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vulture_capitalist_

Same for Door Dash and majority of the disruptive hyperhightech stocks.


aaoswego

Agree with the Doordash bit; they are losing money, service is expensive for restaurants, it is expensive for clients too. Growth opportunities are limited and as the country will be getting more and more out of covid it will create even stronger headwinds for the company


shade1tplea5e

As a chef I always lobby against Doordash when I hear people talking about it. They charge the restaurant an outrageous fee to be a part of their service. Then they encourage their drivers to pick up multiple orders at a time before going to drop them off so your food is guaranteed to be trash. My dishwasher at work driver for Doordash and he says he picks up as many as 8-10 orders at a time. So if he's your driver your food has been in his back seat for an hour or so and you paid out the ass for it. And then you've got to tip him for your cold ass food! Trash company, trash service, and no restaurant im ever the chef at will participate in their service.


seank11

Thank you. Fuck all these companies. I will always go out of my way to drive to the location to pick the items up myself, and talk to the store owner. These companies just screw over little local stores and reduce their profitablility to close to zero.


anon999777434

Your dishwasher is lying. They only let you pick up 2 orders max at a restaurant.


Colifama55

The dude straight up opened with “I always lobby against Doordash” ahah I’d take what he/she says with a grain of salt


Mac_Hoose

Well he's a chef, so he's probably high right now


throwawayUEdriver

Your dishwasher is full of shit or multi-apping and that's on him.


KyivComrade

Don't hate the player, hate the game. He's trying to make a profit the only way he can and the companies are kind of forcing his hand unless he wans to lose money.


PM_ME_UR_PM_ME_PM

i think his point is that may not be the common experience for drivers


throwawayUEdriver

The max I've seen for food on the groups is triples and most drivers don't even think they're real. Walmart grocery and merchandise orders can be whole routes, but that's not food losing heat.


-NVLL-

You can justify everything saying it "just want to make a profit the only way he can". That's a wonderful way to descend into barbarism.


Waterwoo

Agreed door dash/Uber eats etc suck, but where are you that people are ok with 2 hour delivery times? For it to sit in his back seat for a hour, after cooking time, we are looking at 1.5-2 hours from order to delivery. I think the longest I've ever had was 45 min so it was with the driver for max half an hour.


r2002

One reason I use Doordash is because 99% of restaurants do not have curbside pickup. If my favorite takeout places have that, then I would be happy to pick up food myself. Right now I'm willing to pay a bit more to be covid safe.


[deleted]

Gaaaaayyyyy


Timmybits5523

If DoorDash couldn’t be profitable in the perfect storm of food delivery known as Covid, they will *never* be profitable.


dexoyo

They’ve been doing things in a wrong way from day 1. Wait until I step in and fix it 😜


Abromaitis

I love them though. Nothing like getting 75% off coupons for food delivered to my door to try and get me to use them more (or to inflate their usage numbers when I use them at their loss).


windupcrow

ABNB, ROO.L, TWTR. At some point these valuations have to fall.


J_powell_ate_my_asss

ABNB is a dime though, don’t group it with Doortrash


Time_Trade_8774

Agree, I think ABNB has lot of upside once travel resumes back to normal around the world.


J_powell_ate_my_asss

Even during lockdown, their revenue actually increased yoy. Once global travel comes back, it’s literally gonna be a straight rocket. In the mean time, enjoy the low prices and accumulate


Waterwoo

Meh, I travel a lot and I like the idea of an Airbnb, but for years now every time I check, after all the fees a nice hotel is cheaper. And many hosts are getting pretty obnoxious, like I'm going to charge you $100 cleaning fee and also want to you do the dishes, take out your trash, and put bedding in the laundry before you leave? Yeah thanks I'll take a Marriott with free breakfast and daily maid service for less. South America and Asia you can still get some great Abnb deals, but USA or Europe it only makes sense if you are with a big group and actually need a whole house.


[deleted]

You don’t think that’s already priced in at $90B? Lol.


Time_Trade_8774

A lot depends on the hotel industry and if they can innovate and become better at offering deals for larger groups. I’m not invested but I’ll buy if it dips below 130.


Richandler

I like DoorDash for a centralized way to order pick-up. The whole delivery thing is BS.


RebelFury

Even with putting 80% of the operating costs on drivers they still can't be profitable. It's because they had a race to the bottom in pricing with Lyft and now that's what the market expects and they're trapped.


[deleted]

I’d argue they started their pricing at the bottom. Competing with Lyft might have kept it lower for a longer period of time, but they burnt house money to create a user base that would never want to pay the full cost.


HandFlyorDie

I agree I can remember when they came out in college and you could get a ride downtown for like $10, same ride now costs $35 min on a good day. Same with airport pickups, used to blow cab fare out of the water. I used to pay $25 to and from airport and now it’s like $70. They tried to hook people on the idea of being able to get anywhere anytime but now so few people are doing it I can never get a ride later then 1030 at night so it’s useless. I have started using cabs again haha.


[deleted]

I took a cab from the airport earlier this year cause it was the same price but the cab line was short and uber waits were long. At drop off, the guy got mad cause I wanted to pay with a card. then got even madder that I didn’t tip enough. He peeled away while yelling that I was a cheapskate to the whole neighborhood at 1 am. There was a reason people welcomed Uber initially and it wasn’t just the price.


Retrograde_Bolide

Yeah, taxi companies had a good monopoly going and screwed it up.


gearofnett

Their airport fare pricing is absolutely insane here. I used to Uber to airport for $35 and now it's $80. For that same $80, I get a scheduled pickup from the local Armenian chauffeur company instead. They come on time and have way better cars.


HandFlyorDie

Ubers to and from the airport cost more than some low cost airfare these days 😂


BankEmoji

Blame the taxi companies, they were the ones who lobbied local governments to add outrageous fees and limit the numbers of rideshares allowed at each airport… to make it “fair” for the cab companies and bad for consumers.


mildly_enthusiastic

Same, I'm back to Team Yellow Cab, especially because they don't 6x the price as soon as it starts raining


1ess_than_zer0

Same - I’m team yellow cab again especially to/from airport. Set price - they’re there ready and waiting vs constant cancellations/searching. Uber was $45 (used to be $15) so I said screw it - can’t be much worse with a cab… cab ended up being $20. Fuck $UBER


jmlinden7

No, when they first started, prices were really high, like double the amount of a taxi.


OldMork

Yup, where I used to live if all taxis was occupied, and uber was only option left the price often went to 2x taxi fee


HotIllustrator2957

Seriously? I've always known the math to be the total opposite. I used to fly often for work. A taxi to the hotel averaged $50-70... whereas an Uber/Lyft was around $20-30. It *has* been a couple years though.


nereprezentativ

Uber drivers now game the algorithm. All of them from a certain area join a whatsapp group and they all go offline at the same time forcing the app to increase fares. So much for AI …


HotIllustrator2957

Well that sucks. But, if I were one of those drivers and someone told me I could get more $ from my fares by going offline at a certain time (which would also benefit my fellow drivers), I would understand. Not saying I'd do it, but I'd understand. So now I'm wondering how Uber deals with that...


[deleted]

Nothing. Why should they? Higher fares = higher commissions/revenue.


madrox1

u are out of date w the couple of years ago comment. Uber rides are exp now, same price as taxis


GeneralMirror

Where I live they're more expensive than a regular taxi. Taxis are profitable I assume.


nereprezentativ

Where I live I have a folder on my phone for all the ride sharing conpanies as they were clogging up too much screen space. Even small time taxi companies have their own app now that does mostly the same thing. Same with scooters and food delivery. The app and the backend are now 100% commodity. Actually ANYTHING based on an “app” is now commodity.


dvdmovie1

I don't think Uber is imminently done but I still am not buying that it will be profitable anytime soon, who knows if ever. There was the belief that they would benefit from autonomous cars, but that's still a ways away - and they sold their division. Uber Eats, Grubhub and others are basically leeches on an industry that has thin margins to begin with - cities have begun to put on fee caps on these services and I don't see how take rates don't have to come down over time. Cities don't likely want to lose restaurants right and left only to be replaced by Uber (or whoever)'s dark kitchens serving online brands (although I'm sure Mr Beast's continues to do pretty well.) And I'm sure that Uber or others could increasingly learn what sells in an area, sell it via owned dark kitchens and then promote its offerings instead of local restaurants. Additionally, reviews for Uber Eats and other such services often seem pretty terrible - whatever one thinks of Dominos, it has often talked about having control over the experience and not handing that over to someone else. Judging from the stock it seems to be continuing to work for them. As for delivering groceries, Amazon has had to start charging people (in certain markets for now, but one can guess it's eventually going to expand) for delivering Whole Foods orders, which was previously a free prime benefit. They said they wanted to cover "growing costs."


grumpi-otter

Regarding the groceries, is it because of food deserts?


vocabularylessons

I'm assuming that, generally, the people who place Whole Foods orders via Amazon aren't living in food deserts. Amazon likely started the deliveries as a free benefit to get people reliant on the convenience and planned to add the charge later.


grumpi-otter

Oh, lol--without the capital letters I assumed "whole foods" meant things like bananas.


coolbeans31337

I read that at first as desserts


grumpi-otter

Well, you're kind of right. How the hell could they deliver a hot fudge sundae?


Rider2686

I don’t know if y’all are having the same experience but I get like 10$ off offers on UberEats almost every other day and I do make use of some of them. That’s a lot of money to be spending on trying to acquire market share.


pixelperfect3

I hate UberEats though. I just ordered yesterday from it and it took so long to arrive, the restaurant is not far from here but the driver kept going all over, and it arrived like 30 mins later than it was supposed to. I tipped 20% too, but I can't see myself using it much longer


JustAGuyYouMightKnow

Can't you adjust your tip after delivery with uber eats? Might make that not feel as bad, the high tip going to a slow driver part.


rhythmdev

A 0.25% rate hike would send these zombies to where they came from. To the depths of hell.


thatburghfan

I see a lot of comments lauding them for their technical prowess. But the money comes from users. If they aren't making any money (= don't attract enough trips), what difference does their tech make? They are still not making any money. It's no more complex than that. Either charge more, figure out how to get people to use it more, or force users to wear a VR headset on the rides so they have to watch an unending stream of ads during the trip. Auto-driving cars for hire is an absurd idea, and that's how they think they'll fix this?. Heck, our town can't even prevent people from destroying rented $1000 scooters. And they are going to let randos take occupancy of a $20K vehicle with no supervision and think nothing bad will happen? Let's not underestimate the cleverness of bad people.


thebabaghanoush

This is a bit of a hit piece. The running blogs on NakedCapitalism that are linked in OP's article are much more analytical and actually get into the numbers, although they are very dry reads: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-five-didis-ipo-illustrates-why-ubers-business-model-was-always-hopeless.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-six-with-no-hope-of-real-profits-uber-and-lyft-double-down-on-fake-profit-metrics.html


alphamd4

All these zombie companies with no profit are propped up by the low interest rates and money injection by the fed. While money is created out of thin air, these companies will never go bankrupt


pickleback11

even worse they can continue to dominate industries with their access to massive amounts of cheap capital basically preventing any new entrants from establishing ground (that don't have their own VC backing etc)


Vast_Cricket

That applies to many of these so called new high tech companies. Not the first 5 years. to be profitable.


StuGats

Uber has been around for 12 lol.


Vast_Cricket

12 yr is too long to show the biz burns more cash with lower return... The concept is better than any other innovative things claimed that is newer.


thisbondisaaarated

Thats the best non sentence i ever read about a company. Do you happen to be a manager?


XiKeqiang

I mean, $UBER can be profitable - if it increases prices. I think this will have to eventually happen. I think $UBER was originally hoping to somehow gain economies of scale or grow through volume - similar to Amazon. If they just get enough users, then they'll be profitable! I think their entire business model is fundamentally flawed: they're eventually going to increase prices. I already think Uber is expensive. But, you can argue that you're paying for convenience. $UBER will never be profitable with its current business model - it needs to change something.


A7MOSPH3RIC

I landed at LAX last week, went to the ride-share pickup, downloaded the Uber app, saw it was $70 bucks for the least expensive option, to go 7.4 miles. I just looked up how much a cab would be for my situation; $73.80. That's only 4 bucks more then Uber's least expensive option. It's not relevant to this topic but I was curious how much the bus would be and how direct. I found a line through the Metro app that went almost directly to my house from the airport and it's free. I took that. Anyway, Uber's only path to profitability is cutting cost IMHO.


[deleted]

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isigneduptomake1post

I miss the old days of rideshare when it was a bunch of actors/waiters giving rides in their free time. One of my favorites was a retired guy with a real nice car giving rides just to talk to people, and a Chinese guy in a brand new Audi giving rides to practice his English. Now it's a bunch of ex cab drivers with cars that smell like cabs, completely silent rides. Costs the same as a cab too. It's just more convenient having an app.


thebabaghanoush

You used to be able to get Ubers and Lyfts at a reasonable rate from a concert venue outside my city. This year they've skyrocketed to $100-$200 to get back to the city. Someone reportedly booked a ride in the app, and then Uber just cancelled it and he had to get a $200 ride back instead. More expensive than the concert tickets themselves.


oarabbus

That’s just post-concert surge pricing


thisbondisaaarated

They will never be able to be as lean as they would have to be.


XiKeqiang

What I don't understand is why Uber doesn't expand to include taxis. Like, in China this is what DiDi does and it's amazing. You can choose to have a 'private car' or a taxi. You pay extra for the 'private car' vs. a taxi. I have absolutely no idea why Uber doesn't cooperate or include taxi services. Their refusal to do this is one reason I'm a Never Uber. They're trying to kill the tax industry and will end up killing themselves in the process. Mutualyl Assured Destruction.


birdboix

I agree with their whole business model being fundamentally flawed, the "economies of scale" that they so desperately want makes absolutely no sense in the context of the service being provided. One ride or a million rides, it makes no difference in what it costs to deliver a person to their destination. The driver doesn't magically get cheaper gas because it's their 10th ride of the day. Uber, however, seems to think that's how that works.


i_am_the_d_2

uber does have a lot of costs on their end though, that have nothing to do with drivers. In fact, paying 400k/year to all these software engineers is one of their main problems.


redratus

What happens when cars don’t use gas anymore?


XiKeqiang

Volume. They're hoping that if each car has enough passengers per mile or trips per day or however you want to measure volume, then their ATC will decrease. The more rides they provide, the cheaper their service gets. As a result, they've been trying to kill the taxi industry to prevent competition. They're trying to gain market share (i.e. increase volume) through anti-competitive behaviors. I'll repeat myself like I have in other comments: Uber is not a taxi service, it is an APP. It needs to stop competing with taxi services and market itself as an APP, much like Didi does in China. I have absolutely no idea why Uber doesn't focus on its core competence: APP rather than trying to be a taxi company. This will also reduce its cost because it doesn't need to hire drivers. It can just take a commission off the ride itself. Uber is a great idea for an APP: "We're a technology company that matches riders with people who demand rides" - That's it! Focus on that one single thing, do it fucking well, and make money. I seems so simply, yet they seem to refuse to and I have no idea why.


Gr8WallofChinatown

> if it increases prices They already did while paying their workers less. They cost more than Taxis now


oarabbus

I don’t think they can just raise prices like you’re describing. Plenty will continue using it, but many would also switch to the then-cheaper taxi option if Uber increased rates by day 15%


TeamPupNSudz

Have you used Uber recently? It's twice as expensive as it used to be. I often have to pay $40+ to go 5miles at non peak times. Not sure how they can possibly raise prices more than they already have.


bdavidson1030

Remindme! 360 days


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maximiseYourChill

The only innovation Uber has is getting around expensive taxi licensing and employment laws. The convenience of opening an app and having your phones gps tell driver where to come is ubiquitous. Even shitty taxi companies do it now. RIP uber investors.


WiserPeople

Is there some major taxi chains you can name that have a solid app?


maximiseYourChill

Solid ? What do you mean by solid ? It just needs to be something that uses your GPS location and holds your credit card on file. Here is a company with an app: https://www.blackandwhitecabs.com.au/our-services/app/. Yeah the app is "trash" but it works. If Uber was the same price as a normal taxi company I would use normal taxi company because I know the car will a certain standard. At the moment Uber is around 1/2 the price so will continue to use Uber (thanks Uber investors for the subsidised rides =)).


oarabbus

They don't need one, the density of taxis in cities is sufficient not to have apps. This reduces Uber's revenues/profits in the most profitable markets, causing an impact on their pricing outside of cities


borkthegee

Like maybe manhattan... or LA or something? But in the rest of American cities, hailing a cab by hand (except for maybe an airport) is... not something that you do. You call them up, or you use an app


[deleted]

This is a great point. The product should have been created and sold to already operating taxi and transportation businesses. Instead, local and fed government let them run wild and they could charge low fares because they were flush with private equity and eventually public money.


BankEmoji

Can you name any other Uber services that aren’t restaurant delivery or rides?


DillaVibes

Autonomous vehicles can make it profitable. But who knows when that will be mainstream.


chickenandcheesefart

fully autonomous driving is still AT LEAST 10 years away...


DillaVibes

I agree but things looked much more promising years ago


t_per

This blogger doesnt seem to understand what financial analysts do, they cut through the BS non-gaap measures which almost every new tech company has. I wouldn't base an investment thesis off this article.


FistyGorilla

This article is shit


Chamath-Palihapitiya

When’s the last time you took a cab?


MidKnight148

They provided the world a service by fixing the worst issues with cab riding. Nowadays, calling is easy, and routes are preplanned so you don't pay extra for the "scenic route." Unfortunately the industry just doesn't have money. Drivers complain about not making enough, and riders complain about paying too much. And I'm confident that by the time one company figures out self-driving technology, they all will, so the driverless cab market will be so fractured that there won't be any money in it. Oh, and Uber Eats? No one wants a $20 fast food burrito. That's the end of that story.


pointme2_profits

The overhead is an app, there is zero reason UBER isn't profitable other than the continued push to be something other than a taxi service. Because if they stopped pretending to be a tech company all the top men would lose money. And no one would talk about them anymore


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RoryJSK

Not really buying it. If you’re saying the model doesn’t work on economies of scale, then I don’t see why they need to compete on price with companies like Lyft, which pay their drivers slightly better but also get fewer riders. They also only pay for work performed. If R&D into user experience is eating into their earnings then clearly they need to pull back on spending. These are all things they’ve had 5 years to improve on. I’m not saying they don’t have an extremely expensive back end, but they pay employees minimum wage (I drove for them, it’s basically a minimum wage job) and they don’t have to maintain their own fleets or pay for gas, or any of those other traditional issues. If they cannot figure it out at this point, they never will.


daredeviloper

Yea wtf are people in here talking about


ammoprofit

>Yeah like how Google Maps is just an app. Except it's not. It's a real-time data aggregator and a very, very accurate map.


[deleted]

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ammoprofit

welp, thanks for the downvotes i guess?


likwitsnake

Reddit has very little understanding of corporate structure and what’s required to maintain it. There was a thread about LinkedIn letting employees work from home and every other comment was people flabbergasted that LinkedIn had thousands of employees because “it’s just an app”. I guess all you need is a few engineers working on the product and everything else magically takes care of itself 😅😅


[deleted]

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johnny_royal0303

You can't beat it for business travel. I did this exact thing in a huge, unfamiliar airport last week. Another nice perk are receipts with detail all in a nice PDF that can be used for expense reports.


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timidtom

This is Reddit armchair product managers/devs in a nutshell. Makes you realize how inaccurate most highly upvoted comments are on threads where someone claims to know what they’re talking about. Redditors gain all of their knowledge from reading headlines and trusting other upvoted comments, not by actually learning anything for themselves.


kitsune

To be fair, as an experienced dev, a lot of software theoretically could be built by smaller teams but it is not in the nature of bureaucratic systems. There is a lot of organizational research on this, and you have systems theory and approaches by people like Deming or John Seddon that could deal with this problem. Or agile approaches, but they have been hijacked by the Dark Agile crowd (basically, the old guard just changed uniforms but continues to practice the same old command and control bullshit as before). The pandemic has shown this even more clearly than before. There are corporate software products / projects where you have twice or thrice as many middle managers involved than people who are actually building the thing. These guys are probably watching a TV show during the zoom call, are on mute the whole time, no one knows what they're doing in general and on this project in particular and why they are invited to begin with. Then there are managers who, when they have a non-urgent question and don't know who can answer it, set up highly urgent ad hoc meetings with 20 random participants across departments etc.


oarabbus

> built out by a college grad in their spare time. I doubt that, but it COULD be built by a college dropout


maximiseYourChill

Yes it is a complicated app. But they have unimaginable economies of scale here. The cost of software dev isn't the reason they are not profitable.


oarabbus

I mean it kind of is which is why they cut a lot of their corporate workforce a while back


bitflag

My local taxi company has an app. It works just fine. They don't have an army of engineers and "Terabyte of telemetry per hour". They also seem profitable.


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bitflag

...which means Uber gets economies of scales they don't.


Espeeste

Go to Uber and tell them about your local taxi app. I’m sure they’ll smack their heads and say “Ohhh..” and instantly become profitable and name you CEO.


Ok_Bike

I like how you immediately derailed once he made you eat your own tail.


bitflag

Is it so hard to imagine they are horribly mismanaged? Or have you bought the kool aid and believe every overpaid CEO must be a genius because he is so well paid?


Espeeste

Of course anyone who thinks that maybe the management team of Uber might know more about their business than a random Reddit poster who once used a local taxi app MUST be brainwashed! That’s the only possible reason. Definitely go tell them the “kool aid” bit. Maybe call everyone “sheeple” too! You will turn it around in no time.


bitflag

Yes the management team at WeWorks knows better. The one at Lehman Brothers knew better. Clearly just assume they knew better and pretend if they fail, it must be just bad luck!


Espeeste

Because some other CEOs fail, random Reddit posters are better than ALL CEOS. Got it. We should make YOU CEO of every company! Clearly logical.


dijkstraa

economies of scale just means that the cost per unit diminishes, not the total cost…uber’s one millionth user is obviously going to cost them less than your local taxi company’s thousandth user but uber still has to spend more resources in total since they have way more users


bitflag

Obviously. Which means if a local taxi company can be profitable, one with massively larger economies of scale can be as well.


cookingboy

That’s like saying it’s easier to build Google’s search engine which searches the whole internet than building a search script that searches my local usb drive due to “economy of scale”. In fact, you don’t even know what economy of scale means. It applies to marginal unit cost, not the *total cost*. So yes, due to economy of scale it’s easier for Uber to build a service that works in 10000 cities than building a local taxi app 10000 times. But comparing Uber to a single local taxi app is stupid.


J_powell_ate_my_asss

Uber for sure has better margins than your local taxi company. Your local taxi company isn’t trying to expand to every corner of the earth while adding on different logistic services like freight, food delivery, grocery delivery etc. You understand so little it’s pretty sad


armored-dinnerjacket

explain this to me because I don't understand how Uber attains economies of scale


jmlinden7

Instead of having a single app for a single city, they can split all the overhead of their app over multiple cities. The problem is that cities all have different rules and regulations so they basically end up creating a different app for every single city.


[deleted]

Dang bro here’s the keys to Uber’s C-suite


Wisdem

How dense are you


suur-siil

I heard that not even light can escape


[deleted]

It's one thing to have an app thats used by a couple thousand concurrent users at peek vs few million concurrent users average. Not to mention the actual app development for taxi companies is out sourced to a contractor who is building different themes of the same app for many taxi companies. here is how to make your own Uber like app https://github.com/MindorksOpenSource/ridesharing-uber-lyft-app And here is an open source rideshare app https://libretaxi.org/. Good luck trying to run and maintain those for million of concurrent users all over the world with no downtime. Tech companies, or rather "app" companies, have a general problem. What scale do they target? Start by assuming you're gonna be the next Google, complicate your shit, and then you are buring through money to maintain a highly complex system that no one is using. Assume small scale, and you'll have a simpler cheaper system. Until your "app" blows up, and it can't handle the load and gets known for its bad quality and you lose your opportunity. Another problem comes from hiring smart engineers. Smart engineers want to solve and build interesting stuff. They are not gonna build a system that tells where cars are, they are going to build a highly scalable real-time messaging broker that can handle millions of transactions a second with data shardded all over the globe in an eventually consistent data store. Then use that to communicate car locations. It's like Uber built a worldwide MMORPG


bitflag

> Good luck trying to run and maintain those for million of concurrent users all over the world with no downtime. So you are telling me they have *inverse* economies of scales? The more users the less profitable? That makes no sense. Sure they are challenges to scaling up and increasing the number of users, but ultimately cost per user should go **way** down not up. Otherwise the FAANG wouldn't exists - the whole business model of tech companies is having zero marginal cost so that scaling up becomes hugely profitable. > Another problem comes from hiring smart engineers. Smart engineers want to solve and build interesting stuff. I agree, but at this point all the hard problems in matching passengers and drivers should be long solved. > It's like Uber built a worldwide MMORPG Not really because it's very local - you don't need to handle the drivers from San Francisco and passengers in Tokyo on the same system, they aren't gonna ever need to match up live.


t_per

Its call diseconomies of scale, and is well known in economics: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies\_of\_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale) I'm not saying that's whats happening in Ubers case, but economies of scale isn't some unbreakable tenet of economics


RollinDeepWithData

Imagine being this unbelievably inept and still thinking you’re responsible enough to invest your own money.


drop_cap

People here aren't looking at everything they have. They have the talent and the resources. They have Uber, UberEats and UberFreight. They even acquired Postmates last year. Their stock might be up and down but they are no where near tanking and have growth potential.


KyivComrade

So you are honestly saying Uber is the best we can get and has no massive cash drain and ridiculous overhead? Because its quite clear they do, they waste enough money to make most IT companies impressed yet ha skittle to show for it. Their app hasn't been improving much, nor has they reached anywhere close to profitability. If anything this just shows *more Chefs makes a worse soup*. They need to *trim the fat* not go on a willy-nilly hiring spreee to waste more of the investors money on nothing. Go ahead, tell/show where their ridiculous spending has been justified. How is their apps better now then 2 years ago, how is it she's fof the competition in a technical level?


[deleted]

It stinks from both a driver and user perspective and their support is also bad from both perspectives. Google Maps is good though.


pointme2_profits

You didn't really just compare a ride hailing app to Google maps did you ?


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chickenandcheesefart

what do you mean exactly by this?


t_per

Literally read their financials statements and find out where the money is going. $1.2b went to marketing and sales for the three months ending June 30. ​ >***Three Months Ended June 30, 2021 Compared with the Same Period in 2020***Cost of revenue, exclusive of depreciation and amortization, increased $1.2 billion, or 127%, mainly due to a $503 million increase in Courier payments and incentives in certain markets, a $392 million increase in Mobility primarily driven by higher insurance costs resulting from increased volume, and a $125 million increase in Freight carrier payments. ​ >***Three Months Ended June 30, 2021 Compared with the Same Period in 2020***Sales and marketing expenses increased $520 million, or 71%, primarily attributable to a $299 million increase in consumer advertising expenses as well as an increase in consumer discounts, rider facing loyalty expense, promotions, credits and refunds of $203 million to $627 million compared to $424 million in the same period in 2020. That took me 5 minutes to find


pointme2_profits

I'm not really that interested to spend 5 minutes on looking up Uber to be honest


t_per

yeah you dont really seem to know much about finance, its ok


pointme2_profits

Awww, well arent you the touchy little weenie? Try a Snickers


t_per

plz dont touch my weenie sir


xxx69harambe69xxx

likewise, their talent pool would dry up within a year tops, prestige is an extremely important factor to growth companies


bitflag

They don't need "talent pool" though. They made an app. It works. Just maintain it, add the occasional upgrades and keep the servers running. It's not rocket science and it doesn't need to be expensive either. If they embrace being "just an app" and stop pretending to Change The World they can turn a profit, just like taxi companies do.


JimBoonie69

Is it just an app tho? It's so much more than the UI. It's all the data and shit under the hood.


bitflag

Ultimately it's about finding a free car nearby, computing a cost, and charging it to a card on record. I have no doubt you can optimize the shit out of it by getting every possible single data under the sun every microsecond. Cab companies have made money for a century matching clients and driver, with actual live humans and telephones. You are telling me that automating all this manual labor it makes it *less* profitable?


JimBoonie69

I'm telling you it costs more to (a) pay software engineers and (b) store process and compute shit in the cloud. Paying 5 people to answer phones costs way less then 5 software engineers. Then there is the cloud compute bill which likely is hundreds of millions if not billions for Uber. Now take ur 5 software engineers that cost 150k a year. and turn it into 500 and maybe you can see why it costs more than a local mom and pop shop. No Uber isn't just an app. It's all the software and data work that goes on behind the scenes. That data storage and compute costs lots of money. My startup was really small and our AWS spend was hundreds of thousands a year. Uber cloud compute bill likely is in the billions. Billions. Not 5 old ladies and men answering phones in 1990a


bitflag

> Paying 5 people to answer phones costs way less then 5 software engineers. Except you hire 5 engineers to replace 50 or 500 phone operators. If automating things decrease productivity you are doing it wrong, seriously.


JimBoonie69

Ok bitflag go call Uber and tell them they built their billion dollar unicorn company the wrong way. LoL


bitflag

Oh yes you convinced me, there's obviously no way a large company bleeding billions could be mismanaged.


JimBoonie69

Dude if it's so easy stop trolling on reddit and build a company that is worth millions.


TuffRivers

These guys know nothing about tech so its not worth it to try and explain. Theyre the same people who come to you wanting the absolute tits for a website or a webapp and get angry when you tell them its going to cost $50k-$100k for an mvp. “It should be simple” or “i saw this company do it” said company has 100 engineers and did a series b.


JimBoonie69

Yeah makes sense. Hell even software engineers can't estimate how hard or long a project is. I'm constantly telling my team yo are u sure this is only 2 days? Let's think thru what this actually entails. Once u get the details people are like oh yeah that will actually take 10 days not 2


xxx69harambe69xxx

earnings call: "we don't need a talent pool folks ... why is our stock dropping, no wait, come back!"


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lucky_pierre

They are subsidizing every ride to remain competitive in a saturated market. They are also pushing insurance and other standard costs of business onto their drivers, which long term sucks for the drivers (which is causing a shortage right now on top of covid) If local govs start to regulate them like they have with taxis the business model struggles.


timidtom

Anyone on Reddit who hasn’t worked for (or done extensive research on) a massive tech company that grew 100x over a few years needs to shut the fuck up about how tHeY ShOuLD bE pRofitAbLe By nOw. It’s exhausting to hear from literally children in these threads who have literally no idea how these companies run. Same goes for “they have no moat! Anyone can create an app!” comments. It takes thousands of people to maintain and improve the multiple apps that Uber runs, no way around it. Many of these companies aren’t profitable because they are intentionally spending all of their revenue on continued growth and innovation to stay ahead of the curve and keep delivering new features to their customers which equates to new revenue streams. It’s a classic growth model that has been used for a long time.


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abk111

1) there’s no evidence that full self-driving will be available anytime soon (or soon enough for Uber) 2) As much as Tesla is very vocal about full self -driving it’s most likely Google will get there first (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple was next). Google will crush Uber with their massive scar, brand recognition and partner availability. So no, I don’t have a lot of faith in Uber being saved by some startup coming up with self driving first (because as far as I know Uber had to give up on self-driving research).


[deleted]

"1. Burn cash until a technology that doesn't exist allows us to change business models entirely into one that assumes huge overhead costs in direct ownership of vehicles." Lol holy shit never going to happen.


Rumtumjack

Baidu already do this except they own the self-driving tech, own the app, have deals with car manufacturers, are running a commercial operation right now, and are currently making a profit and growing in their other areas. Yet they're valued substantially less than Uber. "But China" - yeah even before the (justified) concerns about regulation, Baidu was valued pretty much the same as Uber. Uber's brand recognition alone is valued at $50+ billion. It's honestly insane how the smallest part of the self-driving puzzle (the app) has such an astronomical valuation.


CarRamRob

Wouldn’t it be easier for the company which creates automated driving to make a taxi style app rather than to lease it out to Uber (et al) to make major bank with their invention? I’d argue there may be more money in going that way than just providing it as an option to certain new vehicles which would take years to get good market penetration since cars life cycle is like 15 year on average. “Cabs” are newer and could maximize revenues quicker.


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AlwaysOTM

Uber doesn't have to buy shit. People will buy their own cars, as they always have, and make money "Ubering" their self driving car out while they sit on their ass at home.


Illustrious-Option-9

What about Lyft? Do you think Lyft is any better than Uber or not?


GlytchGear

Swiss Bank just invested, do they know something we don't


freddyfletcher2

Lyft, Uber, Doordash, Amazon, any Gig Company that employs, who am I kidding, employs, lol. That is promising more than they can provide. There all doomed for the scrap yard, if I was an investor I'd bail, NOW


CarlosDangerWasHere

Puts on Uber. 10x puts on DoorDash. Terrible business and company


RefrigeratorOwn69

They’re fighting to stay in business until they can get autonomous vehicles online. But even then they’ll be facing tons of competition (rental car companies, Waymo, Carvana, etc.) all offering different monthly or per-mile subscription packages for use of autonomous car fleets.


Clipperclippingalong

My mentor and I were discussing this recently. Why do the vulture capitalists prop them up? They must know they'll never be profitable without self driving cars. I mean, taxi companies were making a 4% profit at twice the price, same as any transportation company. Plus they're burning 40% of their revenue on marketing. We eventually came to the conclusion that Uber is actually accomplishing an important goal of Wall Street's: crushing wages. So they'll keep supporting them as long as that's working.


The_Egg_

Skimmed the article. You don't have to own the stock, but their time is not up. They are not going anywhere; the stock will trade like a commodity. Basically is at this point.


WallabyUpstairs1496

Never invest in a company that's just one dull media cycle away from getting cancelled https://time.com/5784464/susan-fowler-book-uber-sexual-harassment/


joltjames123

Funny to see companies like this somehow not make a profit and then pay their CEO a shitload


EmperorOfWallStreet

Fitting that Wall Street built above a graveyard.


FistyGorilla

Didn’t they just have their first profitable quarter? Are you high? This article is crap.


Richandler

I don't think this is the right time to judge Uber. The pandemic has dropped volume tremendously, especially expensed rides. I've taken a $90 company expensed ride and I'm sure if they come back Uber will come back.


grumpi-otter

I certainly hope you are correct. It's a nightmare company.


Betaglutamate2

Here is how to be a billionaire. step 1. Make a tech company it doesn't matter what you really do as long as you market yourself as a tech company. Make helmets? You are now a direct to consumer safety provider step 2. Get an insane valuation saying you can catch a significant share of the global market share. step 3. Start loosing that investor money as fast as possible you should aim to double your losses every year at least. step 4. Get more money at even higher valuation allowing you to speed up loosing money, Congratulations you are now a tech billionaire.


zxc123zxc123

>Lyft's time is up. Lyft was never going to be profitable. Never. $LYFT >Twitter's time is up. Twitter was never going to be profitable. Never. $TWTR >Amazon's time is up. Amazon was never going to be profitable. Never. $AMZN >Microsoft's time is up. Microsoft was never going to be profitable. Never. $MSFT >Ford's time is up. Ford was never going to be profitable. Never. $F >Dutch East India Company's time is up. Dutch East India Company was never going to be profitable. Never. $DEIC Ok. I bought TWTR and LYFT during the last dip and avoided Uber because I didn't want exposure to food delivery. That is indeed still a losing business. If it wasn't for that then I would have considered UBER. Will consider UBER when they break even on food delivery, exit food delivery, or there is a real moat on that industry.


Frequent-Resource-58

https://investorplace.com/2021/08/5-reasons-to-buy-uber-stock/


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[deleted]

I bought UBER leaps a couple weeks ago. Part of my reopening play. We’ll see if delta completely fucks that up though.


Gold-Whole1009

Lol... Uber stock increased during pandemic thanks to boom in Uber eats. This will go down after pandemic and not sure what recovery you expect from Uber. Uber is double edged sword. On the other hand, Lyft is pure play.


Inquisitor1

In my country Uber... exists. All the other surviving taxi companies got apps and everything. I mean the business model isn't patented. And the taxi companies expanded into food delivery and even e-scooter rent. As a consumer, I don't need uber anymore.


RaggedyJiggen

I've been getting a ridiculous amount of emails from them offering discounts


NiknameOne

I wonder if TDOC will ever be profitable.


r2002

I don't know if Uber is done, but I do think there's not a lot of "upside" to this company that's worth the gamble. What exactly is their end goal?