Uber WAS a pump and dump. Insiders used the public for exit liquidity and any public shareholders got stuck with a pretty crap stock. Uber went up 100% from IPO to mid 2025, Google went up 400% in that time period (and I picked 2025 to avoid the huge AI runup we have seen).

It was hemorrhaging in many cities using extremely profitable cities like London and NYC to keep their global competitiveness.

Uber was able to pivot and become financially sound with two moves: - Uber Eats becoming first party delivery to restaurants (it started as a limited selection of items from some restaurants and quickly evolved into a Doordash-esque competitor) - Uber launching a 1B+ RR Ads business - margins on this are obviously incredible

Both of those combined with discipline in their ridesharing business (exiting the China market with a sale + stake, dumping their self-driving business when it became a money sink) have led to a recovery in their stock price, but it is FAR from the crazy expectations set up for VCs. I expect those in the last round didn't get a great return, but obviously folk like Benchmark exited like kings.

Personally, I always underestimate how much exploitation consumers are willing to experience before leaving a brand. I thought Facebook was reaching the peak of its ability to shove ads into its products in like 2011, boy was I wrong.

Uber successfully displaced most of the alternatives, slowly raised rates, and maintained operating margin while their fixed costs didn't have to scale as much. Post Travis they've, financially, nailed it.