But, this was after they had dropped their initial valuation: "Consider also that Uber’s debut valuation of $76.5 billion was a considerable drop from the betwe

But, this was after they had dropped their initial valuation: "Consider also that Uber’s debut valuation of $76.5 billion was a considerable drop from the between $90 billion and $120 billion the company had been worth in some analysts estimation just a month earlier..." So, it seems like they knew it was going to be bad, and dropped their target (by tens of billions of dollars), and it was still not good.