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Uber Valued at More Than $50B

wsj.com

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Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#11

Post by birken »

I love when the press accelerates startup success, even among the most successful companies of all time. They want everything to be an overnight success.

There is no timeline where Uber could be justified as being 5 years old. For example, there is a Techcrunch article [1] about the company launching the initial product over 5 years ago (which I'm sure took some time to develop!). Uber's website says the company existed in 2009, along with Travis' LinkedIn profile.

And then they spend a good chunk of the article comparing the speed that the two companies reach different valuations. I wonder what arbitrary date they picked as the date Facebook was founded...

1: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/ubercab-takes-the-hassle-ou...

2: https://www.uber.com/about

Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#12

Post by [deleted] »

paulpauper wrote: post #3
mikeyouse wrote: post #2

Wow.. I was curious if the pending employment law debates and changes were going to impact their valuation, it appears not.

it was way overblown, the details ignored in the anti-Uber cacophony. This ruling only effects California and a single driver, as explained by an article in Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/06/30/the-california-... California did not rule that Uber drivers are employees. Rather, a single labor commissioner made that finding (not a ruling) in an informal, non-binding hearing that is based on the facts of…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#14

Post by paulgb »

cblock811 wrote: post #6

This may be just me..but I feel like Uber is being built up way too much. People outside SF see it as some shining beacon of Silicon Valley tech startups. If they make missteps and show weakness I wonder if it will shake people's perception of how strong the tech industry is now.

I remember following Groupon closely and feeling like Groupon was spending a bunch of money teaching people around the world how to use daily deals, only to have competitors come in make it a race to the bottom because the barriers to entry were so low.

I feel like Uber is doing the same: spending a bunch of money teaching people how to hail a cab from their phone. When competitors like Lyft, Hailo, and Via enter the market and compete with them, it starts to look like the same race-to-the-bottom that happened with Groupon.

(Last I heard, both Via and Lyft Line are cheaper than UberPool right now in Manhattan. I suspect both are taking a loss on many rides to compete.)

Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#15

Post by sickrumbear »

birken wrote: post #11

I love when the press accelerates startup success, even among the most successful companies of all time. They want everything to be an overnight success. There is no timeline where Uber could be justified as being 5 years old. For example, there is a Techcrunch article [1] about the company launching the initial product over 5 years ago (which I'm sure took some time to develop!). Uber's website says the company exis…

Slightly confused; are you saying they should say they're more than 5 years old? 2009 was 5 years ago, and if that's when the company was founded, saying they're 5 years old makes sense.

Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#16

Post by paulpauper »

DannoHung wrote: post #10

This seems ridiculous.

Looking back since 2008 or so, with the possible exception of groupon, I can't think of a single $5+ billion dollar web 2.0 company that has crashed and burned.

A significant number of these web 2.0 companies seem to have defied the ‘crash and burn’ that characterized the first boom. Pets.com and Webvan were pretty much failures from inception, but sites like Pinterest and Airbnb keep getting more successful and more valuable.

Re: Uber Valued at More Than $50B

#18

Post by aaronbrethorst »

sickrumbear wrote: post #15
birken wrote: post #11

I love when the press accelerates startup success, even among the most successful companies of all time. They want everything to be an overnight success. There is no timeline where Uber could be justified as being 5 years old. For example, there is a Techcrunch article [1] about the company launching the initial product over 5 years ago (which I'm sure took some time to develop!). Uber's website says the company exis…

Slightly confused; are you saying they should say they're more than 5 years old? 2009 was 5 years ago, and if that's when the company was founded, saying they're 5 years old makes sense.

2014: 1 year ago

2013: 2 years ago

2012: 3 years ago

2011: 4 years ago

2010: 5 years ago

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