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Comment by byoung2 | Hacker News Reader

The unit economics of some of these companies may have worked during the good times, but these are unique times. Uber and Lyft are notable examples that barely made a profit even during the good times. Yelp was already in decline long before COVID-19 and having mass business closures didn't help. These layoffs exposed the fact that many companies are like most Americans who live check to check.

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There's a ton of speculative cash-flow negative rental properties. Probably much more money is invested in this space than VC companies. I wonder how these landlords will fare in this and which will cause a bigger long-term problem.

> speculative cash-flow negative rental properties

Usually that means rents aren't enough to cover the mortgages.

Example: Buy a house for $2 million. Mortgage, taxes, upkeep, insurance, pushing toward 100K a year. But there is no chance at all you are going to be able to get $8K/month rent to cover that.

Long term rental property owners, on the other hand, are doing very very well even if they don't sell.

Article goes to show that even during good times, Uber and Lyft were losing money. To me it looks more like a case of flawed unit economics.

I think it's more of a story about marketing, consumer habits, driver churn (for Uber and Lyft), and competition. Breaking into an industry is expensive.

And terrible waste and graft. Can't forget that.

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