Regulation lost again.
If regulation was a team at the 2018 Russian World Cup, they would have already been sent packing in disgrace.
Even if regulators want to regulate, tech companies swiftly respond with an army of well-paid lawyers fighting fiercely for its interests.
Tech is more powerful than government now and the desperation of government intervention after the fact falls on deaf ears.
Investors have even seen this happen in communist China where there are whispers in Beijing that China's BATs are getting too powerful for their own good.
In a major victory in the run-up to the 2019 IPO, Uber one-upped the Brits.
Uber won back its license to operate in the city of London, one of Uber's major growth engines, when British judge Emma Arbuthnot turned over the ruling and gave Uber a 15-month license.
Tech is invincible against the institutions attempting to clamp down on wild business practices involving data.
And this win proves that every emerging tech company should act brazenly and push the line when it can.
If regulations set tech in its crosshairs, this proves there is no recourse.
Tech is disrupting regulation.
Tech is changing so fast that regulators cannot keep up because of the creaky, bureaucratic nature of big government.
Once regulators wrap their heads around a new technology, the next technology is on its way to universal rollout.
If you want to boil everything down to the nuts and bolts, tech is just too nimble.
It can simultaneously morph into anything it wants in a jiffy because any morphing these days involves a computer, Internet connection, and execution ability.
This phenomenon has created a scenario where regulators will always be one step behind the tech companies, which at the same time are staying one step ahead of the hackers trying to skim off their profits or plain out blow a hole in their company.
It is hard to regulate something you do not know about or do not understand.
Even worse, if a technology becomes firmly embedded into popular culture, it's even harder to root it out.
The result is that Uber and the ride-sharing economy is here to stay. Now the most anticipated IPO in 2019 has its best European business up and running again.
When I say nimbleness, this does not just refer to staying ahead of regulators but also the agility to operate in certain geographic specific locations.
In just a few months, Uber shut up shop in Southeast Asia selling its business to Grab, the leading ride-sharing app in Southeast Asia, while receiving a 27.5% stake in Grab.
I have chronicled the problem with American companies entering into Southeast Asia, and this stake proves a shrewd move.
It will materially add to the top and bottom line once Uber goes public.
Southeast Asia is China's sphere of influence, and the special relationships Beijing has procured in the region offers Beijing unfettered access to claim it as its own turf.
This is going on while the Japanese "zaibatsu" and Korean "chaebols" are licking their chops to penetrate the Southeast Asian markets after grappling with an aging society and stagnant profitability.
SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, a recent investor of Uber, has applied pressure on Uber to focus on its premium markets and drop the third world pivot.
Effectively, Uber has done well to seize a stake in a region oozing with Chinese interests in a premium unicorn.
As Facebook has showed, the highest average revenue per user stems from North America and Europe.
Whether it's hawking ads or sharing transportation, companies can extract more profit per user in these two regions.
Migrating up the value food chain is bullish for its financials come the IPO.
London represents a huge opportunity for Uber.
Uber has cornered the London market with more than 3.6 million users serviced by more than 45,000 Uber drivers.
Digging its nails further into its core market will encourage the closing down of the cash burn model that Uber promulgated in its early days.
Before Uber sold its interests in China, it was burning $1 billion per year fighting domestic stalwart Didi Chuxing, one of China's best and brightest unicorns.
The $2 billion Uber lost in two years was enough and avoiding future China risk sealed the move out of China.
That move looks great considering the tariff war playing out in Washington.
The trend of western tech firms doubling down on western markets will strengthen going forward as Europe has the same worries about Chinese tech hijacking Europe's best technology such as China's Midea Group purchase of Germany's best robotic company Kuka in 2016.
China cannot do that anymore in Europe or America.
Uber Eats, one of Uber's hottest growth businesses, has no chance of succeeding in third world countries where delivery charges are a pittance due to cheap labor costs.
This business can only succeed in high transport cost societies.
Uber ran into headwinds using controversial UberPOP, Uber's compact vehicle app in Europe, in countries including Spain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Finland, Japan, Hungary, and Bulgaria.
Aside from Bulgaria and Hungary, these locations represent high purchasing power countries that fit with Uber's business model.
Each victory in court will create additional income streams, and I am willing to bet on Uber's lawyers in the developed world, rather than a hodgepodge of uninformed regulators.
Imagine how regulators will police artificial intelligence (A.I.) in the future?
Only A.I. engineers understand what is happening under the hood of the car.
Uber will find the will and a way to enter into every market it considers healthy for its technology.
Under the new rules in London, Uber must now report crimes to the police instead of to the transport authority of London.
Drivers can only offer rides in locations where they have proper certifications to work for Uber.
Uber must now give a mandatory six-hour break to Uber drivers who have worked for 10 straight hours.
These new laws are hardly anything extreme and should already have been written into stone beforehand.
As expected, Uber blamed the debacle on Travis Kalanick, the maverick founder and former CEO of Uber. And Uber being "not fit" to operate was entirely convenient to use Kalanick as the scapegoat.
Uber has increased private hired vehicles in London 92% since 2009. Without London, Uber's future profitability and growth story becomes questionable.
Uber has interests in more than 600 cities worldwide and more than 40 of these are in England.
Uber can avoid any major damage with the Brighton's of the world refusing to cooperate, but it cannot lose its higher-grade locations in London, New York, San Francisco, and almost every major mega city in the western world.
They did it.
Tech disrupted regulation again, and next year's IPO should be a stunning spectacle.
It is normal in the current climate for expectations of tech darlings to explode, and 2019 will bring self-driving technology to the public markets creating even more demand for this asset scarce industry.
That is exactly what tech does.
Tech builds industry from scratch and regulators have no chance to control it.
Uber's ultimate goal is to profit from flying cars by 2023, in a new business called Uber Elevate that will cause regulators to fall even further behind the regulation curve as tech makes science fiction a reality in the near future.
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Quote of the Day
"We're in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an asshole named Taxi," said founder and former CEO of Uber Travis Kalanick.
