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Comment by twinkletwinkle | Hacker News Reader

All snark aside, isn't Uber the highest-valued startup in the world? Sure, that's thriving.

Startup valuations are mostly a stab in the dark by whoever invested last multiplied by the terms set out by all the people who invested before. There is nothing concrete about Uber's valuation. They're doing some amazing business and building a valuable company, but how valuable exactly is dictated by an exit, not a funding round.

Sure, the valuation isn't concrete. It's also in a different league from the other startups in the article which are shutting down.

I think the person I originally replied to was trying to make an ironic point but to me it fell really flat.

post-money valuations usually overestimate the 'true' value of a company because the investors have liquidation prefs (this dilutes value for further rounds)

With a $470 millions operating loss:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/uber-bonds...

They also have users, a brand, and revenue. They're probably spending all that money on marketing. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert but that's part of building a company. Gotta spend money to make money.

There is no way in hell that loss is going to turn into profit this millenium. Unicorn valuation is basically a very expensive game of hot potato.

They are profitable in the U.S. They are unprofitable world wide because China and India are newer markets and Uber requires scale to turn profit. As they continue to gain market share and overall ridership/driver-ship, they will become closer and closer to world wide profitably.

Why does Uber require scale to return profit?

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