My point as ever remains this: people are looking at Uber's current model (where it loses 15% on each fare), its revenue, and its losses, and shitting themselves. They are correctly observing that to raise fares they would have to suffer a loss of customers. Those people are missing several points:
1. The bet on autonomous cars reducing Uber's fares further whilst simultaneously driving them to profitability
2. Uber's intent to spread beyond just passenger carrying
3. The fact that Uber could cut its expensive R&D and autonomous car team today and likely be profitable.
4. The fact that these numbers are simply the same numbers as most/many/all startups raising venture capital, simply orders of magnitude higher. They raised $15bn at a $100bn valuation? Great. There are companies who have raised $15m at $100m.
> I can only justify Uber's recent valuations if I entirely discount regulatory risk, assume huge GDP growth in the developing economies + Uber establishing dominance there and that Uber goes completely driverless in the next 10 years, without any legal/licencing costs.
A more interesting discussion (although irrelevant to my argument), and one we'd struggle to make without, y'know, actually having the data we need to value the business. Which is to say that we're sitting on the sidelines trying to guess the strategy and numbers. Parts of it are clear but I'd expect that a VC investor in Uber probably knows a bit more about what they want to do than us.
