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Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

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Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#21

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #14
austenallred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite popular belief, apps and communities don't run themselves. Uber is scaling at an ungodly speed, and they're hiring a ton of people to do so. Seriously, look at how many jobs they're hiring for right now: https://www.uber.com/jobs/list (then realize they're doing this in hundreds of cities simultaneously, in addition to the hundreds they're already in). I'm actually blown away that they're losing so little , g…

1200 job openings... that's impressive. I agree that you need people to expand, but it never hurts to question how many people you actually need. Nobody denies that megacorps probably have many redundant positions, it's not possible for a company with 3000 employees to have them either.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#22

Post by joshjkim »

rtpg wrote: post #14
austenallred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite popular belief, apps and communities don't run themselves. Uber is scaling at an ungodly speed, and they're hiring a ton of people to do so. Seriously, look at how many jobs they're hiring for right now: https://www.uber.com/jobs/list (then realize they're doing this in hundreds of cities simultaneously, in addition to the hundreds they're already in). I'm actually blown away that they're losing so little , g…

1200 job openings... that's impressive. I agree that you need people to expand, but it never hurts to question how many people you actually need. Nobody denies that megacorps probably have many redundant positions, it's not possible for a company with 3000 employees to have them either.

Good Eggs just laid of 140 people, more than 50% of it's workforce and shut down 3 out of 4 of their markets - only SF, their HQ, will remain, and even the SF office sustained layoffs. They are Sequoia/Index backed, and raised $21M less than 12 months ago.

Good example of a company that asked the question "how many people do we actually need?", with an unpleasant answer =(

http://blog.goodeggs.com/

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#23

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #6

Wait, so Uber spent $900 million dollars? I thought that considering they offload so much of the costs of running of the business( EDIT: through having drivers buy the cars, for example), they wouldn't have such high operating costs. Though according to this[1] article, Uber's at 3000 employees worldwide. What are those employees doing? EDIT: For reference, Greyhound's 2014 operating costs were 600 million pounds (50…

[deleted]

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#24

Post by jfoster »

rtpg wrote: post #6

Wait, so Uber spent $900 million dollars? I thought that considering they offload so much of the costs of running of the business( EDIT: through having drivers buy the cars, for example), they wouldn't have such high operating costs. Though according to this[1] article, Uber's at 3000 employees worldwide. What are those employees doing? EDIT: For reference, Greyhound's 2014 operating costs were 600 million pounds (50…

I haven't seen the data, but I bet a huge percentage of it is subsidized rides. They essentially use free rides as a carrot for users to learn the value of Uber.

The great part for Uber is that once they've trained their userbase, that cost largely disappears.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#25

Post by prostoalex »

icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I dont think Uber is going anywhere soon. It has such a strong brand. Everyone I know trusts uber a lot more than there local cab companies.

The competition would likely be smaller competitors chipping away at juicy chunks, like Wingz focusing exclusively on airport rides (and competing with UberX on price) and Blacklane promising higher level of service at cheaper rate than Uber Black.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#26

Post by jfoster »

onewaystreet wrote: post #16
rtpg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1200 job openings... that's impressive. I agree that you need people to expand, but it never hurts to question how many people you actually need. Nobody denies that megacorps probably have many redundant positions, it's not possible for a company with 3000 employees to have them either.

It may actually hurt. Uber is in the growth business. They aren't bootstrapping. It may not be worth the time for them to think whether or not they really need to hire someone for x position in x market when they have hundreds of positions to fill in dozens of markets.

Yeah, they likely have decades of amazing margins ahead of them. Doesn't make sense to be too frugal in just the first few years if it puts that growth at stake.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#27

Post by morgante »

puranjay wrote: post #3
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I dont think Uber is going anywhere soon. It has such a strong brand. Everyone I know trusts uber a lot more than there local cab companies.

I do wonder what will happen once Uber starts charging market rates. Right now, your ride is subsidized by Uber. Once it comes time to turn on the profits, you'll have to pay more - substantially more in some markets. Will you still use Uber? Probably. But many who started using Uber instead of, say, taking their own car or using public transport, just might go back.

> I do wonder what will happen once Uber starts charging market rates. Right now, your ride is subsidized by Uber.

Do you have any evidence of that? I'm 99% sure Uber is profitable on a unit and customer basis.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#28

Post by friendzis »

danieltillett wrote: post #12
empressplay wrote: post #8

So what's the model? Put the taxis out of business and then jack up the fares to what the taxis were? Who's winning, then, exactly? Not the consumer...

In theory if they can lower the costs substantially through innovation over the current taxi model they can grow the market out of private car usage. This would mean all parties (except car manufacturers) will benefit.

In transportation business major costs are vehicle depreciation/maintenance/consumables (fuel, insurance, tires, etc), wages and you can include domain specific expenses (insurance, driver health chek-ups).

  * You can't reduce DS expenses. You can offload them to drivers, but that will still be reflected in prices
  * You can reduce wage cost by eliminating administrative load by having tools (apps, backends) do the job. Considering the size of Uber they are just transfering wages from operators to engineers.
  * You can't reduce wehicle depreciation. You can reduce maintenance costs by having own workshop. Taxi companies might have that, for Uber that would be next to impossible due to practical reasons. You can reduce operating costs by buying fuel/insurance/etc in bulk. Agin, easy for cabs, difficult for Uber (not impossible though).
The only place I see Uber can compete is having innovative algorithms route the cars by adjusting for projected demand. Unless they have huge army of dedicated drivers, drivers driving for multiple companies kind of defeats that advantage. currently Uber does compete by exploiting legal frameworks and not labeling their drivers as professionals and their service as transportation. This is not a major factor in operating costs though.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#29

Post by brador »

rtpg wrote: post #14
austenallred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite popular belief, apps and communities don't run themselves. Uber is scaling at an ungodly speed, and they're hiring a ton of people to do so. Seriously, look at how many jobs they're hiring for right now: https://www.uber.com/jobs/list (then realize they're doing this in hundreds of cities simultaneously, in addition to the hundreds they're already in). I'm actually blown away that they're losing so little , g…

1200 job openings... that's impressive. I agree that you need people to expand, but it never hurts to question how many people you actually need. Nobody denies that megacorps probably have many redundant positions, it's not possible for a company with 3000 employees to have them either.

Uber is swimming in capital right now. Their only goal is growth because that maximises cash out ROI for investors. There'll be time for cutting heads and focusing on profit post IPO.

Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014

#30

Post by joshjkim »

Basic rundown of Rev / Loss from reports:

Q1.12: 1.4M / 3.4M Q2.12: 2.1M /2.3M Q3.12: 4.3M / 5.4M Q4.12: 8.2M / 7.0M Q1.13: 12.9M / 7.3M Q2.13: 19.3M / 8.1M 2013 (total): 104M / 56M Q1.14: 45.6M / 52.2M Q2.13: 56.9M / 108.8M

Rev grew faster than losses consistently all through 2012 and 2013 which is really amazing (2013 is when Uber jumped from a 330M valuation to a 3.5B valuation so investors noticed too)...then losses abruptly charged ahead in 2014 (see data pulled below).

Uber launched China in Q1 of 2014 - they are basically betting huge on China / India, and smartly being very clear to their investors that the $$ is for that very costly cause, so they can earmark the cash they are burning for international expansion as "meant to be burned." Also, if the bet goes the wrong way, they can (sort of) cleanly write it off as a failed (billion dollar) project, and ask investors to focus on their (hopefully by then) cash-cow business in the US.

Burn is all about international expansion, which is SUPER expensive, especially at the rate they are attempting. There is an insane learning curve that costs a lot of money to get on the other side of (hiring, culture, regulations, consumers, marketing are all different in each country - not to mention the fact that local competitors have all those in line already!) - look at pretty much any major US company that has attempted to succeed in China.

Good luck!

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