While Uber may have posted $708 million of losses, it is also up 18% in revenue from last quarter. That's 3.4 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2017.
Uber is making approximately $1,500,000 per hour.
I dislike Uber as much as the next person for ethical reasons, but a company that can achieve millions of dollars in revenue per day, in 7 years, is quite extraordinary.
Spending $1,872,000 per hour to bring in $1,500,000 per hour sounds less great.
I understand that it takes money to make money, but this is one of the most extreme cases in a business.
Uber's actual product is a SaaS. Everything else is contracted. Where is that much money going?
It's a place for absurdly wealthy people to park vast sums of cash on the bet that Uber will continue to gobble up marketshare from taxi companies, etc., until they're in a position to disrupt transit in general (and ride sharing services, too) with self-driving cars and who knows what else they'll come up with.
I don't think comparisons with Twitter are all that apt. People need to go from point A to B. No one needs to tweet. The network effect of social networks is valuable but I think that value pales in comparison to transportation. The way we pay backs up this premise: we pay for Twitter and Facebook with our eyeballs and our data, but we pay for Uber with our credit cards.
Yeah, Uber is different because of its insane amount of investor money but losing money is still losing money; it can't go on forever. So saying it doesn't mean anything is a bit shortsighted in my opinion.
> It's a place for absurdly wealthy people to park vast sums of cash on the bet that Uber will continue to gobble up marketshare from taxi companies, etc., until they're in a position to disrupt transit in general (and ride sharing services, too) with self-driving cars and who knows what else they'll come up with.
Seems like an extremely risky bet to me. I'm unconvinced they'll be able to make any decent amounts of money in this service especially considering the majority of auto manufacturers are working on similar capabilities; they'll be able to drive the price down far below Uber ever could unless they start manufacturing their own vehicles.
Considering they have a lawsuit against their self driving program [1], I wouldn't put so much faith on that
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/30/uber-fire...
But who knows maybe Uber will stop being the dominate taxi / self-driving car company globally over the next decade and mess it all up. Or not... but I doubt this large expenditure was done without foresight. The question is whether they can dominate for years to come in a high-growth industry, which it seems likely given the wide gap between them and the competition.
Twitter lost 456 million dollars in 2016 [1] and I don't remember them ever being profitable so i don't know how those people are wrong.
For start ups it can turn out cheaper as the compensation will be lower in stocks if the company doesn't perform well. From a shareholder perspective it's compensation and shouldn't be treated differently. Excluding it from costs is dangerous as it gives the impression that it's optional costs when in reality, you need to pay the stock compensation to retain talent.
Also, twitter is a platform that has exclusivity. Uber is easily replaceable with Lyft or a taxi service's app. Just because a friend is using Uber doesn't mean I have to. The same doesn't apply to twitter, the platform is the value. This is what kept and keeps twitter afloat, Uber on the other hand paved the way for a shift in the way we consume cars as a service.
see: enron
I have a bridge to sell you if you do.