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Lyft Files S-1

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Re: Lyft Files S-1

#81

Post by ceejayoz »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #76
untog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The obvious comparison is Travis Kalanick That's why I said outside objective measure. By any objective standard 90M is an insane amount of money for one person to have. One billion is so far off the scale it is impossible to describe.

I’m making the point that you have two cos whose main US product is virtually indistinguishable from one another. The founder from one became a multi billionaire and the others are 1/20th of the way of becoming one.

Lyft and Uber's revenue numbers are quite distinguishable from each other.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#82

Post by randlet »

Fordec wrote: post #24
randomacct3847 wrote: post #7

Biggest thing I noticed is that the cofounders only own a little more than 1m shares each, which is less than .5% each! Painful amount of dilution....wow.

Still, a $150M-90M personal net worth at the 18B-30B valuation window. They're not going to starve either.

Looks to me like they've made out pretty well on the personal front considering they've run their business at a loss every year.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#83

Post by ceejayoz »

teej wrote: post #58
untog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that always strikes me about the amount of money swilling around in tech. $90M is an absurdly huge amount of money. By absolutely any outside objective measure of work put in to payoff it is off the scale. To look at this as the founders having lost out is almost comical.

The founders (theoretically) created $20B in value and you think $90M is sufficient compensation? $90M is definitely enough to be more than comfortable the rest of your life. But a $5B payout would have meant they could start a VC firm, invest in the next several generations of startups, partially self-fund something ambitious like a Space-X, start funded non-profits, etc.

> But a $5B payout would have meant they could start a VC firm...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator

> In 2009, Sequoia Capital led the $2 million investment round into an entity of Y Combinator which would allow the company to invest in approximately 60 companies a year as opposed to their previous 40 companies a year. The following year, Sequoia led a $8.25 million funding round for Y Combinator to further increase the number of startups the company could fund.

I think they'll be OK if this is their goal.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#84

Post by maxxxxx »

40acres wrote: post #62

The prediction was that ride-sharing would become a winner take all market and that Lyft and Uber would fight it out to attrition, but I'm not sure if this is the case. Both of these companies are massive and I don't see one reaching escape velocity to leave the other in the dust. At a point the losses will matter and the realization will need to be had that the other will not die.

"winner take all market "

This is the wet dream of all tech bubbles. It was the same in the 90s when people said whoever sells dog food online first will win that market and be the leader in perpetuity. Lyft and Uber will be easy to attack by local companies once they have to stop subsidizing their rides and actually run a real business (aka making profit)

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#85

Post by maxxxxx »

smallgovt wrote: post #70
trimbo wrote: post #65

It looks like they spend a bunch of pages on rider retention and gloss over what I think is the primary issue for the gig economy: provider retention. It's just like Groupon, you can't have a good sell-through product indefinitely if the service providers aren't happy and churn at a high rate. Sooo... what's the churn for the drivers?

Driver churn isn’t important if driverless cars are on the way.

Then they'll have to learn fleet management which they have no experience in.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#86

Post by untog »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #76
untog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The obvious comparison is Travis Kalanick That's why I said outside objective measure. By any objective standard 90M is an insane amount of money for one person to have. One billion is so far off the scale it is impossible to describe.

I’m making the point that you have two cos whose main US product is virtually indistinguishable from one another. The founder from one became a multi billionaire and the others are 1/20th of the way of becoming one.

I'm making the point that when you look at both objectively rather than in comparison they are both absurd amounts of money.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#87

Post by maxxxxx »

CondensedBrain wrote: post #18
chollida1 wrote: post #4

Some stylized notes: - If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for. Would you really want to own Lyft over FB and TWTR the day they went public? That's a very large ask of the public markets. EDIT To be clear I"m talking about their valuation multiple not the abs valuation. - working with JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies. So I guess we know 3 banks who won…

I think investors are mostly betting on self-driving cars being closer than anyone thinks. The first company to get rid of its drivers wins.

They have zero experience in fleet management. Rental car companies or car dealers are probably set up better than Lyft or Uber for self driving car sharing.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#89

Post by occamrazor »

cabaalis wrote: post #28

> In 2017 and 2018, certain of our named executive officers provided rides to riders using the Lyft platform in a similar manner as other drivers. We believe that these driving activities provide the named executive officers with substantial practical insight into how our platform serves drivers. I thought this was a pretty interesting point. I was about to call it dogfooding but not quite, since it's more of an expe…

McDonald's does (or used to?) the same, requiring corporate managers to work in a restaurant at several points in their careers.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#90

Post by kregasaurusrex »

CondensedBrain wrote: post #18
chollida1 wrote: post #4

Some stylized notes: - If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for. Would you really want to own Lyft over FB and TWTR the day they went public? That's a very large ask of the public markets. EDIT To be clear I"m talking about their valuation multiple not the abs valuation. - working with JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies. So I guess we know 3 banks who won…

I think investors are mostly betting on self-driving cars being closer than anyone thinks. The first company to get rid of its drivers wins.

Lyft's business model is betting that automation will happen at the OEM level, and thus has a slower corporate burn rate. So less of their balance sheet goes direct towards automation efforts. Contrast this with Uber's significant losses in which the company's long term survival is contingent on the automation developed in-house to be leveraged as their own. I'm not entirely sure how Uber's technology would be integrate with OEMs where most (GM/Honda's Cruise, Ford, and others) are developing their own level-3+ autonomy, and how their sensor arrays/networks would be physically installed on cars.

I personally wanted to see the patent lawsuit Google had brought against Kalanick to completion- much of the lidar and sensor technology at stake needs to be either licensed using FRAND terms or have each company using its own disparate systems. V2V may be a desired open standard but I'm less than optimistic about its targeted implementation date being a few years away because of this competition.

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