The line between being unprofitable and selling at a loss can be very blurry. What one might call "selling at a loss" another might consider "making upfront investments for ensuring and sustaining long term success".
In one option, there’s high turnover (bad for customers, employees, and restaurants) leading to restaurants not signing up with future food delivery companies due to being burned in the past. In the other option, there’s a heathy competition leading to customers paying realistic prices (an undistorted market) and giving delivery workers and restaurants more stability.
It's not anti-competitive if you're a relatively small player or trying to build a market.
Comparison: when a new restaurant opens, it's very common to hand out coupons in the neighborhood for discounts or free meals. Those free meals will be sold at a loss, with the goal of building a customer base. Think of it as marketing.
EOD, "anti-competitive" is evaluated on the outcome -- does the success of the company running the discounts make the market more or less competitive if they succeed? If a company is already the dominant player in a market, it's anti-competitive to price dump to keep new entrants out.
But if the company is new and trying to disrupt established players (or trying to create a market where one didn't exist), it's very hard to argue that there's less competition due to their success.
> EOD, "anti-competitive" is evaluated on the outcome -- does the success of the company running the discounts make the market more or less competitive if they succeed?
This doesn't seem right. If they are price dumping then it will immediately affect the competition. No need to wait for an outcome or interpretation.
> Comparison: when a new restaurant opens, it's very common to hand out coupons in the neighborhood for discounts or free meals.
I'd say this is only acceptable because it is small scale (only few restaurants fit in a neighborhood) and the amount of money isn't endless like it (often) is with VC money. The short duration makes it possible for the competition to overcome the negative effects.
The problem with VC money is that all too often it is used to destroy competition and build monopolies.
It is ignorant of reality to expect a surfeit of recent antitrust cases, as those sort of cases are only made in the most egregious of violations, and long after the damage has been done. Such as around 1999, when the several states and the US Federal DOJ brought suit against Microsoft. Microsoft had been pulling anti-competitive moves for decades before, killing alternative operating systems like BEOS or OS2. The most recent related suit was brought up against the NFL for conspiring to violate the Sherman Act, but that was 10 years ago.
Microsoft - not a VC funded company.
NFL - government sanctioned monopoly, also not a VC funded company
Now, as to OS/2, people say "poor IBM", but IBM was the monopolist boogeyman in the 70's and 80's. BEOS simply wasn't good enough. Apple OS's and Linux did and continue to do quite well.
The DOJ went after Microsoft for giving away Explorer for free, which is what every browser maker does now, and has for 20 years. How that's bad for consumers I have no idea. As for Netscape, I switched from Netscape to Explorer because Netscape crashed constantly. That was hardly anti-competitive behavior on Microsoft's part, it was bad engineering on Netscape's.
Yes, I know IE crashed too, but nowhere near as often as Netscape.
I also give away the Digital Mars C and C++ compilers, the D compiler, and the source code to all of it. Is that anti-competitive too? How about all the other free software I use every day? Should the DOJ go after their creators, too?
