61–70 of 70 posts
"The gleeful anticipation of a correction by investors and pundits is not helping the world get better in any meaningful way." Probably the most important line of the post. Hate that someone invested $ M in an app that just sends "Yo" to other people? Great, don't use it, don't invest your money in it. Yelling on the sidelines about how crappy it all is, seems counter-productive. Writing self-fulfilling prophecies to…
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Hmmm. I think at least some of these companies are worth less now than a year ago. Zenefits, coinbase, palantir, mixpanel, etc. am I wrong? Agree on the bubble issue. It's a boring discussion
That's why the bet is structured as a portfolio. In startup investing, it doesn't matter if some of the portfolio loses big (or everything) as long as there's at least one winner that expands many-fold.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/t-rowe-price-marks-down-most-of-...
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> Uber and Airbnb Imagine a world in which any object (human, animal, package, food) can be moved from one place in a city to any other place in the city using a smartphone. An electric, self-driving vehicle picks it up and drops it off. That world is very nearly possible, and Uber is on the tip of the spear that's creating it. There's an absolutely massive upside. Uber is probably very under-valued. Airbnb is less w…
I hear that argument in favor of Uber a lot, but what barriers to entry exist for potential competitors when there are autonomous vehicles? Currently, you can argue that Uber's competitive advantage and big barrier to entry is the driver network. When you don't need a pool of humans and software that makes the human's job easier, why would Uber be better suited than another company to utilize self-driving vehicles?
I find that a LOT of people go from "I envision a world in which rides-on-demand serves massively more rides" to "and thus Uber does very well as a for-profit company" with no steps in between.
Since 1970, the number of passenger miles traveled by air in the US has grown about 6-fold [1]. And airlines have, as an entire industry, overall run a loss. There's a cautionary tale in there for Uber bulls.
(BTW: Driverless cars don't necessarily mean that rides-on-demand becomes the dominant car transportation model, either, though it's certainly within the realm of the possible).
[1] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
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If you take the one year out results, and using those growth rates project out to end of bet period, he would not be right on all 3. But it's only been one year and tech doesn't grow linearly. That's why I said so far.
Another comment in this thread claims to have done the same analysis and come to the opposite conclusion. But neither of you shared your math. Could you show the analysis that led to your conclusion, so we can compare it to the other one?
"The gleeful anticipation of a correction by investors and pundits is not helping the world get better in any meaningful way." Probably the most important line of the post. Hate that someone invested $ M in an app that just sends "Yo" to other people? Great, don't use it, don't invest your money in it. Yelling on the sidelines about how crappy it all is, seems counter-productive. Writing self-fulfilling prophecies to…
Uh oh, it looks like someone has skin in the game and is worried. :'(
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I think #1 is actually the toughest bet. I can see Palantir, Dropbox and Pinterest either remaining static or even dropping from their current valuations. Even Uber and Airbnb don't have a clear path to huge growth in front of them, Airbnb is the safer bet for growth because of the lack of competition. Uber still seems a strong business but I'm not sure how well they continue to grow. X-factor for Uber is how it well…
Uber has zero stickiness outside retail car hailing. Their easy and seamless transactions are great compared to taxis, but are par-for-the-course in deliveries, etc. And the only thing Uber has going for it is being the only choice in most areas. When there's a competitor (as in SF) everyone has all the apps on their phone and shops around. Also, Uber's huge innovation is zero-capital rollouts. They use your car. Whe…
It's easier to displace incumbents when they offer a widely used service but they basically suck at it.
Things like food and package delivery, on the other hand, work pretty well where the economics have worked and it's unclear that uberizing, say, grocery delivery makes it attractive and financially viable where it wasn't before.
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I hear that argument in favor of Uber a lot, but what barriers to entry exist for potential competitors when there are autonomous vehicles? Currently, you can argue that Uber's competitive advantage and big barrier to entry is the driver network. When you don't need a pool of humans and software that makes the human's job easier, why would Uber be better suited than another company to utilize self-driving vehicles?
Also note that in this hypothetical world, Uber suddenly has to make gigantic capital investments in fleets of automobiles, whereas now they don't have that limiter on their growth. I find that a LOT of people go from "I envision a world in which rides-on-demand serves massively more rides" to "and thus Uber does very well as a for-profit company" with no steps in between. Since 1970, the number of passenger miles tr…
Basically you can pay people a lot less to be 'drivers' if they don't need to be driving.
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Also note that in this hypothetical world, Uber suddenly has to make gigantic capital investments in fleets of automobiles, whereas now they don't have that limiter on their growth. I find that a LOT of people go from "I envision a world in which rides-on-demand serves massively more rides" to "and thus Uber does very well as a for-profit company" with no steps in between. Since 1970, the number of passenger miles tr…
That's one model, but you could also have owners of autonomous cars allow Uber to use their car in the fleet. Basically you can pay people a lot less to be 'drivers' if they don't need to be driving.
Also: if very large numbers of people are buying autonomous cars, then there's probably not a lot of increase in the rides-for-hire market.
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I think #1 is actually the toughest bet. I can see Palantir, Dropbox and Pinterest either remaining static or even dropping from their current valuations. Even Uber and Airbnb don't have a clear path to huge growth in front of them, Airbnb is the safer bet for growth because of the lack of competition. Uber still seems a strong business but I'm not sure how well they continue to grow. X-factor for Uber is how it well…
> Uber and Airbnb Imagine a world in which any object (human, animal, package, food) can be moved from one place in a city to any other place in the city using a smartphone. An electric, self-driving vehicle picks it up and drops it off. That world is very nearly possible, and Uber is on the tip of the spear that's creating it. There's an absolutely massive upside. Uber is probably very under-valued. Airbnb is less w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uber and Airbnb Imagine a world in which any object (human, animal, package, food) can be moved from one place in a city to any other place in the city using a smartphone. An electric, self-driving vehicle picks it up and drops it off. That world is very nearly possible, and Uber is on the tip of the spear that's creating it. There's an absolutely massive upside. Uber is probably very under-valued. Airbnb is less w…
I hear that argument in favor of Uber a lot, but what barriers to entry exist for potential competitors when there are autonomous vehicles? Currently, you can argue that Uber's competitive advantage and big barrier to entry is the driver network. When you don't need a pool of humans and software that makes the human's job easier, why would Uber be better suited than another company to utilize self-driving vehicles?
People used to say the same about Amazon. Amazon was leading a race to the bottom in terms of prices, and they were selling the same products as everyone else.
Amazon succeeds today because they embraced their competitors and they're aggressively pro-consumer (even to the detriment of their own employees). They're also way ahead of the curve in terms of operational investments. For example, Target can't match the Prime service even if it tries.
Is that exactly the model Uber will follow? I doubt it. My point is just that even in commoditized industries, there can be a dominant player.