Having that amount of money to hand likely means that Kalanick is going to go off and spend a lot more time doing other things. That could also be good for Uber.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177

[2] https://wtfeconomy.com/what-paul-graham-is-missing-about-ine...

But this is not an example of the notion that "many people get rich by selling shares to suckers", and this is not the kind of thing O'Reilly was talking about.

The people who have invested billions of dollars in Uber are not "suckers". They are some of the most sophisticated and experienced investors on the world, and they have access to information that is not available to anybody else, including me, you and the paper's author.

Most importantly, they have skin in the game, that the rest of us, including the author, do not. If they are wrong about their investment decisions, they will lose significant amounts of money personally and on behalf of their limited partners, which will hurt their reputations and prospects for attracting more funds in the future.

None of this means that I think Uber is certain to succeed. Of course nobody knows.

But it's unquestionable that Uber has already created vast amounts of economic value already (for people - particularly several women I know - who feel safer in Ubers than they did in cabs, for drivers who make a living from Uber, and for people who can afford to pay for rides more often than they could before Uber existed), and the investors who believe it will continue to create more value are well qualified to make that judgement.

For what it's worth, I dislike Kalanick as a character, and I have no great love for Uber as a company.

I just care about accuracy in discussions like this.