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Comment by camjohnson26 | Hacker News Reader

I doubt many of Uber’s casual users understand how insanely unprofitable the current business model is. 2.9 billion is 3 unicorns. Even before COVID they’ve been losing something on the order of a billion a year.

It’ll be interesting to see if they can turn this around.

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> 2.9 billion is 3 unicorns.

Hmm, unicorns are usually defined by $1B valuation, while the number of $2.9B in loss is related to revenue. So I think the comparison doesn't hold, it's apples to oranges.

Seems like a fair comparison, they could have acquired 3 unicorn companies with that money.

Good point

Per year.

(Comparisons involving both stock and flow measures are somewhat dodgy, but they’re made all the time (debt/GDP, annual rent/house price, unicorns/revenue)).

Edit to add: they’re not really dodgy per se, but the result is a rate, ie has a time dimension.

I wonder what it takes to take down Uber and alike. These companies keep losing money but still going on.

Is it possible that they pivot the whole business to Uber Eats only?

...or "pivot" to selling themselves to GM or Avis or some taxicab company, at pennies on the dollar?

What would qualify as a turn around? If three years from now they are a $50 million company that's profitable, would that work?

I don't think so. Being a 50mm company probably includes no longer serving the majority of markets they do now. At 50mm they become a regional taxi service with phone hailing rides.

Truth is - now that they are public ~ I'm not sure what success is... for a lot of people who started there a long time ago - the IPO was 'the success' now the public is left holding the bag (mostly by their own choice of buying the stock).

I think they meant $50 million in profit.

No, I was talking market cap. That's the size of some nation-wide retailers (like J.C. Penney).

I think Uber can exist, I just don't see how what they do is worth billions. When Uber withdrew from Austin, it took a couple of days for very similar replacements to pop up.

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