
Travis Kalanick selling nearly a third of Uber stake for $1.4B - whitef0x
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-travis-kalanick/uber-ex-ceo-kalanick-selling-nearly-a-third-of-stake-for-1-4-billion-source-idUSKBN1EU07P
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thg
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075911)

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dandare
If I was sitting on all those billions in stock I would be unable to sleep one
single minute until I turned at least one billion to cache. With 2/3 of the
stock and $1 billion securely under my matrace I would not feel bad if the
stock tenfolded in the future.

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bryanlarsen
one billion in "cache". Typo or pun?

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dandare
typo :)

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ealexhudson
This shouldn't be a surprise, given Softbank is buying from insiders. In fact
it would be a poor signal if the shares weren't bought from a variety of
individuals who invested early.

Having that amount of money to hand likely means that Kalanick is going to go
off and spend a lot more time doing other things. That could also be good for
Uber.

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hidenotslide
I find it a bit surprising that investors would want it under those terms.
Aside from the (negative) signaling value of insider sales, the company is
still burning cash and it's a little weird that over half the capital they are
raising will be a payout to the founder rather than an investment in the
business. Unless they consider getting rid of him an investment like you
imply?

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oblio
Uber Meltdown incoming? Jokes aside, do they still have ridiculous losses at
the moment?

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ddon
According to Statista [1], Uber lost $1.46 billion in the third quarter of
2017. And that is a significant increase from losses of just a billion dollars
a year earlier. But, gross revenue for Uber reached nearly $10 billion from
July to September of this year. Sounds not bad, however, the majority of the
money goes to drivers, while uber received $2.0 billion. Which means that Uber
spent about $3.5 billion in expenses to earn $2.0 billion in revenue.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/chart/12059/uber-revenue-
bookings-a...](https://www.statista.com/chart/12059/uber-revenue-bookings-and-
net-loss/)

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oblio
Then why do people rate them so highly?!? Not even Amazon operated like this.

At this point Uber resembles Webvan.com, than Amazon.com.

Does anyone really believe that they're going to recover the money invested in
Uber? Let alone get more on top of that.

I don't get it...

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xandar11
This is an example of someone getting rich without increasing economic
welfare. It goes against what Paul Graham writes about wealth creation and
confirms Tim O’Reilly's view [2] that many people get rich by selling shares
to suckers.

[1]
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177)

[2] [https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-
ine...](https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-
inequality-a9f7e1613059)

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Lxr
Can you point to some specific articles by Paul Graham to explain what you
mean?

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xandar11
There is one article where he writes how people/hackers get rich by creating
wealth [1]. This is not the case with Travis and Uber, which the article I've
linked to shows. It's also mentioned in his article on economic inequality
where he asserts that people get rich because they are more productive than
others [2].

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

[2] [http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html)

