Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 257 posts

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#81

Post by jkubicek »

nytesky wrote: post #67
jkubicek wrote: post #56

> Most of that was down to booking stock-based compensation plans for employees, who earned $894m from Lyft’s initial public offering Could someone help me understand what this means? Is this compensation above and beyond employee stock options? If not, that means employees own ~5% of Lyft, which is much less than I would expect. As an employee of a pre-IPO startup, I'd love to get a better handle on the realistic va…

0. It’s a lottery ticket. To be realistic. Esp with the DOW down 300 today.

Yeah, I've always considered it a lottery ticket, but I'd love to get a sense of whether I'm holding a $10k or $10mm lottery ticket.

FWIW, I've done the math based on my percentage ownership, expected valuations, timeline to IPO, etc. The big unknown for me is dilution. I don't yet have a good sense of how much dilution I should expect as we move through rounds of funding into an IPO.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#82

Post by kevin_b_er »

mimixco wrote: post #23
SilasX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the summary in the child twitter link: >We hope in the future there will be driverless cars and that we can then make money because no drivers but other people are developing them too. Nice! It's common to think that self-driving cars will be Uber's salvation, but even then, they'll have to come with other SDC providers, so there's no moat. They'd have lower costs, but so would everyone else, and so they'd have…

The self driving car idea won't help Uber or Lyft for two reasons. First, neither company has the tech experience to build one. Second, and more importantly, both companies would have to buy and maintain the cars which isn't financially viable.

Indeed, part of the ability for the driving "gig economy" is the masking of risk and liability from the corporation onto the individual driving humans for car expenses and depreciation. The myriad of humans thinking Uber/Lyft are job have yet to get caught up the the expense of the car itself.

Uber/Lyft both hope they can get to self driving cars before the drivers figure out the true cost after the car they provided to Uber for free is involved.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#83

Post by OscarCunningham »

CPLX wrote: post #61
jahlove wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't the ride cost go down substantially if they ever get autonomous vehicles on the road? I believe that is the end goal.

In short, no. I read this in literally every HN discussion of ride sharing, but there's literally no reason to think that ride sharing companies will have any special role to play with autonomous vehicles if they materialize (which seems extremely doubtful in the short or medium term) and there's even less evidence that it will be cheaper. I still can't figure out why people don't realize that low income humans are c…

Maybe they'll lobby for higher minimum wages?

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#84

Post by unreal37 »

swarnie_ wrote: post #31
return1 wrote: post #21

Uber and lyft look like a charity set up by VCs to provide people with cheaper transportation. Who knows what will happen once they increase fares as they promise to investors

As soon as one of them increase prices to generate profit ill just move on to the next ride sharing app, then the next, then the next. You'd need a price fixing scheme worthy of British Airways make this work.

This reminds me of an airline actually.

Uber is "the first airline" for ride sharing service. Lyft is "the second airline".

The way that you beat an airline is not to copy it's service. It's to figure out it's most profitable routes and provide cheaper service on only those routes. Ignore the unprofitable routes.

If Uber can make a good profit in one city, and loses money in hundreds of other cities, someone will come along and compete with them in just the one city.

You don't need $20 billion to beat Uber. You only need to compete in their 5 most profitable cities.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#85

Post by nytesky »

jkubicek wrote: post #81
nytesky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. It’s a lottery ticket. To be realistic. Esp with the DOW down 300 today.

Yeah, I've always considered it a lottery ticket, but I'd love to get a sense of whether I'm holding a $10k or $10mm lottery ticket. FWIW, I've done the math based on my percentage ownership, expected valuations, timeline to IPO, etc. The big unknown for me is dilution. I don't yet have a good sense of how much dilution I should expect as we move through rounds of funding into an IPO.

Well in current environment I would expect a lot. Uber maybe the canary in coal mine and dry up VC funding unless with more favorable terms.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#86

Post by jkubicek »

jkubicek wrote: post #81
nytesky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. It’s a lottery ticket. To be realistic. Esp with the DOW down 300 today.

Yeah, I've always considered it a lottery ticket, but I'd love to get a sense of whether I'm holding a $10k or $10mm lottery ticket. FWIW, I've done the math based on my percentage ownership, expected valuations, timeline to IPO, etc. The big unknown for me is dilution. I don't yet have a good sense of how much dilution I should expect as we move through rounds of funding into an IPO.

To clarify, I think I have a good sense of the dilution I should expect, but there's always stories about someone working for years, expecting a big payout after IPO, and ending up with $20k.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#87

Post by GCA10 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #9

Very interesting process going on right now with Lyft & Uber both losing money and some of their drivers trying to stage protests and strikes. The drivers appear to rely on the company as their primary source of income and want more money yet at the same time the companies are operating at a loss. Were they to increase wages (as % of every ride) it stands to reason the losses would widen. If they get to wide the comp…

Right now, Uber keeps 22 cents on each dollar paid by passengers, as its fee for creating the app, keeping it working, etc. That's cheap relative to the iTunes store, which keeps 30%. It's preposterous compared to the 3% that real-estate agents get for buying or selling a home.

We really don't know what the "fair" rate is for running a ride-hailing business. We know what's been collected to date in a venture-funded duopoly with limited public disclosure.

But my guess is that 22% is not the long-term equilibrium. Lots of outside pressures (regulators; new competitors) could drive Uber's share down. It's hard to see any forces that would cause it to expand.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#88

Post by farrukhnawaz »

New Online Md5 Generator for the web developers and programmers. The MD5 is a calculation remains for Message Digest 5, A cryptographic hash work ordinarily used to confirm information respectability, Meaning It is fundamentally checks the information exactness which is being sent over.

https://seotoolcheckers.com/online-md5-generator

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#89

Post by misiti3780 »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

When Lyft was doing their road show there were a few analysts who had price targets of $45 as Lyfts fair value at IPO with an acknowledgement that the amount of shares available would double, and possibly triple when all shares were off restriction, meaning that the $45 price target was a best case and we would probably see far lower once people can sell. This is a company that has maybe 33 million shares outstanding…

exercise their green shoe option. ?

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#90

Post by maxerickson »

wonderwonder wrote: post #9

Very interesting process going on right now with Lyft & Uber both losing money and some of their drivers trying to stage protests and strikes. The drivers appear to rely on the company as their primary source of income and want more money yet at the same time the companies are operating at a loss. Were they to increase wages (as % of every ride) it stands to reason the losses would widen. If they get to wide the comp…

Can you explain why you think gig work is different?

Given the dynamic, I'd expect people to charge the company more for their time for gig work than for a stable job.

Post reply on HN