Uber's driver and rider acquisition costs (marketing, promotions, ads, etc.) are astronomical.

They can't easily scale these efforts back because the value of the service plummets for all parties if they lose their economy of scale.

> Uber's driver and rider acquisition costs (marketing, promotions, ads, etc.) are astronomical.

Which is hilarious to me. Uber is spending a ton of money, and very little of it trickles down to the people that make Uber possible (the drivers).

"we lose money on each sale but we make up for it in volume"

Won't there be some point at which they're established and don't need to work so hard at those things?

Probably not. Riders and drivers are both primarily price-driven. They have little or no brand loyalty. It's a low-margin, race-to-the-bottom type of business.

L5 self-driving cars will be a game-changer for a while, assuming Uber gets exclusivity from Waymo (which now owns a stake in Uber).

It seems to me that they are very well known at this point, and don't have significant competition. I don't see why they would be spending so much money for marketing... maybe in the past, maybe in the future. I must not understand the market.

I'm sure there's plenty of analysis of this out there, so I should read some articles.