Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

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Umbrellas at the ready, the mess is going to be big when this bubble eventually bursts. Sure, I see the value of services like Uber, but there are so many ridesharing services in the market offering a decent product, Lyft arguably has a better app. While I don't doubt its usefulness, I don't think Uber is worth $40b. Especially considering it was only valued at roughly $17b in the summer which was what, like 6 months ago? A $23b jump in value in six months, seems kind of unrealistic to me, but that's how it works in tech.

I don't want to see Uber fail, because I hate catching taxis, but I think there needs to be a serious reality check here. The business model that Uber runs upon is still relatively unregulated & fragile, and as shown in Vancouver, cities and Governments have the power to easily drive out services like Uber. Not to mention the pressure from taxi lobbyists.

I don't want to see Uber become a monopoly, but this cash injection can only mean that Uber will aggressively attempt to drive out its competitors therefore becoming a monopoly and in the process, a splitting image of the broken taxi industry they are trying to disrupt. As history has shown, when you have next to no competition, you stop innovating. Lets just see how this plays out.

> I don't want to see Uber fail, because I hate catching taxis

I want to see Uber in particular fail because of their horrible treatment of drivers, spying on (and publicly shaming the habits of) their riders, threatening journalists over negative press, and because of their shady business practices in general.

I want to see ridesharing as a service succeed, as I think it is the future of taxi service. But I want Uber to either go away completely, or else reorganize as a positive, beneficial company instead of a cancer with douchebags at the helm.

Those are pretty strong words, "a cancer with douchebags at the helm." Any personal experiences that motivated these words other than joining in the hatred hive mind fostered by the media?

> Those are pretty strong words > joining in the hatred hive mind fostered by the media?

Pretty strong words on your part as well, but whatever, I'll answer. No, I decided a while back that if I ever need a ride, it won't be in an Uber car. This decision was based not only on what's in the regular media, but from reading personal experiences of riders and drivers in forums like this and larger media like Facebook and Twitter. I've read a few good, positive things about Uber in the past few years, but as a whole I consider them to be hostile and extremely slimy.

Simply put, I formed an opinion, as is my right, and it's a strong opinion so I use strong words to convey it.

Yes, personally I wouldn't go that far - but at the same I would never use Uber as management do, at the least, sound like jerks. I think this is an entirely reasonable position drawn on evidence presented across multiple media reports about Uber's behaviour, and quotes from management.

Hm... it might be a stupid question, but by "ridesharing service", do you mean Uber, or something else? To me, Uber doesn't seem a ridesharing service, merely a Taxi on demand with a nice phone+GPS app.

I thought that was the official name for Uber/Lyft/etc.

Uber's "ridesharing" service, UberX, is and will continue to be, its biggest business.

Yes. Uber can fail, but ridesharing/e-hailing/etc needs to succeed against entrenched interests while working towards sensible government regulation.

If I may make the counter argument here, nobody except perhaps the odds makers in the bay area, are going to note or care if Sequoia Ventures loses all of its investment in Uber, or if Menlo does, or if KP does. It will show up on CNBC as "Well its been a bad year for Venture Capital firms, probably not going to host lavish parties..." but for most people who don't work at a company that goes 'poof' because it ran out of money and couldn't raise more, its really a non issue.

For bubbles to really be bubbles they need broad participation, and VC funding really is limited in how many people can participate.

Disagree with almost everything you've written. It's a winner-take-most/all, trillion plus dollar market. Investors getting in at $40b, besides having little downside due to preferences, will almost certainly make a reasonable return. Uber is already on track for $1b in revenue and continues to grow very rapidly. Governments have in fact shown no ability to stop Uber (only a very few instances in the entire world). Peter Thiel would argue (effectively, imo) that monopolies are important in driving innovation.

> Governments have in fact shown no ability to stop Uber

Governments have not seriously tried to stop Uber yet. If/when they do, they will easily succeed.

Right now, the farthest most have gone is fining drivers a relatively small amount, which Uber pays. What happens when they step that up to seizing the car? Who is going to sign up to be an Uber driver in a city where it can get your car seized?

Here's how I predict it will go down. Cities will eventually decide to legalize Uber-type services, with such companies required to obtain a license. There will be a limited number of companies licensed in each city--it makes much more sense for the city and its citizens to have a small number of healthy companies than to have a large number of companies barely scraping by. Those licenses will go to Lyft and other non-Uber services, because they have not had the "fuck you" attitude that Uber has.

That's when the cities will crack down severely on Uber.

I can't think of anything that would stop governments destroying Uber - is there anything? They've already started getting banned in various places, and it's not hard to write laws to enforce a taxi monopoly.

They're doing well but I don't see anything that would stop government regulating them out of existence. They're no, say, Bitcoin in that regard for sure.

Well, so far constituents and a bit of common sense have stopped government action in almost every locale.

Uber is already on track for $1b in revenue*

*gross revenue. Big difference.

Actually on track for $10b gross and $2b net.

I can only find one source[0] and it's source is quoted as "is what I'm hearing" for an estimate at the end of the FY2015 (13 months from now). That's pretty bold stance without any real confirmation.

[0] - http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11

Either way, the $1b is net, not gross.

I think you're worrying far too much about valuations at various rounds. Personally, I have no idea if Uber is worth $40bn. It just doesn't matter. When Uber IPOs, what "pop" do you expect if their market cap is $20bn instead of $40?

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