Unicorn that can make you unicorn
Uber, Lyft, Airbnb may go IPO soon, sometimes I feel these are over valued and risky to join at this point. What are your thoughts? UBER: Eats is really not a big mover, self driving takes years to become main stream, say 3 years. So this is a super long game even if they IPO in 2019. Lyft: fierce competition, less aggressiveness in core business expansion to other countries. Airbnb: no strong direct competition, but it is now valued above Marriot, expedia and other big groups. Expedia is a big player here, with recent acquisition of HomeAway I will be surprised if they are not coming after Airbnb. Leaving tech stack, learning aside from equation and solely from TC maximization perspective, which one do you think will live up to these valuations and even surpass in 2 years timeframe, i.e they go public and retain or increase value. Note that controlling valuations in private is totally different from public. Please dont vote an option because you want that to be answer, rather pick something that you truly believe for us to assess it well
Uber is the best of these options.
It's time to think beyond FANG and LAU.
Airbnb is currently profitable, unlike others
In the last few years, stock appreciation came from growth, not profitability. Is Airbnb still growing fast enough?
Good point. I’ve heard their growth has slowed. However, if we enter a recession soon, I have a feeling that profitability will matter more
Why not look at grab? Asia is going to be a huge market regardless
Grab has really shitty pay and a bad culture. It will definitely not help maximize your CTC.
Oh that’s interesting
Uber has more big bold bets than eats and self driving cars. Also eats can actually be a big mover, why do you think it wouldn’t be? I really think that out of these choices, Uber would be best for your TC if you believe that Uber can do the 120 billion IPO as advertised, which in this bear market would be pretty damn good if we can pull it off. But to put things into perspective none of these will make you unicorn at this point. You need to join a company that’s going to be the next unicorn for that to happen.
Probably ads is other bet, share if there are any other non confidential bets. My concern with uber is it takes very long time to be profitable. Best case for self driving to be successful is 3 years but I think it would be more than that. I dont think uber or Lyft would IPO in 2019. Risk is public investors are not patient, see snap. Amazon managed it by delivering and building trust with investors. Biggest problem with current valuations are, how they map number of users directly to billions. I think they take google and Facebook as examples but business models are different for a lot of companies. Agree it's too late to be a unicorn, unless you hold millions worth of shares it may not work out.
In Amazon case it took a lot of years to build that trust and patience with investors. Uber needs it if they IPO soon.
Uber will pop, lyft will fizzle, airbnb who knows. Stick with FANG
Uber