People make a difference. Uber has a lot of execution left to master and without Kalanick and the other key players that have left the company, the odds are now definitely not in its favor. And yes, the self-driving car play was a brilliant fund raising play (leveraging the news of the amazing advances by Tesla) but a terrible waste of limited resources. It is acceptable to outsource such projects. Or to make strategic alliances. Business is most often a series of trade-offs. Startups more so.
I think he was right about the self-driving. He doesn't have a moat otherwise, as explained in another comment above; specifically ts not hard for a city to develop, deploy and advertise their own cab-hailing app and only a little harder to then design partnerships with other cities to network and share profits.
Uber's play was that they could subsidize that through private investors in order to scale. But now they have to find, hire, and compensate basically the whole tier of upper management, while still burning operating money. I'm not a business major, but that's probably REALLY not good.
I'm surprised I haven't read about it in another comment yet, but this is screaming for a company with good management and a stash of solid reputation/PR/marketing to come get a really good deal. Maybe Facebook because the culture wouldn't clash as much as my next two: apple and Google? Apple has the cash, and needs an entry into automotive while we wait for the apple car. Google/Waymo+Uber immediately settles the lawsuit, puts uber back into moat territory with self-driving, and gives google some people on the ground to compete with Amazon in last-mile?
