Selling a $20 bill for $18 is unsustainable. Selling a $20 bill for $40 and having $15 of advertising expenses and $15 of R&D expense might be sustainable. I think Uber is comically overvalued here, but still is a viable business which is profitable in its core operation.
Ignoring all other expenses and saying that a company is a good business is ignoring reality.
I’m not just choosing a method that makes Uber look bad. They are not profitable or successful based on a legal GAAP definition of profitable.
If we just cherry pick numbers, we might as well think that WeWork’s made up metric of “community adjusted EBITDA” is valid.
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/wework-details-run-rate-rev...