He famously missed the dot com boom. And in the middle of it, gave a private speech about exactly why, about how few of those companies were likely to be around in a few years even if the internet were exactly as successful as hoped for.
He was widely derided as being behind the times, out of date, and so on for a couple of years. But looking back now, he looks prescient.
If you are a value investor and don't understand how to value it, don't invest.
I don't think he regrets his conservatism. From 1990 through now, BRK.A is up 4,200%, while the NASDAQ composite is up only 1,500%.
But as https://alphaarchitect.com/2016/10/10/value-investing-got-cr... points out, it looked rather different when Berkshire lost 44% while the NASDAQ gained 145%. Buffett stood by the strength of his reasoning. But the rest of the world didn't.
- facebook and google sure, but how many are there of those who didn't make it?
- sounds like a fear of missing out.
- Buffet didn't invest in Microsoft because he didn't "get it". His idea, I believe, is: "it's ok to pass on investments". He's looking for "sure things".
Personally, I think the entire thing is ridiculous. 120B ? for what? 2 of my friends are uber drivers and hate every second of it, that's worth that kind of money? or the fact that they have an app. What do they have?
Market share? As soon as somebody gives me the same or slightly less price, I'll push a button on that app instead. Why didn't they go public for so long? Are they trying to rescue their investments now? I don't know. Don't care.
It's not the type of product I would miss. it's just a taxi.
Or, at least, has spent a lot of money failing to be in that business.
> They burnt through cash to get market share, because when self driving becomes a thing, they'll have a huge swing in margins/profits as self driving will get rid of their greatest expense (human drivers).
Established relationship with human drivers and the acquisition cost to overcome that is a big part of Uber’s moat, which is potentially erased when self-driving from anyone but Uber is real.
If Uber really, really believed that self driving was such a sure thing for them, their optimal strategy would be to wind down the rideshare business, the food delivery business, and all its other businesses that aren't self driving, so that it could redirect its mountains of capital toward developing self driving even sooner. Because as soon as cars that really can operate fully autonomously hit the scene, it's not going to matter who was incumbent in the rideshare space or how dominant they are. The company with the self driving cars will take over just about as quickly as they can manufacture new cars.
The fact that they're not playing it this way implies that they're not so confident that they're well positioned to be first past the post with self-driving cars. Which means we probably shouldn't be, either.
Using self driving car to justify their valuation is very risky - it's huge project, tons of competition, no idea about when it could even become a product, etc.
Alternately, Uber attaches their public messaging to external hype cycles and, in fact, is just a taxi business.
When Facebook IPO'd did they already have the self serve ad product rolled out? I believe Google did not and if you could imagine that future then it might have been easier to see a bright future. I didn't see Android coming until the iPhone came out as another example.
at the moment of their IPO