Hacker News Reader

Comment by beisner | Hacker News Reader

They’ll have a major share in Aurora after the fact. They just are focusing on their core competencies, I assume. To compete in the self driving space, you need to have 1) a crap ton of money and 2) the patience to wait 10 years before you see any ROI. Uber is not structured to do that this late in the game. They’ll probably get a preferred partnership for licensing the tech once it rolls out, if Uber still exists in 10 years.

View on HN

Do they get ROI on rides or Eats? I was under the impression they were still pretty substantially subsidizing prices on those, though maybe that's just out of date information.

It's not about subsidies as a business model so much as a war of capital attrition with weaker competitors, which is necessarily not endless.

Current competitors may go out of business. If there really is a niche, however, seeing off current competitors won't be the end of it. There's always someone else, who may not have burned so much VC.

The other option is that there will never be a sustainable business here.

If so then why would VC's fund new competitors? The answer is they would not. VC's may throw their free money at new unquantifiable opportunities, but for this niche the financials will have become well known. In other words there would be less risk premium.

VCs are looking for firms who can build "moats", i.e. commercial positions within markets that have built-in advantages against potential competitors. Sometimes this is some technological feat that is difficult to match, like Uber have been promising. Other times this is unethical business practices, like paying employees less than minimum wage. Such moats may not last very long, but the concept appeals to VCs.

The phrase "war of capital attrition", however, will send capable VCs running for the exits. If they liked that sort of thing they would have been bankers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com