David Rosenthal: commitment

Transcript context

…Their contribution margin was -70% then -20% then -20%, exactly what you talked about in Q1. It flipped, where they were +7%, then Q2, +29%, Q3 was +24%. Having a 25% contribution margin is great. The big question is, will this be able to continue after the pandemic? In one of the sources that you can check out in the show notes, I remember reading that someone was like, they're effectively essential infrastructure for the country right now. I sure hope they can be profitable with that demand but all power to them there. Totally. Two more things to wrap up history and facts. On election day, November 3rd, 2020, a huge moment for the country, but also for DoorDash, and Uber, and the whole gig economy. Prop 22 passes in California. It was super controversial. We said we would get back to gig labor here. We won't go into all the ins and outs here, but the TLDR is California has a crazy legislative and legal system where citizens actually vote directly on propositions that in fact, the laws instead of a Republican representative-type system, and Uber and DoorDash, as well as the other gig economy companies had put forward this Prop 22 to permanently create space and classify their labor as contractors and gig economy workers. This idea of a third type of workers—you have pure contractors who are at 1099, you have pure W2 employees. California and other states have been trying to classify gig workers as making companies classify them as W2 employees. Prop 22 says, no, they are contractors. They will be paid as 1099s, but it's this third class of business. Basically, it opens the way for the companies’ sustainable economics on their labor supply. That was a huge win for the companies, regardless of what you think politically, whether this is good for gig workers or not, it happened, it removed an existential threat to the business. Ten days later on November 13th, 2020, DoorDash releases their S-1 and files to go public. As we wrap up history and facts here, should we talk about some of the interesting nuggets revealed about there?…

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