Ann: Appendix 3Y, page-16

True enough, but it's funny that Amazon's history is cited positively when people are explaining why it's OK that FLN is not making very much money, but if a competitor to FLN spends to grow revenue and market share at huge rates suddenly everything is about prudence. We seem to have forgotten all those mantras about marketplaces being winner takes all.

What it comes down to is that, like its competitors, FLN had a cash pile post IPO. It has turned that cash pile into 2-3% annualized growth and a bunch of dubious acquisitions (Escrow, Freightlancer, that conference) that now mostly show up in the balance sheet as "goodwill". They have now fired that bullet and their growth rate is what it is.

IMO MB is too afraid of losing control of his company. They did not raise enough cash and step by step he has transformed a startup with hypergrowth into a mature lifestyle business that is now a solid but unspectacular #3 in their category, despite all the guff about how they are the #1 marketplace (they are obviously not, except in terms of some Javascript-updated tickers on their web site). UPWK has 6x the revenue and FVRR - an upstart that has overtaken and passed FLN - has 2x. These guys could still stumble, but it wouldn't surprise me if UPWK/FVRR stumbled and the new #1/#2 was a fresh venture-backed company willing to aggressively grow market share, not FLN.

I liked the FLN up to about 2016, but they seem to have lost their edge. FLN has spent too much on staff, too much on acquisitions, and too much on distracting novelty projects. There are likely a horde of middle managers doing random projects hoping to get noticed, while MB writes 80 page theses on How The Australian Economy Should Work and What's Wrong With Sydney Nightlife. Why does FLN have such a big spend on staff? It's nuts. They need to spend their money on growing their core business, not haphazardly expanding into adjacent markets that turn out to not be very adjacent (think Escrow).