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Comment by badminton1 | Hacker News Reader

As usual, Uber throwing money at people to clean up after their mess.

Where is this money coming from? You.

Stop. Using. Uber.

And the 11 billion invested. Luckily that money is burned at a breath-taking rate and we can see the closing of Uber sooner than later.

It is true that significant part of that money comes from investors.

However it is expected to ultimately be self-sustaining and come from you.

Is it expected? It probably was, when the money was first invested. Now their expectations are irrelevant.

In my area, there's already another competitor (Cabify), plus taxis, who are not significantly more expensive. Uber doesn't have a chance of raising their prices to cover that.

I'm hoping they last just enough for another competitor to appear, and that they'll crash and burn afterwards.

Isn't Uber currently losing money? I think the money for this is coming from VC firms.

Who take money from our pension funds for example.

they also create wealth by investing in new services.

Money creates money, it's not a scarcity resource

Not mine. If you're not happy with your pension fund's investment strategy, maybe you should take that up with them.

My point was that VCs are not heroic risk takers that invest their own money but often invest other people's money and live off the fees.

Plenty of VCs invest their own capital. Do not confuse private equity, funds with limited partners that contribute the bulk of the money in the fund and classical venture capital where the bulk of the fund is raised from the managing partners.

It depends on the city. Uber is not uniformly profitable everywhere.

Isn't Uber losing money on every ride?

They aren't a charity. Either they are making money from the ride, or they are using your choice of uber as a way to attract more investment.

They're not a charity, but they can easily be wrong. Companies go out of business all the time.

Think that depends on the area. I imagine they're not in most big US cities at least.

yes, but they'll make it up in volume. /s

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