There is an older (by ~13 hours) submission on the same topic with numerous comments if you want to checkout the discussion captured then: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10013798" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10013798</a>
Is anyone surprised by this? Amazon had a net income of (241,000,000) in 2014 and a market cap well over $100 billion...<p>I know the comparison is a little strange, but these big startups/tech companies (i.e. Uber/Amazon) feel remnant of the old Standard Oil days. Standard Oil would routinely operated at a loss to hamstring competition. A tech company (similarly) can operate at a loss, undercut it's competition, and skirt regulation until it reaches an economy of scale. At which point competition has been decimated and a monopoly (or oligopoly) is established. The ideal scenario for a profit maximizing business.
They're still in an aggressive growth stage, they're supposed to be burning through their cash.<p>Did anyone really think that $5 Uber pools were money makers?
I wanted to ask if anyone seriously believed that Uber was making a profit, while requiring funding at their current scale, but then again what are they spending all that money on?<p>Sure they need developers, infrastructure, marketing and all the stuff required to run any business, but the drivers and vehicles aren't costing them money. So why do they need $1bn in cash? It would be very interesting to see the Uber yearly budget.
So, they are ignoring regulations, avoided paying insurance fees and drivers licenses for months, are equally expensive as normal taxis, are paying their drivers badly, and are STILL not profitable?<p>Well, this is a failed experiment.
More details in Gawker's article: <a href="http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove-uber-is-a-mo-1704234157" rel="nofollow">http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove...</a>
The profits on a business in a rapid growth period, where everyone expects losses, is not a problem. It's all about expectations and communication with the investors. If this is the plan, then they are on track.
Kalanick is not necessary lying about revenue growth, he just doesn't differentiate between gross or net which is misleading unless you do your own legwork into the revenue numbers.<p>Not much of a story here...
I think "Leaked documents suggest Uber operating at big losses" would be a clearer headline. I parsed it at first to mean Uber's losses were due to document leaks, or that they suggest leaking documents because of losses(?) Especially when they also have headlines like this:<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-31771046" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-31771046</a>
Other than marketing, what are Uber's expenses? From the outside, it looks to me like they've successfully outsourced all their costs onto their "independent-contractor" drivers? How are they not profitable?