I'm interested in the investors who bought Uber at IPO.
What were they expecting to happen? A company losing money with no sign of being profitable any time soon. If ever. They expected the stock to go up?
Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
401–410 of 516 posts
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
this kind of thinking so vastly underestimates the creative capacity of humans and the amazing nimbleness of the invisible hand, not to mention the sheer vastness of existence itself. humans will work on other, bigger, more varied, and more complex problems. we have not solved the universe yet, let alone understand even the basic workings of biochemical machinery. there is a crap ton of things we can apply our mental…
Ya, rereading what I wrote, I might have missed a part of what I was trying to address. I don't think anyone is proposing that humans then do nothing and watch VR porn while being tube fed for the rest of their lives. There is indeed an infinite amount of things left to do. The question is given this 'initial condition' where everyone is where they are currently in 2019, who does that work. Is it the 56 year old truc…
first, while long-haul interstate driving is probably the easiest type of driving to automate, it's pretty audacious to assume that automated trucks will take over the industry any time soon. there are still many social, political and legal issues to wade through, never mind the economic and technical.
but to follow your line of reasoning, what you do is walk up to him and say, "hey, in the next 10 years, your job is going to be automated. every year, your chances of losing your job goes up. what do you want to do? [...listens...] ok, let's set up a transition plan and make sure you're ready when the time comes." and who knows, maybe he's a hobby machinist, and can work for CERN custom-building the crazy one-off contraptions they need.
it's paternalistic and patronizing to make assumptions about the abilities and motivations of millions of people and 'solve' their problem for them. it's how we get misguided social programs that waste billions of dollars (i'm not against social programs, just misguided ones, and they're really, really tricky to structure properly).
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber/Lyft are also great when you can expense your trips. Not having to deal with (local) cash or a constantly “broken” credit card machine are also pluses.
Uber and Lyft can now feed receipts directly into corporate expense reporting systems which is a major time saver for frequent business travelers.
I found that if I used my corp card, transit stuff was automatically categorized just fine.
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
R&D is the only way that they survive in the long term. Uber's entire plan is just to keep hemorrhaging money until autonomous vehicles come online. They just did not expect that to be as hard of a problem as it has turned out to be.
I hope they don't actually think that. Autonomous vehicles will turn a two sided market into a one sided market. Just think about all the companies working on self driving cars that don't currently compete with Uber. As soon as they succeed, they'll build an app, buy thousands of cars, and cut the per ride price to nothing.
Edit: misread comment. What I meant was that even with autonomous cars, there will probably be a huge market leader (but it won't necessarily be Uber).
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#405Uber and lyft are both on the way down. The price at which they need to operate to be profitable is not a price that most americans are ready to pay. As simple as that. For now they delay this reality by subsidizing rides in order to generate business. In some cities like San Francisco, most incentives were removed and among my friends we all stopped using Uber (unless we really have to). It simply became way too exp…
I really hope they both implode. The blitzscaling strategy might in fact work but it would effectively be an end to democracy. We would basically have a marketplace of ALL monopolies. It just doesn't scale.
Blitzscaling doesn't let you produce monopolies unless you have someone constantly bankrolling the beating down of competitors. As soon as Uber runs out of other people's money then the issue stops. The fact that Lyft exists shows that they can't monopolize.
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#406Uber and lyft are both on the way down. The price at which they need to operate to be profitable is not a price that most americans are ready to pay. As simple as that. For now they delay this reality by subsidizing rides in order to generate business. In some cities like San Francisco, most incentives were removed and among my friends we all stopped using Uber (unless we really have to). It simply became way too exp…
To qualify your comment: The line item in Uber's results you want to look at here is "Excess Driver Incentives" which covers: "Cumulative payments to a Driver could exceed cumulative revenue from a Driver as a result of Driver incentives or when the amount paid to a Driver for a Trip exceeds the fare charged to the consumer." What's really interesting here is that year over year this number went down substantially ($…
One of the big outstanding macro questions is how these businesses perform in a recession. If (or when) an inevitable contraction occurs, how quick are millennials to trade a daily uber eats habit for weekly groceries and meal prep at home.
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#407Seems like there is a lot of mutual benefits between Uber and local taxi companies. Didi does this in China, where you can hail a taxi through the Didi app. Not sure if there is any revenue sharing setup but payment is made directly to the taxi driver. Seems like a win win for all concerned.
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People were willing to pay taxi rates all along Baloney. The market size of people willing to pay taxi rates for transportation is much smaller that the market sizes currently implied by Uber and Lyft's valuation. Before Uber and Lyft, most people I know would only take taxis very occasionally, for special occasions or emergencies. Once Uber and Lyft started offering such good rates they would use ride sharing much…
Consider pool rides -- which were never part of the traditional offerings. Pool rides from Uber/Lyft lowered cost while expanding the market. Consider all the places where you needed a taxi but wouldnt know how to hail one -- Uber/Lyft expanded the market here. I was recently in Taiwan and needed a ride, but could not describe the address to a driver who did not speak English. Uber to the rescue -- again the market g…
I was recently in Taiwan and needed a ride, but could not describe the address to a driver who did not speak English. Uber to the rescue -- again the market got expanded.
The only time I've been in a situation where I needed to take a taxi but didn't speak a common language was in Paris. I simply showed the driver the address as written and he got us there with no problems whatsoever. Granted Paris is pretty easy that way as rides (both taxi and Uber) from the airport are fixed price.
Alternatively I bet just pulling up the location on a mapping app would be enough. Of course in most countries I've been to, the public transit infrastructure was good enough that I never wanted to bother with a taxi of any sort.
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider pool rides -- which were never part of the traditional offerings. Pool rides from Uber/Lyft lowered cost while expanding the market. Consider all the places where you needed a taxi but wouldnt know how to hail one -- Uber/Lyft expanded the market here. I was recently in Taiwan and needed a ride, but could not describe the address to a driver who did not speak English. Uber to the rescue -- again the market g…
Uber/Lyft are also great when you can expense your trips. Not having to deal with (local) cash or a constantly “broken” credit card machine are also pluses.
Taxis would give me blank receipts and tell me to fill in the amount. Free money!
Now Uber and Lyft has made it harder to embezzle from my job :(
Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's a solved problem show me the fixed roads and clean water and I will buy what you are selling. Do it in one town. There is no need to debate and discuss anything more if you have proof for the simplest case.
You want me to show you a road that has been fixed and a water supply that is clean? I mean, look at any major city with significant wealth? I don't understand your argument at all. It's unrelated to people being automated out of a job and the structure of our society changing. We aren't going towards a utopia where everything is perfect, we are talking about a stumbling forward into the unknown, all our crummy parts…
I was responding to your framing things as a choice between a 5 year time frame Vs a 20 time frame. How can anyone asses without proof a 5 year time frame is possible? So I said don't fall for people who claim they can do things fast without asking for proof. Otherwise anyone can claim anything is possible by tomorrow.