> Suddenly, no one wants to invest in a company that requires significant capital

But this is the point: the reason Uber is successful isn't particularly because of their technical excellence or innovation, it's because they've used massive amounts of capital to very knowingly buy the market.

This is an example of one of the nefarious sides of capitalism -- a flaw -- not a celebration of how great it is at solving problems (which is genuinely is in a lot of circumstances).

If Uber didn't have as much capital, smaller distributed co-ops may well have prospered.