adamonkey

Rent is typically only 7% of total restaurant operations costs. See Chipotle's quarterly earnings filings for example, and any restaurant industry analyses.

Labor and food costs make up 60% of costs, with them being roughly equally divided. Restaurant margins are around 5-7%. I don't see how CloudKitchens is supposed to fundamentally alter the restaurant industry, making it cheaper. Maybe I'm missing something.

Fair point about my misuse of words, :). "democratizing" was a poor word choice.

"Giving opportunity" would be more appropriate, and is the vocabulary Daniel Gross uses. He specifically mentions that he wants to find more female founders. I hope he succeeds; I am just a bit shocked by the state so far. It would be great to know what is causing this imbalance, whether it is its avenues of marketing, the messages it sends through marketing, or something else. Because there is a lot of diversity out there.

Sounds like you are concerned that it would be a move towards a direction that is less fair rather than one that is more. Asians/Harvard is unfair. I think the point is making sure opportunity is given fairly so that individuals can be evaluated based on merit.

YC has better diversity stats though? And I don't think it's because its pipeline is too different.

I'm shocked by the lack of diversity of those who win Pioneer, given that this is supposed to democratize funding for anyone across the globe.

Right now, it's mostly peer recognition which is prone to favor projects the dominant demographic finds cool. But I could see the competition based on revenue be more democratizing.

I think what this company is doing is great. Unlike all the other automated food startups, this one focuses on COST. I would definitely buy a $6 burger with great ingredients.

The founder cares about people's wellbeing, and seems to have a mission. He's been grinding this out for 8 years. It doesn't sound like the other automation food startups out there.

Thank you for recommending this article! Just what I needed!

Smart Bathroom

These bathrooms don't necessarily need to be targeted at households. It could make sense for office buildings, so that:

-costs/person can be kept low

-it is easier for the employer to handle connecting measurements to medical IDs (scan an app/employee ID)

-it is easier for employers to negotiate directly with providers to lower health insurance (I believe some companies already do this with Fitbits, e.g. John Hancock)

How is the pricing? Firebase Realtime Database is fairly expensive ($5/GB of storage per month), so it makes economic sense for developers to migrate to their own backend once they hit a certain scale. This is why third-party mobile backends are nowhere near the popularity of non-mobile backends with Google Cloud / AWS.

Do you think $0.18 per 100000 writes solves this problem?

She should become COO of Uber. Perfect!