31–40 of 413 posts
Amzn and tsla started reporting profits just recently. Would you call them failure?
> Uber’s growth is fueled by subsidies A lot of people think if their Uber/Lyft ride is cheaper than their traditional taxi because it's subsidized. The lower fare for the most part is due to extreme efficiency difference between a taxi company and Uber/Lyft. 1. Uber/Lyft don't own the cars. They are leveraging car owners capital 2. Uber/Lyft drivers are more efficient because they don't have to roam around the city…
In Singapore they tried out the model to own cars because car ownership is pretty low here in general ~10%. They bought cars at a massive scale. This model seems to be working for them and they have expanded this model to other countries. Check out Lion Car Rentals. 100% Uber owned.
If I could bet against Uber, I would do it
You can. Buy a taxi medallion. In buenos aires they are worth about 25ku$S, and uber has been made illegal but is still operational.
Possibility: seeing all this, Uber looks hard at what they do have and simply becomes contract cab dispatcher for all cabs everywhere, smartly choosing which cab to call to the scene of the caller using their algorithms. And lets existing can companies so the actual driving. Why? Currently some cab companies have shitty apps, others have none. Your chances of getting a cab in a suburb of an unfamiliar city is zero. U…
The question then becomes: Is a global taxi dispatcher worth 70 billion dollars? Maybe. Probably not.
-NYC has ~13,605 licensed taxicabs.
-The average annual net income for a NYC taxi (in 2015, probably a bit lower now) was $58,555.
-$58,555 * 13,605 = $796,640,775
This figure is for taxis only, in one (big) city. It leads me to think that $70 billion is not an absurd number, globally.
edit: sources: https://www.yellowcabnyctaxi.com/blog/new-york-city-taxi-rev...
In my opinion, giving large scale subsidies to customers seems like a business anti-pattern, and is surely gonna kill a lot of startups in near future. I have been sold to the Idea that Investors are killing any Internet "Business" by advising Founders against simple & straight-forward business plans. They constantly ask founders not to monetize earlier and wait until founders have no choice but to trash out the comp…
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People said similar things about Facebook/Instagram. Or even the internet as a whole (Paul Krugman).
Depends on how you define success. Imo, Uber will become financially successful when autonomous cars and trucks work well and are regulated.
If I could bet against Uber, I would do it
How would one short a pre-IPO company. Betting sites?
I don't understand his point. Maybe I'm dense (today, ha). If Uber has a (simplified) split cost per drive consisting of vehicle (+maintenance) and/or fuel & driver. If subsidised part is generally covering the driver part. When you replace driver with autonomous vehicle and you remove subsidies, you're left with a sustainable (presumably) model on a certain margin that is already rolling. Rolling in a sense that it…
The author's not making the point that there is no margin, but rather that with self-driving cars it'll be a quick race to the bottom against competitors, thus eroding whatever margins Uber is left with after replacing human drivers.
In my opinion, giving large scale subsidies to customers seems like a business anti-pattern, and is surely gonna kill a lot of startups in near future. I have been sold to the Idea that Investors are killing any Internet "Business" by advising Founders against simple & straight-forward business plans. They constantly ask founders not to monetize earlier and wait until founders have no choice but to trash out the comp…