Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt Close to Becoming Uber’s CEO
techcrunch.com
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Jeff has no real tech credibility, he is a old school boys network business guy with dodgy/bad performance rap.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/28/ge-needs...
"At this point, it is probably too late to save GE. By losing sight of the need to grow, and instead focusing on optimizing the old business while selling assets to raise cash for reorganizations, Immelt has destroyed what was once a great innovation engine. Now that the activists have GE in their sites it is unlikely they will let it ever return to the company it once was - creating whole new markets by developing new technologies that people never before imagined. The future looks a lot more like figuring out how to maximize the value of each piece of meat as it's carved off the GE carcass."
Good luck to the folks that work at uber. You are going to need it.
Uber doesn't need tech leadership, it needs adult leadership. It's wounds are all entirely self inflicted.
This is the same thing that happened to MSFT under Ballmer. MSFT stocked performed well, but they missed the biggest opportunity of the post-PC era (mobile), were late to the cloud game, and probably missed some other opportunities I can't think of.
A decade ago, I had a front-row seat for Yahoo! under the stewardship of CEOs brought in to run the business well. The focus was not on innovation, and the company continued to languish. Why? Because tech companies that don't innovate get their lunches eaten by the ones that do.
As for Buffett, I'm no expert on his portfolio, but I believe his track record was built on non-tech companies until very recently.
If you wouldn't call JB Hunt a tech company, you shouldn't call Uber one.
(The research into autonomous cars is not really central to their current core business model - and assuming the technology is successfully developed - their entire business model would change - they'd also need a massive capitalization to purchase a fleet of self driving cars when it does.)
This is a pretty bold claim. The fact that it's instant, and that it geolocalize every party involved thanks to a mobile app, and that every part of the process is fully automated is what makes uber something different from a regular cab company.
To reduce uber to its high level functions abstracting away the technical details and implementation is i think one of the big mistakes business people make in general. I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of reasoning is what business CEO show in their slides before they take the decisions that completely screw the tech companies they're leading.
Once autonomous vehicles become practical, it is almost imperative for Uber to own the critical technology to be competitive in their current businesses.
Uber can't ever own the critical technology in autonomous. They are late to the party, critical patents have been filed. Autonomous technology will be freely available when it's commercially feasible, Uber can buy some then. In the meantime it has to avoid blowing through the remainder of it's capital and stay alive.
Twenty years ago an astute and entrepreneurial young man named John took over his father's taxi company, Orange Cab based in San Diego. Exploring ways to reach potential customers, he found that all the cab companies in town were marketing their services through the same traditional mediums - newspaper ads, Yellowbook listings, billboards, etc. Not sure what else he could do, he remembered he still had 4 free hours of America Online credit, and decide to see if the internet had any advice. Then it struck him... Maybe my competitors have websites that I could browse for hints on how they advertise. The search came up empty. Damn he muttered, "none of them have websites", to which his wife Jane (expertly lurking from the nearby davenport desk) quips, "well neither do you, so maybe you should get a website". I have a brilliant idea, he thinks while slightly tilting his monitor away from Jane, maybe I should get a website. He types into the Lycos search bar "how. to. make. a. website." enter, "You know in that technology class I took last semester they taught us how to make a webpage using HTML", pipes Jane; then she smiles and taps John on the shoulder "move over".
After building the website they noticed things starting to pick-up a bit, and in a short few years they were beginning to see real growth; recently their was a nice spike in their marketshare after implementing an online form to request rides directly from their homepage. Younger crowds in particular preferred to request rides over speaking with someone on the telephone.
Fast-Forward ~10 years...
Orange Cab is not so little anymore. They now manage fleets in 14 metropolitan areas and recently incorporated so they could merge with Yellow Cab, making them the biggest cab company in the US. A few days after the merger, Jane (formerly Orange Cab's head of operations) had a meeting with Yellow Cab CEO to see how her role would change after the merger. She came into the meeting excited with ideas about how to innovate to reach new customers (particularly since the new operating budget was 10x the pre-merger budget). She started by sharing an idea where the whole point-to-point experience, from cab request to fair payment is managed entirely by a little software applications on someone's mobile phone. Jane, Jane, Jane, ahhh silly Jane, we are not a tech company. Yes, the website has been really helpful, but don't those smartphone things have a web browser? We are the biggest taxi company in the US, and we have a veteran management team, what's the worst that could happen!
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-and-lyft-didnt-bankrup...
At this point of time, Uber is an excellent example. There is an innovation on the horizon that will completely change the taxi industry; autonomous vehicles. It's not a secret either. It's an inevitable future. The date of realization? No one knows, but we can see it's coming. Now, should Uber optimize on it's current product set and optimize until they are profitable on every ride? Or should they balance some part of that, with innovating on the future of autonomous vehicles? Travis seems to be working towards the big vision of driverless cars. What would Jeff do?
Fun stuff to think about :)
I'm assuming you mean it's something that will happen within the next 50 years?
I just don't get how this isn't a super-hard social/political issue that we haven't even begun to address as a society. Maybe spending significant resources on this now, is not optimal.
* Will people, on mass, accept being driven around by a machines, on public roads.
* How will they deal with "trolley problem" type ethical scenarios? How will these decisions be made.
* How will self-driving cars cope with rural roads (where they are arguably MORE useful than in Urban settings better served by public transport)?
* How will they cope with signs/marking intentionally designed to fool machine vision systems. Who will be liable for accidents caused in these cases?
There are other issues too. However, overall, I think with some infrastructure investment we could have had self-driving cars since the late 90s early 2000s and there have been many prototypes. It's the ethical/social issues that are the bigger barrier in my mind.
They won't, but neither can humans. Signs aren't secure. Anyone with a wrench can take down a stop sign or put up a fake speed limit.
You don't have to panic, throw huge amounts of stock at a shifty development team, while ignoring due diligence (or do an incompetent job at it) all to do your own.
Car rental companies are the most likely first bulk buyers of self-driving cars. They already buy, store, maintain, and clean large fleets of cars. They're all set up to handle the problems of a big fleet of cars used by many people. Uber doesn't have that infrastructure.
Car rental companies would like to have a car pick you up outside baggage claim and drive you away, rather than using a shuttle bus to get you to their car lot. Customers will like that, too. Even if the cars aren't self-driving on all roads, if they can get from rental car storage to the airport and onto the freeway, that's enough to justify the technology.
Avis already owns Zipcar, so they have app-based car services already deployed. So as soon as the technology is ready, Avis is there with the customer base and the infrastructure.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-26/alphabet-...
Burning money on autonomous now buys them little. They can't control it, they don't have key patents, they will have to buy it just like everyone else.
Uber doesn't need to innovate? That is literally the premise of their entire business.
If you look deeper, the premise of their business is to take over all of transportation. Not just ride sharing. Taking over transportation needs innovation.
If their premise was just ride sharing, their funding and priorities would be very different.
It could never take over all of transportation. It's burning billions every year just trying to build out ride-sharing.
Uber absolutely does need to innovate. Its business model up to this point has been operating at below cost to suck the life out of the competition so that they can reap the massive network effects when they have driverless cars they can reap the profits.
They can't run their business like a mature low-growth software business where the name of the game is to milk profits and license revenue, because they have no profits and license revenue to milk. Their current business model of subsidizing fares with VC cash is not a sustainable one, so they need a visionary CEO who can get them to driverless cars.
Once they have driverless cars, then they'll be the kind of mature, milk the revenue stream business that Buffett tends to invest in (and then, they'll need the 'keep the business ticking over' CEO too). But Uber is not Geico yet.
Become the quality brand they started as. Charge more than Lyfy and Taxis because they have higher standard. Immelt can make that happen with process and measurement. Uber's tech will allow them to monetize data, and show customers their value is better. Better response times, better service, shorter faster trips, etc. That's how they can win. Trying to be cheaper than Lyft will fail miserably.
Right after he's announced, he should find a buyer for 3/4 of Benchmark's shares to get them out of the conflict, and immediately appoint Travis Kalanick as Chief Vision Office, and hire Holder or someone with perceived panache as Chief of HR and put them on the board. That'd be a good deal to make with Travis - Kill Benchmark's influence by paying them to go away, trade a TK board seat for a neutral party. Win/win/win/win.
I don't doubt that there are some people who will go for it, and I'm sure Immelt would run that business very well, but it doesn't strike me as a multiple billion dollar offer...
We kind of are hitting on Uber's core problem here though. "Profitability" would seem to involve either involve removing the drivers from the equation or hiking the price.
Removing the drivers is really hard. Hiking the price is easy but massively cuts Uber's appeal and cedes the low end to Lyft/Gett.
This valuation has been botched by the recent success of Tesla, Apple, Google, GM and a few more who are developing self-driving technology. The one with the best technology will win the race and probably become the first trillion dollar company.
So, in order to keep Uber competitive, you don't need to keep status quo. You need to invent probably the most meaningful technology of this century, at least of the next decades. This requires deep knowledge in tech, artificial intelligence, being able to find the right people for that, navigating the legal landscape in a.i. ethics (e.g. kill my passenger or kill the two pedestrians), motivating your employees through inspiring leadership and being able to lead your company through the next decades.
Adult leadership as you called it is not it. It might conserve the company as is, but you need a lot more than that to make it succeed.
Kalanick had the competitiveness and vision, however could not control his competitiveness, which lead him to build a toxic company culture. He might have succeeded in making Uber competitive to Tesla & Co. from a competition point of view, however, sooner or later the toxic culture would have made the company fold under the pressure, so the decision to replace him was a necessary one.
They can never win the self driving technology war. They were late to the party, they missed out on key patents. They chose a team that may have stolen technology from Waymo, exposing them to massive potential liability. Now they have to start over.
Automous car technology will be freely available to everyone when it's commercially viable. Uber can't transition to that model unless it becomes far more economically successful. No one is going to give them $50B more to build out autonomous car infrastructure (cars, service, storage, parking) world-wide when they are still hemorrhaging money in their first business model.
Uber doesn't need to invent squat. It has to maintain it's massive lead in drivers and installed apps. When it's customers want an autonomous car, they'll use the same app they always did.
I don't buy that. They'd use that technology to build out their advantage over all the competitors instead.
Regarding your point about Uber not being able to compete in the autonomous technology race. Having a network of drivers (which will become obsolete) and users is a bit of an advantage, but not much.
The first company to reach stage 4 can release their own app and get 100 million installs in a few months, if they reach stage IV. They don't need the Uber app.
Maybe a second mover who reaches stage IV after the first mover will buy Uber, because they can't get that many installs as the first mover, and they want to catch up as fast as possible, but that won't be worth more than a few billion.
No one who reaches stage 4 is going to build tens of millions of their own cars within months and build the parking/service infrastructure nationwide to boot. No one is going to download their app till they do.
The idea that the company that is first and best at developing autonomous tech is going to also simultaneously build huge factories and make good cars is ludicrous.
Looking at the numbers, over his tenure, GE's stock is down ~38% while the S&P 500 is up 123%. He did take over during some rocky times, but in the last 10 years, it's the same picture. If you put $100 into GE at the start of 2007, today you'd now have ~$105. For the S&P, you'd have $210. For a basket industrial stocks, you'd have $205.
http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return....
How can the CEO who delivered this be considered good at his job?
But perhaps his job is to land the plane at a $30 billion valuation.
GE's stock performance imo is more about how the market no longer favors conglomerates and relatively boring industries.
Total return for 5 and 10 years:
GE 6.6% -1.6%
S&P 500 13.7% 7.6%
Diversified Industrials 13.0% 6.4%However... based on the experience of friends and colleagues who worked for different divisions of the company, I think that Welch's glory was a little overstated and not well understood at the time.
How much worse would it have been had they not been at the helm? And of course the logical follow-up of how do you know that it could actually be turned around?
I think that there is good reason to doubt that premise. Driving people around has a very different cost structure from a SaaS business that can throw off 85% margin if you get to product / market fit. Uber is a commodity and is trying to create margin by sucking all the air out of the room for competitors. A key strategy has been weaponized fund-raising. But even if you snuff out Lyft the barrier to entry for any player with a platform and scale is very low.
Then let's think about the tech. There's an implicit assumption that Uber is going to be a force in the self driving car market. Even if you set aside the Otto mess, why does anybody think that a 6 year old company that drew a car on Google Maps and did a payment integration is going to dominate the driverless car game? GM, Tesla, Volkswagen, Google have been thinking about this shit for decades. Why is Uber going to win? They can't run HR yet -- how are they going to own what happens next?
It's a monster business and they should be super happy with where they are. But I just don't see how they win in the shift that is coming. Car ownership is dying. It's becoming about transit experience
I realize Immelt fits the picture that the Board is looking for (professional, intelligent, organizational, experienced, etc) but given SV's tendency towards men under 40, Immelt does not fit that bill at all. Would be interesting to see how well he would be accepted at all the tech conferences, events etc.
They've hit their stride?!? Looks to me like a company in crisis that needs a turn-around artist.
He will be a terrific asset in managing the legal issues that are surrounding Uber w Google and others as Immelt has vast experience in managing intensive litigation threats to a company.
Like that Pepsi guy that ran Apple (into the ground).
"Jeff [Immelt], do you want to sell planned-obsolescence dryers and weather derivatives the rest of your life?"
You can argue that Sculley saved Apple. At the time Jobs was a terrible leader and manager, and he had way over-forecast Macintosh sales. And because of it, Apple was hemorrhaging. After booting Jobs, Sculley cut head-count, refocused Apple on it's bread and butter product, the Apple II and led Apple to a massive turnaround. Sculley did so well he lasted 10 years as CEO.
Uber is a company that was a great idea, got off to a great start, but then management started to constantly sabotage themselves. Travis has acted as irrationally as Jobs 1.0 did. Bringing in a Sculley type is exactly the type of leader they need now. Clean out all the dumb side business ideas, refocus on the car sharing service, and work hard to rebuild it's brand.
Ten years from now they might need someone more creative (and Immelt is so old there is no way he's going to run it for that long). But right now they need to survive and get back on track.
It simply can't be that they spent even a small fraction of that writing software, smartphone apps just aren't that expensive. But they've got one helluva marketing engine and investor relations group...
That, and a lot of their money is buying market share, effectively subsidizing people's rides.
I've never understood how that's going to work, beyond vague handwavey arguments about potential future driverless cabs and other complex arguments that don't seem backed by data.
IMO it doesn't do them just when we say "it's just an app". It's a complex operation that they've simplified to appear as that way.
Also, they already have substantial scale. When would one reasonably expect them to stop losing so much money?
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/1...
Similarly: Why is Blue Apron a tech company? Their business model is putting food in a box, and then shipping it to people. That's great, but my local grocery chain does that too?
And then there's Juicero, who's only claim to being a tech company seems to be they printed QR codes on the packaging, despite the QR codes being entirely unnecessary to their core business. If Kraft puts a QR code on a box of mac and cheese so you can scan it and get a cooking instruction video on your phone, do they become a tech company too?
It's just branding.
My current and my previous company is a traditional business, both more than 20 years old. They sell a product or service that has existed for decades. But damn they both tried to say we are a startup, we are a tech company, etc etc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogurt-li...
They're virtual-reality companies.
https://hackernoon.com/blue-apron-is-not-a-tech-company-neit...
It doesn't need someone to "execute" some sort of plan, it needs a miracle only innovation can provide.
The myth that their rides are unprofitable is because they spend money like drunken sailors in a whorehouse. Anyone analyzing their financials has no insight into whether ride sharing is profitable in the US, or other countries because the needed information is not broken out in those reports
They have up to 100 side businesses like UberEats. They've spent a ton trying to design autonomous vehicles they don't need now and likely never will need (given they'll be freely available for purchase from Tesla, GM, etc when created). Lastly, they spend huge amounts opening new markets, basically paying drivers to sign up with such lucrative bonuses that Uber gets scammed constantly by them.
The plan is pretty simple 1) Kill almost every side business, and do a substantial headcount reduction. 2) Dump the autonomous driving development group and cheaply settle the Waymo lawsuit. 3) Focus everyone left on ride-sharing, improving the brand, and efficiently expanding internationally. 4) Clean house in the HR department and of every remaining harasser. 5) Raise another round to ensure Uber's long term financial stability.
Thats a plan that gives Uber a very long runway to achieve full profitability, even without an IPO.
They seem to scale in reverse. That is, an Uber that runs in the US and the UK will cost more to operate than an Uber that runs in just the US. An Uber that runs in one state will cost less than an Uber that runs in a whole country, and so on. The more diverse an area you serve, the more legislation and markets you have to deal with, more hours you'll have high customer support load, and the less well you will be able to analyze and react to trends in individual markets.
What stops me, then, in an era where Uber isn't fueled by investor money every trip, from being a competitor with Uber? Raise a few million dollars, get a simple app together with a few friends, and then convince drivers to try (take a lot of short Uber rides and pitch good drivers) and riders to ride. I'd have less staff, less overhead, and therefore less costs. The savings could be passed on equally to the drivers and riders. I could give discounts on nights when there was a big game, I could advertise in local areas, I could poach good drivers from Uber, etc.
It seems to me there is no way for Uber to be competitive if they aren't using investor to subsidize the price of rides. There is nothing, that I am aware of, that is impossible or expensive to replicate in their tech.
Abandon the auto project and UberEats (I don't even know if UberEats is even profitable or how many people actually use it) will allow the company to focus on core problems. How can you clean your house if your kids constantly go around the house making a mess? Let's get the house cleaned first then we worry about how to correct the kids' behaviors. Basically, do one thing well enough before moving to another.
They really need to focus on growing in cities and countries where they face competitions but already have a strong root. I understand the awesomeness to be the bigges, but look at Uber China, Uber had to parnter with Di Di instead (Uber doesn't run its business in mainland China anymore). Uber also recently shut down its business in Marcu because the drivers were fined so much no one would work for Uber.
And Uber has hundreds of competitors, and it's crushing all of them because of brand. I have Uber on my phone. I will never have your app. Getting app installs is hugely expensive and they have a huge lead. Even if you pay for installs, people will delete your app as soon as they realize you don't have as many drivers.
They have a huge lead in a big market. They need to not lose that.
People do switch their ride solution. For example, I used to use taxis when I needed to hire a ride. I switched to uber because it was easier and cheaper. If something was as easy and cheaper, I'd use that instead (For example, I use lyft whenever it has a better price and I have the time to check).
Building a competitor for a single city seems plausible. I don't think there is a technology related hurdle. All you need is the capital to build the brand and to be competitive on price.
> given they'll be freely available for purchase from Tesla, GM, etc when created
Tesla has a built-in "feature" in their cars, to make OTA updates to the software running the car. One part of the vision of buying a Tesla, is supposed to be the day when customers let their autonomous car "work" for them while they are not using it.
I don't think it's a huge stretch of imagination for Tesla to come out with it's own version of the ride sharing parts of Uber when autonomous driving becomes a full reality with their cars. They could eat Uber at this point.
> Thats a plan that gives Uber a very long runway to achieve full profitability, even without an IPO.
Points 3, 4 & 5 of the plan are likely going to be very difficult! Why?
> 3) Focus everyone left on ride-sharing, improving the brand, and efficiently expanding internationally.
I'm fairly certain there are very smart, well-paid people already trying to do each of things at Uber, not sure how reducing headcount will magically improve the state of affairs here. Mythical man month like arguments come to mind.
> 4) Clean house in the HR department and of every remaining harasser.
If the company was built on a foundation of sexist and abrasive culture, rooting every one out will take a long time, not to mention disruptive as it involves disentangling the fiefdoms built by these people (who may even be doing a "good job", causing damage to raw business metrics in removing them). I'm not saying this shouldn't be done, I'm just saying "birds of a feather flock together", so if I may dare say, wholesale pest removal might unfortunately be low on the priority of any new exec. They would be more focussed on other matters and just treat the symptoms. Human nature.
> 5) Raise another round to ensure Uber's long term financial stability.
If Points 1 & 2 are followed, without the silver-talk of "constant innovation" and projections of "taking over global transportation with our technology" - raising private funds might get extremely challenging and may not have the expected results. At that point, an IPO might provide better success as public investors are interested in "business that execute" as well, as opposed to the private investment folks who look for returns in the Order(s) of Magnitude scale.
1) It's possible Tesla could enter the ride-sharing market. And it's possible they could win. But I won't download a Tesla app until their service is as good a Ubers, and that's a huge barrier to overcome.
Uber's advantage is their massive lead in installed apps and available drivers. If they lose that, then they'll be at risk. Some autonomous company may pull it off, but the far more likely route is that Uber adds autonomous fast enough that none can catch them.
3) I'm not arguing to add headcount to ride-share, I'm arguing to add focus to it. Having a CEO 100% focused on ride-share instead of CEO 50% focused on ride-share and 50% focused on autonomous/uberEats/100 other side hustles will trickled down through exec staff, directors, etc.
4) Starting over in HR is your first start. You can't have a culture where people were allowed to hide problems or protect bad employees. It starts in HR.
5) An IPO is fine. It's all about financing the business over the long term, so the new CEO will pick the best possible financing path. And reducing burn rate might be enough alone to do it, since Uber should still have billions left in the bank.
Let's be fair, the $60B valuation was really dumb and won't be seen again for a long time if ever. You can't count on having investors as dumb as the Saudi's again.
Could it be that there are profitable rides in some of its markets that inspire investors that it would eventually be able to make every ride profitable at some point?
If you fired 75% of the people, and focused on selling rides and selling cars to drivers, the company would probably coast and make money for years.
The other interpretation is this decision is entirely about managing short term to get to an IPO, so investors who have lost faith can cash out. The candidate they are considering fits that bill more closely.
It's not at all unreasonable to think that the way to save Uber is to ruthlessly cut costs and focus on the business of fleet and driver management, without banking on the assumption that the drivers are all going to go away within a decade. They should certainly still be watching autonomous cars, and perhaps find someone to partner with the way Lyft has with Google/Waymo, but I'm not at all convinced that's a business they should actually be in.
(I also suspect that the belief that we're going to have "level five" autonomous cars within the decade is far too optimistic. Also, an awful lot of discussions apparently assume the vast majority of consumers will, as soon as it becomes practical, stop buying cars and switch to autonomous taxis for all transportation needs. At least among American consumers, I'm going to stamp that with "[citation needed]" until further notice.)
But TK and his buddies ruined that by leaking her name to the press and putting her in an impossible position. Given how leaky the board is - they can only go after candidates that are between jobs.
There is no fix for the "bro culture" at Uber except firing everyone and rebuilding the company from the ashes. Also, regulators are starting to apply pressure to all this "sharing economy" crap (Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Foodora and friends) which is basically just exploitation of workers combined with open ignorance of laws and regulations... which means that there is no way Uber can justify its valuation except they manage to roll out fully autonomous driving in 2 years.
You associate with Uber if you want the chance to solve big problems with incredible teams to continually improve a product that you and millions of others rely on as a matter of necessity.
The "Uber exploiting workers" meme is a classic, and holds little water given the fact that everyone on the platform consents to be there and can leave at any time. If anything, the flexible earnings opportunity Uber provides is transformational to a group of people who have historically had to make insidious trade offs (money over family time) to keep the lights on.
I doubt it'll help but hey.
I'm not sure I'd want to inherit that particular mess, though, particularly not after Yahoo.
Apple CEO is pretty anti Trump but still sits on panels.
Ignoring the president just creates divide and conflict. If you sit on the panel you get Trump’s ear and don’t really have to give anything in return.
Jeff Immelt and Travis Kalannick sat on the "American Manufacturing Council" and "Strategic and Policy Forum" respectively, which had memberships and were regularly consulted.
Anyone who would be invited to be on one of those panels has no trouble hearing from and making themselves heard by government without being on a panel.
Personally, I'd be surprised if they were. Of course, it's not clear anybody has what Uber needs.
Can you explain these terms?
I don't think they have to have a technology person at the helm; I mention that comparison just to give a sense of how long this guy has been doing exactly one thing. Uber is in a very different market.
However, some technology savvy is going to be necessary, because Uber is facing a deep change in their business. It's sort of like Netflix. They started with mailing DVDs, but that was not the business that mattered. I don't think you can run a Netflix or a Tesla without a deep appreciation for the business volatility created by technological change.
Suppose Immelt steps in, stops subsidizing rides, things stabilize and Uber's valuation cuts in half but they find a sustainable place to be. That seems like a job well done and the echo chamber can crap on Immelt for not innovating or destroying "value"
But it's not clear that absent subsidies they have a significant business. Their valuation might not fall by half. It could fall to something much, much smaller: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/09/13/2173631/mythbusting-u...
And that's only in the short to medium term. In the 20-30 year timeframe, their current business will be destroyed by automated cars. Car manufacturers have intrinsic advantages here, and they have deep existing relationships with the bulk of America.
Costs need to be looked at and pricing needs to be aligned with those costs. I tend to agree that this could drive ride volumes down significantly as people become less interested in Ubering everywhere if VCs stop subsidizing.
But doesn't it have to get to that point? Neither autonomous cars or anything else are magic talismans just out of reach today that will change everything in an interesting time horizon.