Just spoke to my mother who had a good suggestion: Look at delivery.
Could Instacart be an example? In 2018 they'd already had 6 rounds of funding, they were barely breaking even on a per-delivery basis, Whole Foods was cutting them loose, and they were just holding their cash in their hand with no clear path to profitability.
Then they had ANOTHER round of funding, took in 600m and almost doubled their valuation from 4.3 to 7.6 billion. None of it made any sense at the time, but having all that cash on hand paid off massively a year later.
They weathered the strike, the boycott, expanded during the lock-downs, and they're expected to have a $30B IPO.
They snatched up Goldman Sachs' lead investment banker as CFO. Crucially, he'd already been advising them since 2015.
You have to wonder how this kind of information flows, and if Instacart is an example that would explain it. Goldman Sachs' lead tech stock investment banker was in their ear telling them to make moves that were — on their face — stupid. But it did all pay off in the end.
I wish I had more perspective on this type of thing. I know enough to know that 6 rounds of funding is weird and considered a bad sign, ditto just hanging onto cash instead of expanding. Seems like a weird time to get 15% of your valuation in investment, then go back for round 7.
But I'm spitballing.
Starting from the premise the oxygen buyout and the chloroquine heist look like foreknowledge, WeWork looks potentially suspect. From there what else?
Speaking of foreknowledge, see also:
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