grain of salt. I tend to be over-reactive toward these things because my hobby is routing out these kinds of social curiosities, and the topic is something that gets my blood boiling.https://t.co/XD4ztWDzIG