What Was Money, Part Infinity
Uber, the most valuable bro startup in history, has been valued at $18.2 billion. Crazy, right? Or is it? asks Andrew Ross Sorkin. “But here’s another way to think about Uber’s whopping valuation: It is still too low.”
After all, he notes, “consider the ‘smart money’ that plowed $1.2 billion into the company before its recent valuation, only 10 months after it was valued at only $3.5 billion: Fidelity Investments, BlackRock, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Wellington Management and Summit Partners.” This is true: not one of these venture firms has ever contributed to the wildly inflated value of a technology company in the hopes of one day realizing an enormous profit.
Sorkin, being a reasonable person, however, concedes, “Maybe Uber will turn out to be a bust. It is possible. Or maybe not. Either way it will be a fun ride.” The evaporation of billions of dollars and the “20,000 new jobs per month” that Uber is supposedly creating could indeed be fun, in the way that the Freefall ride at Six Flags is, once you’ve trained yourself to recognize the sensation of your stomach shooting up into your throat as you plummet to earth from an unimaginable height at incredible speed as fun.
