Uber Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer Stepping Down

Christine Wang and Deirdre Bosa, reporting for CNBC:

The executive shakeup comes about a month after the ride hailing company went public.

“There’s never really a right time to announce departures or changes like this, but with the IPO behind us, I felt this was a good moment to simplify our org and set us up for the future,” Khosrowshahi said.

Late on a Friday afternoon seems like exactly the right time.

If you want to know what’s going on, read this great piece by Hubert Huran in the current issue of American Affairs, “Uber’s Path of Destruction”:

An examination of Uber’s economics suggests that it has no hope of ever earning sustainable urban car service profits in competitive markets. Its costs are simply much higher than the market is willing to pay, as its nine years of massive losses indicate. Uber not only lacks powerful competitive advantages, but it is actually less efficient than the competitors it has been driving out of business. […]

These beliefs about Uber’s corporate value were created entirely out of thin air. This is not a case of a company with a reasonably sound operating business that has managed to inflate stock market expectations a bit. This is a case of a massive valuation that has no relationship to any economic fundamentals. Uber has no competitive efficiency advantages, operates in an industry with few barriers to entry, and has lost more than $14 billion in the previous four years. But its narratives convinced most people in the media, investment, and tech worlds that it is the most valuable transportation company on the planet and the second most valuable start-up IPO in U.S. history (after Facebook).

Uber is a pyramid scheme, a scam. If they charged enough to make a profit almost no one would use the service. If I worked at Uber I’d get out now too, before the investment world wakes up.

★ Friday, 7 June 2019