They have phone operators. Each of which has to sit somewhere. And have some kind of manager. Uber coordinates 15 million rides per day [1], which assuming a p

They have phone operators. Each of which has to sit somewhere. And have some kind of manager. Uber coordinates 15 million rides per day [1], which assuming a phone operator coordinates 20 rides an hour (unrealistically efficient-- in reality, I'm sure plenty are playing candy crush waiting for a call), that 160 a day, or an army of 100,000 phone operators to coordinate those rides. This is ususally done using local office space. Just to pay them a salary of $40,000/yr is $4B/yr. That's ignoring the army of people needed to logistically support a 100,000 ground troops, the office space and the expenses required to so. Uber currently has an army of 16,000 people total performing this coordination [2]. That's 1000 rides coordinated per day, per employee at current efficiency. And it's not difficult to imagine them pushing this efficiency 10x or even 100x. That's a fundamental value proposition that stands the scrutiny of even a hard-nosed conservative investor. [1] http://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ http://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber