51–60 of 430 posts
Theoretically, couldn't they just fire almost all non-maintenance engineers and continue running the app without building new features? Wouldn't that make them profitable instantly?
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Driverless ride sharing isn’t coming, in a meaningful way*, in the next ten years, I’m willing to bet my house on that. Meaningful such that it actually delivers monetarily
Do you plan to short UBER on amount of your house cost?
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>> There is literally no way for a mass-market taxi service to make money unless they have a monopoly, or some unexpected disruptive technology comes along that gives one company an unassailable advantage in lowering costs. I dont understand this comment. Traditional taxis made money for generations, why cant Uber? If anything, Uber has more advantages. EVEN: Traditional taxis had the "rent" of medallions. Uber has t…
Taxis made money because the medallion situation limited competition, and because fare prices were fixed by the city at levels that ensured a profit.
Similarly, Uber leads to a sort of perfect competition equilibrium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition) where drivers keep entering the marketplace until wages drop to some low wage, but not below that (because below that, drivers start to leave the marketplace, thus decreasing supply and increasing the equilibrium price point.)
I'm not quite sure everyone discussing this, including the economist article author, is in the loop with why Lyft and Uber are getting valued the way they are. Wall Street is not paying for a taxi company, they are betting that Uber and Lyft are the best poised to first rollout driverless ride sharing, i.e. one of them will own and monopolize patentable tech that the mass public wants to use. The existing experience…
That's like investing in Yahoo in the .com bubble. Uber and Lyft's only asset is the interface between the customer and the driver, not self-driving cars. It's very easy for someone to come up with an app to order a robotic taxi. This is probably the easiest part of the robotic taxi business. It's so much so, that unless Uber or Lyft's service is essentially "free," a robotic taxi business will probably consider the…
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Option 4: Uber uses the expertise, infrastructure, and brand it built in ridesharing to expand into the becoming the de facto standard for timely last mile delivery. This is why UberEats is such a major strategic focus for the company. It's proof of concept that they can do more than be a taxi. An efficient platform for quickly and cheaply ferrying around stuff around town is a way bigger market than ridesharing. We'…
Expanding on this Option 4: They become an auction platform for last mile deliveries. - Demand comes from third party apps through API, or SMBs that are looking to make a same-day delivery. Higher delivery bids means network is more likely to fulfill sooner. - Uber fulfills supply with their own network of drivers but also allows other regional rideshare networks to plug in. - Reputation is keyed to driver's license,…
I'm not quite sure everyone discussing this, including the economist article author, is in the loop with why Lyft and Uber are getting valued the way they are. Wall Street is not paying for a taxi company, they are betting that Uber and Lyft are the best poised to first rollout driverless ride sharing, i.e. one of them will own and monopolize patentable tech that the mass public wants to use. The existing experience…
Patents are not valid indefinitely. Given the ridiculous amounts of money thrown at this, patents will probably expire long before the break-even point is met. Besides patents, Uber has no way to bind customers. Yes, it's a commodity business, and I see no way around it. Users can simply use a different and cheaper car, which will inevitably exist and become popular.
There is literally no way for a mass-market taxi service to make money unless they have a monopoly, or some unexpected disruptive technology comes along that gives one company an unassailable advantage in lowering costs. The Uber app was the original innovation, but it's not particularly innovative anymore. Besides Lyft, traditional taxi companies have similar apps in some markets. Skirting regulation and good labor…
I want a lift from x to y to z. Bid on me.
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People are willing to pay to get driven around for relatively short distances on-demand so I'm not sure why that's an inherently unprofitable business. I assume many taxi companies and black car companies make money. What's probably true is that they probably have to raise prices and deal with decreased volumes in at least many markets to do so--and probably grow more organically. And it won't be the kind of profitab…
I can imagine that running a taxi company might be a lot like running an airline (a notoriously money losing business). Four out of five of Porter's five forces are working against you: - relatively easy for new entrants to enter the market - lots of consumer substitutes - lots of customer buying power - lots of competition
I imagine cab companies are in roughly the same position as people who own a bunch of fast food franchises. The owners can earn a reasonable living but it's mostly not the sort of income stream that people in Silicon Valley dream about.
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Option 4: Uber uses the expertise, infrastructure, and brand it built in ridesharing to expand into the becoming the de facto standard for timely last mile delivery. This is why UberEats is such a major strategic focus for the company. It's proof of concept that they can do more than be a taxi. An efficient platform for quickly and cheaply ferrying around stuff around town is a way bigger market than ridesharing. We'…
Saying that we're going to work to dominate a low-margin sector at a staggering loss for years, so that we can enter an even lower-margin established industry and recoup our losses there, is a gutsy proposition.