Hacker News Reader

Comment by SmartTix | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely, yes. As indicated by the terrible stock performance after the IPOs of Uber and Lyft. This is literally the market in action.

View on HN

> As indicated by the terrible stock performance after the IPOs of Uber and Lyft.

The Lyft price is down but it looks like Uber has kept pace with the overall market since their IPO. I think we'd struggle to find many people who would define "keeping pace with the market" as "terrible stock performance".

> IPOs of Uber and Lyft

These two companies do not represent all of tech. They represent ride sharing.

These companies represent bubbles within tech, that we can see are currently bursting.

You can get up to date stock quotes for free. Search for the symbol UBER. Uber being near it's listing valuation around $70 billion is hardly "a bubble bursting".

These are both wildly unprofitable companies, and they may likely never become profitable.

Possibly not the best examples...

Yes, exactly, and yet how did they command such a high valuation?

That's an entirely different conversation... I do think Uber in particular was great at creating hype and glossing over the fact that their pricing/model isn't sustainable without the substantial rider/driver subsidies and worker exploitation that let them consistently undercut traditional taxi pricing.

What I meant is that any poor market performance for Uber/Lyft could simply be a function of investors waking up to the aforementioned realities, it doesn't necessarily indicate the bursting of some broader bubble.

Furthermore, I don't even view Uber/Lyft as "tech" companies. Sure, they make software, but they're not in the software business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com