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End of the Line for Uber

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Re: End of the Line for Uber

#31

Post by dredmorbius »

beckman466 wrote: post #29
dredmorbius wrote: post #2

Dupe: 7 days ago, 311 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28132830 Yesterday, 41 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28197691

Did you flag this thread? I find this idea so strange, that there can't be multiple conversations about the same topic on here. You do realize readership of online forums is global right? Some might have missed earlier threads or will miss this one. Your idea of 'dupe' fails because for whom it is a dupe depends on many factors, and all you're doing by flagging is stifling opportunities for organic conversations beca…

See the site guidelines:

Are reposts ok?

If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

HN moderator dang has made clear that stories which are submitted but don't get traction can be resubmitted after a day or so. This particular item has seen ample discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8315602

HN has an excellent search functionality, through Algolia. If you're interested in a specific topic, you can look to see if it's been discussed, whether recently or in the deep mists of time.

There's also the "front page" view which allows looking at the top stories of any given day, through history. I use this to catch up on top items from the recent past frequently: https://news.ycombinator.com/front

Traction and front-page status are a highly-variable lottery at best. This particular story's landed at least three times in the past week, though it's been repeats of the original item each time.

I do try hard to encourage what I see as worthwhile and substantive discussions. This includes frequently submitting nominations for "second chance queue" stories. A few of those have spawned rich discussions.

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#32

Post by dredmorbius »

thehappypm wrote: post #24

I find it fascinating that the gig economy makes sense. Business 101 is to find economies of scale. In the taxi business, cars are purchased in blocks, maintenance is centralized (and easy since the cars are all the same), gas prices are negotiated, insurance is negotiated. The gig economy pushes all those costs to the driver, who has to buy market rate gas, pay a high market rate for individual insurance, pay Joe th…

There are a few variants of the gig economy concept.

Most seem to be inherently flawed and oppressive.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/what-the-c... (a current HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209323)

Onlyfans average earnings: https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans (discussion 9 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28105011)

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#33

Post by alex_young »

siliconlotus wrote: post #4

Uber didn’t invent adjusted EBITDA fwiw… it’s a standard practice for businesses to present GAAP and non-GAAP (pro-forma) earnings that they believe better represent the business. Also, any investor can simply look at Uber’s regular SEC-filed statement of cash flows if they would like to get a clearer view of Uber’s cash flows without those accrual accounting nuances

Non-GAAP is an amusing idea. GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Practices right? Doesn’t this mean that non-GAAP is pretty shaky since it’s not accepted by the rest of the industry?

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#34

Post by OldHand2018 »

brightball wrote: post #23
dionidium wrote: post #20

There's a kind of dance that happens in arguments about the post office where somebody points out that the USPS is actually profitable, absent its pension obligations, and then somebody else responds that, yeah, but they actually do have those pension obligations, so you can't erase them from the profitability calculation, but then somebody else argues that, sure, but the point is that it's not critical to the functi…

There's a lot of major interests out there that have essentially been at war with Uber from day 1. The cab driver's unions in different cities primarily. All of these interests want nothing more than to see Uber fail and will amplify any projections like these. My simple question...if Yellow Cab can be profitable, what makes it so hard for Uber or Lyft to be profitable?

Yellow Cab doesn't have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in executive compensation, nor does it need to hire thousands of developers.

Yellow Cab's annual expenses are probably less than 1 month of Uber's AWS bill.

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#35

Post by azth »

laurent92 wrote: post #13
CogitoCogito wrote: post #7

Given the numbers of this article, we should expect Uber to go bankrupt within the next two years or so. I'm fairly cynical and find it a reasonable prediction, but even if you don't agree with me, please play along. My question then is, when Uber goes bankrupt, what happens then? Would it spook the market? There are after all many other companies that have floated on investor capital. Would this sort of event be eno…

Grab is already leader in Asia, Uber is lacking in Indonesia. The difference? You have the choice between paying through the app or not (like a prepaid regular taxi). Uber designed its system to look as if drivers were employees, so they will die with the concept of HR fraud they created, but prepaid transport apps will remain.

In some countries, you can pay Uber with cash.

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#36

Post by whall6 »

alex_young wrote: post #33
siliconlotus wrote: post #4

Uber didn’t invent adjusted EBITDA fwiw… it’s a standard practice for businesses to present GAAP and non-GAAP (pro-forma) earnings that they believe better represent the business. Also, any investor can simply look at Uber’s regular SEC-filed statement of cash flows if they would like to get a clearer view of Uber’s cash flows without those accrual accounting nuances

Non-GAAP is an amusing idea. GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Practices right? Doesn’t this mean that non-GAAP is pretty shaky since it’s not accepted by the rest of the industry?

Non-GAAP is understood to be biased. It’s the company’s version of their financials. This is not the same version that is audited and required to be submitted on a quarterly basis.

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#37

Post by whall6 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #12

I dislike uber, but given that they have meant to gone bankrupt a number of times already, I'm not keen to bet against them anytime soon. Yes, they should have disappeared in a normal world, but uber didn't because its backed by people with a fucktonne of cash, enough might to distort lots of things about it that should have really killed it years ago. But then again, in a normal world, Tesla's stock price should be…

This is where I stand. Just because their current trajectory puts them in the ground, doesn’t necessarily mean that in 6 months they actually will fail.

Considering every startup ever has had a runway (i.e. how many months until we fail), the fact that even some have survived should remove complete confidence that Uber _will_ fail.

Re: End of the Line for Uber

#39

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

laurent92 wrote: post #21
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really just think the play on all these sorts of companies was just to get max amount of money in this era of intense amounts of dumb investor money before it dries up. The math on WeWork etc finding profitability never made sense. The investor money IS the end goal. I didn’t know things were already this bad for Uber. Looking like a big short on the stock would pay off nicely soon. I’ll leave that to the big guys.

> The investor money IS the end goal. “But you said you would never betray our customers! —Yes, because the customer is the shareholder.” – You know it’s bad when the series Silicon Valley mocks one’s business model for a joke. > The math on WeWork etc. finding profitability never made sense. “Don’t worry, we lose on every unit but we make it up on the quantity.” Yes, we were in a bubble. More seriously though, Kondr…

Hadn't heard of Kondratief cycles, it's an interesting idea, thanks for sharing.
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