Uber planning stock market flotation 'in April'

[TheGreenBastard]

Amazon's strategy was to undercut small business on price (tax conditions were a bonus) That meant taking a loss. Wasn't until the small businesses were bankrupt did Amazon prices start creeping up. So along comes Tesla, Uber, (and a shocking number of others trading on S&P 500 etc) to copy & paste Amazon's business model. Airbnb pulled it off tremendously whilst Uber is failing miserably. What's the difference?

There are a number of public and private corporations out there operating with huge debts. A number of UK Plc's too on the verge of collapse for trying to play Amazon's game. It'll all end in tears.

The "business model" is as old as commerce itself - Walmart before Amazon and others before that. Your cataclysmic conclusion just shows how uninformed you are.

[TheGreenBastard]

RIP Entrepreneurship if UK businesses are operating in the fashion you suggest.

US companies certainly are, and have been absolutely dominating world industry for the past half century.

[tomtomagain]

Well I tell you my company certainly did not borrow money to get my foot on the ladder! Most successful businesses I'm involved with scale up rather than distort & disrupt with capital hoping the remaining customers land on their doorstep. That's not making business that's something else entirely, which could only have been born in Murica. You think Microsoft started off by spending capital?! No, they convinced customers to buy something they never had before by being inventive.

RIP Entrepreneurship if UK businesses are operating in the fashion you suggest.

I'm not entirely sure why you think I was referring to UK businesses when I was posting about Uber specifically and Silcon Valley start-ups more generally.

Getting big fast is absoultely the requirement for any company that relies on network effects for it's long-term survival. Posting a quaterly profit is a secondary consideration.

Uber floating allows it's early stage investors to exit with a handsome reward. Which they will plow back into the next wave of start-ups and which will cover the loses for the 90% of other start-ups they invested in but which failed early on.

It ties in their key staff, who now have valuable share options, and gives Uber a better leverage to hire more talent, and of course will give them a massive capital boost to allow them to continue their expansion.

What did Amazon invent? Feck all. They just stole other people's business by age old undercutting, which always hits the buffers when the quality of small independents is lost. Rinse n repeat.

What did Amazon invent? Well that's obvious, they "invented" an entirely new way of doing retail, one-click purchasing ( Amazon patented, that's why other companies don't do it and why you don't enter your CVV when your check-out ), next-day delivery ( free on subscription ), massive automation of their warehouses, the first decent e-book service/hardware combination ( I love my Kindle ), consumerising "The Cloud" in the form of AWS ... don't remember that many traditional IT vendors offering pay-per minute VM's, databases et al before Amazon came along.

As for the comment of "Stealling other people's business". That's just dumb. Businesses don't steal business. They offer a more compelling reason to make consumers switch.

[scooterscot]

US companies certainly are, and have been absolutely dominating world industry for the past half century.

US companies dominate global avoidance of tax receipts but certainly not business. China takes the business hat. Even Germany exports more than the US despite a smaller population.

The largest US industry is the defence sector, hence why they're splattering their Russian counterparts with sanctions.

[TheGreenBastard]

US companies dominate global avoidance of tax receipts but certainly not business. China takes the business hat. Even Germany exports more than the US despite a smaller population.

The largest US industry is the defence sector, hence why they're splattering their Russian counterparts with sanctions.

US dominate global business, that's a fact, China are catching up, but sadly for you they follow the Uber model for their startups, so I'm not sure fetishizing the US's demise at the hands of China conveys what you want.

US exports more than Germany. US and China are less reliant on exports due to large internal markets. I think the sanctions might have more to do with Russia brazenly annexing country's.

You clearly have a narrative, shame it's coupled with stupidity

[scooterscot]

US dominate global business, that's a fact, China are catching up, but sadly for you they follow the Uber model for their startups, so I'm not sure fetishizing the US's demise at the hands of China conveys what you want.

No they don't. The perception is quite different to the realisation. And I certainly don't have a fetish for the demise of and country. What a strange thing to say.

• Top exporting countries worldwide 2017 | Statista

[scooterscot]

I'm not entirely sure why you think I was referring to UK businesses when I was posting about Uber specifically and Silcon Valley start-ups more generally.

Getting big fast is absoultely the requirement for any company that relies on network effects for it's long-term survival. Posting a quaterly profit is a secondary consideration.

I was think about Uber and London taxi drivers and their protest to be specific.

Network effects are important for adoption for sure but necessary for all businesses. You think funeral directors care about network effects?

[tomtomagain]

Back on the topic of Uber:

What is a car? It's an expensive metal box that costs you a tonne of cash to buy ( or hire on a lease ), you have to fill it with fuel, tax it, insure it and maintain it and it loses value over time. Not only that but it's a pain in the ass to park and cities and governments have the car-driver in their sights as a source of more revenue AND to rub salt into the wound ... you only use it for a couple of hours a day.

So given that. Why wouldn't you subscribe to a Car-As-A-Service?

Because you like your car? That's probably just because you are middle-aged, rich and irrationally attached to material objects. What if you don't like cars or are poor or young or very old or live in a busy urban centre. Cars for those groups are a burden.

So why wouldn't you subscribe to a CAAS?

Because you don't want someone else driving you around? Self-driving cars will remove that obstacle.

So the interesting question for me is : What happens to society when CAAS is common place? What happens to the little local garages and the glitzy car-dealerships?

What happens to the motor-manufactures when society only needs 75% of the cars that it needs today because of better resource utilisation? What happens to them if society only needs 50%? What happens to an economy built around the production and export of the traditional motor car?

[TheGreenBastard]

No they don't. The perception is quite different to the realisation. And I certainly don't have a fetish for the demise of and country. What a strange thing to say.

• Top exporting countries worldwide 2017 | Statista

It might seem strange, but what is one to assume when you're bleating false facts, like German exports exceeding the US.

Using exports as the one true measure of business domination is retarded.

Consider the nature of Amazon, FB, Google - exports are an horrendous measure of success for such companies.

[tomtomagain]

You think funeral directors care about network effects?

No, I think that given they have a limited but consistent supply of customers, they concentrate on personal service and running their businesses efficiently.

However, funerals are unreasonably expensive and its well documented that funeral costs can push some families into poverty. Hence the popularity of the funeral-plan savings scheme.

That's generally a sign of a poorly working market. Ripe for innovation. Uber-funerals ... self-driving hearse and a robot that shovels you into a furnace. I like it. You should do it.