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A comment on Uber Valued at More Than $50B.

Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by birken on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:44PM (#9983917)
I love when the press accelerates startup success, even among the most successful companies of all time. They want everything to be an overnight success.

There is no timeline where Uber could be justified as being 5 years old. For example, there is a Techcrunch article [1] about the company launching the initial product over 5 years ago (which I'm sure took some time to develop!). Uber's website says the company existed in 2009, along with Travis' LinkedIn profile.

And then they spend a good chunk of the article comparing the speed that the two companies reach different valuations. I wonder what arbitrary date they picked as the date Facebook was founded...

1: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/ubercab-takes-the-hassle-ou...

2: https://www.uber.com/about

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Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by mikeyouse on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:56PM (#9984005)
The first UberCab website appears in Archive.org at March of 2010 -- They might be ever-so-slightly older than 5 years, but it doesn't seem too misleading to call them a 5-year old company.

Their Delaware date of incorporation is actually 7/2010.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by birken on Friday July 31, 2015 @04:09PM (#9984106)
The founding date shouldn't be when the website first launched, or when they incorporated (though both are good minimums). The founding date is when the founders got together and starting working on the idea full time.

This is a pet peeve of mine because often in the first year not much happens. For Uber, it seemed like they were building the app and preparing for a private beta. This doesn't mean the company didn't exist before the beta was launched or the app existed. This is important because many founders who don't know any better think that if their company isn't crushing it after a few months then they are doing something wrong.

It takes time to get stuff going, and when looking retrospectively if you skip over this time it creates a misleading timeline of how successful companies are created.

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Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by sickrumbear on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:48PM (#9983948)
Slightly confused; are you saying they should say they're more than 5 years old? 2009 was 5 years ago, and if that's when the company was founded, saying they're 5 years old makes sense.
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Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by birken on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:55PM (#9983996)
The graph on the article is demarcated in months, leading me to believe they are indicating that Uber is exactly 5 years old.

Travis' LinkedIn says he has been working for Uber for: 6 years, 2 months

Crunchbase founding date of Uber (Mar 1, 2009): 6 years, 4 months ago

Last day of 2009 (conservatively based on Uber's about page): 5 years, 6 months ago

It is just very sloppy fact checking. They wanted to write the story about how Uber is the fastest growing company ever (which it very well might be), but they care much more about the headline than the facts. Again: this is one of the most successful companies of all time in terms of growth, and the tech press is still exaggerating it.

This is why you shouldn't compare yourself to the myths of other startup's success that are being written about by the press.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by aaronbrethorst on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:49PM (#9983958)
2014: 1 year ago

2013: 2 years ago

2012: 3 years ago

2011: 4 years ago

2010: 5 years ago

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber Valued at More Than $50B by drivers99 on Friday July 31, 2015 @03:54PM (#9983990)
> 2010: 5 years ago

Not necessarily.

Date diff today (2015-07-31) and (2014-09-01) is 4 years, 10 months, and 30 days.

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