Boy, this is shaping up to be a terrible week for Uber isn't it? Kicked out of California, the Naked Capitalism post about their inevitable doom is gaining attention, $800MM loss this quarter, the UK labour board ruling means they may have to (retroactively and in the future) pay VAT, and now this.
I'm certainly happy. I can't think of a single company that as "ruined it" for startups more than Uber. Skirting around laws and regulations combined with absolutely insane valuations must have put completely unfair pressure on other startups.
Sure, but their sales are subsidized by VC dollars. I don't have all the data, but everything I've heard in every city says Uber pays drivers more than they charge riders, hence the enormous 10 digit losses annually. And once they raise rates, people will use their services drastically less. The question is can they make driverless cars work before they run out of money? And I really, really doubt it. That's many years away, and I don't think Saudi Arabia is going to give them a few more billion dollars.
Agree with this. Revenue is deceptive when you're undercutting the competition, especially when there's no profit to show for it.
And pay incentives for drivers are not only the surge charges but how many completed rides. That's likely to make sure there's enough supply on the road.
It may be the case they are losing money on rides - it may not be - you said it yourself 'I dont have all the data'. I dont think people should be so quick to say they are losing money unless you see the real numbers - which none of us will ever see until they do an IPO.
In my experience, the drivers are usually very happy to talk about Uber - including how much they're making. They will often tell you what they're getting paid for the same ride, which you can compare to how much you're paying. I have never seen them get paid less than what I was paying, and am often surprised how much more they're making (it can be 3x depending on the promotions).
Yes, this data is limited. But all signs point towards Uber hemorrhaging money with no easy way of becoming profitable. And we know that competition can easily swoop in by looking at Austin, where Uber and Lyft left. It's a race to the bottom until self-driving cars are a reality.
The maths in that article is terrible, all venture backed startups will have expenditure > revenue (because you're investing today for future revenue), you have to look at unit economics to understand if this is a problem or not (i.e. do customers cost more to service than revenue they generate).
I wonder if there is any legal argument that there is a trade 'dumping' issue if Uber are selling their services lower than the cost of producing the service. Maybe a news article to look forward to in 2017.
Even if they can, they won't have a structural moat. Too many others are developing this technology. Either someone will disintermediate private self-driving car owners a la AirBNB, or other tech companies will run fleets, or the car manufacturers will run fleets in the manner of GE's engine-hours program.
Uber is the greatest transfer of wealth from VCs to middle-class professionals in history.
They have some obligation to other startups to keep valuations low, for what purpose? Are other VCs going to suddenly put irrational expectations on the companies pitching them?
Any VC/company that engages in some unrealistic valuation pissing contest deserves any big expensive failure that comes to them. Otherwise they can prove people wrong at their own risk.
The article doesn't mention the FBI most wanted list, where did you get that from? Are you confusing ROKSO w/ the FBI? Spamhaus is a crooked extortion organization ran by former spammers themselves, not some squeaky clean protectors of the Internet.
I'm puzzled. I have been referring to a quite old article that doesn't mention anything about FBI anymore. Unless I'm heaving early Alzheimer, I can swear reading at multiple spots that Nathan Blecharczyk was once on 100 FBI top wanted. I'm confused by this, however I guess the minimum I can do is not mention that "fact" anymore.
From the article that was linked in a few posts up: He was running a major spam operation, and he got into a list of known spammers arranged by SpamHaus (an anti spam organization). The list happens to have about 100 people.
It's said that he received a few letters from the FBI and other law enforcements while he was running the operations. Nothing specific.
When it finally hits the bottom and it's for sale at non-unicorn prices, I fully expect to either see Amazon buy it up and merge it into Flex, or else Google/MS/Whoever buy it so that Amazon doesn't.
Amazon has enough cash on hand to do it, isn't afraid of losing money for years on end, and enough legal power to defend it (see: Google buyout of YouTube). The extra work density of both programs combined would make the sum more valuable than the parts.
[Bias: former Amazon Flex dev, though with no knowledge of any actual plans Amazon has]
I'd think Otto in particular would be enormously beneficial to Amazon. Amazon loves robots, and anything that reduces shipping costs (and times) would be incredibly valuable to them.
> ... the Naked Capitalism post about their inevitable doom is gaining attention ...
Not only am I glad that post is gaining attention (the entire series is excellent), I'm glad Naked Capitalism is getting attention. It's my favorite finance blog.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people /s