The worrying tale of how my business made $515m more than Snapchat last year

Uber is showing huge growth by expanding in a lot of new markets (in Europe and Asia). Market formation is expensive; they initially support a critical mass of drivers with minimum guaranteed earnings before mass adoption in that region happens. As long as they can prove profitability in established regions such as New York City, I don&#x27;t see a problem with them temporarily losing money on expansion.<p>At the end of the day, Uber is still a private company. There&#x27;s very few data flying around, and key metrics are shared just with the original investor group. It&#x27;s hard to judge if they made a correct capital allocation decision or not. And, ultimately, it&#x27;s their money and their decision to make. Who are we to judge?

Link to article online: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cityam.com&#x2F;258991&#x2F;worrying-tale-my-business-made-515m-more-than-snapchat-last" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cityam.com&#x2F;258991&#x2F;worrying-tale-my-business-made-...</a>

This kind of analysis nearly always fails to account for <i>why</i> these businesses aren&#x27;t able to recoup expenses. While many startups are will never find a large enough market to be profitable, many others choose to invest earnings and take on debt in order to improve their product further and acquire market share.<p>Could Uber or Lyft be profitable if they slashed incentive spending, cut R&amp;D efforts (self driving cars, improved matched algorithms, etc), closed up shop in cities too small to be profitable, and fired everyone that wasn&#x27;t critical to keeping the business running?<p>Maybe. But this guy certainly doesn&#x27;t know enough to tell.

What a cheap attempt at fame. Must take a PR guy to do it. Even if you were a beggar who made no money at all, you would still be mathematically more profitable than start-ups that declared losses, $1Bn+, $515Mn, and $450Mn for Uber, Snapchat, and Twitter, respectively. About as hollow as they come. Regardless of your views about an internet venture armageddon, Don&#x27;t give the article the airtime he&#x27;s looking for.

Huh, print newspapers are running clickbait now. If you can&#x27;t beat them, join them.

Sleaze merchant is jealous of more successful sleaze merchants, warns of sky falling due to people not playing by the set of rules he understands.

lol, he pinned his article on twitter.. and has also invested in Facebook.<p>Go figure.