Uber vs EnviraBoard.
There’s only one way to find out…FIGHT!

If any of you are heading away for a bit of winter sun, and are looking for a good read, can I recommend: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac.

It’s the definitive account of Uber’s meteoric rise – and the chaos that came with disruption at scale.

Here’s its blurb: It’s the definitive, award-winning book detailing the meteoric rise and fall of Travis Kalanick at Uber. It explores the “win-at-all-costs” culture, regulatory battles, and scandals leading to his 2017 resignation.

1. Travis is fascinated by the scene in Casino Royale, where the phone display shows a car travelling down a road on a map. He thinks he can adapt it for taxis.
2. Uber’s business model is pretty much illegal everywhere. From memory, the issue hinges on whether Uber is a taxi company or a technology company. Uber’s view is: let’s break the law, get support from the public, and get the law changed. It’s a risky strategy, but the law could be wrong – or at least not fit for purpose.
3. The Uber team is fascinated by the uptick in ride hailing at about 5am most mornings – the result of romantic (or otherwise) clandestine activities coming to an end and the necessity to get showered, changed, and get to work. Makes me think I have missed out.

4. Travis treats his investors with considerable disdain. He keeps changing the share classes to give him board control. I think there is some give and take here, because boards are a pain and are generally high confidence / medium competence. I mean, how can they be any higher in terms of competence for one day per month? My experience is that many decisions you make as CEO are marginal: you’re navigating the rocks. Over-analysis leads to paralysis, and if you’re not a good people person or orator, dealing with multiple egos with different visions must be tiresome. Travis, however, is a buccaneer. And for that I congratulate him. I mean he is the ultimate buccaneer: break things, make money.
5. Where the book blurb says he resigned, in absolute terms he did. Was he pushed? Yes. Was he booted out? Yes. He was actually removed two days after his mother died in a boating accident. I think she was about 60. Made me think for a second whether I would want to swap places with him. It’s a no. To the best of my knowledge there has not been a more vicious removal.

Disruption and Chaos: Uber vs EnviraBoard

1. Undoubtedly, we are dealing with two of the longest-running industries in the world – transport and building products.
   SCORE: 9 Uber / 9 EnviraBoard
2. While for Uber the incumbent was, in some cases, city- and state-organised legislation, creating licences and medallions, for EnviraBoard, the incumbent is plasterboard or Sheetrock.  I anticipate it’s actually easier having a commercial incumbent, rather than one enshrined in law.
   SCORE: 4 Uber / 9 EnviraBoard
3. Uber is actually super easy and has a considerable network effect, if you can get the drivers. From what I have heard, the workmen go wild for EnviraBoard. These are the guys with tool belts, throwing the boards around, chopping, cutting, nailing, installing the boards in homes and businesses.  At a sub-level, i.e. domestic DIY, I think there is nothing worse than being blamed for something that is not your fault. I mean, who can actually work with plasterboard/sheetrock? Wall plugs – what are they? You only need them because sheetrock is strong in compression but weak everywhere else. I mean, it has to be illogical – why would you make your partitioning out of rock? It’s just bonkers. I think Uber is weaker. It really needs network dominance. As soon as competition comes in, you need multiple apps: Lyft, etc. Whereas people can buy and use EnviraBoard anywhere. A network effect of “this is brilliant, and it’s carbon negative” does give EnviraBoard a boost
   SCORE: 6 Uber / 8 EnviraBoard
4. The experience: OK, so there have been some problems with Uber drivers, but this is to be expected. Could there be manufacturing quality problems with EnviraBoard? Probably. In either case, mild mess-ups have to be expected. Can the teams deal with it? Yes.
   SCORE: 7 Uber / 9 EnviraBoard
5. Access to capital: Uber smashes it. We are doing pretty well with funding, but our valuations are still very, very, very low compared to the opportunity we are sitting on. Uber is tech in Silicon Valley. EnviraBoard is a carbon-negative industrial cleantech in Europe.
   SCORE: 10 Uber / 4 EnviraBoard

I suppose I could go on. But here are the scores for the opportunity:

So now, let’s add in the chaos metric. Generally, you want low chaos, high disruption. Chaos is a negative. Uber fuelled with Silicon Valley money got laws changed and pushed many out of their professions. It’s sad really. EnviraBoard produces superior building boards made from secondary paper waste sludge. The only losers will be the shareholders of plasterboard / sheet rock companies. Is there going to be a fight. Yup. But it’s within the confines of standard business. Who wins? EnviraBoard is good for everybody.

I therefore present to you today: a bigger opportunity than Uber.

Now, I have not mentioned that it’s carbon-negative and made out of waste that would otherwise go to landfill – and from 2030, it will be illegal to send this waste to landfill.

But Uber on electric cars probably makes this an even steven.

I also haven’t mentioned that EnviraBoard creates circa 70 jobs per factory, while if we are moving to driverless cars, this destroys them.

A bigger opportunity than Uber? Possibly.

EnviraBoard is currently priced at 15 pence (circa £20m market cap), and the development cost of the product are circa 30M so far and its ready now. The mini-plant build and core machinery are almost complete, and the ongoing seed round is focused on automating production to enable board samples to be offered to factory investors, customers and distributors.

If you’d like to learn more about EnviraBoard or see the investor materials, simply click below and we’ll arrange a conversation.

Kind regards

Nicholas Dimmock BA MBA CASS

Chairman
350 PPM Ltd