I’ll start this by saying that I’ve bought the shoes, and they’re decent. If you’re looking for comfortable shoes and can stomach the price tag, Allbirds are worth trying.
Now with that out of the way…
From the Allbirds S-1 filing:
We have incurred significant net losses since inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future.
We incurred net losses of $14.5 million and $25.9 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, and we had an accumulated deficit of $113.1 million as of June 30, 2021. We expect to continue to incur significant losses in the future. We will need to generate and sustain increased revenue levels in future periods to achieve profitability, and even if we achieve profitability, we may not be able to maintain or increase our level of profitability.
It takes a special kind of psychopathy to say “we have never made a profit, we have no plans to make a profit, now give us two billion dollars please”.
It’s an even more damning indictment of the current state of the market that they got their two billion dollars and then some.
The asset price bubble that we’re living through right now will pop eventually—presumably when printing money starts causing more problems than it solves. When that happens, we’ll find the public markets full of these dud companies, and the venture capitalists that pumped-and-dumped them will have taken their profits and left retail investors to absorb the losses.