I feel like there is a hidden metaphor for OSS companies hiding in this article:
> Customers benefited, but no one else did
Customers being the users of OSS, the ones not benefiting being the companies making it
Can Uber ever make money?
281–290 of 430 posts
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#282There 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…
But in a way, that's the beauty of disruptive use of technology. Without the innovation of the Uber app, the traditional taxi cartels would have no incentive to improve their services and the fact that they have been forced to do so in order to compete benefits the consumer. They're not quite there yet, and are still catching up. The next logical step is a lift aggregation service that creates a marketplace. I want a…
> Without the innovation of the Uber app, the traditional taxi cartels would have no incentive to improve their services and the fact that they have been forced to do so in order to compete benefits the consumer.
The taxi “cartels” can’t “compete” with Uber or “improve their services” to match Uber. Some of the key things that make Uber attractive to customers is low rates and the ease of booking through an app. Taxi companies are *legally prohibited” from competing on rates. Rates are set by the government, and surge pricing (which allows Uber to offer cheaper rates to more cost sensitive customers by charging more to less cost sensitive customers) is illegal for taxis. Likewise, the government usually regulates metering and payment processing for cabs. It’d be illegal for most cab companies to do GPS based metering and smart phone billing like Uber.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Both rideshares subsidize about half of what they pay drivers, but their deficit is not nearly half of their total revenue. Take out the drivers, profit tomorrow. Patent good for 20 years. That's about as juicy as it ever gets.
Take out the drivers and you have a company that makes short term rentals of automobiles to consumers. There are already companies that do this. You may have rented a car from one of them last time you traveled. Take a look at Hertz or Budget and see if those are companies you actually want to be invested in.
And regarding patents: what will probably end up happening with self-driving patents is that there will be a bunch of different entities (everyone currently working on self-driving tech) that will cross license their IP to each other. A patent in this space is going to be good for licensing fees, but not for giving yourself a monopoly on self-driving tech.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 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…
I feel like Uber can always make money as a marketplace - but competitive pressures from other marketplaces will drive profits down. However, is there any further growth in the model? Seemingly no unless they gain monopoly.
You are making me smack my forehead to the point of giving myself a concussion. If your comment were true, market economies as a concept would be unviable. The global economy would not exist if your comment were true. Ride-sharing is a market. People compete in the market. That’s how literally every solvent business in the world operates.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#285Well, 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.
Netflix pulls it off because they have nearly 0% cost of goods sold, so it doesn't matter how much you use Netflix, nearly all of your subscription price contributes to profit. Not so with companies that sell physical goods and services.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#286Uber will eventually profit from long-term SAAS+Ops+robots contracts with municipalities and governments, assuming they can grow/operate for that long and out-lobby and out-execute Lyft, Ford, Tesla, Google et al.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
As it stands the price you pay for a ride in an uber is unfairly low. Driving it even lower would be irresponsible.
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.
> I'm left feeling like the fare - strictly from the perspective of a consumer - is actually too high.
Not to mention personal risk if you consider how dangerous some Uber drivers are.
However if you consider the cost of car maintenance, annual depreciation on a taxi-like vehicle, and petrol the fares are actually very low. I would be willing to bet that a lot of Uber drivers are wavering around breaking even on the long run. Maybe that's why a lot of drivers' cars aren't as well-groomed as they used to be.
Now, I get that "from a consumer perspective" this is irrelevant, but it does mean that a cheaper service is simply not possible without sacrificing something.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This isn't my idea man... It's literally the reason why large investors are in Uber and Lyft. No VC's are dropping money on commodity businesses.
Well, the VCs have cashing out in the next 6 months when the lock ups expire. The question is what the valuation will be then.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#289There 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…
> The Uber app was the original innovation No it wasn't. There were a ton of taxi related apps and startups before Uber and nothing about Uber's app was particularly impressive IP-wise - it's basically just distance search. What Uber did that was unusual for a tech startup was to invest in lobbying - https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/14/7390395/uber-lobbying-st... - it allowed them to play across regulated markets whe…
In San Francisco there was nothing before Uber and similar companies started operating. You called a phone number (I used to have it memorized) and some surly individual would bark at you and then maybe a taxi would come in 40 minutes or maybe not.
Later, the driver would explain the credit card machine was broken and you'd need to pay in cash.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#290There's is zero information in this article.
Uber probably has 1 billion+ $ worth of IT structure and presumably 99 Billion worth of goodwill and other IP.
A good start for a article that cares would be to estimate this more accurately.
So if it's all the same how can someone break into this market?
Who can go out and invest a $ billion + to see if they can crack the market knowing where ever they start Uber will smash them?