Deliveroo, Greensill, Coinbase, Archegos. Apart from their shared proclivity to dominate the headlines, these high and low flying outfits are an exceptionally disparate bunch.
Yet one thing they have in common is a dependence on regulatory arbitrage to attempt to extract value – successfully or otherwise – from pedestrian core businesses in which fancy technology plays a purely ancillary role.
At the risk of inflicting a taxonomy, here are some basic thoughts. Deliveroo, the lossmaking food delivery company which was a notable flop in its recent flotation, is all about labour market arbitrage and the legal definition of employment.
Yes, it uses artificial intelligence to manage its casual gig economy workers. But what it is really about is transferring food from A to B, just as Uber transfers people from A to B. It does so more efficiently than the old non-gig economy could manage but it will transform no one’s life in the way electricity or the internal combustion engine succeeded in doing.
Greensill, the supply chain finance business whose collapse has…
