The first article presented evidence that Uber is a fundamentally unprofitable enterprise, with negative 140% profit margins and incurring larger operating losses than any previous startup. Uber’s ability to capture customers and drivers from incumbent operators is entirely due to $2 billion in annual subsidies, funded out of the $13 billion its investors have provided. That P&L evidence shows that Uber did not achieve any meaningful margin improvement between 2013 and 2015 while the limited margin improvements achieved in 2016 can be entirely explained by Uber imposed cutbacks to driver compensation.

Thus there is no basis for assuming Uber is on the same rapid, scale economy driven path to profitability that some digitally-based startups achieved. In fact, Uber would require one of the greatest profit improvements in history just to achieve breakeven.