Why exactly is Uber worth $120 billion? It isn’t. It’s a pitch being made to make Dara ‘whole’. Some eye watering numbers from Axios’ Dan Primak makes you wonder how big this house of cards really is. For example 24% of its GLOBAL buiness comes from just 5 cities - two of them in California!

Uber Alles

… with my highlights.

Wall Street banks last fall told Uber that it could fetch a $120 billion valuation in its IPO. What we didn’t realize that the time was just how important that specific figure was to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi stands to make a boatload of money if Uber maintains an average fully-diluted valuation of at least $120 billion during a period of 90 consecutive trading days, according to a footnote in the company’s IPO registration document.

Specifically, he’d be entitled to stock options to buy 1.75 million shares. The fair market value when those shares began vesting last May was $59 million, but would be substantially higher at a $120 billion valuation (yes, even fully-diluted).

For context, 1.75 million is more than all of the other stock options Khosrowshahi could earn. He also currently holds just under 200,000 actual shares, and last year received a $1 million salary and $2 million cash bonus.

For further context, he left over $180 million of options on the table when he left Expedia to take the Uber job. This potential options grant is part of his original employment agreement, not something specifically tied to the IPO.

Just to give Khosrowshahi some heartburn, Lyft shares closed yesterday at $56.11. That’s 22% below the IPO price and just 18.5% above the final private share price.

Just to give Khosrowshahi some antacid, both Zoom and Turning Point Therapeutics this morning increased their IPO size. Neither is a transportation company, but the moves do suggest that Lyft hasn’t softened the broader IPO market. Will be interesting to see if we get an amended filing from Pinterest over the next 24 hours…

Based on Uber’s S-1 filing, the company conceded that a full 24 percent of its business in 2018 was derived from just five cities: LA, New York, San Francisco, London and São Paulo.

This is a fairly consequential concession: its 3.9 million drivers would make it the largest employer on earth, but if a full quarter of Uber’s business comes from just five municipalities this grants those metropolises a considerable amount of leverage over the company just as it attempts to broach the public markets. After all, it would take just one of those cities reclassifying its gig workers as “employees” to jeopardize its “friendly regulatory environment.”

Dan Primack - Axios

How New York City Could Destroy Uber

iPad Mini (2019) Review

“You’re not awash with high quality choices when it comes to small tablets, and within that context, the Apple iPad Mini 2019 stands truly alone and at the top of the pile. Most of the other small tablet options are budget devices with nowhere near the design flair or power of the iPad Mini 2019.”

Alex Kidman

The Full Story

Truly alone and at the top of the pile. It truly is magic!

A Solution To Immigration Law

“I have an answer to this dilemma: nominate Stephen Miller as secretary of Homeland Security. He’s the guy who’s been advising Trump on immigration policy all along, so he’d be obligated to break the law and do whatever Trump wanted. Later, he could be prosecuted for wilfully violating immigration statutes and be put away for five-to-ten with time off for good behavior. Trump would get what he wants and Miller would get what he deserves. It’s win-win.”

Kevin Drum

The Full Story

The Role Of Oracle’s Magic Suitcase’ In It’s Anti-Google Campaign

“Just over a year and a half ago, Oracle lobbyists started lugging a large black suitcase through the halls of Congress. It contained a tangle of communications equipment they used to demonstrate to members of Congress and regulators the river of real-time data that flows from Android phones to Google’s advertising servers.

The rig—dubbed “the magic suitcase” by congressional staffers—generated a record of the second-by-second logs that a phone equipped with Google’s operating system sends to the search giant, including users’ location and whether they are on foot or in a vehicle. It quickly had an impact.

Sen. Joshua Hawley, a Missouri Republican known for his strong opinions about reining in big tech, was shown the presentation, according to people familiar with the situation. His recent grilling of a senior Google executive during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing echoed the presentation’s findings, which highlight Google’s ability to create intimate behavioral profiles from the troves of personal data Android phones collect.”

Christopher Stern

The Full Story

There Is No Limit To The Ugliness Of Facebook

“Last year, while swiping through Tinder, I matched with a young lady whom I’ll call Emily. After a polite exchange, we made plans to meet up and swapped phone numbers, intending to plan a date over text. If you’ve never used Tinder, the app, in a welcome gesture towards privacy, will never reveal its users’ last names. So you can imagine my surprise when, later that evening, I logged onto Facebook and saw that Emily was the first suggestion in my list of “People You May Know,” her last name and job title — both hidden on Tinder, the former by design the latter by choice — plainly visible.”

Will Partin

The Full Story

On Offensive License Plates

A Canadian Court Has to Decide if a License Plate is Offensive.

“Mr. Grabher argued, via a court filing (republished in Harper’s Magazine), that even if that’s true, Nova Scotia turns a blind eye to a lot of other offensive phrases. Specifically, he cited “recent advertisements placed on Halifax Transit buses” (including one that read “Be proud of your Dingle”) and “government-regulated Canadian place-names” (such as “Crotch Lake, Ontario”). And none of them have a way to indicate their etymology, either.”

Dan Lewis

The Full Story

On Time

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

Jorge Luis Borges

On Thinking

”Most people would rather die than think; many do.”

Bertrand Russell

On Pursuit

”An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.”

Pliny the Younger

On Paradise

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

Jorge Luis Borges