This is underselling the Uber story to a degree. The original sell for Uber was that their total addressable market was the entire auto industry because people will start preferring taxis over driving. They are still trying to achieve that with similar stories now pushed to sell robotaxis.

Uber was undercutting traditional taxis either through driver incentive or cheaper pricing. Many hot takes were around the sustainability of this business model without VC money. In many places this turned out to be true. Driver incentives are way down and Uber pricing is way up.

That said, this is also conflating one company with an industry. Uber might have survived but how many ride sharing companies have survived in total? How many markets have Uber left because it couldn’t sustain?

In a bubble the destruction is often that some big companies get destroyed and others survive. For every pets.com there is one Amazon. That doesn’t mean Amazon is good example to say naysayers during the dot bubble were wrong.