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People keep saying Uber is burning cash, but their core business model is sound:

$5 per hour per driver goes to Uber

Assume 80,000 drivers (half of # U.S. Uber drivers) drive 8 hours a day, 7 days a week

52 weeks in a year

5x8x80000x7x52=$1,164,800,000

So about $1.1 billion just in the US. The only expenses are at headquarters (engineering, operations, design, legal, marketing, support) and the tiny field support offices they have in each city (local, entry-level employees).



As far as I know, Uber loses money on driver incentives and stuff like pool/share options, where they pay the driver the amount over the discount granted to the customer. I'm assuming a lot of such tricks are how they keep their drivers, and this is what they spend money on.




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