[danielmarkbruce]

1. Good unit economics can come from various sources. The idea that Slack has little lock in and hence can't have good economics is misguided. Coke has little lock in, yet amazing economics. Google has little lock in, yet amazing economics. Sources of competitive advantage aren't restricted to lock in. Scale is a source of competitive advantage, for example.

2. Your point is hard to refute and may be correct - it isn't obvious they will do well or poorly over time.

3. This is almost certainly wrong. If Uber had no moat there would be more than Uber and Lyft in the US. It's going to be impossible to enter this market for a new player short of having self driving all worked out.

4. Yep, it wasn't/isn't clear on Amazon's retail biz, I'll agree with that.

You have some examples which are correct - there are specific situations where you are right. But the statement cannot be generalized.

[mike_hearn]

For (3) it isn't required to have a moat. Market dumping is sufficient. Nobody is going to compete with a firm that's selling below cost, as Uber/Lyft are doing. But, I've used non-Uber/Lyft taxi apps that were perfectly competent. It's not that hard to build such an app, especially if you 'just' want to sell taxi rides in local jurisdictions instead of any conceivable moving service in every possible geography. If/when they stop burning money, only then we'll find out what kind of moat they have.

[danielmarkbruce]

Uber is a public company. They do over 50% gross margins. One may reasonably suggest some of their marketing expense should be in the COGS, but even if you take all of it, they are still GM positive. Similar story for Lyft (also public).

These stories persist, of companies deliberately running their companies so as to give away a $1 for $0.80 or whatever - but with very few exceptions it's a bs story.

[danielmarkbruce]

I think we've reached the depth limit here, so this is an answer to below.

I'm spinning it as positive because I'm attempting to break out their fixed and variable costs. If one looks through the line items and imagines themself as CEO, there are items which can easily cut and/or don't need to climb as revenue climbs. EG, their R&D is probably too high and doesn't need to double for their revenue to double. By breaking out their costs one can figure if they are likely to be "perpetual money losers" or just "currently money losers", which is the question at hand.

They are valued in public markets at over $100 billion. Usually the public markets do a reasonable job at getting a reasonable number for a company's value. Thinking about Uber's cost structure in some depth is how folks have arrived at that number.

[mike_hearn]

Yet they make a loss. A $6.7 billion loss if I read their 2021 financial report correctly. I don't understand how you can spin this as "positive". Gross margin positive is not the same thing as being profitable, which is what we're talking about.