Taxis are about 20% (rough estimate) cheaper than Uber in Japan. That, plus the already mentioned abundance and good quality of service of taxis in Japan (as well as the ease of booking one through phone/internet/mobile apps), leaves no real reason for most people to use Uber in my opinion.
Uber's Failure in Japan
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Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#32I think in many countries companies like Uber and AirBnB are seen to be a challenge to the democratic will of the people. It should be no surprise that we don't care very much for this! I wonder if Uber could have achieved success in markets with more trusted governments (Germany, Japan) if they started with a softer approach.
Really? I find that most people think it's the other way around, that Uber and AirBnB represent the democratic will of the people, challenging broken systems that the people do not endorse now that a better idea is available. At least, that's how it looks over in USA/Canada.
Then the guy next store turns his house into a flophouse, and all of the sudden AirBNB is a problem.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#33Better title would be "How Uber's Failure in Japan Can Help Multinational Corporate Expansions Everywhere". It's a bit of a stretch to still call Uber a startup, and even if you grant that, these lessons are not for startups. I happen to have co-founded a multi-national startup. The best advice I have for going multi-national as a startup is don't.
The company I work for is technically multinational (only 2 countries right now) If you're a SAAS company, why no go multinational? I guess with MUBI you'd have hoops to jump through re: licencing though?
Every situation is different, I don't mean to preach like I know what is best for all startups, so take it with a grain of salt. MUBI definitely has a licensing burden, but it goes beyond that, even to very vanilla SaaS.
My thesis is this: if you can't get traction in one country, then acquiring customers in other countries is not going to make the difference which pushes you over the top. It may be the case that the country which you can gain traction in is not your own country, which will bring its own challenges but still doable. However, if there is not one single country which can offer you a sufficient market then I suspect that trying to piece together a customer base from many countries will drown you in overhead. You can make qualifications like English-only, USD-only, EST-business-hours-support-only, etc, etc, but at the end of the day each country has its own culture and you end up diluting your effort. This is to say nothing of regulatory or billing issues (note that accepting and clearing payments in other countries is a lot more involved than just looking at Stripe's supported countries list). My experience is that the human mind, especially the software engineer's mind, is very susceptible to building a mental model where going global appears to be a small marginal effort. You can even design your business plan that way and it still looks relatively tidy, but then once you get into the weeds you find a never-ending stream of details you overlooked. I guess this happens in all companies, but if you are serving multiple countries it's just more compromises you don't want to choose between: do I do something that sort of works globally, or something that really works locally? Companies that have some kind of physicality like Uber or Airbnb obviously have to think even more locally to individual cities, but for the average SaaS my instinct is country is the right granularity.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#34I think Uber's failure in Japan means the failures in Tokyo downtown and other large cities like Osaka. In those cities you don't have to wait much to pick the cars up. It's not the same like in SF. Discovering a niche market for Uber in Japanese large cities might be difficult.
Yeah, Japan does not really have the problem that Uber is supposed to solve. At least, not to the degree that we have in the US. EDIT: however, I did see TONS of AirBnB (or the like) in Japan. Temporary housing is certainly a problem they DO have (at least in the cities)... perhaps even more than western nations...
Hotels or rooms for visitors to stay is indeed in shortage nationwide, and a big problem, presumably since 2014 or so.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#35Japanese are different from rest of the world :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#36"In fact, there is a school of thought in the West that when the fines are cheaper than the cost of compliance, it is not only OK to break that law, but that the CEO has a fiduciary duty to break the law." This claim seems absurd. Fiduciary duty is a legal concept, and for obvious reasons, there can never be a legal obligation to break the law. Americans might think it's ethically OK for corporations to break some la…
> a claim that a CEO had violated legal duties to shareholders by not breaking the law would get instantly laughed out of court
I think that real issue here is that it would not get laughed out of the board room or a shareholders meeting.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#37> If you’ve attended a movie in Japan ... you understand that many laws can be broken as long as everyone breaks them together. What is this referring to?
I was wondering the same thing...
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#38The article basically states that Uber's cavalier attitude towards the law was the wrong approach to use in Japan, because the Japanese public does not respect this attitude, and that they should have worked it out with regulators before they started operations. I guess the broader lesson implied is that you need to put in the effort to understand the local culture, and adapt your strategies accordingly, before you t…
That and, having taken taxis in Japan... they're honestly very decent. Much better than the taxis I've taken elsewhere. Partly because the roads are less congested, even in the heart of Tokyo, since so many take the train. I never found myself wishing I could take an Uber in Japan -- a taxi was always there when I needed it... and that was only if I wasn't near a train station, which was almost never.
Not to mention that there is generally a line of taxis outside of most Japanese train stations and office buildings, ready to go at a moment's notice. Uber is actually slower, because the taxis are already right where you are.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#39The advantage of Uber has nothing to do with price and everything to do with grotesque incompetence on the part of the taxi operators. Five-six years ago, when I asked for a receipt for an expense report, I got a hand-scribbled note. Running credit cards often required hand-based crank mechanisms. Autoplaying TV on the back of a seat that was billed unless you explicitly opted out. It was, in short, a scammy operatio…
> Now, all of what the author said about Uber's flouting of the law is true. And that's not something I'm terribly happy about. But I think there's a certain value in simply ignoring bad law and fixing it on the fly.
And this is the problem. Uber is providing superior service for less cost. Clearly the city, which enacts laws on my and other tax payers behalf, isn't actually acting in my favor when it goes after uber and lyft.
If we manifestly don't need the laws protecting the taxi racket then let's do away with the regulation -- not pile more on.
Re: Uber's Failure in Japan
#40I think in many countries companies like Uber and AirBnB are seen to be a challenge to the democratic will of the people. It should be no surprise that we don't care very much for this! I wonder if Uber could have achieved success in markets with more trusted governments (Germany, Japan) if they started with a softer approach.
Uber solves a problem in the US because the US government is failing to provide adequate public transportation and fails at properly regulating taxis.
In most other civilized places with governments that succeed in these areas, Uber just doesn't have product market fit. The legal problems are only producing noise.