Why did Sachin Bansal quit Flipkart?
I think today’s story in TOI by Samidha Sharma has covered Sachin’s journey perfectly well.Summary - With less than 6% share and whole bunch of investors, it becomes hard to survive and end up being an employee who is always under pressure with fewer rights. Investors blamed him for making wrong decisions like app only, going full fledge marketplace strategies, some wrong hirings, launching the digital flute platform. Mind you the decisions were not wrong, they were just way ahead of their time. He has been criticised for the wrong decisions but everyone forgot that he had built the Flipkart from a small room to 21 Billion dollar company.He made the smartest move by selling his stake and making another billion. Though flipkart couldn’t see the sunlight of single rupee profit, Sachin Bansal has made over Billions apart from the big fat paychecks every month. He is an active investor investing in startups and don’t be surprised if he builds another Big Billion dollar company in next few years.Suggest you to read the story - very insightful.What led to Sachin Bansal's exit from Flipkart - Times of IndiaPeace
Has Walmart finally become too big? With 269 closures of overlapping/underperforming stores have they reached a retail saturation point?
It is possible to reach saturation. This happens once in a while in business. Walmart in particular has a very specific set of conditions in which its stores thrive. The area usually must be either rural or poor. Walmart doesn't do as well in prosperous areas where the labor market is tighter, worker expectations are higher and the customers are more concerned with quality and convenience than the cheapest possible price. Where I live, there are no Walmarts on the SF Peninsula until you get to Mountain View. Not in San Francisco, Marin or the other side of the Bay in the Berkeley, Oakland, Fremont corridor.They must be able to get reasonably good very low cost labor. That's obviously not going to work in a prosperous area. There must be plenty of cheap land, usually undeveloped.People must have a reason to drive to Walmart, it must be easy and they must have few inexpensive alternatives.Walmart makes sense for people only if they go there and buy a lot of stuff at once to save time and money or if that's the only place they can buy something at a reasonable price. The "buy a lot of stuff at once" part is what keeps Walmart in business. In urban areas they are worse hardware stores than Home Depot and Lowes, not convenient for most people for groceries; their clothes aren't very good quality and they don't measure up well in quality against goods from Costco.So Walmart can't just expand in the US to infinity. There is an absolute limit.
Does America still need labor unions?
I am the child of two proud parent retired union laborers. I understand that unions in the past mid 20th century were extremely important in our nation's history to protect the working class. They came at a time when Americans where making too little and working too much. That century is over. Going forward into the 21st century do we still need labor unions? Is it still necessary for companies to hire union laborers in a day and age when those bids can typically be 20-30% higher due to expensive union tradesman. Should not companies have the freedom to hire any tradesman, union or non-union, to save money on labor costs? Should not the best worker be hired at the best price? For a small private company or individual to not have that freedom or as consumers do I really have to walk past striking union workers on my way into Wal-Mart to buy paper towels for my kitchen? Please, educated thoughtful answers only. Others will be flagged. Thank you.
Why do people think being cheap is bad?
I'm cheap, and is that so bad? - I tend not to buy branded clothing and shoes, most of the time I buy my wearables from thrift stores and discount stores, I don't see the reason to buy branded, so no, you won't see me wearing shoes from Nike or pants from Levi's, and I tend to have my clothes and shoes repaired than just replacing them, I sew my clothes, but my shoes I send to a shoe repair shop. - I tend to reuse and recycle, for example, when my lampshade broke, I was told I had to buy a new lamp set, my lamp was still functioning, the shade just broke, so I recycled a clear plastic container, cut the bottom off so both ends are opened, then wrapped it in masking tape. - I tend to buy used DVDs and music CDs, there's a store that sells them near my place. - when it comes to over-the-counter drugs, I almost always buy generic, because I've been taking generic for a long time, most of them are just as good as branded ones, and I haven't experience any side-effects. - shopping for groceries, it takes me a long time to do, because I compare products and their prices and I always try get the best cheapest product possible, I stick to my budget religiously. - whenever I eat out, I always choice the cheapest thing on the menu. - And I don't have and use credit cards, I always plan what I'm going to spend and I stick to it religiously.
Do you think it’s justifiable to ever pay less than minimum wage, why?
Let me flip the script and ask you why is it justifiable to charge more for a service than it is worth?Here is the thing about wages which the minimum wage increase crowd DON’T want to deal with. A wage is a payment for a service rendered. If the service is not worth what you pay for it, then you are most likely not going to pay it. A McDonald’s Happy Meal sells for what it does because it is what the market will bear. If McD’s suddenly charged $15 for it, I would suspect that few people would buy it. It’s worth $5.00 to most, but not $15.Let’s suppose a high school kid offers to mow your lawn. You haggle over the price. At some point, you say, ‘this is worth it. I’ll pay that,’ and then you get to a point where you say ‘Screw that, I’ll do it myself.’ Apply that thinking to hiring someone to flip burgers or asking “do you want fries with that?”The last thing that is not considered is that most of the minimum wage jobs are entry-level work that is traditionally staffed by teenagers; high school kids looking to make a few extra dollars for gas money or to go to the movies with a date. Flipping burgers should not be a career for someone with a family to support. I understand that some people find themselves in this situation, but this is not the norm, nor should it be.