What draws VCs

In today's day and age, Venture Capitalists are drawn to startups and businesses which are scalable yet maintain quality. These would primarily be businesses which rely heavily on automation and not so much on people aka labor. VCs look at potential return on their investment and obviously ROI is much higher when a business doesn't need as many human resources.

For instance, Uber which relies heavily on human element (drivers in their case) was able to raise close to $24 Billion USD (pre-IPO) be it as equity or debt funding. It's market cap today is perhaps somewhere close to $84 Billion USD.

On the other hand, Facebook which clearly doesn't need as much human capital and raised just about $2 Billion USD (pre-IPO) has a market cap close to $789 Billion USD. So, go figure.

Uber makes money by selling transportation (driver) services to passengers while Facebook by selling its users to advertisers. Whoever said advertising is dead. Advertising is still what drives the likes of Google and Facebook. I guess that is the reason Uber too couldn't resist the potential of advertising as source of revenue. You can now advertise on Uber as well the old school way.