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

111–120 of 257 posts

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

#111

Post by jethro_tell »

GCA10 wrote: post #101
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot understand why Uber needs 22k employees. I get it that WhatsApp and StackOverflow and Instagram have/had a lot less legal, financial, and marketing requirements. But Uber has almost 1000 times the amount of employees WhatsApp, Instagram, and StackOverflow had when they reached similar scale. I get it that there's a lot more analytics and geospatial complexity in Uber. I get it that they have to manage tens (…

Uber has a huge community operations team that's in charge of making sure that its drivers stay productive and at least semi-at-peace with the way the system works (and evolves!) There's a lot more human-to-human work needed in this business than for a social-media site, or an automated online-ad service. That's where a lot of the 22,000 employees are, and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have alrea…

>and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have already done so.

That's uber's position, that doesn't make it so.

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

#112

Post by nabla9 »

Once the ride-sharing matures, 5-10 years from now, Uber, Lyft and new competitors are not going to take 20 to 25 percent per cent of drivers’ fare. If I had to guess, 10 years from now they take just 1-3% per ride and maybe ask few $100s upfront for each registered driver to cover fixed cost of handling new drivers.

These valuation include hopes for fully autonomous cars and the fear of missing out.

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

#113

Post by freewilly1040 »

GCA10 wrote: post #87
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 d…

Where is the comparison to real estate agents coming from?

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

#114

Post by vlovich123 »

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…

Your analysis fails to account that the demand for that camera is smaller, more variable, bursty, provides temporary exclusive ownership, & has a market that will bear that cost (professional photographers, filmographers, etc). That's why it's so expensive. The majority of the fleet of self driving cars would be rented out for nearly 16 hours a day 7 days a week with a fairly reliable income stream across many many users. Additionally you get multipliers by picking up extra passengers (shared ownership) which is win-win (lower cost for individual rider, better margins and revenue for fleet owner).

A Nikon 4DS is also almost the cost of a LIDAR sensor while the cost of the LIDAR sensors are dropping quickly & will probably continue to do so due to economies of scale; the cost of the 4DS has reminded at 6k even long after being discontinued. Additionally, the 4DS has direct user wear & tear handling meaning on average it will wear out faster (drops, throwing it in a camera bag, etc) than a LIDAR mounted to the car.

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

#115

Post by jartelt »

dd36 wrote: post #78

They just went public at $80b but are raising $8b, so per the chart in the article, quite a few recent investors are getting a haircut? Pre-money $72b valuation?

The investors from the last funding round paid about the same share price as the IPO price, so they haven't really made or lost any money. It certainly wasn't a good investment for them (0% return), but I don't think they have taken a haircut yet. It will ultimately depend on where the stock price goes.

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

#116

Post by sjg007 »

unreal37 wrote: post #84
swarnie_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

Airlines are a good analogy. I imagine we will see Uber and Lyft miles/points as a thing. Maybe even status as a thing.. A good comparison to Uber is starbucks. Their average sale is $5 but they’ve managed to grow and grow, mostly by investing in their “partners”. Uber could do something similar. The podcast masters of scale has a good segment on Starbucks.

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

#117

Post by goobynight »

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…

You can rent rooms and regular cars for cheaper than that day rate on the camera. Not a proper comparison, in my opinion, even if I agree that the self driving car costs might not make sense initially.

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

#118

Post by adambyrtek »

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…

I'm not sure what your expectations were, but a typical size of the option pool is 10-20% which gets diluted with each following investment round.

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

#119

Post by neffy »

Invictus0 wrote: post #30
Spooky23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers are independent agents who have every right to demand better conditions. It’s especially important to chisel every penny out of a company that will likely vanish in a short number of years. Lyft has bled money from day 1, so justifying stiffing the workers on the basis of accelerating losses isn’t logical at all. Now that the investors have cashed in, perhaps they can double down on patents on robo-cabs and s…

How can you say that Lyft is "stiffing" the drivers when they lose money on every ride? Where is the extra money for the drivers supposed to come from? Every passenger has the opportunity to tip if they want: would you also say that restauranteurs are stiffing the waitstaff?

Lyft (and Uber) are essentially borrowing money long term, and selling rides at a less than market price short term. Some of the drivers are getting stiffed - many of them, did they but know it, are getting an income where otherwise there wouldn´t be one with higher prices.

The trick is essentially that at the end, the loan (or the shares that replace it) goes into default(become worthless).

This is an old, old game, and one that can be run for a few short years, before it all ends in tears, and "whocoodanode" (to coin an americanism). Let´s just hope there isn´t too much pension fund money tied up in all this.

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

#120

Post by luckydata »

GCA10 wrote: post #87
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 d…

RE agents get a lot more than that.
Post reply on HN