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Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

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Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#41

Post by ikeyany »

slackstation wrote: post #15

Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. Uber won't own the market. There is zero lock-in. If Lyft is cheaper this week, I'm riding Lyft. I sold my car over a year ago and use a mix of ridesharing and rentals for transportation. Uber and Lyft's greatest competition in my life is a small Google product where people pick up people on their daily commute to and fr…

> There is zero lock-in.

They're fixing this. You buy 100 flat fares that you can use over the next 6 months, then you're more or less locked in.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#42

Post by georgespencer »

JimboOmega wrote: post #12
pchristensen wrote: post #10

"We'll make it up in volume!"

Seriously. We can double the size of a loss making business! We can lose money twice as fast! Actually it looks like losses relative to revenues are smaller than they were, but that's still not impressive. Especially when it's non-GAAP anyway. How much money do they have? How did they raise so much without giving any control away and not going to the public markets? I mean... a billion here, a billion there, sooner o…

They've raised $15bn in total and their last valuation was about $70bn. In total they've lost around $6bn, meaning that between cash and credit facilities they have around $8-9bn in the bank.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#43

Post by jacquesm »

georgespencer wrote: post #33
acchow wrote: post #6

“We’re fortunate to have a healthy and growing business" $2.8bn "adjusted net loss" on $6.5bn revenue is healthy?

The naivety on HN is staggering sometimes. Imagine your parents give you a $10 loan to start a lemonade stand. You think you need six years to make them an above market return on their investment of 2x. You're gonna buy cups, lemons, sugar, and water. In the first year you think you're going to spend $3 and make $0. So you have $7 in the bank. In the second year you think you're gonna spend $2, and make $1. So you ha…

But there is no guarantee at all that you will ever turn a profit. That lemonade stand of yours might spend more than it makes for longer than your loan will sustain you. Which would require you to obtain another loan and so on. How many loans would it take before you would say: Maybe I really should start to make a profit on every glass of lemonade? Or maybe you'd say: What a bummer, Joe from next door has also started a lemonade business, I wished he wouldn't subsidize his lemonade so much because I can't compete with him and his parents are wealthier than mine so they can keep that up longer.

It's not always a happy ending in the lemonade business.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#44

Post by codecamper »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
codecamper wrote: post #23

hackernews.. the place for uber quarterbacking.

> I'm 43 and would like to start a family. Don't wait for success or money if you want to start a family, there really never is a 'right' time.

You are right. Time to get started.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#45

Post by georgespencer »

jacquesm wrote: post #43
georgespencer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The naivety on HN is staggering sometimes. Imagine your parents give you a $10 loan to start a lemonade stand. You think you need six years to make them an above market return on their investment of 2x. You're gonna buy cups, lemons, sugar, and water. In the first year you think you're going to spend $3 and make $0. So you have $7 in the bank. In the second year you think you're gonna spend $2, and make $1. So you ha…

But there is no guarantee at all that you will ever turn a profit. That lemonade stand of yours might spend more than it makes for longer than your loan will sustain you. Which would require you to obtain another loan and so on. How many loans would it take before you would say: Maybe I really should start to make a profit on every glass of lemonade? Or maybe you'd say: What a bummer, Joe from next door has also star…

> But there is no guarantee at all that you will ever turn a profit.

That's correct. And that's why most of your parents' money is in more stable investments. But if yours comes off, then they get a great return!

> That lemonade stand of yours might spend more than it makes for longer than your loan will sustain you.

That's also true. And if that happens, your parents don't have to put bad money after good. That's why it's important that you say what you're going to deliver, and if you deliver it, then they can believe you're on course. If you think you need $40, and you ask for $10 today, then they'll be happy to give you the $30 in 3 years when you need to open more lemonade stands on other streets.

> Which would require you to obtain another loan and so on. How many loans would it take before you would say: Maybe I really should start to make a profit on every glass of lemonade?

That's the point I'm making: your parents and you have an agreement and a plan. If you're sticking to that plan and on course, then we'll give you however many loans we discussed or anticipated you'd need.

> Or maybe you'd say: What a bummer, Joe from next door has also started a lemonade business, I wished he wouldn't subsidize his lemonade so much because I can't compete with him and his parents are wealthier than mine so they can keep that up longer.

This is an inevitable outcome that anyone in the lemonade business would have expected.

> It's not always a happy ending in the lemonade business.

:-)

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#46

Post by AndrewKemendo »

codecamper wrote: post #40
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, comments like these here on HN tend to be seen as "sore loser" comments and find their way to the graveyard. Congratulations on your foresight, however I think the chorus you should expect from this audience is "they did it better than you, so get over it."

second post.. why can't I delete the whole tree?

I'm actually a DNN that can recognize social patterns based on sentiment analysis of text in the context of HN. ;)

Seriously though, this is a super common thing that happens on HN all the time. This community is actively hostile to people who aren't winners and talk about why they should have won if only they were "given a chance" or did something differently. Pretty typical recipe for the bottom of the page.

I'll note that I didn't vote either way on your comment so as to not bias it. Though simply posting my comment might actually sway people to vote it up - there is also a very strong contrarian trend on HN as well.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#47

Post by petra »

slackstation wrote: post #15

Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. Uber won't own the market. There is zero lock-in. If Lyft is cheaper this week, I'm riding Lyft. I sold my car over a year ago and use a mix of ridesharing and rentals for transportation. Uber and Lyft's greatest competition in my life is a small Google product where people pick up people on their daily commute to and fr…

There's no lock in, because Uber failed in the most important category of their business - true ride sharing, a business with strong network effect, while others(ridewithvia, ford chariot) are already succeeding with true, high-density ride-sharing, with others companies(moovex, mercedes, ..) are working on their own service.

And chariot i think started in 2014, so Uber is very slow to respond, not sure why.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#48

Post by codecamper »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #34
codecamper wrote: post #23

hackernews.. the place for uber quarterbacking.

Don't worry, don't lose too much sleep over it. You forget that Uber was the last one to market with ridesharing. Lyft and Sidecar were out there faster. The reason why Uber is huge is because it was the first company to take all its money and go all-in into growth, by any means necessary. They spent and grew and got more funding until they were global within a few years, unlike most other companies. Their growth str…

I think there are some strategies that may still work.

FWIW, back then my friends sounded a lot what you are saying. Oh it's too hard. Oh you'll be up against big boys.

And I didn't do it b/c I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Uber did it. And, from what I understand, they did it by hiring someone off an offshore programming website. MVP.

And they built the human pyramid. That's what you need to do to retire. Build a human pyramid.

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#49

Post by maxxxxx »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
slackstation wrote: post #15

Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. Uber won't own the market. There is zero lock-in. If Lyft is cheaper this week, I'm riding Lyft. I sold my car over a year ago and use a mix of ridesharing and rentals for transportation. Uber and Lyft's greatest competition in my life is a small Google product where people pick up people on their daily commute to and fr…

> Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. It's almost a standard by now: lose on every sale, make it up in volume. Joseph Heller had that one first I think.

Can you even call this a business?

Re: Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

#50

Post by codecamper »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #46
codecamper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

second post.. why can't I delete the whole tree?

I'm actually a DNN that can recognize social patterns based on sentiment analysis of text in the context of HN. ;) Seriously though, this is a super common thing that happens on HN all the time. This community is actively hostile to people who aren't winners and talk about why they should have won if only they were "given a chance" or did something differently. Pretty typical recipe for the bottom of the page. I'll n…

bye bye HN. going to get some work done.
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