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Uber S-1

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531–540 of 559 posts

Re: Uber S-1

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The other day I was driving and thinking about this, and I started noticing "how many times during this drive have I looked another human (driver or pedestrian) in the eyes in order to determine their intentions?" It was a significant number even in a 15 minute drive. I was still thinking about it during my bike ride later in the day, and I noticed that more than a dozen times I exchanged looks and nods with…

This argument always seems a little strange to me. I think I can count on one hand the number of times, in 14 years, I've ever made eye contact with another driver while driving, or used some kind of hand signals. And in all of those cases, if the signaling had failed, the situation would have resolved itself just fine in less than a minute anyway. Most of the time, I can't even see the other drivers through reflecti…

Where do you live?

It is literally impossible to drive in Rome, Buenos Aires, Lima or Rio without looking at drivers for their intentions.

Re: Uber S-1

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought experiment: how hard is it for a billion dollar company to roll out a simple crud app? Easy, right? Now name a single major bank with an app that is better than "barely usable". Which is easier? A crud app or a ride hailing app?

Which national US bank or investment company has an app you find “barely usable”? The only one that comes to mind is Vanguard and that fits my mental model they’ve cultivated of keeping costs low on extraneous things so in a perverse way is a positive.

Chase's website is pretty crappy. I regularly have to login twice, or check the developer console to debug why I get infinite loading spinners. This is with a stock and up-to-date Chrome install on a good network.

Re: Uber S-1

#533
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Likewise in Russia. That's BS. Yandex is an incredibly strong player in Russia in the search space and Google is not outcompeting them either. It was the case way before Putin's political ambitions became relevant. All in all, there are many reasons to blame Russia for it's government, but that's blatantly not one of them.

Not much, it is like saying that Google outcompeted Apple in mobile world.

It’s more like saying Google outcompeted Apple in creating a better clone of Excel via Google Sheets vs Numbers.

Re: Uber S-1

#534

Can we just take a second to appreciate how ridiculous their growth chart is considering how big they are. Hockey stick at its finest.

I think the word you are looking for is "quadratic".

Re: Uber S-1

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will have to pay out and worry about the cars, so this is true only if the cost of buying and maintaining the AV is less than the cost of paying a driver, and I’ve seen no evidence yet that this is or ever will be the case.

They don't have to buy the cars they use today, what makes you think they'll have to buy them when they're self driving?

I can’t tell if you’re joking? Today the drivers buy the cars. A driverless car can’t buy itself, so some entity will have to, and if it is not Uber itself buying the car whoever did buy it will want to get paid just like today’s drivers do.

Re: Uber S-1

#536
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your business is selling $10 for $5 then no, I cannot see a way to turn cash flow positive.

Your example isn't proportionate. It's selling $14 for $11, which is much closer to selling $10 for $8, which is a lot more reasonable than $10 to $5.

Cool, cool. Just gotta raise prices by 25% or cut costs by 20%. Trivial.

Re: Uber S-1

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Western Europeans countries have you tried?

Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK (hah), France, some cities in Italy, some places in Spain.

Thanks. I'm surprised your description applies to all those places, but to be fair I don't really have direct experience riding taxis there.

Re: Uber S-1

#538

Wow those are some heavy risk disclosures: We have incurred significant losses since inception, including in the United States and other major markets. We expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future, and we may not achieve profitability. Our business would be adversely affected if Drivers were classified as employees instead of independent contractors. If we are unable to attract…

eh, those are more CYA than anything. Yes, these are risks, but thats in plain sight. Its about disclosing all the ways you could fail, however obvious, to avoid a lawsuit. There are lots of scary statements like that in most financials.

Re: Uber S-1

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's against any competently worded lockup agreement. "“Derivatives” is sort of a vague term, and there is a persistent folk belief that they have magic powers, that any legal or financial problem can somehow be solved by doing a derivative." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-08/lyft-i...

Lyft's common stockholder market standoff agreement doesn't bar hedging. See the s1.

But employees are forbidden to hedge. Source: am one.

Re: Uber S-1

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - Facebook has a network effect/moat because a new service that's better in every way is useless if your friends aren't on it. Getting the network to migrate is hard and when this does happen FB is quick to buy the threat (Instagram, WhatsApp) or compete and kill them (Snap). Nobody holds an allegiance to Lyft or Uber - they pick whichever is currently a better deal for both driving and riding. Uber's recent l…

> Nobody holds an allegiance to Lyft or Uber - they pick whichever is currently a better deal for both driving and riding. That's not exactly true: I use Lyft exclusively because have anti-loyalty against Uber because of their greater level of past unscrupulous behavior and scandals.

Yeah - I should strike 'nobody' from my vocabulary in most cases. I meant most people.
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