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Sure Uber is losing gobs of money, but that's not the most important metric at this stage for them. Look at Tesla, they lost 330 million in 2017 Q1. You absolut
by nodesocket 9y ago
Sure Uber is losing gobs of money, but that's not the most important metric at this stage for them. Look at Tesla, they lost 330 million in 2017 Q1. You absolutely will find bears against Tesla, but that's mainly because of its current $324 share price, not its fundamental business which is losing money.
- riffraff 9y agobut then what is the most important metric for Uber? AFAIR they are not growing as fast as they were, and have been all but outlawed in many places already.
- nodesocket 9y agoActually there are only a handful of places in the US where Uber is banned. Contrary to popular belief (and intentionally propagated by smear campaigns), Uber wasn't banned in Austin TX... they pulled out of that market voluntarily.
- chillydawg 9y agoThat's like believing a politician is ACTUALLY resigning to spend more time with their family.
- Zarel 9y agoYou are so wrong I don't know where to start. You're talking about a situation where a politician resigns to avoid being impeached or otherwise deposed. That has basically zero to do with Uber and Lyft leaving Austin. We know exactly what laws Austin has (laws are not secret). And it's not like it's remotely unclear what happened: Uber and Lyft left in protest of the law requiring background checks for them. You could speculate that they were trying to strong-arm Austin into repealing that law, but it didn't work. But there's zero reason to believe that they were secretly forced out, unlike the case with the politician, where the incentives are obvious.
- jakubp 9y agoIf I enter a market, then the market penalizes me for breaching its rules, and I pull out, I am not calling it "voluntary".
- Tepix 9y agoWhy talk about the US? It's only one market of many. In many other countries Uber has been banned.
- jorvi 9y agoYeah, this is a really pervasive attitude on HN and tech in general. By not taking that path WhatsApp has pretty much locked down the international messaging market, so it's a stupid attitude too.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>Sure Uber is losing gobs of money, but that's not the most important metric at this stage for them. Look at Tesla, they lost 330 million in 2017 Q1. Apples and oranges. Tesla is losing money because they are investing massive amounts of capital to improve their supply chain and production capabilities. Uber is losing money because they subsidize rides to try to push competitors out of business. Tesla is actually profitable. Uber? We don't know.
- grkhetan 9y ago"Uber is losing money because they subsidize rides to try to push competitors out of business." ?? I think thats the wrong way to phrase this. Uber is loosing money as Uber and its competitors are giving a lot of incentives to drivers to win business. All of them are loosing money.
- Tepix 9y agoI think the original statement was accurate. And it's not working. Uber will have a rough awakening.
- pyrale 9y agoIt is interesting that you and him describe essentially the same mechanism with different words. I would personally call it dumping. In effect, Uber is selling something at a lower cost than it buys, in order to acquire the market.
- rogerdonaldson 9y agoNote that all companies in the ride-sharing market are doing the same thing, not just Uber. Uber in fact looses less money than Lyft per ride.
- Grue3 9y agoUber doesn't even have competitors in many markets they expanded to. Well, save for traditional taxis.