Posted on 06/10/2014 7:43:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The ride-sharing app company Uber last week raised $1.2 billion in venture capital on terms that valued the company at $17 billion. As Will Oremus at Slate.com observed, that's almost as much as Hertz and Avis combined.
It's more plausible to see Uber's valuation not as an artifact of its genuine potential, but of growing inflation within the high-tech bubble.
Consider this: the number placed Uber in a rarefied club that previously included Groupon (worth $16.6 billion on its first day of public trading in 2011) and WhatsApp (worth $19 billion, based on the price paid for it by Facebook).
Of course, Groupon today is worth about $4.2 billion in market capitalization, a sizable plunge from that first day. And WhatsApp was paid largely in Facebook stock, which in time may or may not prove to be as valuable as quatloos.
Rational analysts have been pointing out the flaws, or at least the pitfalls, in treating Uber's $17-billion valuation as a number that reflects actual conditions in Silicon Valley, the business category, as opposed to "Silicon Valley" (the HBO satire).
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Uber is a taxi company. Hardly worth that kind of money. Won’t be surprised to learn Goldman Sachs and similar ilk are involved in the pump and dump scheme.
Don't you wish you invested back then?
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