Oh my God, this is insane.
I have literally 21 pages of notes in the Google Docs.
Welcome to season four, episode six of Acquired the podcast about technology, acquisitions and IPOs.
I'm Ben Gilbert.
I'm David Rosenthal and we are your hosts.
We sit here today on the day of Uber's long awaited ipo.
And David, let me tell you, I am super pumped to be here today.
Me as well, Ben.
Me as well.
Well, here was my alternate intro and frankly I have a few here.
We covered Pinterest and Lyft recently, both valued at about $15 billion.
Today we are covering a company who has raised over $20 billion in Uber.
Or perhaps this third.
Uber just raised $8 billion or approximately one half of Lyft's entire market cap in its ipo.
Or maybe this fourth one.
Today we are diving into a company whose epic history is matched only by its epic operating losses with over 3 billion last year, the largest of any company to ever go public.
But what you really need to know about Uber, they are a broad multi mobility transportation platform, a hyper growth food delivery service that leverages Uber's existing customers and driver assets, and an international ride sharing holding company with enormous chunks of Didi, Yandex, Taxi and Grab, and a trucking shipping marketplace called Uber Freight to top it all off.
So holy God David, there is a lot to cover here.
I thought we were doing an Uber episode, not a softbank episode at this point.
What's the difference?