# Uber’s Rise And Fall In One Map



## KevinH (Jul 13, 2014)

https://medium.com/swlh/ubers-rise-and-fall-in-one-map-5d7d5f80c8c0*How Uber won and lost the world*


Indi Samarajiva
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Dec 8, 2019 · 11 min read









You can watch the rise and fall of Uber in this GIF. From 2010, Uber black spreads across the globe. Then in 2014 Europe starts to go grey as regulation kicks in. Then Asia goes white as the company goes into full retreat. The investors manage to get their money out in time, and the public markets are stuck with this rapidly declining turd. It's a hell of a ride.
*2010 - UberCab*









UberCab was dreamt of in 2008, launched in 2009 and carried its first passenger (in San Francisco) in 2010. It was and is magic. Push a button and get a ride.
Uber hit that startup sweet spot - a product that both masses and Venture Capitalists could actually use. America was also an ideal market- a country with widening inequality, where people wanted to have servants but didn't want to call it that.
Uber lets people have drivers and be drivers without looking at either the economic or social problems too closely. Just push a button, get a ride.
*2011 - Uber*









In 2011, UberCab changed its name to Uber, to avoid regulation. This was more than a name change, it was (and is) core to Uber's being. Uber's two core innovations were actually not technical. The first was to break economic laws, and the other was to break labor laws. The secret sauce was how they got away with it for so long.
*Economic Laws*
I took some remedial business school and the first thing they taught us was about fixed and variable costs. A gun is a fixed cost. Bullets are variable.
No firm will sell below their variable cost, in this case, the cost of a ride. Otherwise, you're just selling a dollar for 50 cents. I was taught this as essentially a law. Uber broke that law - subsidizing both the rider and the driver - and saw explosive growth. They continually lost money on a unit basis, pricing any rational firm out of the market and continuing expand. Their losses also expanded, but no one seemed to care.
*Labor Laws*
The other law they broke was much more real, but they got away with it anyways. People fought for labor laws for decades and jobs now come with certain rights, which are expenses to an employer. Uber was just like, 'what if we just don't call them jobs?' and the world was like, 'yeah, OK'. For a while.
Uber likes to call drivers independent contractors, but I've worked inside a ride-hailing company and the business runs on people that drive every day. They want (and get) the benefits of full-time employees without the costs. Which is obviously a competitive advantage.
If you price below variable cost and don't pay the same labor costs, of course, you'll compete with more economic firms out of the market. Of course, you'll grow. And Uber did.
Uber got away with it because of the name change, and the 'tech' halo that was still keeping regulation at bay. 2011 was also the year that Uber expanded to France. Europe would prove to be its regulatory Waterloo, but not yet.
*2012 - Uber White*









In 2012 Uber spread across the 'western' world, ie wherever white, English speaking people live. The US, Canada, UK, Australia and France (which gave English most its big words).
Growth was explosive. The product worked like magic and was becoming magically cheap as it became more and more divorced from traditional economics. The company's valuation squared from $60 million to $346.5. This was just the beginning.
A massive amount of 'cheap' capital (at a time when poor people struggled to survive) was about to subsidize middle-class lifestyles and make a few people billionaires.
*2013 - Three Comma Club*









In 2013, Uber went brown, to a truly mass market in India. They also launched in South Africa, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, and the UAE. Ride-hailing went from millions of potential users to billions, and their valuation increased accordingly. Uber joined the three comma club.
Their investors went from individuals like Jay-Z and Jeff Bezos to all institutions. Uber's Series C from Google Ventures (GV) valued them at $3.7 billion, and that was just the beginning.
I've competed against Uber, and whatever you say about them, the company can execute. They put numbers on the board. Numbers disconnected from any economic reality, but that takes a while to kick in. We're not there yet.
These are the good days. Cocaine is on the table and the lights are low.
*2014 - World Domination*









2014 was the year of world domination. Uber had spread to every inhabited continent on the globe. With China, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, and Egypt, Uber offered investors exposure to almost all growth across the globe.
At this point, however, the herd immunity of democracies was slowly kicking in, and the competition was biting back. Europe began banning Uber, first in France and then Berlin. It took a while for these bans and regulations to work through the courts, but it never got better.
At the same time, companies like Didi and Lyft and Grab showed that cheap capital was no longer an advantage, and smaller, more nimble companies took lesser markets from Uber, like PickMe where I worked, in Sri Lanka.
In a Napoleonic or blitzkrieg attack, you depend on a small force to shatter enemy lines and hopefully get them to scatter or give up. Time, however, is not on your side. If the enemy has time to regroup, they are bigger than you and will eventually win.
Uber had rapidly smashed through regulation and competition, but time was not on their side. These two forces eventually formed a pincer movement that would choke and ultimately drive the company back. But not yet. This was still the Travis era. The triumph of the will.
*2015 -The High Water Mark*









No one knew this at the time, but 2015 was the best it would ever be for Uber. Uber expanded into my country, Sri Lanka, and its valuation ($51B) was rapidly approaching our GDP ($80B). If you look at the map above, this is the furthest Uber would spread, and it was already beginning to roll back.
This year saw small additions - Sri Lanka, Morocco, Costa Rica, Lithuania - and big setbacks. The regulation cancer in Europe had spread to Spain and gone around the Maginot Line to Belgium and the Netherlands, and then east to Romania. Uber would continue to operate in Europe, but at a diminished and highly-regulated level (for them). This cancer had also spread to Korea.
Travis Kalanick had reached the limits of blitzkrieg warfare, though he didn't know it. No leader seems to, but it happens. Eventually, your troops get tired, the methamphetamine wears off and the board takes you into the bunker for a chat.
*2016 - New logo. Does not save company*









In 2016, Uber changed its logo to some sort of digital sperm. This did not help. Uber withdrew from China after heavy losses, the first blood in the water, and not the last. As a parting gift, they got 15% of Didi, but Uber would never be a truly global company now. They were being pushed back west, and also losing Europe.
The regulation had spread to Scandanavia now, and eventually the UK. These regulations were a threat to Uber's core business model, which was signing up anyone with a car. Uber was forcing Uber to work with licensed drivers and companies, to essentially become UberCab again. The tech halo was coming off, and Uber was getting a more devilish reputation in the press.
Uber's valuation was still going up, to $68B, but they're scraping the bottom of the barrel now. This time it's blood money, from Saudi Arabia. Saudi is one of the most objectively evil autocracies in the world, a petrostate built on climate change and human rights violations. Uber now had murderers on their board. This would come up later.
*2017 - New leader. Sorta saves company*









By mid-2017 Travis Kalinick was out and the much more responsible Dara Khosrowshahi was in. He had one job. Get this turd over the IPO finish line so that early investors could get their money out. There were still enough animal spirits in the market to ignore the obvious, but he didn't have much time.
At this point, Europe is essentially lost and the UK has fallen (for the first time). Uber exists there but it's on its way to being regulated into a commodity. Russia is also lost. Uber exits with a minority (now 35%) stake in Yandex's hailing business, but it's still an exit.
Note that I've whited-out these exits on the map, but they're not of zero value. Uber will never be a truly global cab company, but in retreat, it has become a holding company for global assets. Like Yahoo's stake in Alibaba, this isn't nothing, and could potentially be worth a lot.
*2018 - Loss Of Southeast Asia*









At this point, the shitty business model of regulated cabs is becoming a default. Uber launches in Japan, but as the frontend for a cab company. Cabs is a shitty business already and food delivery (UberEats) is a shitty business in the future, but Dara just has to keep rolling this turd over the finish line. And he's almost there.
Before that, however, he has to take one major hit in Southeast Asia, namely all of it. Uber exits the market for what becomes a 23% stake in Grab. Only India (and Sri Lanka) remain in Asia, but I also think this is a matter of time. Uber started a ground war in Asia and lost, like everybody else in history.
Europe is totally gone and this regulation contagion is spreading to Morocco and who knows where. In its last private round Uber is valued at $76 billion, but for a relatively paltry investment of $500 million from Toyota. As you can see these private valuations are meaningless and set a misleading peg for the IPO, which is exactly what Uber wants to do. The pyramid scheme is almost complete and it's time to unload this turd on retail investors. Yay pensions funds.
Come on Dara, you old dung beetle, you're almost there!
















*2019 - Cashing out before crashing out*









The pharaohs respected dung beetles and Uber's investors better respect Dara. He did it. By just being a responsible manager he manages to cover up a crumbling business model and the company successfully IPOs in May of 2019. By successfully I don't mean being a good investment, I just mean enabling the pharoahs to cash out while everyone else gets buried alive.
The stock lists at an $82.4 billion market cap, far down from estimates of $120 billion, but who cares. Early investors get paid, the Saudis get paid, Travis gets paid. In Q3 Uber shells out $3.9 billion in stock-compensation so by November even employees get paid. At this point, the stock has dropped nearly 40% but the pyramid scheme is complete and retail investors are holding the bag.
Luckily it's not a complete sham and there's _something_ there, just not an 80 billion-dollar company. If you look at the maps, retailers paid 2020 prices for a company rapidly receding back to 2013.
And the retreat continues. Uber will likely exit India (at least UberEats), regulation is coming to its core market of America and they just got kicked out of London, again. Uber is smart and they execute like the guillotine, so maybe they'll surprise me, but it's hard to escape a global pincer movement.
Competition and regulation are slow, stupid forces, but they do catch up with everyone in the end. You can't win a land war in Asia. You can't sell below your variable cost. You have to follow labor laws.
Uber's core innovation has been outrunning reality for a decade now. They've emitted a bunch of carbon, increased traffic, worn-out poor peoples' cars and told everyone it was a tech company. And we loved it. It's been a lot of things, but this I know for sure. It's been one hell of a ride.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

What an interesting comment! 

*No one knew this at the time, but 2015 was the best it would ever be for Uber.*


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## dmoney155 (Jun 12, 2017)

Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


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## Coastal_Cruiser (Oct 1, 2018)

KevinH said:


> The investors manage to get their money out in time, and the public markets are stuck with this rapidly declining turd. It's a hell of a ride.


Pretty much spot on.


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## gabesdaddee (Dec 4, 2017)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


While I agree that there are some serious greedy drivers, it's bad juju to keep lowering the rates.


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## peteyvavs (Nov 18, 2015)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


I see that the lobotomy is working out well for you.


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## Disgusted Driver (Jan 9, 2015)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


Put the crack pipe down, it's killing your brain. Both Uber and Lyft would fold immediately if they relied on just people who were going somewhere. I don't do that much going somewhere at 2 am in the morning when it's busiest, do you? So clearly they need people to "play taxi" at peak demand hours and in markets like NYC where the barrier to entry is higher. Why is it appropriate for them to take as much of the fare as they can but greedy of me to try to make as much as I can? Next time, try using some critical thinking skills before you run off at the keyboard with nonsense.


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## 5☆OG (Jun 30, 2019)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


Sorry i disagree with all of this...why do drivers have to whipping posts? Everyone makes out accept for us...its complete bs


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

goneubering said:


> What an interesting comment! :smiles:
> 
> *No one knew this at the time, but 2015 was the best it would ever be for Uber.*


When i signed up.
And Uber only took 20% !


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## 5☆OG (Jun 30, 2019)

tohunt4me said:


> When i signed up.
> And Uber only took 20% !


They promised 20 in vegas but never honored it was always 25


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


There's no such thing as greed in capitalism. The object of the game is to maximise one's own wealth. If I work 3 days per week and earn $500 and decide to work 6 days per week to earn $1,000 does that make me greedy? If so then call me greedy; I'll call myself twice as productive.


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## Nats121 (Jul 19, 2017)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


Because you and other shills like to say drivers are overpaid and should be grateful to these companies, I say put your money where your mouth is and ask Uber to cut your inflated pay.

Uber will be glad to cut your pay, in fact it's right in their contract...

All you need to do is contact Uber and tell them to reduce the fares for your rides or better yet, you can tell them to waive the fares altogether since you're having such a blast driving pax around.

Uber will credit the pax and take it out of your pay, simple.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

tohunt4me said:


> When i signed up.
> And Uber only took 20% !


Same here. Ever since I joined Uber it's been skidding downhill. 



The Gift of Fish said:


> There's no such thing as greed in capitalism. The object of the game is to maximise one's own wealth. If I work 3 days per week and earn $500 and decide to work 6 days per week to earn $1,000 does that make me greedy? If so then call me greedy; I'll call myself twice as productive.


You're not greedy. You're hard working.

You would agree there's been greed at Uber corporate I assume?


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## The Gift of Fish (Mar 17, 2017)

goneubering said:


> Same here. Ever since I joined Uber it's been skidding downhill. :frown:
> 
> 
> You're not greedy. You're hard working.
> ...


I wouldn't call it greed, because I haven't seen any evidence that such a thing exists. I'd classify Uber corporate's behaviour as being free from the constraints of ethics or conscience.


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## Taxi2Uber (Jul 21, 2017)

goneubering said:


> No one knew this at the time, but 2015 was the best it would ever be for Uber.


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## ABC123DEF (Jun 9, 2015)

Taxi2Uber said:


> View attachment 396883


I'd rather wait for flying pigs...wearing lipstick! :rollseyes:


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## Lando74 (Nov 23, 2014)

dmoney155 said:


> Nice article... however, I still blame the greedy drivers... who figured, "hey, I all I got to do is drive around while listening to some tunes and get paid as much (or in some cases better) as professional jobs" . We all knew the gravy train will run out. Ride share is great for what it is, you going somewhere, why not give someone a ride and get some compensation for it. It's the greedy drivers who started to play taxi and now crying because there is no money for it or because everyone is doing it. Not sure why everyone hates uber, they should hate themselves for being greedy. Uber just gave you a platform, but the ultimate sin is that of greedy drivers.


You do realize pretty much any business is a gravy train, right? T.G.I. Friday's was a gravy train. So was Pan-Am, Toys R Us, Blackberry, Pet Rocks, video rental stores, record stores, book stores, horse buggies, gold mining, long distance calling, mail order catalogs, shoe shining, dial-up internet, 3D TV's, video arcades... Every business model or company has a finite life to it. It's called opportunity - you either take it or miss it.


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