A $24bn public valuation without a product for sale has to be off the charts as "going public early", though, right? Amazon raised, what, $50M or $100M in its IPO (and is what I'd consider an early one)?
you mean versus having a product that loses money ?
Uber was losing between $1B and $5B a quarter when they IPO'd. In the last quarter of 2020, Uber lost close to $1B, and they're still valued at $108B, with no real long term plan for survivability. The way I see it, risks include legislative changes WRT driver status, bad press, self driving cars, a post pandemic world where more people own a car, and less people are in cities. And we're talking about a company that is primarily marketing and software, where the wind can change very quickly, and assets are mostly intangible and untransferable.
car manufacturing is much harder to get into, so having a factory and an almost-complete design is already a huge milestone. Obviously, they'll need to sell _some_ cars, but they could even make money if they were to sell cars at a loss, through carbon credits.
Pets.com went public the year after incorporating. The year after that they liquidated. (Granted... those were crazy times we probably don’t need to replicate.)
Uber was losing between $1B and $5B a quarter when they IPO'd. In the last quarter of 2020, Uber lost close to $1B, and they're still valued at $108B, with no real long term plan for survivability. The way I see it, risks include legislative changes WRT driver status, bad press, self driving cars, a post pandemic world where more people own a car, and less people are in cities. And we're talking about a company that is primarily marketing and software, where the wind can change very quickly, and assets are mostly intangible and untransferable.
car manufacturing is much harder to get into, so having a factory and an almost-complete design is already a huge milestone. Obviously, they'll need to sell _some_ cars, but they could even make money if they were to sell cars at a loss, through carbon credits.