Side note, profitability is generally described as "into the black" not the green. Amazon is probably the best example, their GAAP losses totalled several billion dollars for a decade or so before they flipped the switch.
That completely got me. I thought he was talking about green technology which did not make much sense to me. Didn't realize he was talking about profitability.
That's a good question. As far as I know these losses are pretty epic, so it's somewhat uncharted territory. They're also not directly comparable to previous unicorns because of their cost structure. They also can't exactly amp up the website ads to cash in on advertising, like previous big losers who turned things around.
autonomous driving could potentially cut one of the main expenses (like the driver's fee), which could cut down prices even more, and probably get them enough of a margin to make them profitable.
that's probably why it makes sense to dominate the market while they still can.
Would it be fair to call it a Hail Mary if a technology that isn't ready for the mass market is a potential savior for a company losing $2 billion per year?
To be a Hail Mary it'd need to be a last minute risky play wouldn't it? I was under the impression that Uber has been playing the "lose money on human drivers until we have robot drivers and market share" game since, if not day one, a long time ago.
AWS is wildly profitable, but Amazon as a whole isn't consistently making profits. They've been in the black lately, but that's largely just to keep up appearances. Who knows of they'll choose to carry on that way. They certainly haven't "turned on the tap" yet, though (as always) they could choose to whenever they want.
TBH I think profit is a terrible metric for them. Profit measures cash, and why does Amazon want cash? To buy back shares? To pay dividends? No. We should measure Amazon by annual growth of book value.
