Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
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Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#2Uber Meltdown incoming? Jokes aside, do they still have ridiculous losses at the moment?
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#3This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares to suckers.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177
[2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#4This shouldn't be a surprise, given Softbank is buying from insiders. In fact it would be a poor signal if the shares weren't bought from a variety of individuals who invested early.
Having that amount of money to hand likely means that Kalanick is going to go off and spend a lot more time doing other things. That could also be good for Uber.
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#5This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares to suckers. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177 [2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...
Can you point to some specific articles by Paul Graham to explain what you mean?
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#6Uber Meltdown incoming? Jokes aside, do they still have ridiculous losses at the moment?
According to Statista [1], Uber lost $1.46 billion in the third quarter of 2017. And that is a significant increase from losses of just a billion dollars a year earlier. But, gross revenue for Uber reached nearly $10 billion from July to September of this year. Sounds not bad, however, the majority of the money goes to drivers, while uber received $2.0 billion. Which means that Uber spent about $3.5 billion in expenses to earn $2.0 billion in revenue.
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/12059/uber-revenue-bookings-a...
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#7This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares to suckers. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177 [2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...
He already owned the shares, he's technically been rich for a long time now. Since the latest share sale was at a 30% price reduction, surely the previous investment rounds were worse?
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#8This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares to suckers. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177 [2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...
I'm not a fan of either Uber or Travis Kalanick, but I'm not sure I understand the difference between Kalanick selling his stake in Uber and Bill Gates selling his stake on Microsoft. What counts as 'increasing economic welfare'?
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#9This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares to suckers. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177 [2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...
Can you point to some specific articles by Paul Graham to explain what you mean?
There is one article where he writes how people/hackers get rich by creating wealth [1]. This is not the case with Travis and Uber, which the article I've linked to shows.
It's also mentioned in his article on economic inequality where he asserts that people get rich because they are more productive than others [2].
Re: Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B
#10If I was sitting on all those billions in stock I would be unable to sleep one single minute until I turned at least one billion to cache. With 2/3 of the stock and $1 billion securely under my matrace I would not feel bad if the stock tenfolded in the future.