[crdb]

I worked in several and I disagree. Take the fashion companies (Lamoda, Zalora, Dafiti... I think they're called global fashion group or something now): branded stuff has a 50% gross margin and the private label stuff up to 90%. That kind of economics leaves room for a lot of error and learning - basically, if you can get your costs under control, manage your inventory correctly and so on, you have a new Zara or H&M. So long as you can see this trend towards improvement, it's worth investing in (and will probably IPO eventually).

I used to think Rocket was operationally not that great, but then I started consulting with normal medium sized businesses and by comparison, they are regional leaders (dunno about global, as I haven't had any American clients yet, but based on my interviews with large Californian companies I won't name who still have interns do all their reporting in Excel, I wouldn't be surprised if Rocket was ahead there too). Same applies to marketing - the ones I worked in were surprisingly efficient with up to 10x the conversion rate I witnessed in competitors and a CPO perhaps 1/5th as high.

Could they do better than they are doing? Absolutely, but generalizing from FoodPanda ("pretty typical") or the Samwer "Blitzkrieg email" is like saying Uber and Palantir will end like Pets.com because they're Californian tech startups with VC funding pre-profit. They've made a genuine effort at building sustainable and sellable businesses globally and I learnt to respect that.