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Can Uber ever make money?

economist.com

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Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#261

Post by BigJono »

kelnos wrote: post #234
caseyohara wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A driver who doesn't talk to me I wish "Quiet Ride, Please" was an option in the app.

I wish drivers that pick me up from the airport (or who are taking me to the airport at an early hour) would have some sense of situational awareness and realize that someone who just got off a plane (or is waking up early to catch a flight) might not be feeling all that chatty, and just wants to sit back, close their eyes, and enjoy some peace and quiet.

I wonder if this is a uniquely American problem. Over here (Australia) it's always a couple of short sentences ('how'zit goin'?', 'yeah good') then awkward silence the rest of the trip.

Unless the cricket is on the radio, then all bets are off.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#262

Post by tomjakubowski »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #259
rubicon33 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a snob, but Uber's criteria for what qualifies as an acceptable car has dramatically declined to the point where even Taxis are sometimes "nicer". Combine that with the fact that the drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS (so tend to be worse drivers than a taxi). I'm left feeling like the fare - strictly from the perspective of a consumer - is actually too high.

>Call me a snob You're a snob. I wish they'd relax their policy on vehicles. I would have no problem riding in 90s shitboxes. I would find it novel. As long as it's been vacuumed that week I don't care what condition it's in.

I'd rather pass on 90s-era safety tech

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#263

Post by xenospn »

connorcodes wrote: post #194

Well, this may drive a crowd away, but maybe the best way for monetization is to make Uber a subscription based thing. Obviously, it would have to be cheap though.

Moviepass tried do so the subscription thing on a very large scale and that didn't really work. Netflix pulls it off since they own most of the content and some of the distribution network.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#264

Post by robertAngst »

cc439 wrote: post #135
joncrane wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the other group of people who benefit: the users of the app.

How much of that benefit is purely short-term though? In a hypothetical world where Uber and Lyft's current pathway to profitability never pans out, what are the ramifications. The most obvious one is that their fares will increase by 25-50% depending on the market, pricing them well above the legacy taxi services that existed before the arrival of these VC-backed companies. The second most obvious ramification is th…

>fares will increase by 25-50% depending on the market, pricing them well above the legacy taxi services

Hahaha Right now they are 1/4 of taxi prices. Or at least last time I rode a taxi.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#265

Post by robertAngst »

mpweiher wrote: post #159
matchagaucho wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really just about the dynamics of mobile hailing and logistics. Of course it's cheaper than actually calling a Taxi dispatcher, verbally providing a pickup location, and paying cash. But how much cheaper? Uber, Lyft, Grab and others are in the business of figuring out those margins... and riders will pay rate increases as supply and demand equalizes.

> cheaper than actually calling a Taxi dispatcher But we have apps for hailing Taxis...? These do all the automated hailing, tracking the taxi for pickup (got my anxiety levels down quite a bit, I've had taxis not come for important trips), as well as payment and ratings (optional).

> payment and ratings

Underrated, never felt cheated out of a lyft or uber. I've even tipped.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#266

Post by cabaalis »

kelnos wrote: post #221
cabaalis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS I drove for Uber about 3 years ago for a couple of months when getting my consultancy off the ground, which led to my current gig. If I had a way to tell Uber "Don't give me rides that require me to leave a given geofence--we'll all have a bad time." Then I'd have been much, much happier. Everyone wanted a ride from my suburban town to the metro…

The problem there is twofold: 1) Many drivers from your town would likely geofence themselves to your town, reducing the supply of drivers that will drive to the metro area, increasing wait times and driving up prices, making riders unhappy. 2) Drivers would use this feature to avoid driving to "bad" parts of town, making transportation discriminatory. (In ways that are illegal for traditional taxi companies, so Uber…

For #1, it seems the market would adjust. We already see complaints about drivers not knowing the area they're driving in. Would it reassure riders to know that their driver spends 99% of driving time in an area they're riding?

For #2, sincere problem for which I am not aware of a good solution.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#267

Post by __jal »

remote_phone wrote: post #237
__jal wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that could only emerge in a post-Uber world. Maybe, but a lot of restaurants despise Ubereats and want it to die, so they can't count on goodwill or loyalty there. (This is second-hand from a couple local restaurant owners; I am not one.) As I understand it, Uber is playing a sort of TicketMaster-ish game, demanding exclusivity (no having your own drivers, no using competitors) and funny terms about hosting your me…

>As I understand it, Uber is playing a sort of TicketMaster-ish game, demanding exclusivity (no having your own drivers, no using competitors) and funny terms about hosting your menu designed to make you dependent on them. This is false.

I'm really curious about this. I've known one of the people I talked to a long time, and while I don't audit his business, I believe him when he says the contract says he can't hire his own drivers.

What, exactly, is false?

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#268

Post by Simon_says »

kelnos wrote: post #221
cabaalis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS I drove for Uber about 3 years ago for a couple of months when getting my consultancy off the ground, which led to my current gig. If I had a way to tell Uber "Don't give me rides that require me to leave a given geofence--we'll all have a bad time." Then I'd have been much, much happier. Everyone wanted a ride from my suburban town to the metro…

The problem there is twofold: 1) Many drivers from your town would likely geofence themselves to your town, reducing the supply of drivers that will drive to the metro area, increasing wait times and driving up prices, making riders unhappy. 2) Drivers would use this feature to avoid driving to "bad" parts of town, making transportation discriminatory. (In ways that are illegal for traditional taxi companies, so Uber…

Yes, this is how supply and demand works in a healthy market. Riders should pay higher prices for tasks that drivers are less willing to do, and concomitantly drivers should get paid more for those tasks.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#269

Post by JudgeWapner »

IanCal wrote: post #226
reverend_gonzo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf? It is completely different. Before Uber, you had to call dispatch, give them your location or your closest estimate of it: dispatch would then manually try to find a car that was available and send them to you. This usually took at least 30-40m, if they arrived at all. With Uber, I open the app, it looks at all available cars, finds the closest one available, and sends that car to my GPS location. Oh, and if tha…

Before Uber there was an app I could use to book a taxi. That's one of the main reasons I don't think their app was innovative. > This usually took at least 30-40m, if they arrived at all. Not for me, I would and still do get cars faster using other firms. Uber says they're two minutes away and they come ten minutes later. The only reason I use Uber is I get receipts I can push to my expenses.

do you think big hits in tech are merely the first one to code the idea? proper execution and business maneuvering are arguably more important than being the first "app to book a taxi".

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#270

Post by danieltillett »

munificent wrote: post #82
rchaud wrote: post #74

Looking at Uber, WeWork, JustEat etc., I get the feeling there's a growing gap between what we were brought up to believe about entrepreneurship and innovation vs. what the reality is. We're all familiar with the '>50% of small businesses fail' stat (not the real number) and that we should be toiling and not taking a salary for years until we break even, i.e. reach a point where we're no longer losing money on every…

> how is this supposed to create wealth for anybody except the shareholders who got in early with cheap valuations? Spoiler alert: It's not. The primary goal of a VC-backup startup is a positive return to its VC backers. Everything else is a necessary evil to attain that primary goal.

Now for the million dollar question - how is this different to a ponzi scheme?
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