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by nostromo 2642 days ago
Sure, maybe.

But I'll note that for every Amazon there's dozens or more Pets.com. So, yes, maybe Lyft is the next trillion dollar company -- or maybe it's, you know, a cab company.

3 comments

Yes, either case is possible. Lyft could become Pets.com or Amazon.

You can argue that Lyft will become Pets.com, due to other reasons, such as growth potential etc. That would make sense.

BUT, the argument in your graphic, that a company is overvalued simply because its valuation is higher than traditional well-known brands, that ARGUMENT is flawed.

Lyft's valuation is totally independent of Ford's valuation. These are separate companies with separate paths. Amazon's valuation was not tied to Sears--the 60-minutes journalist made the mistake of connecting the 2 together. The argument behind your graphic is wrong.

The graphic isn't making an argument, it's stating a fact. If you think Uber's valuation is sensible, I don't think this graphic could sway you.
No the graphic was posted to make an argument. That was the purpose of why that graphic was posted:

"I found this simple graphic a great distillation of why Lyft and Uber may be considered overvalued"

That's true. I think my point still stands (OP interpreted the graphic one way, you interpreted it another way), but I'm splitting hairs.
What you said actually proves my point.

If Lyft becomes the next Pets.com and goes bust, its stock would be worth $0. If that happened, it would be laughable to say that Lyft is under-valued, simply because Ford is valued in the billions.

Ford's valuation has nothing to do with how Lyft is valued. To say that Lyft is over/under valued because Ford has X valuation, like what your graphic is saying, makes no sense at all.

My rebuttal is to note the notion of "expected value". A company that has a 1/1000 chance of becoming a trillion dollar company and a 999/1000 chance of becoming a worthless company is worth 1 billion dollars.

And that's the most simplified model possible. If you have a 1/1000 chance of being worth a trillion dollars, you may also have a 10/1000 chance of being worth ten billion dollars, 100/1000 chance of being worth one billion dollars, and 200/1000 chance of being worth 100 million dollars. That adds $220 million of expected value. You can add another couple million if you account for the company still having liquefiable assets even in the case that it ends up folding like Pets.com (which ended up returning at least a few million dollars to their shareholders: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1100683/000089161802...).