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When Disruption Gets Too Disruptive
With massive strikes in France and now drivers shooting passengers, Uber is making headlines everywhere. While some might say any publicity is good publicity (and any disruption is good disruption), for the firm valued at $50 billion (with a stunning operating loss of $470 million and revenues of only $415 million) perhaps there is a limit to both press and disruption...
As Bloomberg reported yesterday from a recent prospectus:
- *UBER BOND PROSPECTUS SHOWS $470M OPERATING LOSS
- *UBER BOND PROSPECTUS SHOWS $415M IN REVENUE
And that's what makes Uber worth $50 billion to the Shubik Dollar Auction private equity holders.
And, as Bloomberg details, Uber has a multitude of problems...
Uber also routinely upsets regulators, which are challenging or banning the company from California to India. Last week, French President François Hollande said Uber's service is illegal and called for it to be dismantled. The latest bump in the road involves drivers in China scamming Uber via fake fares. Uber faces challenges practically everywhere, and we’ve mapped out some of the highlights below.
Perhaps - given this global furore - Uber's disruption is too disruptive.
A Florida Uber driver has been reportedly suspended pending a police investigation after he broke the company’s anti-gun policy and shot a passenger who was allegedly choking him during an argument.
Clearwater police are investigating after the passenger in an Uber vehicle was allegedly shot Sunday night during an altercation with the driver, 74-year-old Steven Rayow. Passenger Marc Memel, 60, was shot in the foot and treated and released from a local hospital, a local NBC affiliate reported.
“There was a gentleman sitting in his car and there was like blood dripping out of the car so I was concerned what was going on,” Justin Smith, who works at Union Burger on Mandalay Avenue, told the station. “I came back inside to get a couple of rags to just to make sure he wasn’t bleeding out or anything, but it wasn’t nothing like vital.”
Police spokesman Rob Shaw said: “The driver basically told us that the passenger started choking him. He had his hands around his neck, and in fear of losing consciousness, that’s when the driver of the car pulled out a gun, and in the ensuing struggle, that gun went off.”
Police said Mr. Rayow is a retired New York City Police officer and has a concealed weapons permit.
A new Uber policy prohibits riders or drivers from possessing a gun. An Uber spokesman said Mr. Rayow’s access to the Uber platform has been removed, NBC reported.
Sunday’s incident is a glaring example of why Uber needs to be regulated, with drivers getting a level 2 background check, Public Transportation Commission Executive Director Kyle Cockream told NBC.
* * *
Problems aside, Uber was raising a $1.5 billion funding round as recently as May that would value the closely held technology company at $50 billion.
The six-year-old company has recently begun to put more cash toward hiring lobbyists.
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if you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars http://www.philiacband.com/propaganda.html
But it's high tech, and high touch,
and trending now, now, now!
The guy behind Uber makes Musk look like a piker
Next gen is a fleet of self-driving Uber Teslas that guarantee revenue by driving passengers thousands of miles out of their way.
Elon Musk is an asshole, narcissistically pontificating upon the course of mankind while swigging off the goobermenit teat
Like his environmental meme for auto sales (not true) while happily dumping bazillions of tons of toxic crap into the environment with every space launch.
Hypocritical government funded leach upon humanity
Not to mention the environmental carnage that occurs in order to make those fancy batteries. Total scam targeted with a "laser focus" on the ego of the wannabes.
Listen, Über makes sense for all the down trodden brothers in city centers who want a leg up becoming gainfully employed, of true entrepreneurial spirit, taking whatever car they can hot-wire out to the glorious McMansion studded suburbs to ensure everybody has a "taste" of the Good Life
You know Zippy, I love to read your comments but I'm almost as convinced as I am that there are many Tylers that there are multiple knukles commenters also. I can't believe the same person wrote both of the above statements.
Yeah, and only one minute apart .... BUSTED !
Maybe Knukles is one of the Tylers posting under that name?
If you believe that this comment board is not passively moderated and directed...
(Oh...I do realize that timestamps are changed due to edits. But ONE MINUTE?)
HA HA! knukles' account is 5 Years, 41 Weeks old. That put's it at the week around September 16, 2009. 2 months after ZH went posted its oldest article.
You might be right. :-)
zh started January 2009.
Okay. I just looked at the date on the "last" page article. The oldest article I could find was 6/18/2009
Need I really have put the "sarc" on the one?
Fear not the slings and arrows of the unwashed, Knucks.
I have grown fond of your whimsical schizophrenia.
Carry on.
Being one of the Tylers is actually a compliment.
There is no sling or arrow intended.
You do not respect your hosts?
I happen to respect my hosts. The Tylers have awakened me and have educated me.
we Tylered some folks.
Truth is you are all Tylers to the citizenry of the greater ZH metroplex. Hat tip to all you life ninjas. Thanks for sharing what you share.
I'm here for the information exchange and to make the random smartass comment dipped in personal opinion, just to test the waters of my own sanity with yous guys, my AA drinking buddies. It helps take the mind off the inevitable death of the last human being which I am more certain daily, will happen in my lifetime.
The only question is what will deliver the nuclear payload: ICBM or GE Thermonuclear Power Plant? Will it be slow and agonizing, starving, bleeding? Or will it be over in a big bright flash? Cancer or evaporation?
Sleep tight bitches, and thanks again!
The sad part is, I was rooting for the "Elan Musk..." knukles and he's loosing in the ZH opinion polls.
He's a leech but a hell of a salesman.
Uh...I think that ye mean lecher...as in lechery.
No ol' Knuks is a pirate aye tell ye...a pirate at that.
I see 'im a raisin' the Jolly Roger an'a fightin' the King.
No time fer leechin'
Too much bounty to be had.
Dupe
Ripley's Marching Chinese.
http://www.bookdrum.com/books/something-wicked-this-way-comes/11661/book...
Only a Dolla' from each one I could afford to retire.
Kyle Cockream ? did he have to go to public school ? musta been interesting.
Uber means avoiding filthy Muslim cabbies !
Uber
Useless
Business
Endevour
re-visited
QE cash flowing into this shit company to finance its fight with lawsuits, instead of contributing to society, just another pheonomenon of the times we live in.
Uber would be contributing to society if they could be left alone by the regulators who can't stand the competition their friends receive.
Uber is worth $50 BILLION. By far the biggest transportation company out there.
Who do they compete with? Thousands of local small tax-paying taxicab companies?
It's Walmart trying to convince you that pop-n-mom shops own China. Wake up.
I think you need to go back to class and understand the difference between "is worth" and "is valued at"
I had to get a limosine service to pick me up at the airport, 12 midnight in a new Mercedes SUV, to deliver me to my Pittsburgh destination. Dude held up a sign with Q99X2 on it and picked up my luggage from baggage claim and drove me 35 miles for a little more than Uber couldn't do it for.
Uber might cost a little more, but they throw in the possibility of rape/robbery/murder at no extra charge.
Of course, you read the article right? So you mean "defense against" rape/robbery/murder at not extra charge ... right?
I really don't see rape/robbery/murder as defensible, unless of course you are defending yourself.
You didn't read the article. He was defending himself.
Same as paid Uber trolls that appear to be defending this Uber-parasite.
That article linking to the shooting in Florida might just be the most idiotic thing I've ever read:
"Police said Mr. Rayow is a retired New York City Police officer and has a concealed weapons permit.
And in a case that's clearly self defense:
"Sunday’s incident is a glaring example of why Uber needs to be regulated, with drivers getting a level 2 background check, Public Transportation Commission Executive Director Kyle Cockream told NBC."
Are you fucking kidding me?
Did you read that last bit about background checks. The guys an ex cop I'd like to see his. I'll come back as this guys an angel from heaven an upstanding ex enforcer of the police state.
From all of the evidence presented in the article, there is absolutely no reason to conclude that stricter background checks are necessary. I'm not arguing against stricter back ground checks, per se, but if you're using this case as evidence, you're a fucking idiot.
Also, not all cops suck, man. Judging him based on that is no different than judging him for anything else (looking forward to the downvotes that one gets me... I'll go ahead and say Jews aren't evil either... fucking Zero Hedge commenters....).
Furthermore, CCL holders are statistically proven to be less likely to commit crimes than the general population. There is nothing here to suggest that the weapon going off is a result of negligence or foul play. The only rule he broke was Uber's no-gun policy, and apparently, good for him that he did.
FUCK UBER!
Their damn pop-up ads are driving me crazy!
Ironically, I get more pop-up Uber ads from this site (on my phone) than I do anywhere else..
Yeah I had to download Adblock plus.
Good to go now.
Too bad he only got his foot. I'd pay extra to have Mr. Rayow pick me up in a difficult part of town.
Bubble anyone? What a joke.
Taxi companies have ripped off drivers for years, overcharging them for credit card processing and numerous other things. Uber rips them off less (for now), but they are still a for-profit company with a lot of VC money to pay back and a lot of expenses to open new markets via lobbying and to secure market share by attacking competitors like Lyft. That's why they take 20% of most fares, and still run such huge losses.
But what's to stop anyone from duplicating their business model (once they've done the heavy lifting) by building another web platform that connects drivers and passengers and doesn't charge 20% of the fare, but instead charges just enough to cover development costs, a minimal administative overhead, and Amazon elastic cloud server capacity?
Nothing, as far as I can see.
Drivers are free to switch back and forth between Uber, Lyft, or any other service any time they want, because other than that one case in California, they're independant contractors. If Uber ever goes public, that will be the end of Uber. It will be obvious how much they're spending and where, and an open invitation for someone to copy-cat their model with none of their legacy expenses or ROI expectations from the VC.
Same thing goes for Airbnb and other easy to duplicate app based rent seeking business models.
If you provide a platform where 99% of the value is generated by the activities of the buyers and sellers on the platform, you can't expect to collect 20% of that revenue stream, because your business model is just too easy to copy once you've blazed the trail.
Uber is Windows, Lyft is Mac OS, and some other platform, yet to be built, will Linux them both.
Rumor on the street is the Amazon distribution center in Hebron, KY will be using an uber model to help deliver packages in the Cincinnati area.
Uber is a parasite that evades taxes and municipal dues on the scale of BILLIONS worldwide.
Truth be said, they don't even have a business license to operate and refuse to pay for one
because well... they have an app that they factually stole from earlier car dispath app inventors
(read lawsuits).
Your wall of words is pointess. Uber is NOT a platform. It is a TRANSPORTATION company.
Compete fairly, pay taxes - you are using roads which we all are paying for.
Unreal that this "PLATFORM" drivel is still alive. What's next?? My local corner drug dealer is NOT a drug dealer but a "substance platform". Wake the heck up. Uber is BS and is full of BS-ters.
Your local corner drug dealer isn't the "substance platform" - the corner itself is. Uber prodives the corner where buyers and sellers can meet - that's why it's just a platform.
If it were a transporation company, then it would own the vehicles, but it doesn't. That's both the genius and the weakness of its model.
In order to expand, Uber extracts excessive rents from the drivers - not as much as their former companies did, but still a lot. The problem is, because those drivers are independent contractors who use Uber like any other business tool - a telephone, for example, they're free to switch to a differnt "corner" that lets them keep more of the money they earned - any time they want.
What is this Uber you speak of? The only Uber I know of is 'Uber Alles'.
;-)
Is that like Oobi?
http://damnvoicesagain.blogspot.com/2009/07/who-acid-tripped-mushroom-fu...
They were almost as popular as Kukla, Fran, and Adolph.
Ha.
My daughters favorite show preschool was PEEWEE's PLAYHOUSE and I told my wife that this kid is going to grow up with a predisposition to use LSD.
Thankfully I was wrong, and Larry Fishburne went on to become a respectable actor.
Peewee not so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWI-5b2MHNI
U
BEen
Raped.
Much more fitting than some "alles" nonsense.
Out of chaos and misery for the people comes the ZWO.
Think about the phone calls. Right now somewhere there is a central bank head on the phone. Maybe he is on with a private bank CEO, he being LaGarde or Yellen why sure. They are discussing, or rather the CEO is teling LaGarde and Yelen what to do, bond purchases and yes the current policy of ZIRP will stay in line. Of course this is fodder when we al know that eventualy the Fed can not hold up the global bond market and a Nation-State like Estonia will default too, a daisychain ensues.
We've all missed the most important part of the whole story and that is the Public Transportation Commission Executive Director's name is Kyle Cock-cream...
Kyle CockReam...Fixed it for ya !
;o)
This is such bullshit it isn't funny. Its the fucking amateur-hour out there in IPOland. On the other hand, MY new startup, BOOBER will revolutionize the transportation industry and the way the entire planet lives their daily lives- even MORE than the Segway!!! With my company and its companion app, with just a phone call some drunken, crazed wench, naked from the waist-up, will drive up to your location and either give you a ride, piss on the sidewalk, vomit on your shoes or pistol-whip the fuck out of you in front of your posse. All for a nominal fee. Its all about the experience- the BOOBER experience. Tell your friends. Invest while you can.
I can't find it in the play-store.
Disruptive!
If you want an asswhoopin and a free ride just call 911 and run when the cops come.
Uber is hated by unions .... should be loved by global warming types .... competition is good !
Fair competition is good, not the uber criminal-type.
Don't really matter, Uber will be terminated by Skynet robocars from the future in short order.
Meanwhile park your Segway and try this silly widget:
https://phunkeeduck.com/
Will it hold 400lbs? Even so, you have to stand up . . .
Seriously: How does this improve on walking? Toy value, period.
Spend the $1500 on decent bike, stationary bike or elliptical machine and walk.
Old Habits Die Hard.
Kyle Cockream. What an unfortunate last name. I'll bet he copped a shitload of bullying at school.
As for the $50 Bill valuation, I'll take 4 thanks, what a bargain.
uber is the perfect example of people doing shit because other people do it just because it is the cool thing at the moment regardless of whether it makes sense or not. why would a person pay a different price every time they need to hire a car to go to the same place, especially since most real hacks will negotiate with a steady ride or a long ride or just because and the meter marks the max price.
Uber drivers don't shoot people. People shoot people.
Don't be a hater. We use Uber all the time. Every time I need to drive somewhere, we use another phone to "book" that trip using a "new" account. Uber gets 20% and I get the subsidy. Pays for gas and a free lunch.
That's the really funny thing here. I see in the US drivers generally scam the passengers. Over here, we just scam Uber. No one gives a shit if it dies, we'll just suck everything we can out of it. So far in China they have burned through $1b. 80% of all the rides are fake, and then like half of the legit ones are just rich kids cruising for sex. Uber doesn't care, they get to use those fake numbers to sucker morons into investing in them.
Given the fact that taxi drivers have one of the most dangerous jobs, far higher than police "officers" er thugs, Uber is completely stupid to think they're going to prevent their drivers from being armed. That is a human right of defense.
From a driver's perspective, Uber will never find out if you're carrying unless you shoot someone. If you've shot someone, presumably you were defending your life. Your own life is more important than the Uber gig. Driver wins either way.