
Here are a few other interesting figures from a WSJ article published in the fall:
- Uber has indicated that it doesn’t expect to be profitable for at least another 3 years. This year it is expected to hit between $10 and $11 billion in revenue, compared to $7.78 billion last year.
- First Round Capital invested about $1.6 million in Uber’s first two fundraising rounds (2010 and 2011). If the company does in fact reach a valuation of $120 billion in the public markets, that early investment will be worth $5 billion. (First Round sold some of their shares to SoftBank in January and I’m not sure if the above figure accounts for that.)
- Over 50 companies have invested in Uber since its founding, not including a slew of individual investments from people like Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
On a related note, Fred Wilson, who is far more knowledgeable on this topic than I, recently published a post talking about the relationship between the private and public markets and what could happen to (tech) valuations in 2019.
It’s a good follow-on read to the above.
Figure: WSJ
Lately I have really gotten into Matt Levine’s daily newsletter about “Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff.” Maybe that’s how I should describe this blog: Cities, real estate, design, and other stuff.
If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s writing, here is an article that he wrote about Kylie Jenner’s recent tweet concerning Snapchat. You know, the one that wiped out $1.3 billion of market value because she revealed – using only 88 characters, I might add – that she was no longer using the app.
sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The article was spurred on by this question:
“Would it be insider trading for Kylie Jenner to buy short term out of money put options on Snap and tweet out that she’s no longer using Snap?”
And this is the start of his answer:
Insider trading, as I am constantly saying around here, is not about fairness; it is about theft. It is not illegal to trade on your own nonpublic knowledge of your own intentions. Warren Buffett can buy stocks before he announces that he’s bought them, even though that announcement will predictably make the stocks go up.
If I did describe this daily blog like Matt describes his daily newsletter, this post would clearly fall into the “other stuff” camp. But maybe you too will find it interesting. If you do, you can subscribe here.
I am still catching up on reading after being mostly offline last week, minus short windows where I would go online to upload these daily blog posts.
Here is a post that Fred Wilson wrote on new year’s eve about “what happened in 2017.” It has become a tradition of his to write a “what happened” post on the last day of the year and a “what is going to happen” post on the first day of the new year. He then uses these posts to keep track of how well he does on his predictions for the year.
His three headlines for 2017 were: (1) crypto; (2) the beginning of the end of white male dominance; and (3) the tech backlash (i.e. tech is the new Wall Street). It is worth a read. Crypto was an obvious one, but he has been writing about it – and investing in the space – for years. Of particular interest in this post is how he positions it as the basis for Internet 3.0 (the decentralized internet).
What is also clear from the post is just how ingrained tech has become in our everyday lives and how much it reaches beyond simply the tech industry. I have been saying this for years, which is why I spend a lot of time writing about it on this blog.

Here are a few other interesting figures from a WSJ article published in the fall:
- Uber has indicated that it doesn’t expect to be profitable for at least another 3 years. This year it is expected to hit between $10 and $11 billion in revenue, compared to $7.78 billion last year.
- First Round Capital invested about $1.6 million in Uber’s first two fundraising rounds (2010 and 2011). If the company does in fact reach a valuation of $120 billion in the public markets, that early investment will be worth $5 billion. (First Round sold some of their shares to SoftBank in January and I’m not sure if the above figure accounts for that.)
- Over 50 companies have invested in Uber since its founding, not including a slew of individual investments from people like Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
On a related note, Fred Wilson, who is far more knowledgeable on this topic than I, recently published a post talking about the relationship between the private and public markets and what could happen to (tech) valuations in 2019.
It’s a good follow-on read to the above.
Figure: WSJ
Lately I have really gotten into Matt Levine’s daily newsletter about “Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff.” Maybe that’s how I should describe this blog: Cities, real estate, design, and other stuff.
If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s writing, here is an article that he wrote about Kylie Jenner’s recent tweet concerning Snapchat. You know, the one that wiped out $1.3 billion of market value because she revealed – using only 88 characters, I might add – that she was no longer using the app.
sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The article was spurred on by this question:
“Would it be insider trading for Kylie Jenner to buy short term out of money put options on Snap and tweet out that she’s no longer using Snap?”
And this is the start of his answer:
Insider trading, as I am constantly saying around here, is not about fairness; it is about theft. It is not illegal to trade on your own nonpublic knowledge of your own intentions. Warren Buffett can buy stocks before he announces that he’s bought them, even though that announcement will predictably make the stocks go up.
If I did describe this daily blog like Matt describes his daily newsletter, this post would clearly fall into the “other stuff” camp. But maybe you too will find it interesting. If you do, you can subscribe here.
I am still catching up on reading after being mostly offline last week, minus short windows where I would go online to upload these daily blog posts.
Here is a post that Fred Wilson wrote on new year’s eve about “what happened in 2017.” It has become a tradition of his to write a “what happened” post on the last day of the year and a “what is going to happen” post on the first day of the new year. He then uses these posts to keep track of how well he does on his predictions for the year.
His three headlines for 2017 were: (1) crypto; (2) the beginning of the end of white male dominance; and (3) the tech backlash (i.e. tech is the new Wall Street). It is worth a read. Crypto was an obvious one, but he has been writing about it – and investing in the space – for years. Of particular interest in this post is how he positions it as the basis for Internet 3.0 (the decentralized internet).
What is also clear from the post is just how ingrained tech has become in our everyday lives and how much it reaches beyond simply the tech industry. I have been saying this for years, which is why I spend a lot of time writing about it on this blog.
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