91–100 of 256 posts
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A third worry: Uber's brand on your resume. At every turn there just seems like increasingly shady stuff coming out of there: covering up data breaches, covering up IP theft, etc.
Every person who I know has left Uber this year is at some company HN would probably agree as "better" (FANGs as backup, startups if more adventurous). So unless you're in the handful caught in the crossfire of these issues, Uber is an extremely strong brand name on a resume.
Uber had $6.6bn on hand at the end of June [1]. That means they are down to $5.1bn. Absent cost-cutting, that implies a 9 to 12 month runway. Even if SoftBank injects $1bn, that could only mean a few months’ runway. A large fine in the Waymo case [2] could literally bankrupt them. [1] https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/23/uber-is-still-burning-cas... [2] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/business/waymo-uber-tr...
Honestly if they need to make money, they can lay off a ton of staff, and license their logistics software to a lot of companies. It wouldn't be what their game plan has been, definitely a severe pivot but they would be a money printing machine for years to come.
I have a feeling this isn't as easy as you think. There are some great talks on Uber's microservice architecture and it's pretty insane. They could create new services, but I have a feeling their existing infrastructure is very custom. They've got over 1,000 microservices and it's actually difficult to get an exact number.
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the waymo case will certainly take some time to play out, wont it? I'm assuming year(s), but that's just a guess.
Probably, but can they successfully go public with that unsettled?
If so, they then probably think they can go public with all of that baggage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every person who I know has left Uber this year is at some company HN would probably agree as "better" (FANGs as backup, startups if more adventurous). So unless you're in the handful caught in the crossfire of these issues, Uber is an extremely strong brand name on a resume.
How long does this remain so though? Is there a point where it starts to look bad (like why didn't you leave earlier?)
With regards to why not move sooner, isn't the company going through an entirely top-down overhaul starting with the CEO? If someone wants to be part of that change, and if they still believe in the ride-sharing space and if they were never in the crossfires of any of this anyways, then all of these are valid reasons to stick around.
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Honestly if they need to make money, they can lay off a ton of staff, and license their logistics software to a lot of companies. It wouldn't be what their game plan has been, definitely a severe pivot but they would be a money printing machine for years to come.
> they can lay off a ton of staff, and license their logistics software to a lot of companies. I have a feeling this isn't as easy as you think. There are some great talks on Uber's microservice architecture and it's pretty insane. They could create new services, but I have a feeling their existing infrastructure is very custom. They've got over 1,000 microservices and it's actually difficult to get an exact number.
Symptomatic of too many engineers and too little leadership
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The idea is to drag the entire ride hailing industry underwater long enough to drown out competitors, and the trick is to do this without drowning themselves in the process. This is the nature of "predatory" pricing. There is something to be said for volume and if a couple competitors die in the process then Uber's volume can only go up. Unfortunately their competitors have found a variety of ways to keep from being…
Even if they manage to kill their competition -- and I'm not expecting they will -- I don't understand what their endgame is. I don't see what their moat is. Ridesharing companies are not hard or expensive to start. They'll have a hard time extracting monopoly rents, and there isn't much of an economy of scale they can reap. And once autonomous cars become part of the picture, I think they're in an even worse positio…
There is a lot of work that goes into the infrastructure behind companies like Uber and Lyft. You need good engineers that build products that are reliable and well tested, to work 24/7.
It is a hard problem. A lot of the smaller city taxi companies that have apps contract to larger vendors as well.
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Every person who I know has left Uber this year is at some company HN would probably agree as "better" (FANGs as backup, startups if more adventurous). So unless you're in the handful caught in the crossfire of these issues, Uber is an extremely strong brand name on a resume.
How long does this remain so though? Is there a point where it starts to look bad (like why didn't you leave earlier?)
Uber had $6.6bn on hand at the end of June [1]. That means they are down to $5.1bn. Absent cost-cutting, that implies a 9 to 12 month runway. Even if SoftBank injects $1bn, that could only mean a few months’ runway. A large fine in the Waymo case [2] could literally bankrupt them. [1] https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/23/uber-is-still-burning-cas... [2] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/business/waymo-uber-tr...
Waymo won't bankrupt Uber. If Uber loses, they will appeal. Uber will run out of runway for other reasons before they're done with the appeal. What a loss to Waymo might do is make an Uber IPO much less attractive. It might even be the difference between an IPO happening and not happening. And that might be the difference between Uber getting another year or two of runway and them dying in 2018.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is to drag the entire ride hailing industry underwater long enough to drown out competitors, and the trick is to do this without drowning themselves in the process. This is the nature of "predatory" pricing. There is something to be said for volume and if a couple competitors die in the process then Uber's volume can only go up. Unfortunately their competitors have found a variety of ways to keep from being…
Even if they manage to kill their competition -- and I'm not expecting they will -- I don't understand what their endgame is. I don't see what their moat is. Ridesharing companies are not hard or expensive to start. They'll have a hard time extracting monopoly rents, and there isn't much of an economy of scale they can reap. And once autonomous cars become part of the picture, I think they're in an even worse positio…
BMW has no choice but to do this, as do all the strong brands. They can't compete in a world that you don't care about the brand because you're riding journey-by-journey with no personal investment.
Better source, and one that the article references: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/uber-s-th... At this point, two things are clear to me: 1) Uber will IPO, there's just oo much money and influence behind it to stop that. 2) I'd be really worried if I was an employee about my options and also about my job. Employee's now ahve two large worries hanging over their heads..... What about my job and wh…
What happens to stock which isn't part of the IPO? Ie, all the stock owned by employees, investors, etc? Does it become instantly tradeable? I would imagine that considering the long road, a lot of people are really ready to sell. There are lots of owners that will have achieved 50X or more return, even at a low market cap. Former employees with option strike prices @ £20m, early investors that got in @ £150m.... Tha…
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period...
>For example, Facebook's IPO lock up prevented the sale of 271 million shares during the company's first three months of public ownership. FB hit an all-time low of $19.69 the day its first lock-up period ended, a price about 50% lower than the share price on the day the company went public. Further restrictions prevented the sale of another 1.66 billion shares through mid-2013. Facebook's unusual lock-up policy released insider shares at five different dates.