16 ms·

Annual reminder of Uber missing this goal

91 points by farmerstan 5y ago

keewee7 5y ago
He mentions DoorDash. The service was launched in 2013. Back then I would have assumed that online food delivery already had dominant players and it would be hard for a startup to get significant traction. How did DoorDash overcome that and become to the biggest food delivery service?
- statguy 5y ago
  by focussing on the suburbs https://twitter.com/michaelxbloch/status/1335608284338909187?lang=en https://twitter.com/michaelxbloch/status/1335608284338909187...
myself248 5y ago
This isn't a technical goal. Why should anyone but Uber's investors care?
- nolok 5y ago
  I don't understand what your question means. Feels like you can answer that to basically every single thread on HN just changing two words.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  It says things about the state of the market and how unreasonable goals communicated. That said, it's not a very meaningful miss because of covid...unless someone wants to tease apart how much was execution and how much was the environment.
TechBro8615 5y ago
Let’s ignore the elephant in the room about canceling the founder CEO, and look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case – was there also brain drain of the top marketing and sales talent in Silicon Valley? I guess there was probably a big exodus of people after the IPO. All those employees were locked into their positions due to 90 day exercise windows. Once the stock was liquid they had no reason to stay anymore. Then there was the whole “Uber is an immoral company” shtick that gave employees yet another reason to leave (to go work for more upstanding companies like Facebook, I’m sure). Yeah, it’s no surprise Uber is having trouble. Demoralize your work force, make enemies of regulators and drivers, experience a multi-year global pandemic... none of these things are auspicious signs on their own. Taken together, it’s hard to imagine that Uber hasn’t peaked.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  The whole issue with them not being remotely profitable no doubt doesn't help things either...
- lhorie 5y ago
  > look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case Eh, yes and no. There's that famous thread about how they rewrote the iOS app and managed to pull it off by what can only be described as a sheer miracle. That was a legit technical/scaling issue. But also, the first round of layoffs under Dara came largely because there were too many teams spending time on projects of dubious ROI (there was even an internal joke about how people would build things first and only then write the RFC for it...) and eng spending was kinda out of control. Layoffs were extremely demoralizing to be sure, but honestly, employees are over it now and the internal atmosphere is back to business as usual. Recall that pre-pandemic Uber had projections to reach profitability by EOY 2020. Personally I think it's a bit weird to single out Uber as having difficulty retaining drivers when I see reports of labor shortages across just about every service industry. On the rider side, people complain about prices going up, but again, this is happening across the board due to the inflation spike (and doubly so for Uber due to its supply/demand bound elastic pricing structure). Sooner or later, I think the economy is bound to return to business-as-usual with their bosses shortchanging minimum wage employees and people scrambling to pay for bills flocking to Uber for extra cash. </two-cents>
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom, drivers went out and got other skills. That’s the biggest reason for inflation too IMO: the US economy was being held back by a shortage of skilled workers. Now that workers have acquired more skills, low wage jobs have fewer people to hire and the economy is more productive. If you want to put the brakes on inflation, under the current fed system that means raising interest rates to slow investment so those there are fewer higher-skill jobs being created and more low-skill ones. Under MMT it means raising taxes on the top earners. Someone has to be the loser though.
majormajor 5y ago
Uber Eats gained ground incredibly rapidly on other delivery options in my market, and then basically just as rapidly has lost it to DoorDash in the last couple years. It's very curious - did they just initially light money on fire for market share and now are suffering because DoorDash was willing to do the same to them? Or is there some deeper difference?
- debacle 5y ago
  Building a market is expensive. If you don't have to recoup that expense, you can outcompete those that do.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I used to use Uber Eats and mostly moved to DoorDash. DoorDash throws gobs and gobs of deals at me. I can order 2-3 times a week and use a coupon every time. I return to Uber Eats only when they give me 30% off or something.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  uber eats orders come out to be much more expensive than door dash, grubhub, etc. idk why this is the case, but this is why I don't usually use uber eats. they do usually have a better selection of restaurants, I'll give them that.
- darth_avocado 5y ago
  One answer: Dashpass. For more frequent users it was a game changer, no delivery fees from even far off places and very low overall fees. And partner with credit cards to give it away for free and suddenly you have a massive customer base with recurring revenue. A customer base that will order more because suddenly delivery isn’t that expensive
  - majormajor 5y ago
    I have the Uber Eats version of that free from my Amex and yet I find myself using DoorDash w/o a subscription more. Uber lost some restaurants I liked, and even with the pass hasn't been substantially cheaper!
ren_engineer 5y ago
seems like a seething former exec trying to dunk on current leadership. Reality is that the former leadership team sold a bunch of lies about self-driving cars creating massive profits that never had a chance at working. Valuation would have never been that high if it wasn't for the AI self-driving cars being shilled
- pessimizer 5y ago
  AI self-flying cars
  - Finnucane 5y ago
    The AI pilot has been trained on all known routes and passenger volume statistics. You tell it to take you to Chicago, and it drops you in a field in Iowa.
- V-eHGsd_ 5y ago
  this is the answer right here. this is emil michael, the former exec who suggested smearing a reporter critical of uber (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/uber-exec-suggests-opposition-research-on-journalists/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/uber-...). he was a cancer on the company and his "hey remember me" tweet is just sour grapes. worse, he's wrong; uber was trading above 60 for a while definitely putting their total valuation above 100B & the 2017 benchmark tweet said "within 2 years" making august 10 2021 the second year they had "missed this goal"
ffggvv 5y ago
seems like it roughly did hit that goal earlier this year before receding down on delta fears
svantana 5y ago
What a weird tweet. Firstly, the "goal" was set for two years after 2017, so how is this the 4th annual reminder? Secondly, according to a random google link [1], Uber market cap has exceeded $100B in the last year. Stocks go up and down, that's in their nature. [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/uber/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/uber/marketcap/
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
I think none of his claims about the cause are the real one. It's more like: Uber undercut taxis by using VC money to try to buy market share, which worked, but now they have to raise prices and less people want to use it (plus there was a demand shock caused by covid). See this with Airbnb too. They're no longer cheaper than a hotel in many cases and the experience has declined for a variety of reasons.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Was Airbnb ever really subsidized the way that Uber was (i.e. the host gets more than you paid?)
  - jl2718 5y ago
    Yes. I was a large host in 2012, and whenever someone would cause trouble, AirBnB would pay for a Palo Alto hotel room to get them out of there. People would go full psycho just to get a free hotel room. I tried hosting again recently; it was an expensive nightmare, but probably better for their margins. Too bad because I had really enjoyed the community in those places.
    - rticesterp 5y ago
      I'm a host now and roughly 30% goes to AirBnB. There is both a Host Service Fee and a Guest Service Fee. They also take out taxes
      - ornornor 5y ago
        And as a guest, they do jack shit when things go wrong. The best you can hope after spending hours on the phone explaining your case over and over with each new person you’re getting is that they’ll refund your money with a “good luck finding another place to sleep for tonight, you’re on your own” Airbnb ruined so many of our vacations in the last few years that we’ve sworn to never ever use them again. It’s not worth the trouble. And the prices are completely ridiculous now, on par or more expensive than a bona fide hotel.
phreeza 5y ago
I used to think that Uber eats meant that an Uber would be dispatched to pick up my food for me, which lined up with it being more expensive than other available options. This struck me as super wasteful and simultaneously dodgy, so I never used it initially, and have never had a reason to use it even after discovering it is actually a different model.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > This struck me as super wasteful and simultaneously dodgy Unless you're in an urban area where bike delivery is viable, how would that be wasteful or dodgy?
  - phreeza 5y ago
    I guess it's mostly in my head but somehow the thought of a random Uber driver puting my food on their back seat as opposed to some specialized container comes to mind, and I found that very unappetizing.
    - darkwizard42 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you think Doordash and others do...they also just put the bag they receive from the restaurant into their vehicle and deliver it to you :/
- bombcar 5y ago
  What exactly do they do differently? I assumed it was a way to keep Uber drivers "active" when fares aren't available.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    I have seen cyclists with backpacks around, just like for door dash, deliveroo etc. I thought that is their mode of delivery. Based on your comment it sounds as if my initial assumption actually correct?
candyman 5y ago
I've never been convinced that you can make this model profitable if you expect to pay the drivers a living wage. People are price sensitive which limits how much you can charge. (This goes for other delivery services too like DoorDash.) If you charge the customer enough to cover all the expenses and pay a decent wage it results in a price high enough to cut into demand. At some point we may find the right marginal pricing model for all this but I have yet to see it.
- Finnucane 5y ago
  Clearly the model did not include a living wage for the driver. In fact, the opposite--the model depended on pushing costs as much as possible onto the drivers.
- linuxftw 5y ago
  Let's say they have 1M rides per day for an average of $10/ride. That's $10M in revenue per day. If they charged a flat 5%, that would be $500k in revenue per day, or $182.5M per year. Of course, they actually did about 13M rides per day in 2020, and they're taking a much greater slice than 5%. They should be printing money, not burning it. They only reason they're not insanely profitable is complete and utter mismanagement.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    >They only reason they're not insanely profitable is complete and utter mismanagement. It's hard to take this statement seriously, at least look into the business before making claims that it should be "easy". How did you come to your $10/ride number? Over what distance/time are those rides? How are those rides spaced during the day? How many drivers can you keep on standby to service those rides. Those questions are incredibly important into whether you can achieve a sustainable business that you have handwaved away into "$10/ride".
    - linuxftw 5y ago
      5% of $10/ride would be $0.50/ride. Maybe they could charge a $0.50/ride flat fee for rides under $10. CC processing fees, retail, are about 3% and $0.30 each, so that can be added on to uber's cut as well. They did 5B rides in 2020. At $0.50/ride, that's $2.5B. That's enough to pay 1k employees $1M, and still leave $1.5B for infrastructure, business expenses, and profit. It's also a business that requires no on-going capital other than operating costs, it's not like they buying steel and stamping out widgets, it's practically free money. Right now, their revenue is over $2/ride, so what are they doing with all that cash? Nothing useful.
LandR 5y ago
Last time I tried to get an Uber, the app found me a ride then when he was on his way he cancelled the ride. I go on the app and get another ride, on the way he cancelled the ride... I called a regular black cab and got picked up in 5 mins. I assume both got a more profitable / closer ride on the way to pick me up, so ditched me and got that one. That shit doesn't fly with black cabs here.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  My favorite is when they call me to ask where I'm going and then cancel if it's not within 5 minutes of city center or an airport. I'm guessing uber is relaxing their requirements just to keep drivers around
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works. If someone was on the way and cancelled a ride, that is largely wasted time for the driver. The incentives for the driver are to come pick you up and get you in their car as soon as possible (thats when they start earning per minute, per km money). What is more likely that occurred is that they either saw where you were going (which is revealed upon the ride request being accepted, they can only see how far away ETA wise you are from them when accepting and recently some passenger rating information, experiments have been done about showing the approximate pay of rides before accepting as well) and decided not to pick up OR they are multi-apping and found a closer ride (again not likely on this second one because repeated cancelling of rides lowers the likelihood you will get future rides of high value - given you are killing the user experience for the rider). You mentioned black cab which leads me to believe you might be in New York or Europe and yes, service there is definitely better but for MOST of the US, cabs were notoriously fickle and would RARELY show up on time and even if they did would then sometimes just leave once they heard where you were going or their card reader would "malfunction" just as you finish the ride.
  - aliswe 5y ago
    > Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works Don't you mean fortunately
blunte 5y ago
Or, how about this: the projections have always been absurdely inflated and were effectively predicated on not having to follow any local rules, thus avoiding the time to market and legal overhead that traditional companies face when doing business. You cannot ignore reality forever. What you can do, as Uber proved, is borrow against the future and playing the VC ponzi game until that game no longer works... and hopefully you've IPO'd so the real cost of your early profits is distributed over the foolish greater population.
diebeforei485 5y ago
I'd give them a pass due to the pandemic. This was a force majeure event.

91 points by farmerstan 5y ago

He mentions DoorDash. The service was launched in 2013. Back then I would have assumed that online food delivery already had dominant players and it would be hard for a startup to get significant traction. How did DoorDash overcome that and become to the biggest food delivery service?

statguy 5y ago
by focussing on the suburbs https://twitter.com/michaelxbloch/status/1335608284338909187?lang=en https://twitter.com/michaelxbloch/status/1335608284338909187...

myself248 5y ago

This isn't a technical goal. Why should anyone but Uber's investors care?

nolok 5y ago
I don't understand what your question means. Feels like you can answer that to basically every single thread on HN just changing two words.
dehrmann 5y ago
It says things about the state of the market and how unreasonable goals communicated. That said, it's not a very meaningful miss because of covid...unless someone wants to tease apart how much was execution and how much was the environment.

TechBro8615 5y ago

Let’s ignore the elephant in the room about canceling the founder CEO, and look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case – was there also brain drain of the top marketing and sales talent in Silicon Valley? I guess there was probably a big exodus of people after the IPO. All those employees were locked into their positions due to 90 day exercise windows. Once the stock was liquid they had no reason to stay anymore. Then there was the whole “Uber is an immoral company” shtick that gave employees yet another reason to leave (to go work for more upstanding companies like Facebook, I’m sure). Yeah, it’s no surprise Uber is having trouble. Demoralize your work force, make enemies of regulators and drivers, experience a multi-year global pandemic... none of these things are auspicious signs on their own. Taken together, it’s hard to imagine that Uber hasn’t peaked.

seoaeu 5y ago
The whole issue with them not being remotely profitable no doubt doesn't help things either...
lhorie 5y ago
> look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case Eh, yes and no. There's that famous thread about how they rewrote the iOS app and managed to pull it off by what can only be described as a sheer miracle. That was a legit technical/scaling issue. But also, the first round of layoffs under Dara came largely because there were too many teams spending time on projects of dubious ROI (there was even an internal joke about how people would build things first and only then write the RFC for it...) and eng spending was kinda out of control. Layoffs were extremely demoralizing to be sure, but honestly, employees are over it now and the internal atmosphere is back to business as usual. Recall that pre-pandemic Uber had projections to reach profitability by EOY 2020. Personally I think it's a bit weird to single out Uber as having difficulty retaining drivers when I see reports of labor shortages across just about every service industry. On the rider side, people complain about prices going up, but again, this is happening across the board due to the inflation spike (and doubly so for Uber due to its supply/demand bound elastic pricing structure). Sooner or later, I think the economy is bound to return to business-as-usual with their bosses shortchanging minimum wage employees and people scrambling to pay for bills flocking to Uber for extra cash. </two-cents>
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom, drivers went out and got other skills. That’s the biggest reason for inflation too IMO: the US economy was being held back by a shortage of skilled workers. Now that workers have acquired more skills, low wage jobs have fewer people to hire and the economy is more productive. If you want to put the brakes on inflation, under the current fed system that means raising interest rates to slow investment so those there are fewer higher-skill jobs being created and more low-skill ones. Under MMT it means raising taxes on the top earners. Someone has to be the loser though.

majormajor 5y ago

Uber Eats gained ground incredibly rapidly on other delivery options in my market, and then basically just as rapidly has lost it to DoorDash in the last couple years. It's very curious - did they just initially light money on fire for market share and now are suffering because DoorDash was willing to do the same to them? Or is there some deeper difference?

debacle 5y ago
Building a market is expensive. If you don't have to recoup that expense, you can outcompete those that do.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I used to use Uber Eats and mostly moved to DoorDash. DoorDash throws gobs and gobs of deals at me. I can order 2-3 times a week and use a coupon every time. I return to Uber Eats only when they give me 30% off or something.
leetcrew 5y ago
uber eats orders come out to be much more expensive than door dash, grubhub, etc. idk why this is the case, but this is why I don't usually use uber eats. they do usually have a better selection of restaurants, I'll give them that.
darth_avocado 5y ago
One answer: Dashpass. For more frequent users it was a game changer, no delivery fees from even far off places and very low overall fees. And partner with credit cards to give it away for free and suddenly you have a massive customer base with recurring revenue. A customer base that will order more because suddenly delivery isn’t that expensive
- majormajor 5y ago
  I have the Uber Eats version of that free from my Amex and yet I find myself using DoorDash w/o a subscription more. Uber lost some restaurants I liked, and even with the pass hasn't been substantially cheaper!

ren_engineer 5y ago

seems like a seething former exec trying to dunk on current leadership. Reality is that the former leadership team sold a bunch of lies about self-driving cars creating massive profits that never had a chance at working. Valuation would have never been that high if it wasn't for the AI self-driving cars being shilled

pessimizer 5y ago
AI self-flying cars
- Finnucane 5y ago
  The AI pilot has been trained on all known routes and passenger volume statistics. You tell it to take you to Chicago, and it drops you in a field in Iowa.
V-eHGsd_ 5y ago
this is the answer right here. this is emil michael, the former exec who suggested smearing a reporter critical of uber (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/uber-exec-suggests-opposition-research-on-journalists/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/uber-...). he was a cancer on the company and his "hey remember me" tweet is just sour grapes. worse, he's wrong; uber was trading above 60 for a while definitely putting their total valuation above 100B & the 2017 benchmark tweet said "within 2 years" making august 10 2021 the second year they had "missed this goal"

ffggvv 5y ago

seems like it roughly did hit that goal earlier this year before receding down on delta fears

svantana 5y ago

What a weird tweet. Firstly, the "goal" was set for two years after 2017, so how is this the 4th annual reminder? Secondly, according to a random google link [1], Uber market cap has exceeded $100B in the last year. Stocks go up and down, that's in their nature. [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/uber/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/uber/marketcap/

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

I think none of his claims about the cause are the real one. It's more like: Uber undercut taxis by using VC money to try to buy market share, which worked, but now they have to raise prices and less people want to use it (plus there was a demand shock caused by covid). See this with Airbnb too. They're no longer cheaper than a hotel in many cases and the experience has declined for a variety of reasons.

phreeza 5y ago
Was Airbnb ever really subsidized the way that Uber was (i.e. the host gets more than you paid?)
- jl2718 5y ago
  Yes. I was a large host in 2012, and whenever someone would cause trouble, AirBnB would pay for a Palo Alto hotel room to get them out of there. People would go full psycho just to get a free hotel room. I tried hosting again recently; it was an expensive nightmare, but probably better for their margins. Too bad because I had really enjoyed the community in those places.
  - rticesterp 5y ago
    I'm a host now and roughly 30% goes to AirBnB. There is both a Host Service Fee and a Guest Service Fee. They also take out taxes
    - ornornor 5y ago
      And as a guest, they do jack shit when things go wrong. The best you can hope after spending hours on the phone explaining your case over and over with each new person you’re getting is that they’ll refund your money with a “good luck finding another place to sleep for tonight, you’re on your own” Airbnb ruined so many of our vacations in the last few years that we’ve sworn to never ever use them again. It’s not worth the trouble. And the prices are completely ridiculous now, on par or more expensive than a bona fide hotel.

phreeza 5y ago

I used to think that Uber eats meant that an Uber would be dispatched to pick up my food for me, which lined up with it being more expensive than other available options. This struck me as super wasteful and simultaneously dodgy, so I never used it initially, and have never had a reason to use it even after discovering it is actually a different model.

dehrmann 5y ago
> This struck me as super wasteful and simultaneously dodgy Unless you're in an urban area where bike delivery is viable, how would that be wasteful or dodgy?
- phreeza 5y ago
  I guess it's mostly in my head but somehow the thought of a random Uber driver puting my food on their back seat as opposed to some specialized container comes to mind, and I found that very unappetizing.
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you think Doordash and others do...they also just put the bag they receive from the restaurant into their vehicle and deliver it to you :/
bombcar 5y ago
What exactly do they do differently? I assumed it was a way to keep Uber drivers "active" when fares aren't available.
- phreeza 5y ago
  I have seen cyclists with backpacks around, just like for door dash, deliveroo etc. I thought that is their mode of delivery. Based on your comment it sounds as if my initial assumption actually correct?

candyman 5y ago

I've never been convinced that you can make this model profitable if you expect to pay the drivers a living wage. People are price sensitive which limits how much you can charge. (This goes for other delivery services too like DoorDash.) If you charge the customer enough to cover all the expenses and pay a decent wage it results in a price high enough to cut into demand. At some point we may find the right marginal pricing model for all this but I have yet to see it.

Finnucane 5y ago
Clearly the model did not include a living wage for the driver. In fact, the opposite--the model depended on pushing costs as much as possible onto the drivers.
linuxftw 5y ago
Let's say they have 1M rides per day for an average of $10/ride. That's $10M in revenue per day. If they charged a flat 5%, that would be $500k in revenue per day, or $182.5M per year. Of course, they actually did about 13M rides per day in 2020, and they're taking a much greater slice than 5%. They should be printing money, not burning it. They only reason they're not insanely profitable is complete and utter mismanagement.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >They only reason they're not insanely profitable is complete and utter mismanagement. It's hard to take this statement seriously, at least look into the business before making claims that it should be "easy". How did you come to your $10/ride number? Over what distance/time are those rides? How are those rides spaced during the day? How many drivers can you keep on standby to service those rides. Those questions are incredibly important into whether you can achieve a sustainable business that you have handwaved away into "$10/ride".
  - linuxftw 5y ago
    5% of $10/ride would be $0.50/ride. Maybe they could charge a $0.50/ride flat fee for rides under $10. CC processing fees, retail, are about 3% and $0.30 each, so that can be added on to uber's cut as well. They did 5B rides in 2020. At $0.50/ride, that's $2.5B. That's enough to pay 1k employees $1M, and still leave $1.5B for infrastructure, business expenses, and profit. It's also a business that requires no on-going capital other than operating costs, it's not like they buying steel and stamping out widgets, it's practically free money. Right now, their revenue is over $2/ride, so what are they doing with all that cash? Nothing useful.

LandR 5y ago

Last time I tried to get an Uber, the app found me a ride then when he was on his way he cancelled the ride. I go on the app and get another ride, on the way he cancelled the ride... I called a regular black cab and got picked up in 5 mins. I assume both got a more profitable / closer ride on the way to pick me up, so ditched me and got that one. That shit doesn't fly with black cabs here.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago
My favorite is when they call me to ask where I'm going and then cancel if it's not within 5 minutes of city center or an airport. I'm guessing uber is relaxing their requirements just to keep drivers around
darkwizard42 5y ago
Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works. If someone was on the way and cancelled a ride, that is largely wasted time for the driver. The incentives for the driver are to come pick you up and get you in their car as soon as possible (thats when they start earning per minute, per km money). What is more likely that occurred is that they either saw where you were going (which is revealed upon the ride request being accepted, they can only see how far away ETA wise you are from them when accepting and recently some passenger rating information, experiments have been done about showing the approximate pay of rides before accepting as well) and decided not to pick up OR they are multi-apping and found a closer ride (again not likely on this second one because repeated cancelling of rides lowers the likelihood you will get future rides of high value - given you are killing the user experience for the rider). You mentioned black cab which leads me to believe you might be in New York or Europe and yes, service there is definitely better but for MOST of the US, cabs were notoriously fickle and would RARELY show up on time and even if they did would then sometimes just leave once they heard where you were going or their card reader would "malfunction" just as you finish the ride.
- aliswe 5y ago
  > Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works Don't you mean fortunately

blunte 5y ago

Or, how about this: the projections have always been absurdely inflated and were effectively predicated on not having to follow any local rules, thus avoiding the time to market and legal overhead that traditional companies face when doing business. You cannot ignore reality forever. What you can do, as Uber proved, is borrow against the future and playing the VC ponzi game until that game no longer works... and hopefully you've IPO'd so the real cost of your early profits is distributed over the foolish greater population.

diebeforei485 5y ago

I'd give them a pass due to the pandemic. This was a force majeure event.