OR how about the super questionable culture of the company and its executives and leadership? Those are such red flags by themselves... This is a horrid company with a horrible past that wouldn't die because of VC money.

I had a funny discussion about Uber with my uncle. I said I refuse to use it because they are a shitty company who are only cheap because they are using investor money to subsidise the rides on the plan of forcing the other players out of the market. His answer was that the barriers to entry on private car hire are so low that if Uber are doing this as their plan and I dislike them, I should use them as much as possible, as then they will collapse quicker.

Doing exactly what Uber wants isn't how you kill them. They're subsidizing the rides right now, but if everybody followed your uncle's advice, Uber would very quickly "win" the rideshare wars, establish their long-sought-after monopoly, and raise prices.

His point is that this plan of Uber's is crap in his opinion as you can't actually win the ridesharing wars and establish a monopoly in hire cars.

Better to support legislation that pushes the minimum wage up for rideshare and taxi drivers in top markets (see: Lyft $17/hr minimum in NYC). Faster death than trying to bleed Uber and Lyft dry through rides (which could take forever depending on investor taste for losses), and full self driving won't arrive anytime soon. Ride the populism wave.

This is silly. All this does is make it impossible for new competitors to enter, as they won't get enough riders to cover that minimum.

This is a ticket to an Uber monopoly.

So basically you're saying that you should use laws to send them out of business instead of basic economics?

Why wouldn't you pass a tax on search and social media companies that sets the minimum wage of engineers to 1 million dollars a year if you want to break up twitter, google, and facebook? That's logical equivalancy.

Basic economics have failed when a company that has existed for over a decade without any ability to turn a profit IPOs. And indeed, I am all for using laws against abusive corporate entities.

I am also for using data protection laws (and not minimum wage regulations) to break the ability of social media companies to survive (or at the very least, rein them in). Have to use the right tool for a job.

Laws against abusive company practices I am all for. Laws written with a specific company in mind, less so. Of course a specific company's behaviour can be a trigger for the drafting of a law, but if so, that law should be carefully thought through in light of the general rather than the specific issues, otherwise you just end up playing kingmaker.

> Basic economics have failed when a company that has existed for over a decade without any ability to turn a profit IPOs.

The markets are irrational sometimes. Basic economics assume rational behaviour, which is something that cannot be assumed.

> And indeed, I am all for using laws against abusive corporate entities.

I don't think you can pass laws against companies specifically. First, define what you mean by abusive. Uber/Lyft doesn't have a gun against your head to force you to drive.

You have to pass them against specific behaviours. Also, for ridesharing companies, what does "per hour mean"? Time you spent logged in, adding time you spent stuck in traffic getting to the customer, or time you are actively moving towards your destination after pickup? There are obviously unintended side effects to give in to knee jerk reactions to something that you feel is wrong. Would Uber/Lyft drivers be happy if the companies implode and they're stuck with a bunch of worthless predatory leases on cars? Or the fact that part time drivers no longer have that option to at least make some money?

>which could take forever depending on investor taste for losses

If the existing investors had much more of a taste for losses, why the IPO?

Stupid retail money. Greater fool theory.

But if the existing investors thought that Uber will win if they only just piss away a bit more money, they would have dumped the money in rather than let the stock go to the public.

Yes.

So therefore we have a very good idea of the taste for losses amoung existing Uber investors. And the taste for losses in the stock market is fairly guessable.

> establish their long-sought-after monopoly, and raise prices.

How would they keep out competition if the barrier to entry is low?

Because they can build a war chest and drop the fares below sustainable levels longer than any new entrant can bleed money.

It’s a game played to death in every other market.

Large predators can get swarmed by ants in some markets. After some thought on the point my uncle was trying to get across, I suspect the hire car market is one of them. Look at the bloat of Uber. If you don't try and own the whole thing but wrote an app that gave the functionality of uber to the existing cab and hire market, you could probably run it on a shoestring.

edit - basically I think whoever works out the craigslist version of Uber will eat Uber's lunch and it is quite likely someone will.

I 100% agree with that sentiment. The only business that will survive is the one that reduces its operating costs to zero.

How is the internal culture today? We all know the horror stories of one/two years ago but I haven't seen anything in what feels like a long time.

You're investing in driverless cars at this point.

I am a bit more cynical and I would say you are investing in paying off the earlier investors.

But not in one of the companies that appears to be well poised to win first entrance into the market. I think it's likely a dark horse will end up being first to market - but I think google will be there pretty soon after - uber's probably going to end up retrofitting any hardware they've developed with the winner's software as a way to scrounge back some of the R&D costs.

Sounds like a euphemism for betting on horses.

That's what the stock market is

The whole thing is bizarre, who is buying these stocks?

not the index funds, unlike what the sibling comments are suggesting.

IPOs aren't even added to the indexes until it's been some months since their IPO.

Many retirement portfolio managers.

Institutional investors?

Funds, mostly. Investors who want a large stake of control and see intrinsic value in a TNC outside of the numbers. People who buy into California math. People buying a $42 lottery ticket. ML trading algorithms who have a tensor weighted heavily on "unicorn going public" that ends up equating to "Buy". Family or friends of employees that want to buy so they can "root for the company" (Yes this sounds ridiculous but this happened to a personal friend of mine and his mother still always asks why the stock is down 300% from when she bought it, and when she can expect for it to go up.)

There's a lot of reasons why people would buy Uber. But for anyone who is investing safely for retirement, I think it's easy to see that this is not an investable company at the moment.

I think they hope to boost their value by going into the self-driving cars/cabs business, how much that will work if up in the air though...

Full self-driving cars will be unproven/limited to certain very specific areas for a while. And Uber will have to deal with the liability from accidents, too, plus the media storms (and they have enough of those already).

Is not just Uber, it's LYFT, neither can seem to make a profit. That kind of worries me because both are so convenient and so help people with limited income.

Ehm majority of their markets? The entire developing world says hello