Things like Uber are a typical dumping cases. For years, they charged below their COGS and eventual profitability depended on driving out competition and raising prices.
On top of that, there is nuance as to what goes into fixed v variable, how fixed fixed really is, how good your management accounting system is, how good you are at predicting things like product recalls, or insurance losses, or loan recoveries, or whatever other variables are part of your particular business.
Well yes, because they are selling software or other products which require a very high investment into R&D and have minimal marginal cost...
Other markets don't work like that so I don't think this is particularly relevant especially considering the a huge proportion or the majority of those startups (which received the most VC money) are yet to turn a profit (until they do it's still 'dumping' in this sense).
I think the key difference is how the price for the sold good changes over time, not the net profit for sales. If Your business model is to hold price relatively constant, but only see a profit when you hit your target market share, that's not dumping. It becomes dumping if your business plan is to capture Market share at a low price, and then ratchet up your price once you have displaced competitors.
did you not read the article? the entire thing premise is that is not true and there are negative externalities and incentives even if the company doesn't ever make a profit.
It's a rather sickening bet though. One would hope they'd lose.
Uber and other folks who sell whatever it is they sell at a loss -- with no real expectation (other than driving their competition out of business so they can then hike prices well beyond where those who can actually make a profit charge) always reminds me of this[0].
The ridiculous part is that the link below was a parody when created. Now it's a "business model." Sigh.
Even these things get played. Sometimes driver/rider subsidies get classified as "Marketing expense" rather than cost of goods sold.
Many startups and new projects operate with effectively zero revenue until critical mass, at which point they start charging. Youtube, Meetup, Reddit, G Suite, facebook, craigslist, twitter, linkedin. The list goes forever. These all started as free services without any meaningful revenue. I don't see any difference between these platforms and Uber, which while not free, is also selling below costs.
Not saying whether or not this actually happened, only that it's mathematically totally possible.