Gssh posted:

"bitterly barren barons of moral turpitude" ... lol, wow. that whole thing is fantastic, i'm sure he felt very clever writing it. but i wonder how?? did nobody proofread this shit or is the company culture that far up their own asses / fucked on drugs that this flies as sane PR?

uber have generally had excellent top-dollar PR/spin, including David Plouffe who was Obama's campaign manager and also one or two of David Cameron's guys iirc. but as you can see the insane investors and SV people blow it occasionally.

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 (Sept. 1, 2017 11:08:48)

Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:

on the lighter side:

Let us take this pause in this moment, when we find ourselves swimming in the crucible of one of the grandest business and moral battles of our generation, and find strength in each stroke of our proverbial digital pens, that we wrote with the indelible, eternal and permanent ink of righteousness. We write with the souls of thousands of lives saved, the lives of millions of jobs created liberating multitudes of drivers from the shackles of servitude to iniquitous taxi cartels of corrupt cabals that choked cities with their pollution of air and morals. We write with the spirit of Bonnie Kalanick, who raised her son with deep unconditional love and unfading faith in his ability to do good for the world. Whose tragic and untimely death was used against her son at his most vulnerable, unspeakable time of pain. They chose to strike at a moment of a devoted son’s retreat and leave of absence to mourn the absence of the inviolable love of his mother. In doing so, they joined the very corruption her son had devoted such fervent passion to fight. In her memory, we devote our actions to a just cause; to defend what is right and to protect the interest of not only shareholders but most importantly the far more important stakeholders of employees, drivers and customers whose lives have been forever altered by the abiding faith and fervent hard work of Travis Kalanick and the Uber team. Their allegiance was met by this unholy alliance of perfidious greed devolving rapidly into the audacity of vituperative unparalleled predatory rapacity.

Let us strike tomorrow with the full and fulsome courage of our convictions. Let our just cause give pause to those who would ever dream of ever emulating the shameful shenanigans of these sanctimonious hypocrites who fling filings and letters de haut en bas; when it is we who have the higher moral ground and our letters and filing will hail down upon their platforms, exposing them as bitterly barren barons of moral turpitude. And as the summer sets, we let us be steward of truth who in unison proclaim: fiat justitia ruat caelum.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/annotations-for-decoding-shervin-pishevar-uber-letter-2017-8?r=US&IR=T

just wanted the text here for posterity

Where is Lyft a year from now? Do you anticipate international growth?

Green: There will be two things you see in the coming year. One is, we just hit a really exciting milestone of 100 million Lyft Line rides. Shared rides have really hit a point of maturity on our platform. You’ll see those continue to become an even larger part of Lyft. Two is all the work we’re doing on autonomous-vehicle front. We’ve announced some exciting partnerships over the last several months, with Waymo, nuTonomy, Drive.ai, and you’re going to start seeing those partnerships mature and come to life and more people will get to experience a test ride on an autonomous vehicle. On the one-year horizon it’s still very much in the testing phase, where there’ll be safety drivers behind the wheel, but the technology is evolving quickly.

{...}

In the meantime, there isn’t a single ride-hailing company that isn’t losing money. What is Lyft’s path to profitability?

Zimmer: We’ve raised quite a bit of capital and have the majority still in the bank so our focus today is: how can we build the best possible business to serve our drivers and passengers, such that the long-term value of the company is the largest for our shareholders? If profitability was the No. 1 goal we were driving toward today, we could be profitable right now. What we’re investing in is future growth.

That future presumably includes an initial public offering.

Zimmer: We don’t think about it like that. We think about it like: how can we build the best possible experience for our drivers and passengers? And one way we’re able to build better products and invest in better acquisition of drivers and passengers is through capital. We haven’t had an issue getting capital from the private market. But if it allowed us to increase our valuation in the public market that was different than in the private market, and would give us the opportunity to serve drivers and passengers better, we’d think about it. We don’t think about it as something we’re solving for.

Whatever the timeframe for an I.P.O., do you see any first-mover advantage between Lyft and Uber?

Zimmer: The most important thing for people to realize is that we’re still at the beginning of this industry. We believe the long-term opportunity here is large and we’re still so early on that I would judge this as still being in the first 10 percent of what this will ultimately be.

no timeline for lyft IPO.

Belphegor posted:

Oh yeajh? Well my dad is in the army and he could beat up your dad and they gave him a seal for marksmanship

"we could be profitable!... we just dont wanna "

as sad as it is i think a lot of this rhetoric works on most ppl

tears posted:

lol

you're in the uk right tears? any hot takes?

Uber threatens to leave if Quebec insists on stricter rules
'Bye-bye, I don't care,' Montreal mayor says as Uber balks at drivers having to train for 35 hours

Low oil prices have limited the government jobs that many Saudis have long relied on, and the kingdom is trying to push more citizens, including women, into private sector employment. But some working Saudi women say hiring private drivers to get them to and from work eats up much of their pay, diminishing the incentive to work.

In recent years, many women have come to rely on ride-sharing apps like Uber and Careem to gain some freedom of movement.

bad news for saudis investment in uber...

The changes serve three main purposes:
1) They reduce Kalanick's grip on the company.
2) They pave the way for a large investment from Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank (SFTBF).
3) They help prepare Uber for an initial public stock offering by September 2019.

{...}

"The board voted unanimously to move forward with the proposed investment by SoftBank and with governance changes that would strengthen its independence and ensure equality among all shareholders," Uber's directors said in a statement.
The vote is a huge win for Uber's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. He was able to calm a tumultuous storm brewing in the company's board and secure one of Uber's biggest-ever investments in just over a month on the job.
Softbank has agreed to make an initial investment of between $1 billion and $1.25 billion in Uber, buying new shares to maintain the company's $69 billion valuation, the person familiar with the board's decision said. The Japanese company also committed to spend billions more purchasing between 14% and 17% of the company's shares already held by current stakeholders at a discounted rate.

if softbank invest $1.25 billion that's enough to hold out uber for about 6 additional months (adding to their current 6.6 billion which would by itself last about 2.5 years). also they might be buying out some of the smart early investors who want out even at a discount. IPO apparently planned for september 2019, at which point they should have about 2-3 billion dollars left according to my extremely rough estimation. can they pull it off?

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 (Oct. 4, 2017 14:07:08)

swampman posted:

Pretty sure Tesla is playing the game of, get embroiled in absurd public works projects to justify future bailouts.. as usual this is based on absolutely no evidence just my pesronal beliefs

yea

they're def chasing government subsidies, private/public partnership, control over what might otherwise be public utilities, etc. dunno if it'll work - hasn't so far.