The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 86 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mac: Uber is doing about 300 million trips weekly on core platforms
“We're doing like three hundred million trips a week on our core platforms.”
Uber Mobility Revenue Dropped 84% in Three Weeks During COVID
“Our mobility business had lost 84% of our top line in three weeks. The company was burning billions annually. We didn't have a core business producing cash.”
Stebbings: Benchmark returned roughly 640x on Uber versus 25x on WeWork
“Uber made benchmark roughly 640 X versus around 25 X with WeWork.”
Pishevar: TPG generated nearly $2B return on $83M Uber investment
“I think TPG on that eighty-three million made close to two billion.”
Pishevar: Emil Michael architected Uber's $15B fundraising efforts
“He architected the fifteen billion dollar raise he had a massive impact on the trajectory of Uber, and he became really Travis's right hand and sparring partner in building, building Uber.”
Hommels: Uber's San Francisco revenue exceeded the total initial taxi market
“So at, look at my famous quote always is when Uber started in in San Francisco, people said, but the taxi market is only two hundred fifty million, and today Uber's revenue in San Francisco is six hundred million.”
Uber paid early city drivers $20-$30 per hour in guaranteed subsidies
“In the early days, we paid a driver 20 or 30 dollars an hour to sit there, right? And you know, this lasted probably 60 or 90 days into a market launch, and then after, you know, it became clear that the driver was making 20, more than 20 or 30 dollars an hour…”
Uber's unit economics worsened in 2014 due to intense market competition
“Even though we were in 2014 and the business was five years along, like, the unit economics as we launched Hooper X and had more competitors actually got worse over time because you started spending so much money to acquire drivers, to acquire riders”
Uber deployed permanent local teams while Lyft used central launch teams
“I think the big differentiation in Uber versus Lyft is that we had on the ground teams in every market. And, you know, we had an Atlanta city team, we had a Philadelphia team, we had a Chicago team and Lyft operated completely out of San Francisco. So while th…”
Khosrowshahi: Uber completed two billion trips in the previous quarter
“Now in this last quarter, two billion times a quarter.”
Uber Spent $1 Billion Per Year on Growth Marketing
“I mean, we were spending a billion dollars a year at one point.”
Emil Michael: Uber is among few global ride-sharing firms with net debt
“It's one of the only ride sharing the companies in the world with net debt.”
Mohnot: Uber raised $25B in VC to reach a $50B enterprise value
“And you've seen it with the likes of Uber, you know, today, a fifty billion dollar enterprise value. There's twenty-five billion dollars of venture capital money that went into that company.”
Ed Baker: Facebook and Uber growth leaders reported directly to CEO
“And in both of those cases, they had separate growth teams where the growth leader reported directly to the CEO. And these teams were structured cross-functionally.”
Jain: Uber estimated a $4.2B TAM initially, now handles nearly $60B
“Uber, of course, you've seen the first deck, right, talks about the TAM being 4.2 billion dollars. And they now do almost sixty billion dollars in bookings.”
Kupor: Uber and Lyft expanded SF taxi market from $100M to $1.5B
“At the time, Lyft and Uber were raising kind of their first couple rounds of financing. I think the taxi market in the, in San Francisco was about a hundred million dollars annually. And I think today, the combined, the two of them do north of a billion and a …”
Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon all launched in seemingly small niche markets
“All of those companies look small in the beginning, you know, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, like the lists, you know, even Uber in the beginning, they all looked like they were going after something small in the beginning, Amazon just doing books.”
Real estate tech represents $250B+ in public and private market value
“So if you just look at, you know, two of the three largest unicorns today are real estate and hospitality tech. We work in Airbnb after Uber. And then beyond them, there's another two hundred and fifty billion of real estate and hospitality tech companies out …”
Lipman: Uber raised $4.9B at $41B valuation versus Lyft's $862M at $2B
“I think the last time I looked, when I was online here Uber raised 4.9 billion at a forty one billion dollar valuation. Better lift. That's in total. And, Lyft has raised, you know, 862 and a half million at two billion dollar valuation.”
Yamashita: Uber structured all team KPI trees under trip count
“At Uber, at the very top was trips. Everything cascaded from there.”
Tolkin: UberPool launched with post-hoc pricing before upfront pricing was built
“When we first launched, it was variable pricing, depending on whether you matched or not. You open the Uber app, you say, this is where I'm going, and it was just like, okay, and then based on minutes and miles, the cost would post hoc calculate until we built…”
Benchmark invested $10M in Uber at $50M valuation in 2011
“Benchmark invested in March, 2011 at a, I believe it was a fifty million dollar pre-money valuation. They put ten million in.”
Pishevar: Uber's Series D valuation was negotiated up to $17B from $10B
“So that Series D, like a year after the Series C, which Google and TPG did, that was at three billion. This was at seventeen billion, and we started off at 10. So, Emil was able to negotiate from, like, 10, eleven billion valuation to 17, because there was so …”
90% of early Uber drivers worked under 10 hours weekly
“For like, 90% of drivers, it's very part-time, right? Less than like, 10 hours a week.”
Careem completed a corporate spin-out with regional investors and Uber
“We have done a spin out thanks to their help with some regional investors on board now.”
Khosrowshahi: Postmates backend integration enabled aggressive cost cuts for Uber
“While Postmates as an app is still in the app store, they've got millions of loyal customers, all of the backend is essentially being served by our infrastructure, which allowed us to save pretty aggressively as it related to the cost side.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber provides income to over five million earners globally
“You know, we are an incredibly important entity in terms of Transportation and cities in terms of earning power for over five million earners.”
Uber Expanded From 12 to Over 1,000 Cities During Grenier's Tenure
“Yeah, so, you know, I joined Uber, we had about a dozen cities, and when I left, we had probably a thousand plus cities, or, you know, the idea of cities kind of disappeared at some point.”
Uber Used Completed Trips as Its Core North Star Metric
“The, like, trips was our metric, because it's like, okay, well, a trip can't happen without a rider and a driver, and so if trips slow down, it forces us to go into the weeds and say, like, well, why aren't they happening?”
Ed Baker Imported Facebook's Growth Organizational Structure to Uber
“Uber was really the first place that we called it growth, right? I was hired by Ed Baker. He brought over the kind of Facebook structure that they had built at Facebook.”
Loverro: Uber Proved Unit Economics by Highlighting Mature Cities Like NYC
“You know, Uber did this well, for instance, by showing, you know, yeah, hey, we're bleeding money left and right. But if you look at our oldest cities, these dense cities like New York, you know, the unit economics are actually fantastic.”
Ed Baker: Uber selected weekly trips as its North Star metric
“Similarly at Uber, our North Star metric, in fact, one of the first things I did when I started the growth team at Uber was said to the team, we've got to come up with our North Star metric. We decided on, instead of something like monthly active riders, We sa…”
Stebbings: David Cohen's portfolio companies have created over $80B in value
“To date, David has backed hundreds of startups, including the likes of, check this out, Uber, SendGrid, Twilio, ClassPass, PillPack, and many more. In total, these investments have gone on to create more than eighty billion dollars in value”
Calacanis Invested in Uber as a Sequoia Scout
“Jason's also previously been a scout for Sequoia Capital, where he made the original Uber investment.”
Marini: Uber and Lyft valuations perfectly illustrate the 90/10 market value rule
“If you were an angel in Lyft, you're still very happy if they're worth, you know, roughly five billion. But you really want to be an Uber who's worth over sixty billion. Right. And that math actually, you know, kind of works out to that kind of 85, 10, and fiv…”
Wertz: Uber seeded supply by paying idle drivers in new cities
“Uber has done a very good job whenever they launch a city to initially pay their drivers to kind of drive around idle just to have inventory and be quick to pick up the next passenger once there's an order coming in.”