4 ms·
Maybe they are investing in user habits, branding and data, such as : where are the consumers, where are the most wanted food, how frequent is it, at what time,
by antpls 7y ago
Maybe they are investing in user habits, branding and data, such as : where are the consumers, where are the most wanted food, how frequent is it, at what time, etc. $544m are invested to grow the data machine.
Uber uses the current fleet for now, but once they have more data to analyze, they can switch to a better operational model which would be hopefully profitable.
What is worrying is the aggressive, anti-competitive, potentially illegal (depending on the country) subsidiaries aimed at killing the local competition.
- navigatesol 7y ago>they can switch to a better operational model which would be hopefully profitable. So they have been burning billions of dollars in the hopes that there might be a business model in the future? Maybe it's just that VCs were naive to think that taxis and food delivery were good businesses.
- antpls 7y agoYour sentence seems to insist on "billions", but it's not that much in regard to all the invested money in the world. According to UNESCO (http://uis.unesco.org/apps/visualisations/research-and-development-spending/ http://uis.unesco.org/apps/visualisations/research-and-devel...), the world's spending on R&D (only) is estimated to be $1.7 trillions. Apple's R&D investment for 3rd quarter of 2019 is $4.2 billions. So, yes, billions are burned in the hope of finding things. Most probably, future generations will even burn hundred of trillions.
- freyr 7y agoThanks, I'll try that brilliant logic on my wife. "Sure, hun, the Porsche was expensive, but it's not that much in regard to all the money spent in the world!"