I’ve written a lot about Uber. I was early to start its post mortem, I didn’t want to wait til its body got cold. Also, I wanted to tap the buzzer and say ‘first!’ .
It takes time to dismantle a company as large as Uber, and it fits within my corporate becomes country system view, which in itself informs much of my investment thesis system view,  so I broke everything down into smaller sizes and its a work that is ongoing. You can catch up with these gems:
By far the most popular and notable for its business media attention is 
Uber. BS earnings. Tech journalists didn’t do forensics. So I did
and the next one that got a lot of press and attention is
Will Uber be the death of Softbank
My analysis stared off by explaining the boiler rooms days of Wall Street yore
Uber. Beginning the postmortem  (From there couple of good posts to keep the skeptics in the ‘you are right’ column )
What if a Venture funded and wildly unprofitable company employs all the propaganda of a Nation, uses fake news, embedded journalists, positive feedback loops and all the tricks of the behavioral sciences?
Uber knows.
A sure sign of propaganda is that technology analysts and pamphleteers can’t find the missing WMD’s, a ramp to profit. Their commentaries are universally glowing but strangely sans the unearthing of any evidence that would support optimistic assumptions. The narrative is that the success of Uber has been foretold.
True must correspond to fact, but with Uber we don’t have the latter. We are woefully short any hard data about Uber’s competitive and financial performance and objective economic data.
Tech journalists footnote Uber’s $4.5 billion 2017 P&L loss and then only after a large quantity of ‘glow’ about the company’s reformation under its new CEO and the transformational oversight of Eric Holder, the former United States Attorney general.
A sure tell of propaganda is trivializing Uber’s steadily increasing losses, and those losses have been transferred to its shareholders and one day, perhaps its public shareholders, mutual funds, pension plans. In a long time frame, the markets are a very efficient pricing mechanism, someone will be holding the bag last.
If  technology journalists continue to be sympathetic to the financial interests of the shareholders, and those on the periphery, it can’t be real news it must be #FakeNews – One hundred oohs and aahs should have at least 50 harrumphs.
Prior to 2017, Uber’s narrative emphasized that its powerful business model was based on major technological innovations; that resistance to Uber was driven by regulators and “The Big Taxi Cartel” who wanted to corruptly deny consumers the benefits of Uber’s substantially superior service; that strong profits would quickly emerge as they had for all other “tech” startups, and that since Uber’s business model could overwhelm competitors anywhere, it would inevitably dominate the global taxi industry, and make major inroads on private car ownership and public transit.
When a tech journalist’s opus is subtitled “Dara Khosrowshahi is charged with turning the scandal-plagued startup into a traditional company—without sacrificing what made it successful.” what you are about to read is propaganda, they have used all their might to flip the script: Uber global domination narrative has become redemption/recovery.
But what is cloaked in fan literature is that Uber had a ruthless culture because it has always had uncompetitive economics. Companies that can generate sustainable profits because they are significantly more efficient than competitors do not need to celebrate rule breaking, steal intellectual property, harass journalists or tolerate systemic sexual harassment.
That’s why this happened:
SEXUAL HARASSMENT SCANDAL,
Uber paid off hackers to hide a 57 million user data breach
Uber is tracking your location even when rides are finished
Uber’s app can secretly spy on your iPhone
Uber use spyware to track its rival, Lyft
Uber used a tool to deny rides to regulators and let them book only ghost-cars
And will happen again. Just not here. Soon it will be another country’s, or region’s problems. I suspect Asia and the Middle East.
The End?