Uber now worth 73 billion.

lol
Haven't they lost money every quarter since they began?

Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.
 
Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.
Weeeelll... Amazon did reinvest everything for a good while, however Amazon is a tangible company, with inventory, and buildings and shit. Wtf is Uber doing that merits losing 5billion?
 
Sure, in imaginary fun bucks. My pen that I've been carrying around for 15 years is worth 100 billion based on the amount of work it has done and things it has accomplished.

It’s imaginary fun bucks until you realize how 99% of people in this country rely on these stupid inflated values to grow 401ks and provide for retirement. Absolutely disgusting.
 
Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.

If full self driving vehicle materialize before Uber goes under - it won't do them a lick of good. Any company with access to capital will be able to buy a bunch of them and put them on the road, the only way to compete will be to charge less than the other providers. If Uber doesn't charge the least, people will switch to Company B - if Uber does charge the least, they will have margins almost indistinguishable to zero at BEST.
 
It’s imaginary fun bucks until you realize how 99% of people in this country rely on these stupid inflated values to grow 401ks and provide for retirement. Absolutely disgusting.

Most 401k's tend to hold highly diversified portfolios. There may be a few "fun bucks" tech companies in there, but there are also lots of traditional manufacturing, and other type of large stable organizations in there.
 
Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.


The Self-Driving vehicle as a money saver within the next decade is pure horseshit. The added cost of sensors (tens of thousands) and maintenance (by expensive, qualified technicians to keep all those sensors in-sync) will cost vastly more than just having a cheap human drive it for ten years.


The Self-driving car in the near term is a convenience, not a cost-saver. We're at least 30 years away from sensor mass-production and the cost of the technicians to come down to something resembling current auto mechanics
, at by then Uber will be long-dead. Amazon had a much easier time changing the world, as it only took ten years to build the infrastructure, and start raking in the profits.

And since everyone else will have the same cheap self-driving car, there will be no cost advantage to Uber, over say Lyft. Mass-production implies that every other car company got it figured out, while Uber's selling point was "we will get there first, and have a monopoly on self-driving cars."

It's too expensive if you're not in mass-production, and if you're in mass-production, you've lost your first-mover advantage. There will always be other companies that follow the Uber plotline and lose money to gain market share. If self-driving makes it cheaper, then there will just be even more entrants to the market.

Uber can never be profitable as a rideshare company. The cost of entry for competition is too low, which is why they can never raise their rates. But there seem to be a never-ending line of believers who think Taxi companies somehow have untapped revenue
 
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The silicon valley VC circle-jerk continues...

"HEY WE LOST A LOT OF YOUR MONEY BUT WE ARE MAKING SURE TO BURN THROUGH ALL YOUR MONEY AS FAST AS POSSIBLE SO WE CAN EXPAND ACROSS THE WORLD IN OUR MAJOR MONEY-LOSING STRATEGY OF SUBSIDIZING CAB RIDES WITH AN APP..."

Great, you are worth 73 billion dollars!!

....

This country would be a lot better off if all that venture capital went towards companies investing in boring things like infrastructure or rural internet access and not stupid-shit data-harvesting apps. The fuck happened to starting a small business and working your way up? Now you need to kiss a bunch of people's asses while lying about your profitability so you can expand globally within three-five years.

/rant
 
This is the dumbest business model in the world.

Do some calculations to realize there are tons of stupid people who will work for you even though they get paid less than minimum wage.
Skirt every law possible realizing that only a few cities will push back.
Even then, lose tons of money with no profit model what so ever.
 
If full self driving vehicle materialize before Uber goes under - it won't do them a lick of good. Any company with access to capital will be able to buy a bunch of them and put them on the road, the only way to compete will be to charge less than the other providers. If Uber doesn't charge the least, people will switch to Company B - if Uber does charge the least, they will have margins almost indistinguishable to zero at BEST.

I agree. At that point any company can jump in and have self driving cars. It won't be exclusive to Uber. Their current network of drivers is their advantage but Lyft found a way to use their drivers as well. The road is rocky.
 
Weeeelll... Amazon did reinvest everything for a good while, however Amazon is a tangible company, with inventory, and buildings and shit. Wtf is Uber doing that merits losing 5billion?

Rewarding the founding geniuses scammers "Once in a Lifetime" scam.
 
Sure, in imaginary fun bucks. My pen that I've been carrying around for 15 years is worth 100 billion based on the amount of work it has done and things it has yet to accomplish

Fixed that for you ;)
 
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjew8/were-all-killing-uber-just-by-using-it

This tries to explain why the loses.
Uber are morons, they should have dedicated to make the software their main thing, and getting a small cut. In fact, I think the could have offered access to cabs and stuff like that (maybe, cabs might never want to change squat to who knows).
Instead, the want this grand plan and all this nonsense.
 
Wtf is Uber doing that merits losing 5billion?
Competing with Lyft and existing taxi companies. They are dumping subsidized services to gain marketshare, trying to become a monopoly. If they kill off the competition, they can charge whatever they want. That's the objective.

I primarily use Lyft to prevent this from happening. They are typically on par with Uber in pricing, sometimes slightly cheaper and generally (forced) nicer drivers.
 
Competing with Lyft and existing taxi companies. They are dumping subsidized services to gain marketshare, trying to become a monopoly. If they kill off the competition, they can charge whatever they want. That's the objective.

I primarily use Lyft to prevent this from happening. They are typically on par with Uber in pricing, sometimes slightly cheaper and generally (forced) nicer drivers.
You are right...its just such a bad strategy I think... even if the managed this dominance, it shouldn't take much for competition to pop right back up though.
 
Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.
Perfectly stated. Amazon is the textbook case long-term play, where all along the way there were negative headlines continually trying to shit on them for not being profitable. Now retailers that chose to ignore them and failed to adapt years ago are whining AmAzOn DeStRoYeD ReTail like it happened overnight.

Gamingchair analysts tend to see the now and the now only. You see cynical articles about Uber 'burning" a billion per quarter. Yeah, it's a long-term play - they've crunched the numbers. Eventually they'll own all on-demand personal transport and headlines will be blaring "How did this happen?"
 
They tried to get too big, too fast.
I love using Uber! But the company just shouldn't be that large. Their normal software isn't that complicated and is/was "cheap" to develop. They should have stuck with that and used profits to slowly develop other tech.
 
I used Uber a couple of times to pick my machinery up from the body shop after people hit it twice in the last decade, last time the driver was my neighbor so now I just pay him $20 for a ride to the mechanic or body shop.
 
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Perfectly stated. Amazon is the textbook case long-term play, where all along the way there were negative headlines continually trying to shit on them for not being profitable. Now retailers that chose to ignore them and failed to adapt years ago are whining AmAzOn DeStRoYeD ReTail like it happened overnight.

Gamingchair analysts tend to see the now and the now only. You see cynical articles about Uber 'burning" a billion per quarter. Yeah, it's a long-term play - they've crunched the numbers. Eventually they'll own all on-demand personal transport and headlines will be blaring "How did this happen?"

You have no clue what to look for in a properly-operated company, you just have that same Blue Sky look that all the idiots who keep funneling money into Uber have.

Amazon was profitable after only 8 years of operations. After surviving the Dot-Com crash.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/business/technology-a-surprise-from-amazon-its-first-profit.html

Uber has been in operation for ten years, and shows no signs of stemming the losses. Their Self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian a year back, and they've had to acknowledge that that's not gong to work anytime soon (at least 5-10 years out).

Keep in mind that while Amazon was making losses, they were also laying the groundwork to become thew king of Cloud Compute, before anyone else had thought of it. There is no such movement toward diversification at Uber - everything is aimed at extending their base product (e.g. Uber Eats), built upon the same driving service already proven to lose money.
 
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And at minus 66% profitability. Reminds me of the ridiculous valuations during the dot com boom. Buy on margin anyone? :p
 
Competing with Lyft and existing taxi companies. They are dumping subsidized services to gain marketshare, trying to become a monopoly. If they kill off the competition, they can charge whatever they want. That's the objective.

I primarily use Lyft to prevent this from happening. They are typically on par with Uber in pricing, sometimes slightly cheaper and generally (forced) nicer drivers.
If that's the case then that's dumb objective. It's hard to build up a distribution network, warehousing, etc. on a national scale like Amazon did. There is "hard" value in that business.

Outside of a central office, uber has no real footprint. The barrier of entry to create an app that pairs people up for any given service and only exists on the Internet is really low.
 
They really should have never tried to self develop the autocars. They should have invested in a company that was already doing the research. Uber SHOULD be a cash cow. How many people do you actually need to develop/maintain their app? That really should be all of their expenses. Lavish parties, huge salaries, and crap business decisions are why they are what they are.
 
Perfectly stated. Amazon is the textbook case long-term play, where all along the way there were negative headlines continually trying to shit on them for not being profitable. Now retailers that chose to ignore them and failed to adapt years ago are whining AmAzOn DeStRoYeD ReTail like it happened overnight.

Gamingchair analysts tend to see the now and the now only. You see cynical articles about Uber 'burning" a billion per quarter. Yeah, it's a long-term play - they've crunched the numbers. Eventually they'll own all on-demand personal transport and headlines will be blaring "How did this happen?"
Problem is Amazon was externally subsidized to let it kill the competition. They did not kill the competition by providing a better product or service. Your idea of a success is only from an investment perspective. Rewarding inferior companies and services because they had money bags behind them or some other outside advantage will have negative long term consequences for the economy. It's like being king of the hill but the hill is manure.
 
They really should have never tried to self develop the autocars. They should have invested in a company that was already doing the research. Uber SHOULD be a cash cow. How many people do you actually need to develop/maintain their app? That really should be all of their expenses. Lavish parties, huge salaries, and crap business decisions are why they are what they are.
I actually pointed this out to my friend who works for corporate Uber.

Everyone’s gonna get rich at the top and bail before it falls over.

They own no actual tangible assets to reflect their higher valuation.

He just kinda stared off into space.
 
Problem is Amazon was externally subsidized to let it kill the competition. They did not kill the competition by providing a better product or service.

What?

They absolutely provided a better product. When Amazon came about there was no go to a website that has everything, order, and it comes right to your door. It seems really obvious today, but in it's time it was a breakthrough in connecting to the consumer. At the time the other option was pack your kids in the car, drive to a walmart (or other store), go shopping, and slog everything home. That's typically a 45 minute - 1 hour event plus the hassle. I'd rather spend that 45 minutes like this: 5-10 minutes shop online, 30 minutes take the kids outside to play. Amazon gave time back to consumers, time is valuable. Everyone focuses on distribution and prices or whatever, but really time savings is their most compelling product.

Service wise? Amazon has always been good. Fast responses to me and always a fast solution. I'd rather talk to a CSR on the phone for 5 minutes total than drag the crap and my kids back to a walmart and then wait in line for 15 minutes.
 
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I actually pointed this out to my friend who works for corporate Uber.

Everyone’s gonna get rich at the top and bail before it falls over.

They own no actual tangible assets to reflect their higher valuation.

He just kinda stared off into space.

Right, this is why I can't bring myself to work on the west coast. For every shining success story, there are a hundred retreads looking for that juicy piece of venture capital.

Unfortunately, you have to believe and eat the bullshit in order to not go insane at work daily.

The VCs get their share before the IPO, and then sell at he IPO price, and make bank. Then the company implodes a year or two later, and the process repeats.

Sometimes you get a massive success. Usually you get a failure. But as long as the company makes it to IPO, Venture Capitalists make money selling their stock (acquired pre-IPO, when the company was worth a lot less) to idiots who believe the pumped-up company's value at IPO time.
 
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Service wise? Amazon has always been good. Fast responses to me and always a fast solution. I'd rather talk to a CSR on the phone for 5 minutes total than drag the crap and my kids back to a walmart and then wait in line for 15 minutes.
And another perk Amazon doesn't get enough credit for over Walmart: You won't get shot™

(I'll see myself out)
 
What?

They absolutely provided a better product. When Amazon came about there was no go to a website that has everything, order, and it comes right to your door.
That's today's incarnation of Amazon that you're talking about. And this post is not defending Uber...but remember that Amazon started off as an online bookstore (with videos and music also).

Just like every other hyper-successful business, there were some good ideas coupled with future vision, coupled with some good breaks, coupled with some underhandedness (research Amazon's deal with Toys 'R' Us in the early 2000s) that brought Amazon to where it is today. It didn't start off as 'Everything you find in Wal*Mart brought straight to your door'.

Heck...Crutchfield was the goto place for TVs forever, and Amazon still lusts after Newegg's part-filter technology.
As just two counter examples.
 
Amazon lost money every quarter from its founding in 1994 until 2003 when the company finally turned its first profit.

At one point in 2000 analysts were suggesting the company was doomed when a report leaked suggesting the company only had $350M remaining cash, despite having raised billions.

Now Amazon owns the world with a market cap close to a trillion, with more than 10 billion in profits a year off of revenues over 225 billion.

There is a sense in the industry that these things take time, and can't be profitable until they have built up scale, but once they do they take over the world, so investors are OK with year over year losses as long as they are moving in the right direction.

For Uber that is self driving cars, so they can get rid of all of those pesky drivers and offer fully automated rides.

I will be the first customer when self driving automated cars come here!
 
I will be the first customer when self driving automated cars come here!

Meanwhile I will be using on toy 20 year old Volvo wagon as long as I can keep it roadworthy, as I absolutely refuse to buy one of those new cars that is connected and sends data about you back to the mothership. :p
 
The Self-Driving vehicle as a money saver within the next decade is pure horseshit. The added cost of sensors (tens of thousands) and maintenance (by expensive, qualified technicians to keep all those sensors in-sync) will cost vastly more than just having a cheap human drive it for ten years.

I agree, but for different reasons.

I think it all comes down to the cost of liability.

Sure, cost of wages is an expense. Maintenance, cost of technology are expenses. But those can all be planned, and in the case of capital cost (the price of sensors, new cars, etc) - that stuff gets depreciated.

The cost of liability is the real expense. It's not only insurance, although that's a big part of it. Take a scenario like an Uber car hits a mom pushing a baby cart down the sidewalk...

With the human driver, you can say "Well that's against our company policy, and the driver willfully ignored it, so we fired the driver and we are having training for the rest of our employees". You'll still get some civil penalty, but it will be pretty small, because you've pinned most of the responsibility for the accident on the driver. It was just Uber's misfortune to have employeed that driver.

The automated car, on the other hand... you got no one else to blame, unless you start going after software programmers or device suppliers (which is pretty much what Boeing is doing), but they weren't there when the accident happened. The responsibility for the accident lay more directly with the company, and so will the cost of civil liability.

That kind of expense is really hard to budget. And I think that will be the biggest reason why we ~don't~ see automated driving adoption happen as soon as it otherwise could. Nothing to do with the tech, all to do with who is at fault.
 
This is the dumbest business model in the world.

Personally, I would still give that award to Groupon for walking away from a $6 Billion buyout from Google in 2010.

I'm sure they have lived everyday for the last 9 years wondering what could of have been.....
 
losses are pretty practical when having to pay millions in taxes.
IRS rules make it happen.
 
With the human driver, you can say "Well that's against our company policy, and the driver willfully ignored it, so we fired the driver and we are having training for the rest of our employees". You'll still get some civil penalty, but it will be pretty small, because you've pinned most of the responsibility for the accident on the driver. It was just Uber's misfortune to have employeed that driver.

The automated car, on the other hand... you got no one else to blame, unless you start going after software programmers or device suppliers (which is pretty much what Boeing is doing), but they weren't there when the accident happened. The responsibility for the accident lay more directly with the company, and so will the cost of civil liability.

We are all human, and we all understand that in the face of pressure and limited time, its tough to make a great decision. If you can even make a decision at all.

The software programmers WAS there at the scene of the accident. He was represented by the code and it had time to make several decisions. Decisions that were carefully and methodically "tested in a lab".

This is the argument that will be made in cases. We've been sold on this idea of computers being superior or AI learning (whatever that is). So people actually believe that a computer is superior to a human. When a human reacts bad and runs over someone, we chalk it up to normal mistake. When AI reacts bad and runs over someone, there will be discovery showing that the AI merely followed a set of predefined solutions that resulted in a person being ran over.

I agree with you, that most likely "the company" will be held responsible because they have $$$$ to go after, but the first couple big lawsuits should be fun to watch.

Uber settled out of court for the death of Elaine Herzberg, so we have no idea how much that cost them.
 
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