Coinbase

Uber

Coinbase

Coinbase makes money from transaction fees. Every time someone buys or sells crypto on the platform, Coinbase takes a cut — typically around 1.5% for regular users, lower for high-volume traders on Coinbase Pro.

For a company that processes billions in daily volume, that adds up fast. In the 2021 bull run, Coinbase generated $7.8 billion in revenue.

Beyond trading fees, Coinbase earns revenue from staking (users earn yield on their crypto, Coinbase takes a commission), USDC interest (Coinbase co-created the USDC stablecoin with Circle and earns interest on the reserves), custodial services for institutions, and its cloud platform for developers building on-chain apps.

Uber

Uber is a marketplace that connects riders with drivers. You request a ride through the app, the nearest driver accepts, picks you up, drops you off, and Uber takes a cut — typically 25-30% of the fare.

The driver keeps the rest. Uber doesn't own any cars.

They don't employ any drivers. They built a $150 billion company by being the middleman with a really good app.

The model expanded into Uber Eats (food delivery, same concept — restaurants cook, drivers deliver, Uber takes a cut), Uber Freight (connecting truckers with shippers), and advertising. The advertising business is quietly enormous — Uber has data on where millions of people go every day, and brands will pay handsomely for that.

Coinbase

Brian Armstrong was working as a software engineer at Airbnb in 2010 when he read Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper. He became obsessed.

At the time, buying Bitcoin meant navigating sketchy exchanges, wiring money to anonymous accounts, and hoping your coins didn't get stolen. Armstrong thought: this is never going mainstream unless someone makes it dead simple.

In 2012, Armstrong got into Y Combinator and co-founded Coinbase with Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs trader. Their pitch was straightforward — be the easiest, safest, most regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin.

While other crypto exchanges were operating in legal gray areas, Coinbase went out of its way to get money transmitter licenses in every US state. It was slow and expensive, but it meant Coinbase was the one exchange your bank wouldn't block.

The first version was bare-bones. You linked your bank account, bought Bitcoin, and Coinbase held it for you.

That custody model — Coinbase holding your crypto — was controversial with crypto purists who preached "not your keys, not your coins." But for normal people who didn't want to manage private keys, it was exactly what they needed.

Uber

The idea started in Paris in December 2008. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were at the LeWeb tech conference and couldn't find a cab.

Camp had been obsessing over the idea of summoning a car with your phone. He bought the domain UberCab.com, built a prototype, and recruited Kalanick to help run it.

The first version launched in San Francisco in 2010 as a black car service — not the cheap rideshare everyone knows today. You'd tap a button, a Lincoln Town Car would show up, and it cost about 1.5x a regular taxi.

Ryan Graves answered a tweet from Kalanick looking for an "entrepreneurial product manager" and became employee number one. He ran operations while Kalanick was still finishing up another startup.

Graves would later become CEO briefly before handing the reins to Kalanick. The app launched with just a handful of cars in San Francisco.

It worked so well that riders couldn't shut up about it.

The real inflection point came in 2012 when they launched UberX — regular people driving their own cars at prices cheaper than taxis. That one decision turned Uber from a luxury black car service into a verb.

Within two years, UberX was available in hundreds of cities and the word "Uber" had entered the dictionary.

Coinbase

Coinbase grew with the Bitcoin price cycle. Every bull run brought a wave of new users who heard about crypto from the news or their friends and Googled "how to buy Bitcoin." Coinbase was almost always the first result.

The company spent heavily on brand advertising including a legendary Super Bowl ad in 2022 that was just a bouncing QR code — it crashed the app from the traffic surge.

The regulatory strategy was the long game. While Binance and FTX grew faster by ignoring regulations, Coinbase spent years and millions getting licensed.

When the regulatory crackdown came, Coinbase was the last exchange standing. Being "the regulated one" went from a competitive disadvantage to the only thing that mattered.

The direct listing in April 2021 was a landmark moment. Coinbase went public via direct listing at a $85 billion valuation — the largest direct listing in history at the time.

It legitimized crypto as an asset class in a way that no Bitcoin price chart ever could.

Uber

Uber's early growth strategy was beautifully ruthless. They'd roll into a new city, launch without asking permission, and deal with the regulatory fallout later.

They called it "Travis's Law" — it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

The playbook was simple: launch in a new city, give massive discounts to riders (sometimes completely free rides), pay drivers signing bonuses and guaranteed hourly rates, and flood the zone until the city was hooked. Then slowly raise prices and cut driver incentives once the market was locked.

They burned billions doing this but it worked — by 2016 Uber was in 500+ cities across 70 countries.

They also weaponized word of mouth with referral codes. Every rider could give free rides to friends.

Every new driver got a bonus for signing up. The viral loop was insane.

At peak growth, Uber was adding a new city every day.

Coinbase

The crypto winter of 2022 nearly broke the company. After the collapse of FTX, Luna, and Three Arrows Capital, crypto trading volume fell off a cliff.

Coinbase's revenue dropped from $7.8 billion in 2021 to $3.1 billion in 2022. The stock went from $342 to $35 — an 90% decline.

Armstrong laid off 18% of the company in June 2022 and another 20% in January 2023.

The SEC lawsuit was existential. In June 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase alleging that it operated as an unregistered securities exchange.

The lawsuit claimed that at least 13 crypto assets traded on Coinbase were securities. If the SEC won, it could have fundamentally broken Coinbase's business model.

The case was eventually settled in 2025 with Coinbase paying a $50 million fine but crucially not admitting that any tokens were securities.

Revenue concentration is a structural risk. Coinbase's revenue swings wildly with crypto prices and trading volume.

In bull markets, the company prints money. In bear markets, revenue evaporates.

This makes it nearly impossible to plan long-term or maintain consistent growth — Wall Street hates unpredictability.

Uber

Where do you even start? Uber might have faced more simultaneous existential crises than any company in history.

Regulatory wars. Taxi unions, city governments, and entire countries tried to shut Uber down.

London revoked their license. France arrested two executives.

Uber was banned, unbanned, re-banned, and sued in dozens of jurisdictions simultaneously.

The toxic culture. In 2017, former engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post describing rampant sexual harassment, discrimination, and HR cover-ups at Uber.

It went nuclear. Investigation after investigation followed.

Board members resigned. Executives were fired.

Travis Kalanick's ouster. After the culture scandals, a leaked video of him berating an Uber driver, and a federal investigation into stolen trade secrets from Google's self-driving car unit Waymo, the board forced Kalanick to resign as CEO in June 2017.

Dara Khosrowshahi came in from Expedia to clean things up.

The cash burn was legendary. Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019 alone.

They subsidized rides so heavily that riders were paying less than the actual cost of the trip. The company didn't turn its first operating profit until Q3 2023 — fourteen years after founding.

Coinbase

Coinbase is the consumer trading platform — buy, sell, and hold 250+ cryptocurrencies. Coinbase Advanced Trade (formerly Coinbase Pro) is the lower-fee, more sophisticated trading interface.

Coinbase Wallet is a self-custody wallet where users control their own keys. Coinbase Prime is the institutional platform for hedge funds, family offices, and corporations.

Base is Coinbase's own Layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum, designed for cheap, fast transactions. USDC is the stablecoin Coinbase co-created with Circle — pegged 1:1 to the US dollar with over $30 billion in circulation.

Coinbase Commerce lets businesses accept crypto payments.

Uber

Uber Rides is the core product — get from A to B in someone else's car. UberX is the standard option, Uber Black is the premium black car tier, UberXL fits bigger groups, and Uber Reserve lets you schedule rides in advance.

Uber Eats is the food delivery arm and competes directly with DoorDash and Grubhub. Uber Freight is the logistics play — basically Uber for semi-trucks, connecting carriers with shippers.

Uber for Business lets companies manage employee rides and meals. Uber now also offers package delivery, grocery delivery, and even boat rides in some cities.

Coinbase

Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, IVP

Uber

Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, SoftBank, Toyota, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Tencent