Uber isn't tech, it is a taxi company.
Stripe isn't tech, it is a payment processor.
Airbnb isn't tech, it is a hotel.
SpaceX isn't tech, it is a defense contractor.
Stripe isn't tech, it is a payment processor.
Airbnb isn't tech, it is a hotel.
SpaceX isn't tech, it is a defense contractor.
Uber isn't at taxi company, since it doesn't own or operate taxis. Conceptually it's a platform for connecting independent taxi operators with customers, like Expedia or Craigslist or eBay.
Airbnb isn't a hotel company, since it doesn't own or operate hotels. Conceptually it's a platform for connecting independent hotel operators with customers, like Expedia or Craigslist or eBay.
SpaceX isn't a tech company any more than NASA is. They require science and technology but they sell rides on space ships that they own and operate.
Uber is a moonshot bet on re-imagining transportation when autonomous vehicles become a reality. If that reality never materializes, Uber either raises prices and sees its growth rate and valuation crash back down to earth or it goes out of business.
IBM owned everything in sight in computing, amd when PCs cam along, it improbably wound up owning them for a short while too...
Then MS took over. They owned everything in sight, but stumbled when the Internet came around, and then again in mobile. They’ve roared back, but they don’t own everything in sight.
Uber’s valuation doesn’t leave room for stumbles and settling for roaring profitability. It’s a bet that when the inflection point comes, they will own everything and keep owning everything.
It could happen, but it takes more than just autonomous vehicles becoming a reality for their valuation to become real.
When you get to the point of saying space rockets are not technology, it's time to acknowledge that somewhere in the construction of your ontology, something has gone wrong.
“Technology” means the same thing it always has, but the abbreviation “Tech” is slang for computing, the subject of the current industrial revolution.
- Low variable costs
- Low capital investments
- A lot of customer data and customer intimacy
- Network effects
- Ecosystems that boost expansion with little cost
Based on those features, of the companies that you listed here, Uber and Airbnb are definitely tech companies. So is Stripe, I think most of us would agree, although I'm not sure whether there are many network effects with their platform. SpaceX is not.
As such, the only way your point really stands is if one can make a valid argument that WeWork is doing something material and tech-focused that makes it different from a standard commercial real estate company. If it were leasing space and successfully executing on a model with low variable costs, low capital investments, lots of data, network effects and expansion-boosting ecosystems, that would be one thing. That doesn't appear to be the case.
Business and social changes aside, WeWork could have happened 20 years ago.
I'm not sure why Uber is a tech company because you can order a taxi using your phone, but WeWork is not ... because you can reserve a room or space using your phone?
Not all members pay for an office. Some of us are nomads and stay at whichever WeWork is convenient. We make reservations for space using our phone.
Early on, one of the UX joys of Uber was being able to see where your driver was and how soon before they would arrive. SMS wouldn't be quite the same, would it?
If WeWork was AirBnB for work spaces then I'd call them a tech company. But they're not.
So by that logic if Uber ever does migrate completely to a self-driving taxi system, it is no longer a tech company.
That seems fair to say. If Uber transitions to self-driving taxis the whole business model will be radically different. They'll have to employ hordes of mechanics, and lease huge garages to store vehicles and run repair bays. They'll have massive capital expenses, a complex supply chain to manage, and a large distributed and probably unionized workforce to negotiate with. Their geographic distribution, legal exposure, exposure to economic shifts like tariffs, reliance on capital markets, number of employees, etc... will all be radically different. It seems fairly obvious to say that pre-self-driving and hypothetical post-self-driving Uber are totally different kinds of companies.
Uber’s primary business is finding and exploiting legal loopholes, and ignoring regulators. They happen to have an app, that’s all.
An analogy would be a pizza company where you order a pizza with an app but it actually gets made in some random person’s house.
Marginal Cost of Servicing an Extra Uber Driver is $0 Marginal Cost of Servicing an Extra Uber Passenger is $0
Uber is a Tech Company.
The value prop of Uber was that you could be instantly and automatically matched with a nearby taxi (minimizing cost and time) and see those costs / timings in advance. That required[1] the internet and software, i.e. "tech".
[1] Ok, so hypothetically, you could've implemented Uber 60 years ago if the taxi company called every single one of their cabbies every time they got a phone booking, figured out which one was closest, sent them to your location, and then called you back to tell you "your cab will be there in 5 minutes". But tech made it VASTLY more efficient. Tech makes WeWork only marginally more efficient. Hence, not really a tech company.
In fact, I think "efficiency gains from developing tech" is probably the best way to determine if something is a tech company or not. SpaceX is a tech company because they're using advances in technology over the past 60 years, combined with their own advances in technology, in order to deliver a product (re-usable rockets) that is far more efficient than what we had before (and brings down cost appropriately).
Even if AirBnB isn't "tech company" it definitely is NOT a hotel.