Good points, Devansh. One additional observation: there's only one Meta out there, a Big Kahuna who took its first mover advantage and not only helped to invent the new landscape, but embedded itself into the lives of billions. This was certainly a right place, right time scaling up that I don't think any company founded after 2010 could hope to attain.
Sure, but what I'm saying is that Meta has a ready-made insta-base of users on any platform they decide to launch, and Uber does not. Just citing yet another reason why Meta can stand become shockingly profitable in a very short period of time.
Much has been made of Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency", but the reality is that Meta hasn't ever stopped being profitable ever since they stepped on the gas; the market was upset by their equivalence of Alphabet's "other bets" section; meanwhile, their business model continued to provide stupefying free cash flow while "losing ten billion dollars on the metaverse." What a silly narrative.
Great post. The only part I disagree with is the characterization that Uber will never work economically. I take your point that on-demand ride hailing isn't going to work, but food delivery has been working for them, and I think virtually all on-demand services that can be fulfilled with a single car will work when those cars can drive themselves (this is not an original idea, but maybe the more PC way of phrasing what Travis Kalanick used to say publically...)
Good points, Devansh. One additional observation: there's only one Meta out there, a Big Kahuna who took its first mover advantage and not only helped to invent the new landscape, but embedded itself into the lives of billions. This was certainly a right place, right time scaling up that I don't think any company founded after 2010 could hope to attain.
That may be true for social media- but I was referring to the platform effects. Uber and the rest weren't competing with Meta.
Sure, but what I'm saying is that Meta has a ready-made insta-base of users on any platform they decide to launch, and Uber does not. Just citing yet another reason why Meta can stand become shockingly profitable in a very short period of time.
Much has been made of Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency", but the reality is that Meta hasn't ever stopped being profitable ever since they stepped on the gas; the market was upset by their equivalence of Alphabet's "other bets" section; meanwhile, their business model continued to provide stupefying free cash flow while "losing ten billion dollars on the metaverse." What a silly narrative.
Great post. The only part I disagree with is the characterization that Uber will never work economically. I take your point that on-demand ride hailing isn't going to work, but food delivery has been working for them, and I think virtually all on-demand services that can be fulfilled with a single car will work when those cars can drive themselves (this is not an original idea, but maybe the more PC way of phrasing what Travis Kalanick used to say publically...)
Food delivery is also a very unprofitable business. Unless we can automate away the process or optimize for delivery (the way Pizza chains have).