I've been saying that for a while. <i>Uber is losing $800 million per quarter.</i> They run out of cash in 2018 unless they can find a bigger sucker than Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. Uber is cheap only because investor capital subsidizes every ride. (And because they keep squeezing the drivers harder.)<p>IPO? They'd have to publish audited financial statements with GAAP numbers, which are almost certain to be worse than the leaked numbers. They'd take a big haircut on valuation, which the existing investors would not like. (Who has voting rights in Uber, anyway?)<p>Uber will probably run out of money and be picked up cheaply by some buyer of distressed companies, which will raise rates and cut it back to a profitable operation.
I don't understand why the media and Silicon Valley seem to be gleefully awaiting the downfall of Uber. If Uber's business model is not financially viable then the free market will take care of that. But promoting the view that their "culture" is "rotten" based on a report from a disgruntled employee, or saying that their employees are being "exploited" based on one video from one driver is sanctimonious and vicious. Why is this necessary? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a political motivation, driven by neo-Marxism and the narrative that capitalism and big business are inherently evil.<p>I'm an Uber user, and I still love the service and the fiercely competitive way that Uber has transformed what was previously a protected and stagnant industry delivering poor service.
Isn't Uber like a Ponzi scheme in some way? They use investors money to subsidize drivers so that prices are low and they get more users, and with more users they are valued better and get more investors money. When investors money or/and user growth stops, prices go up, people stop using it, and the system collapses (or at least the user base shrinks).
I found this article (<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-can-drive-profits" rel="nofollow">https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-can-drive-profits</a>) from The Information interesting since the "Uber will get to self-driving cars which makes them profitable" is brought as an argument all the time.<p>TL;DR is that self-driving cars according to an internal Uber study (according to The Information) would only modestly increase their margins:
"Doing without drivers will only increase Uber’s projected long-term net profit margin by as much as 5 percentage points, according to an Uber worker who’s seen internal data projected by that team. That’s in part because of expected municipal regulations on pricing related to autonomous vehicle services, this person said. Another factor is that Uber may have to purchase and maintain its own cars en masse, rather than relying on cars owned by drivers as it does now."
I hope not. I prefer my car service provider to be ruthless, impersonal, and corporate, not lovey-dovey like the "fist bump and ride in the front seat" people at Lyft. …and there's no way I want to go back to using DC Taxis.
I don't get the constant hype around self driving cars. Sure - they will be revolutionary <i>when</i> they get here - but the reality is they are years and years away at best.<p>We have autopilots for planes, that can effectively take off, fly, and land a plane. We've had that technology for quite a while.<p>So why is not common place for planes, at least cargo planes with no passengers? Surely companies like UPS, FedEx etc that have a large fleet of cargo planes that fly around the US and the world would have significant cost savings?<p>Why do we feel a car is easier to autopilot than a plane?<p>And when the car autopilot technology does get here - why does Uber feel it will benefit them more than Lyft? As soon as it is available - you'll just have Uber style copy cats with "on demand" vehicles? What benefit does Uber have at that point?
I'm having trouble believing a high-flying company could really come crashing down over accusations that they are sexist assholes.<p>"They're a really high-pressure place, there's a lot of vicious corporate politics, and they sometimes treat women badly," could describe a whole lot of companies and institutions.
I think about this a lot.<p>We live in a time where some of the most ridiculous services are being subsidized big time by VC cash, and I should be enjoying it while it lasts. From cheap rides to the airport, food delivery, laundry service, etc... soak it up now.
Travis Kalanick is a poster boy for bad behavior but this article is self exploiting trash.<p>First Uber is close to break even in the US and Latin America. They've also stemmed their losses in China with the merger with Didi.<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2016/02/18/uber-profitable-us/" rel="nofollow">http://fortune.com/2016/02/18/uber-profitable-us/</a><p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-31/uber-s-fastest-growing-region-set-to-break-even-fund-expansion" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-31/uber-s-fa...</a><p>The story they should have written is how Uber is going to hire with all this bad publicity? Any 'A' players are going to demand outrageous compensation to work for them now.<p>As for Travis himself he needs to send a plane for Jerry Colonna, startup coach to the stars ASAP.
Here's why Uber will succeed:<p>- Nobody who lives in a market that Uber serves will <i>ever</i> be willing to go back to the old way of calling a taxi dispatch line by phone, waiting on hold, and being told the cab will arrive in "five to thirty minutes". Seriously. Think about this.<p>- Nobody used to Uber will want to waste time taking out a credit card and swiping it through a dirty slot or handing it to a driver only to wait several minutes for it to finally go through.<p>- Compared to the average Uber vehicle, most taxis are filthy and full of all sorts of odors.<p>- The taxi/livery industry is simply too used to enjoying a monopoly business to be able to fix itself.<p>Uber has already won, and all these stories about Uber's culture, Uber's approach to dealing with regulators, etc., are one last attempt by those who dislike Uber to gang up on it and do it harm.<p>Taxi and livery services, medallions, and all the corruption that goes with them are on the way out. The stories we should be reading would be about immigrants scammed by Taxi companies working in violation of medallion laws, or about the cost of an NYC medallion that keeps non-rich people from making money driving.<p>I don't think Uber's prices are subsidized enough that if the subsidy went away demand would be significantly altered.<p>Simply having an intelligent app tell drivers where to expect fares and allowing easy booking and payment ads significant value to every ride that far outweighs the small dollar subsidy Uber invests to try to win market share.<p>I personally use Uber far more often than I would ever take a Taxi, largely because of the incredible convenience that the app offers and the high quality of the service.<p>While Uber's culture could probably use some improvement, it's irritating to see everyone piling on and trying to harm one of the firms that has done the most to democratize labor and empower individuals.
Those of us who have been around a while remember the black sheep of past technology eras. I always like to sum (+/-)happiness/person * num people affected by the technology]. It usually outweighs the dramatized negative points covered in the press.
I think this sentence really captures the customer's mindset with regards to Uber: "We’ll stick with Uber as long as it continues to get us where we want to go at a price we like."<p>As long as this argument above is true, I don't see Uber dying.
My main concern, as a potential founder, is that once Uber goes "pop" or Snap goes "fsssss", there will be the inevitable catastrophic lurch in the financial hivemind.<p>The purses will snap shut all at once, for good and ill. Contractions are no respecter of potential.<p>I'd really like to get in before last call.
I've also been calling for this...<p>"Ridesharing" as we know is it going to crash
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762242" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762242</a><p>Their valuation got so far ahead of itself that priced into it is global domination. Now that it clearly is not a global monopoly, there's nowhere to go but down. Everyday one of their employees goes to work is a day wasted where they could have been vesting at a company which is not horribly over valued.<p>Disclaimer: Former Lyft engineer / stockholder here (2014-2016)
Uber might be the new Webvan <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan</a>
Evidence suggests that this market is changing rapidly. I have seen graphs on paid ride figures being pretty even over time, whereas standard taxi figures appear to almost universally be dropping in quantity. Might not a longer term perspective change a lot of this speculation?
Putting aside the driverless car thing for a moment, can't we at least agree for the next 3-5 years people are going to continue to require taxi-like transportation services?
Uber needs to be hacked and destroyed to finally teach its founders humility, morality and ethics. He isn't going to change until he meets rock bottom!!!
Uber was an interesting idea brilliantly executed with billions and billions of other people's money that in the end has no chance of ever being profitable. Like Twitter, it's an indispensable product that nonetheless doesn't make money and in the end making money is what real businesses do.
The saving grace for Uber will be self-driving cars. Uber is a race against time to keep up the VC-subsidies until self driving is feasible. They don't need to make all routes self-driving, only some routes in some cities, to make the unit economics favorable and profitable. This logic holds true even if self-driving requires a large upfront fixed cost investment, as that cost can be amortized over time.
As an Uber employee, yes we are going through a rough patch and we are doing a lot of bloodletting right now internally, but as a company I think we will emerge much better and much more impassioned. If you saw the numbers we see, you wouldn't be so quick to predict our death. And no, I'm not going to leak anything, go ask NYT who seems to have their own personal leak, whom I hope gets caught and fired.<p>In terms of self-driving cars I'm not holding my breath. I think that's a decade away at least, the only reason why Uber cares is because if we don't have a foothold in that race, it's an existential problem for us. But all it will take is one terrible self-driving car tragedy to push back all research by 20 years due. I really hope something like that never happens but with all these players doing self-driving cars who can tell what will happen in the future.