People in tech industry have excessive bias against businesses with no network effects or other obscenely effective barriers to entry. There are lots of successful, large corporations with varying levels of barriers to entry. Exxon Mobil doesn't have a network effect and has zero brand loyalty, but it's still a huge business. McDonald's also lacks network effects, though it does have some brand loyalty, perhaps similar to Uber.

Of course these businesses have some barriers to entry (so does Uber. Lyft et al. notwithstanding), but it's not a result of network effects that we're used to with companies like FB and eBay.