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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

As always, the most interesting place to start is "Risks to our business": https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000119312519...

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"Our business would be adversely affected if Drivers were classified as employees instead of independent contractors."

They're upfront about it at the least.

Yeah the SEC force them to be brutally honest.

"We have previously received a high degree of negative media coverage around the world, which has adversely affected our brand and reputation and fueled distrust of our company. In 2017, the #DeleteUber campaign prompted hundreds of thousands of consumers to stop using our platform within days. Subsequently, our reputation was further harmed when an employee published a blog post alleging, among other things, that we had a toxic culture and that certain sexual harassment and discriminatory practices occurred in our workplace. Shortly thereafter, we had a number of highly publicized events and allegations, including investigations related to a software tool allegedly designed to evade and deceive authorities, a high-profile lawsuit filed against us by Waymo, and our disclosure of a data security breach."

Just like the WWE’s designation of their employees as contractors. SDC could make the point moot , but this is a salient workers rights issue that politicians have not picked up on.

"We have incurred significant losses since inception, including in the United States and other major markets. We expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future, and we may not achieve profitability."

"We have incurred significant losses since inception and may never achieve profitability" is pretty standard in S-1s. Nothing particularly interesting in these sentences.

This exact comment chain seemingly occurs in every S1 post.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, companies going public used to already make at least _some_ money...

A more civilized age.

Zoom is a profitable company that plans to IPO this year: "Zoom has the very rare and valuable financial profile -- it's growing at over 100% a year and it's profitable" [1], they're not extinct!

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/04/11/zoom-has-...

And with the S-1s coming at increasing frequency for the next several months, I expect this will be repeated many times

in silicon valley S-1s.

Really? Silicon Valley is churning out trashy IPOs of late, and so it becomes the standard?

It was the same thing 20 years ago, so why not now, too?

One of the highlighted risks:

> Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our business prospects. We have previously received significant media coverage and negative publicity, particularly in 2017, regarding our brand and reputation, and failure to rehabilitate our brand and reputation will cause our business to suffer.

In detail, they state:

> Our brand and reputation might also be harmed by events outside of our control. For example, we faced negative press related to suicides of taxi drivers in New York City reportedly related to the impact of ridesharing on the taxi cab industry.

Yikes, I never heard about that until reading it now. I could totally see how some people may have placed the bulk of their money into a NYC Taxi medallion, which have more than halved in value since 2015. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a9d6f8a78e9c6e899cd886...

We have incurred significant losses since inception. We incurred operating losses of $4.0 billion and $3.0 billion in the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $7.9 billion.

  Revenue: $11.2BB (2018)  $7.9BB (2017)   $3.8BB (2016)
  Growth:    3.3BB          4.1
  NetInc:    1.0BB         -4.0            -0.3

But net income buoyed by Other income (expense), net [0]:

  Other:   $4.99BB (2018) -0.02BB (2017)  $0.14BB (2016)

What is that $4.99BB "Other" income?

[0]: Includes gain on divestiture of $3,214BB, plus unrealized gain on investments of $1,996BB.

(edit, format)

I think it's the investment round in which SoftBank invested around $3.5 billion.

Dont mix up cash flow from financing activities with profit from sale of operational piece of the business ;). One is just a cash flow/balance sheet piece the other gets reflected in income ;)

Yeah, it's always a fun read for grumbling grognards like me. Pretty standard stuff, except I don't think I've seen a company call out its own culture as a risk factor before.

I love starting there - this one is pages 25-72!

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