"Despite our early successes, we’ve decided to close Walnut. Our tests revealed that we could create an experience customers loved, but we doubted our ability to be profitable long-term."
If people weren't willing to pay for a product you were offering at a price that would sustain the business, then you did not in fact find a product-market fit.
I don't much care about the semantics of product market fit, but there are a lot of companies - some with astronomical valuations - that sell things at prices that won't sustain the business. These guys could have taken other people's money and done the same thing. "We just need to buy market share until the autonomous moving robots are available!"
I applaud them for not doing so. And FWIW I usually find these autopsies annoying but this one is well written and insightful. Applause.
This might sound cynical but given the way the conclusion has been phrased, it is most likely they were on path to "autonomous robots" but no VC was interested in their unit economics.
Sure, there are companies with astronomical valuations with unsustainable business, but for whatever it is worth they seem to be good at marketing/presenting to VCs too.
Moving awkwardly shaped pieces of furniture up and down stairs without damaging them or the building is one of the jobs that is not likely to be performed by robots for a long time to come. It is very difficult to automate, and very easy for humans to do.
> It is very difficult to automate, and very easy for humans to do.
Easier, but if you’ve spent time attempting to do it, you’ll agree it is not a trivial type of task by any means.
Judging the center of balance for awkwardly shaped furniture, while safely navigating the interior of a multi-level residence is not on my short list of “easy” tasks I’d sign up for on a regular basis.
In many ways, it’s a task that should benefit from automation in the future. Endurance, strength, precision, and the ability to precalculate the best available three-dimensional routes required to move a piece of furniture are all, individually, solved problems. Bringing them together with a form factor that can adapt to different environments — flooring material, stairs, etc. — and at a price point that encourages use is the challenge.
The price point is exactly the challenge. Robots to do this on the Moon, or inside nuclear power stations after an accident, will make economic sense quite soon. Robots to do this competing with a semi-skilled worker who may have substance abuse problems, a criminal record, or be undocumented (all factors which make them cheaper to employ) are not going to be seen for some time. Most desk jobs will be made obsolete before this is an automation priority.
It costs $4K and a weekend to furnish a three bedroom 2400 square feet apartment in NYC with IKEA + TJMAX ( source: done it ). Say I dont want to do it. So it would be $5k with $1k or labor. This means that for people who make $200k/year or below moving cannot cost more than a replacement.
So you either go upmarket and target people who do not use disposable furniture ( i.e. they are moving hundreds of thousands dollars of stuff ) or you are playing in your $1000/move market.
Did you actually get through the entire story? This guy got 2 cases in front of the Supreme Court WHILE IN PRISON! That in itself would be a career maker for any lawyer...he did it before he went to law school....WHILE IN PRISON!
Neither does it mean extrapolation beyond intended use.
If we're going to try to re-frame the whole tech issue with being hostile to women as a human rights issue then we have bigger problems. It's assholes being assholes, they're not going to be impressed by any appeal to higher morality such as the human rights. Besides that plenty of corporations make large amounts of money because they trample those very human rights. If you want to go down that road then what we are looking at right now is a 'first world problem' and can be safely ignored until we've brought the rest of the world up to the level where they can complain about how the women in their tech sector are being dealt with.
The way I see it is simple: shine as much light as possible on those that are actually committing these acts so that it can be made perfectly clear that such behavior is absolutely unacceptable.
No violation of human rights needs to be implied, this is simply a case of inter-human error and frankly a lack of education.
If you're a guy in tech treat women (and in general others) the way you'd want your mom or dad or brother or sister to be treated. That single rule should make things a lot better.
Yes, I think this is precisely the point of this issue...that the problem IS bigger than just some outlier assholes and extends to a systemic bias/-ism towards women in tech and probably many (most?) other industries. Which, if true, necessitates that we frame the problem as an attack on the human rights of 1/2 the population.
"I don't often write immediate reactions to recent news."
This is a peculiar statement to start with. Was this "news" because it only now came to his attention via this particular article. Was the head of the largest social network dedicated to the "world's professionals to make them more productive and successful" ignorant to the reality that half of them were facing in HIS industry for so long or was it simply not an issue to him until it was reported (for the umpteenth time) in this news article?
While I'm glad he's at least now publicly acknowledging the problem, I think it'd be great for the men who want to solve this problem for women to be a bit more humble, sit down, and listen to how women would like their human rights acknowledged and respected.
"I still think driving a truck as a profession will be a thing of the past within 20 years or so."
I hope so. Trucking is one of the toughest professions for a person to endure that I've ever seen. It destroys a person's body and mind...and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.
And what job alternatives will you provide them, think specially about current long haul drivers, not future candidates you can discourage and divert to greener fields.
From whom, the govt? I don't trust that would happen (see rustbelt industries). These automation startups? What's their profit if they have to train the people they help get laid off/made redundant?
> and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.
If you're driving fleet, that's correct; however, there are a large number of "Owner/Operators" out there and they do make significantly more than you'd expect. If you have a good freight contract and a logistical mind, an O+O can easily make around $125k/year.
Having never tried rock climbing, I'm curious what the potential causes of catastrophic events would be on this kind of a climb (that would necessitate safety gear for most climbers in the first place)...pieces of rock that give out under a hand/foot, appendage slipping out of place, etc.?
I am a mediocre climber (after about 5.10c, I start thinking, "Greg, this is fucking insane."), but I used to be quite heavily involved with the Alpine Club of Canada and have read many incident reports about climbing deaths. One thing sticks out as being common enough to warrant mention. It is insane how often deaths happen when highly experienced climbers get out of their routine and make tiny little mistakes. When you are working on a difficult enough problem, a tiny mistake is most often fatal (unless you are using ropes).
With climbs like El Cap, a tiny mistake could be something as simple as letting momentum carry you a few degrees too far, losing your focus for an instant, or even losing strength. Climbing is a cross between chess, long distance running and gymnastics and to free solo something like El Cap, you need to be world class at all of those...simultaneously.
Several years ago, when I had a total of three hours of climbing experience (one hour in a classroom and two hours on an indoor wall), I made a mistake ice climbing that could have been fatal if I had not been properly roped in. I was incredibly inexperienced, got incredibly scared and started gripping onto my tools for dear life. I was so scared that I put all of my strength into my grip. My forearms spasmed and I lost my grip. I was an ugly climber, so my belay partner had given me a little too much slack, so I fell about six or seven feet, thus leaving a very experienced climber's very expensive tools in an ice wall several feet above me. Rather than get lowered and try to recover his tools the proper way, I decided to use crampons and my gloved hands to climb the ice like I would climb a rock. It was an incredibly sunny day, so the waterfall was a little wet and that was likely the most miserable seven feet that I have ever climbed.
In retrospect, it's a funny story about a noob getting scared and I had to buy several rounds of beer when we got back to civilization. But, that's an example of losing focus and doing something incredibly foolish that could have had tragic consequences.
I've run into plenty of snakes and had a bee land on my hand while reaching for a hold. I've had rocks break off beneath my feet. My arms have gotten tired and my feet have slipped unexpectedly. Heck, I've tripped just going down a flight of stairs. That's why I always use a rope. As a climber, I'm in awe of this feat but seriously hope he's the last person to do it.
Despite what others have said, there is still loose rock on El Capitan. That is always a concern.
The particular route Honnold climbed (Freerider) is hardly "cutting edge" (at 5.13-, it is roughly eight or nine grade levels below the absolute hardest rock climbs in the world), but the most difficult section (the "crux" in climbing jargon) is notoriously insecure, meaning that even skilled climbers find the movement difficult. Honnold himself spent time on the route on a rope learning this sequence (and others).
For us mortals, it is far more likely that you simply lose your balance, strength, or concentration. A typical multi-pitch climb is hard work and the odds of missing a move are pretty high.
Granted, I'm a mediocre climber (can lead 10c/d), but falling every once and a while is pretty common for most of us.
If you're a skilled climber, the most common reasons for falling are likely: fatigue, improper execution of a move, improper foot or hand placement, improper sequence of moves, random shit.
Like you said, it's not uncommon for people's feet to slip out from under them. A big part of climbing is the friction your shoes have against the rock, but move around, reach for something, and angle of your foot against the rock changes, along with the friction, and zoosh: your foot slides off.
The rock can break off ("chossy" climbs, Pinnacles is notorious for this), but that's a less common occurrence than Hollywood would lead one to believe.
>The rock can break off ("chossy" climbs, Pinnacles is notorious for this)
A doctor from our local hospital died from, as far as we can tell, exactly this while climbing Discovery Wall. He was an excellent climber, and was using appropriate gear. He just was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his safety equipment wasn't enough.
El Capitan is granite, and perhaps even more importantly, it's very heavily climbed so for the most part anything that can break will have already been broken off by someone else.
I don't agree with that. In fact, I wear a helmet whenever I am near a wall because I have seen way too many formerly solid looking rocks fall, even on granite.
Heck, a few years ago, a 2000 ton slab of rock fell off of Half Dome, which is a famous granite dome in Yosemite. I can't find the article now (of course), but I read a great article about how rock expands and contracts with the heat of the sun, water gets into cracks and plates will break off.
This article is okay, though it isn't the one that I'm thinking of. If I can the correct article, I'll edit this answer.
You're missing a very important distinction though: for a solo climber the main thing out of their control that's different from normal rock climbing is holds breaking unexpectedly. For that risk, having lots of people climbing the rock helps increase the chances that such unexpectedly weak holds will have been broken already by someone else; obviously loose rock isn't so much of an issue, for the simple reason that you know it's loose and can climb appropriately.
Rock fall meanwhile is dangerous to all climbers, whether or not they're using ropes. Sure, it's more dangerous to a solo climber - you might get lucky and just get knocked out, something a rope can save you from - but we're talking about a moderate risk vs. high risk comparison, not zero-risk to high risk. That 2000 ton slab you gave isn't a very good example, because something that big has a pretty good chance of killing you rope or not.
FWIW, I do a lot of cave exploration, and in caves the "already broken off" effect is a very powerful one. Virgin passage that's never been explored before can be a very scary place to be because everything can be loose and ready to fall. This is particularly true in areas that undergo freeze-thaw cycles, such as upper parts of alpine caves - I've been in places where every single bit of rock, including the ceiling, is heavily fractured due to frost. Breakdown piles are also a big problem - they're huge piles of rocks and boulders, generally due to ceilings gradually collapsing, and you have to be really careful around ones that haven't been visited frequently because pretty much anything you stand on could be unstable. Lots of cavers have been trapped in breakdown piles that shifted unexpectedly.
The underlying cause of this problem in caves is simple: caves can be very static environments with no weather, increasing the chances that the force you exert on a rock will be the largest force it has ever experienced in that position.
For example, I've personally done quite a bit of what's actually free soloing in cave exploration, but that style of climbing is done in confined spaces with rock on every side. You're much less dependent on individual holds as you'll usually be supporting yourself by pushing against the rock with your whole body, so it's a lot safer than most free soloing - even if you do fall you have a good chance of self arresting by, and if you can't you can at least slow your fall significantly and just slide to the bottom.
In the Outside article up thread, Tommy Caldwell who free climbed the route with Alex a couple weeks ago mentions loose rock as scaring him: "I went to Yosemite last week over the Memorial Day holiday and we did a practice lap on the Freerider with a rope. High on the wall, panting and sweating, feet smearing on crispy flakes that made crunching noises as I stepped on them."
I was highlighting the sudden surprises that tend to catch a climber off-guard. If someone is climbing on wet sandstone, they should already be cognisant that it may crumble. (They should also avoid climbing it when wet so that they don't break holds, but that's another topic on stewardship.)
when you climb high grades the rock becomes extremely difficult to navigate and 'grip'. The common example is stacking 2-3 credit cards on top of each other and looking at the edge from the top - thats the size of the rock people are holding onto and stepping on with all their weight. In some cases you won't even have a flat piece of rock to step on, imagine climbing a brick wall. Asides from the difficulty, there are obvious elements such as high winds when you're at that altitude, mist, rain, wildlife, etc.
This might be just about the most awkward product marketing page I've come across in my memory. I personally probably will never be able to afford a model S. So I'd essentially be their market for the 3. But looking at how they talk about it, they've pretty much unsold me on it. The worst is this paragraph:
"Model 3 is designed and built as a mass market, affordable electric vehicle. Although it will be our newest vehicle, Model 3 is not “Version 3” or the most advanced Tesla. Like Model S, it is designed to be the safest car in its class."
The actual sales page for the Model 3, https://www.tesla.com/model3, does a much better job at selling it. It could be argued that anyone looking for a comparison page between the two models would be someone considering the Model S, in which case it makes sense for them to focus on upselling it. In other words, you're not the audience for that page.
I wouldn't give up on it. I remember a few years ago the stories of people 3d printing prosthetic hands for $50...where the cost had previously been $30k+. I imagine that some ingenuity and determination could do the same here.
I also practice BJJ but think of MMA as a pretty brutal no holds barred sport. The 2 things are not the same (although often talked about as being the same). BJJ is a (relatively) narrowly defined practice. MMA is a sport where you can bring any fighting practice or combination into the ring (and the successful fighters bring many). BJJ is a big part of MMA, but arguably no longer the defining skill needed to succeed (especially in the past 5 years or so).
"Despite our early successes, we’ve decided to close Walnut. Our tests revealed that we could create an experience customers loved, but we doubted our ability to be profitable long-term."
If people weren't willing to pay for a product you were offering at a price that would sustain the business, then you did not in fact find a product-market fit.