> it pretty much sold by itself -- similar to how Zuckerberg created Facebook, which sold by itself.
Haha don't know where to start. Facebook could have gone to shit in so many ways just like all the predecessors like Myspace and Friendster, but they made all the right decisions and won. Same goes for Uber.
Uber and Lyft operate in a space where there's a huge barrier to entry capital-wise.
This is not the case for 100% Internet based businesses like Facebook.
So they're really completely different models and therefore the competitive landscape can't resemble each other. It's more fair to compare the Uber-Lyft dynamic to rental car businesses like Enterprise-Hertz.
There doesn't have to be a single global monopolist. There probably won't be.
People do move, and the convenience of one app to hail taxis everywhere is appealing. But then again, people don't move that often that installing the local taxi app is too much of an assle.
No no, you've got it a little bit backwards. Right now, the biggest profits for capital are in being bearish about Uber and shorting Uber. This is in the nature of amoral capitalist investment: all the right decisions are 'supporting and enabling Uber' right up to the point where the bubble of valuation pops and then the only right decisions are 'bailing and running away from Uber'.
Kalanick's right decisions are now based on how much he was lying when he said he hadn't divested the slightest bit from Uber. I'm guessing that everyone read his character well, and that he was in fact lying on a massive scale and has many lifetimes worth of stashed-away wealth. Right now, winning for him means avoiding prosecution and jail (probably easy to do) and Uber is over, already.
So Uber lost, and anyone still clinging to Uber has lost (but there will be amazingly few of those). It's the frog and scorpion fable, really. Travis isn't the scorpion, and Uber isn't the frog. Uber is the scorpion and Wall Street is the frog.
What do i have a little bit backwards? You are free to talk about your opinion but it's kinda confusing when you just reply randomly to an unrelated thread.
I am talking about how execution matters, because parent said Uber just worked on its own to get where they have, just like Facebook worked on its own to get where they have. None of these are true.
My comment has nothing to do with wall street or shorting or whatever concepts you bring up.
You've said 'Uber and Facebook made all the right decisions and won'. I think you've got that backwards (and was indeed replying to you): I think it only looked like they made right decisions because Wall Street looked at those decisions and went 'hot damn, one of us!'.
Facebook may have won. I think you'll find Uber didn't win, because Wall Street needed Uber to remain the Travis Uber, in spite of any laws or limitations, and that's clearly no longer true.
Wouldn't investors be able to look at ownership information to see if Travis's shares decreased? I doubt all of the investors would take him at face value, especially the ones who publicly criticized him.
It's essentially the same mechanism: the terminology is immediately understood. The market is public opinion, in a rather special public. If these people all 'short' Uber, it might not even go public. I guess the equivalent would be trying to take all the VC money back? And obviously the equivalent to a long position would be investing more VC money in Uber.
Nobody would seriously argue that there's no difference between the two because Uber doesn't exist yet in 'stock' terms. They need to translate the initial investor enthusiasm into an IPO, so short/long spells out the likely climate for said IPO.
Haha don't know where to start. Facebook could have gone to shit in so many ways just like all the predecessors like Myspace and Friendster, but they made all the right decisions and won. Same goes for Uber.