
Uber's IPO caps an era of mediocrity and small thinking in Silicon Valley - SirLJ
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/11/uber-ipo-example-of-silicon-valley-era-of-mediocrity.html
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SamReidHughes
An utterly ridiculous article. Uber may not be a great business, but it's a
great product, useful and practical for its customers, both drivers and
passengers, in big ways.

Of course it includes braindead bleating about diversity in reference to a
company whose service benefits minority customers the most.

If there's a problem of mediocrity and small thinking here, it's the author's.

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SeeDave
I consider the Uber IPO to be a 'bookend' on what has been a dozen years of
insanity in Silicon Valley. It started off so promising with the sale of
YouTube to Google in '06, but it started to feel increasingly 'off' in the
early '10s with Groupon and Zynga. Color app was the first canary from my
perspective.

Again, this is just one guy's opinion but it has been a hell of a spectacle.
May we all find chairs when the music stops...

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PaulHoule
It will probably be the beginning of an era of an "IPO drought" as well.

The whole thing is happening not because Uber needs to go public as a
business, but that the people who bankrolled Uber needed an exit so that they
could look like they were successful (smooth things out with the people who
bankroll them.) Softbank took Saudi money to string it a long a few more
months, but then Softbank needed an exit too.

Unlike Apple Computer, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Kodak, or many other great
corporations, it was not at all about "let's get public funding so we can make
a huge company and make public investors rich".

Thus it undermines the public markets themselves, the IPO process, etc. It
undermines public confidence in capitalism. It makes a few people rich now at
the cost of future prosperity.

Kudos to everyone involved...

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freewilly1040
None of those companies went public with a noble goal of making the public
rich. They went where the easiest money was.

Why would this signal an I.P.O. drought? If anything it’s the opposite, easy
money is no longer available in private markets so we might now return to
normalcy.

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PaulHoule
If the public doesn't believe it can get rich investing in new stocks, then
they won't buy new stocks.

What really drives IPOs is the demand. If Uber turns into an epic fail it will
be that much harder for the next big IPO. It will draw in regulators, etc.

Ultimately one hand has to wash the other.

