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Uber CEO Plays with Fire

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#391

Post by castle-bravo »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #381
gloverkcn wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 20 years I haven't seen a time where this wasn't the case. Seed money is the first to take the risk and deserves the majority share of profit VC (series A,B,C) are putting in the most money and brining big hitters for the board and advisors. They clearly deserve the majority share. Founders do all the work and it's their idea so they deserve all the money. The second generation leaders productive, operationalize,…

It boils down to this: Capitalism is not the goal of society, it is a tool. Somewhere in the past few decades we've conflated the two - and a larger portion of our population believe that Capitalism is the goal. It's not, it's a way to achieve our goals. It is efficient, it is effective, it will always have little to no morals and consolidate in the hands of the few. That is not a judgement of the system it is an ass…

As sympathetic as I am to anti-capitalist rabble-rousing, your comment comes off as a canned micro-rant which doesn't relate in any substantial way to the parent.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#392

Post by paep3nguin »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #233
jlarocco wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saying isn't meant to be an excuse for companies, it's a reminder to end users to pay attention what they're signing up for. Situations like this one are exactly why the saying became popular.

Like i said below, the most obvious expectation was thinking that they would monetize with ads, which is why people didn't think twice about this. There's a difference between ad supported businesses and business that actually directly sell user data behind the scenes. Equating all the ad-supported businesses with this case is not really fair because the types of businesses you're talking about here are not actually…

You're describing my assumptions exactly! I incorrectly assumed that the occasional ads for Dashlane, HelloFresh, etc. in the "Daily Rollup" were how they monetized their service. But hey, turns out they're straight up selling my emails to third-parties. I've deleted my account and revoked their access on my Google account.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#393

Post by ijafri »

valuearb wrote: post #339
ijafri wrote: post #237

I don't know but Uber has proven to be a shinny example of a ponzy scheme within a larger ponzy scheme. They will never be profitable, Burning billions, so is the case with Careem whom I met, and their staff was at loss to tell how this is a viable business to run. They disrupted taxi drivers, making good earnings. They benefited a lot to consumers eliminating overcharging by common taxi drivers. But as an entreprene…

Hard to imagine how they won't be profitable. The cost of providing the service is pennies and they get dollars per transaction.

i don't know how did you reach the conclusion of costs amounting to 'pennies', they are a taxi service without owning or leasing a taxi (generally) and without investing into depreciating assets, does not make the costs 'pennies' even worse, their one time investment might not be higher but monthly operational and running expenses are far more therefore, who hires taxi drivers, and it's almost costing them more than they pay to taxi 'partners' and all other costs involved, hence the massive losses, have you got a car? go to their office, and 'recruit' yourself and do the math.

pssst!! it's not a 'angelic ride sharing' service period. it's hiring taxi drivers and in this case mostly entrepreneurial taxi drivers having multiple cars and running it as a business.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#394

Post by wazanator »

Iv wrote: post #355
Natsu wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms only of capabilities, that makes me wonder a lot about Gmail. I don't see anything there that they couldn't do if they wished to do it on a far grander scale. Granted, I tend to think the people who run Gmail are more honest than that, but if someday the wrong people retired and others took over or what have you, I wonder just how suddenly that could change?

Who knows? Maybe at one point people will realize the value of local mail storage and end to end cryptography.

There are so many factors involved that it becomes unreasonable quickly.

Your main problem is going to be getting everyone to use it. If you converted 25% of the people using email today to an end to end encryption system it means that they can either only email anyone else in that 25% or anytime they send or receive an email from the other 75% it's not going to be encrypted the entire way.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#395

Post by tedmiston »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #371
tedmiston wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies. Lyft rolled out in many cities before Uber. It certainly can / did exist without Uber's aggressive approach in several cities.

But the business model was proven by Uber.

Not really disagreeing with you because I don't think the business model has been proven yet. Neither company is profitable and both are still powered by fat stacks of venture capital. How the unit economics will pan out once that wears off isn't clear to me yet.

It's also not that black and white as the Lyft team built Zimride (2007) prior to starting Lyft before Uber existed (2009). Even with that Uber focused on the high end market at the start while Lyft focused on the budget market.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#396

Post by late2part »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #227
specialist wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea was in the air. Someone was going to it big. Even my buddy and I prototyped a crappy ride hailing app. When I scouted potential competitors, I found about a dozen. Uber's innovation was financial (fleecing investors), not technical.

Seriously? Show me a ride hailing UX similar to Uber's at the time Uber launched...

I don't think Uber's UX has ever been great.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#397

Post by sharun »

gloverkcn wrote: post #374
hgdude wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tech has become a cesspool of slimy founders + and unbridled capitalism - this needs to stop for the greater good

In 20 years I haven't seen a time where this wasn't the case. Seed money is the first to take the risk and deserves the majority share of profit VC (series A,B,C) are putting in the most money and brining big hitters for the board and advisors. They clearly deserve the majority share. Founders do all the work and it's their idea so they deserve all the money. The second generation leaders productive, operationalize,…

What has changed is speed and scale.

If you want to understand what the implications are you need to spend time not with technologists but with ecologists. In nature there is a reason the apex predator doesn't evolve predatory advantages at a faster rate than its prey evolves defensive advantages. These rates grow or shrink in lockstep depending on resource availability. If they don't the ecosystem collapses.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#398

Post by late2part »

valuearb wrote: post #339
ijafri wrote: post #237

I don't know but Uber has proven to be a shinny example of a ponzy scheme within a larger ponzy scheme. They will never be profitable, Burning billions, so is the case with Careem whom I met, and their staff was at loss to tell how this is a viable business to run. They disrupted taxi drivers, making good earnings. They benefited a lot to consumers eliminating overcharging by common taxi drivers. But as an entreprene…

Hard to imagine how they won't be profitable. The cost of providing the service is pennies and they get dollars per transaction.

And yet, they're losing billions. Those Cassandra servers don't run themselves...

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#399

Post by cmonfeat »

loso wrote: post #154
rhino369 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable. The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda. The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous. Uber and Lyft are better than taxis because of the on demand nature and they are cheaper because of better utilization. B…

No this not Uber propaganda. The NYC taxi union did horrible crap while I lived in NYC. For example, before the rise of Uber Yellow cabs would do their best not to service Uptown and places like it. So instead we had a replacement service which were known as "gypsy cabs". Basically town cars that weren't supposed to pick up people on the street, only by appointment, but they did anyway. This happened so much that Blo…

I don't know how long ago you experienced this, but 311 also helped curb bad behaviour by yellow cab drivers, from what I understand. If you report an issue to them, the TLC will typically try the driver via their own tribunal and fine them if found guilty.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#400

Post by bcjordan »

partisan wrote: post #383
karlkatzke wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that nearly acquired unroll.me. At the time, which was over three years ago, they had kept a copy of every single email of yours that you sent or received while a part of their service. Those emails were kept in a series of poorly secured S3 buckets. A large part of Slice buying unroll.me was for access to those email archives. Specifically, they wanted to look for keyword trends and for receip…

You might have been and possibly still are under an NDA from the acquisition process. I'm not sure it is worthwhile detailing all of this in a public forum.

And if they signed up to try Unroll.me they might have violated it already!
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