This always blew my mind: a smartphone app for a cab company that doesn't even own any cabs raised $16 billion.

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.