81–90 of 294 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Without billions of subsidies from VCs, both companies are long gone. I'll leave it up to you to conclude whether or not trading $0.60 for a $1 can last forever.
It doesn’t have to last forever, it just has to last longer than the competitor.
He at least showed us that waving a smartphone in the face of regulators and the public was the next best thing to a Jedi mind trick. waves smartphone "Uber is not a taxi service." -"Uber isn't a taxi service" waves smartphone "There is no need to regulate us as a taxi service." -"There's no need to regulate them like a taxi service." waves smartphone "Uber drivers are not employees." -"These drivers are not employee…
At least for government, that wasn't a smartphone he was waving. It was a stack of something with drawings of U.S. Presidents on it, sort of greenish.
> waving a smartphone in the face ... the public was the next best thing to a Jedi mind trick.
In that case, the smartphones were the ones in the public's hands: Uber ran an effective media campaign, including paid-for editorials in major newspapers (and I'm guessing elsewhere) about how great it is to be an Uber driver, and, AFAICT, astroturfing in online forums and social media. Uber was a darling of the business world, a paragon of SV and American innovation. Not so long ago, you couldn't say anything negative about Uber on HN without being voted down to oblivion, and the talking points were repeated in every discussion.
Uber's business model is a total failure. Hubert Horan has done an amazing job exposing it [1] and you can also listen to his interview [2]. [1] http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0D_Q8xvosM
Lyft and Uber share the same business model, which is ride hailing. Is Lyft's business model also a total failure?
Uber made total sense in big cities when minimums were $15, the average ride was $40+, and all cars were staffed by professional drivers looking for extra income and hours between clients. It was win-win, complied with the law and really didn’t even have that big of an impact on the taxi industry because it wasn’t a race to the bottom.
None of these services make any sense with $7 rides and random people with a drivers license trying to make a living off of driving all day long.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Without billions of subsidies from VCs, both companies are long gone. I'll leave it up to you to conclude whether or not trading $0.60 for a $1 can last forever.
It doesn’t have to last forever, it just has to last longer than the competitor.
If they raise the prices, does the market go away?
If they are able to outlast and go to self-driving cars, how profitable is that business when factoring in competition, possible regulation, or it even becoming a public utility?
Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt. I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift. We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.…
>We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable. This is really strangely dismissive. Does the "paradigm shift" justify any and all of Uber's unethical actions? If so, why do you think breaking the law and harassing rape victims is either acceptable or laudable? If not, why bring it up, unless you're perpetuating some kind of entrepeneur business-worship over basic mora…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lyft and Uber share the same business model, which is ride hailing. Is Lyft's business model also a total failure?
Yes. Without billions of subsidies from VCs, both companies are long gone. I'll leave it up to you to conclude whether or not trading $0.60 for a $1 can last forever.
It needs to be less expensive than a taxi to generate a lot of demand, but this seems to be a pretty low bar.
Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt. I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift. We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.…
Exactly this. People sit comfortably in their morals while enjoy the huge benefits brought about by Uber. Things are comfortable because people like Travis were willing to take the blame on the wrong side of history and forge ahead anyways. We all sit comfortably in the Bay Area because our ancestors murdered and stole lands from Native Americans. They also build an entire ecosystem that gained wealth from exploiting…
Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt. I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift. We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.…
Thank you for providing a balanced view that’s so often missing on anything Uber related on HN. There is no denying that Travis threw ethics out of the window and took his paranoia way too far and never matured into a peacetime CEO. But every time a HN user takes an Uber, Lyft, Via, Grab, Ola etc etc you can thank Travis for his ruthlessness in fighting some of the most powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of…
> powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of NYC as an example)
DeBlasio is entrenched because he was elected by a majority of his constituents. The people get to write the rules, called laws. Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right?
Good for him. This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but I feel bad for this guy. Could have built a really great empire, and he probably would have if it was ten years ago. But things are changing so fast nowadays and the masses have a lot of power (maybe too much than they deserve) and Uber unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time. When I talk to real people in the real world (not Twitter trolls…
He deserves the money he made by making a company that was competitive by knowingly skirting laws? That seems like a bad precedent to set.
Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt. I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift. We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.…
>We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable. This is really strangely dismissive. Does the "paradigm shift" justify any and all of Uber's unethical actions? If so, why do you think breaking the law and harassing rape victims is either acceptable or laudable? If not, why bring it up, unless you're perpetuating some kind of entrepeneur business-worship over basic mora…
But I think it is important to recognize both the bad and the good stuff that happened.