The company has vanquished competitors, incumbents, regulators, and critics.
All that is left is to see how far it can go.
Money isn’t everything, but it’s certainly a useful metric for keeping score, especially when you’re measuring it in the billions. Which is why it’s big news that Uber just closed another funding round — this time it scored another $1 billion, bringing its total raise to $4 billion and its overall valuation to $40 billion. That is more than double where it was just six months ago, making it worth a little bit more than Fiat Chrysler and The Gap combined. The reason investors are still willing to pile money into an already highly valued Uber? Because it’s increasingly clear that Uber has already won. It has beaten everyone out there capable of putting up a real fight. What’s left is mostly a matter of how high it can run up the score.Possibly related:
If you want a sense of how dominant Uber is, just look at the company’s coup in Illinois. In January 2014, the Illinois House and Senate went after Uber with a series of new rules. They banned its drivers from airports, and capped how many hours they could sit behind the wheel each day. Yet instead of backing out of the market, Uber mobilized close to 90,000 customers to petition the governor to veto the rules. He did. And then Uber went for the throat, releasing contact information for legislators who otherwise might have tried to override the veto. When a legislator did file a motion to do so, the Illinois legislature had been sufficiently intimidated by outraged Uber customers that the motion was promptly denied. One year later, on Jan. 12, 2015, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed what Uber referred to as “the most progressive ride-sharing legislation in the country.” Uber didn’t just win, it ran the field.
The ride-hail industry — in its current form — has only been around for about five years. In that time, as the industry struggled to gain its footing, ride-hail quickly found a champion in Uber. Since its inception in 2009, it has faced off against a slew of opponents, the most formidable of which has been the taxi industry itself. Often shielded by local regulators, big taxi has launched attack after attack on what, today, has become a ride-hail and tech leviathan.
But, armed with a sophisticated PR strategy and a small army of political operatives on its payroll, Uber has almost always won. Nothing — not regulators, not competition, and certainly not the existing taxi industry — has been able to stop it. It has killed everything in its path, and it now seems almost certain that Uber will become the dominant player in an emerging multibillion-dollar, global, ride-hailing sector. (Next up? On-demand logistics.)
Uber has a tried and true playbook to win over regulators, and that starts with owning the market.Uber is on its way to becoming even more embedded into the fabric of society than the taxi industry it sought to displace. The country’s lawmakers are using it. A condominium complex in San Francisco is now offering unlimited free Uber rides to tenants in lieu of a parking spot. And as BuzzFeed News reported, Republicans have hailed Uber (not the industry) as a champion of the free market.
Uber has almost single-handedly managed to convince regulators across the country to create a new framework for the industry as a whole to operate within legally. It opened the umbrella that now gives all its competitors shelter from the storm. The company’s aggressive stance on regulations has paved the way for the entire ride-hail industry in the United States. As of Tuesday, there are now 23 jurisdictions that have passed permanent ride-hail legislation that favors Uber and five others that have implemented short-term legislation. (Virginia just passed permanent regulations on Tuesday.)...MORE
BuzzFeed's Chairman Is Invested In A Uber Competitor
