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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#181

Post by tmoertel »

killbot5000 wrote: post #150
agloeregrets wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I never got how Uber was still unprofitable for so long. Sure you have a bunch of Silicon Valley salaries to pay but realistically speaking, one could build an Uber/Lyft for under $1M and basically can operate with two or so devs fixing issues. Yet, they are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars yearly all over the place while shorting drivers who can’t make a living wage and are basically trading vehicle exp…

The Uber business model is: Undercut competition. Use borrowed money to sell rides under cost. Wait for all competitors to die. Jack up prices. AFAIK they’re still living on borrowed money. It reminds me of the airline deregulation of the 90s. New airlines would use borrowed money to sell seats at below cost to attract customers, driving established carriers out of business. The funny thing is that this smells a lot…

> The Uber business model is: Undercut competition. Use borrowed money to sell rides under cost. Wait for all competitors to die. Jack up prices.

The interesting thing is that there is more than one startup using this model. The competition isn't the other startup; it's the other startup's investors.

I wonder how long those investors will keep on pumping money into the scheme, hoping their guy will be the last standing. Or will they ride the sunk cost fallacy all the way down?

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#182

Post by Kaze404 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #109
psoots wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making some assumptions. Why can't programmers be workers in the coop and be part of the equation? Why can't forms of capital available to other startups be available to coops?

Hmm, they probably could be. But it may be difficult to recruit and retain good ones. Coops tend to have a compressed salary spectrum, which is good for lower wage workers like taco drivers, and bad for higher wage workers like programmers.

I would personally give up half of my income to work at a cooperative. Weirdly enough, I don't see many cooperatives hiring software engineers specifically.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#183

Post by aphextron »

kbos87 wrote: post #176

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…

Agreed. Their technological moat is practically nonexistent. I honestly think things like this are the future of ridehailing, and uber and lyft will be left in the dustbin after this economic cycle of free debt ends.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#184

Post by bayindirh »

njoubert wrote: post #180
kbos87 wrote: post #176

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…

The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.

A local coop doesn't have to go worldwide to be meaningful.

Not all businesses shall grow indefinitely. If they can get a core customer base and hold it steady, it'd be much more valuable and impressive over time.

They try to make a living, not to dominate the world for money.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#185

Post by tnzm »

marcosdumay wrote: post #179
tnzm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers There does exist a segment of users who are willing to navigate a less-than-seamless experience if that lets them avoid dealing with a less-than-ethical business. (And probably there's at least some PR effort involved in making their voices not count.) Besides, the Uber/Lyft experience is far from "seamless", and developing a ride-sharing app that does _not_…

> That's how a cooperative can compete with a megacorpo Hum... I guess you forgot about the main competitive force of cooperatives. On service based industries, they let the service providers capture most of the value, what should attract better service. (But some times it doesn't, those things are complex.) It's not about the IT people at all.

Parent post explicitly referenced "a high-tech complexity business". Agreed that "high-tech complexity" is not essential to providing a service, indeed it's often antithetical to that goal. Does help with market capture though.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#186

Post by frereubu »

njoubert wrote: post #180
kbos87 wrote: post #176

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…

The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.

Uber is not used exclusively by international jetsetters.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#187

Post by clarkevans »

njoubert wrote: post #180
kbos87 wrote: post #176

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…

The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.

Cooperatives can expand by cooperating with other cooperatives -- a bunch of local cooperatives might nest to form a regional one, etc. Those regional ones could form a federation with a single identity for global operations.

So, this problem can be addressed by cooperatives, it's just a different kind of structure that distributes power locally -- with centralized power deriving from the bottom up, by the membership of localized cooperatives. The organizational challenge for expansion is how to avoid administrative capture: how to keep centralized infrastructure controlled by localized entities.

I don't think this "franchise" challenge has been worked out with platform cooperatives. However, if this NY based cooperative becomes profitable, it could expand to other cities not by getting bigger, but by forking off the operational aspects into a cooperative-of-cooperatives, then, a Chicago driver's cooperative could be a member of this shared operational entity.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#188

Post by foepys »

gher-shyu3i wrote: post #142
foepys wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I hear this, I have to laugh. Setting up a car workshop, carpenter workshop, a bakery, a hair salon etc. will set you back a few ten if not hundred thousand dollars for equipment and/or inventory alone. Meanwhile you can rent servers for low double digits dollars a month and a decent laptop costs $2,000. The only thing expensive about software development is labor cost. Hardware is ridiculously cheap compar…

We're talking about infrastructure costs to run a platform like Uber or Lyft. Do you think that's cheap?

Yes. Compare it to having to buy/lease all cars first like a traditional taxi service.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#189

Post by beckingz »

njoubert wrote: post #180
kbos87 wrote: post #176

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…

The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.

An aggregator model would be great here if the major and local platforms provided fair access.

SmallTownUberCoOp would provide their offerings via standardized API, which aggregator apps could use and display to anyone.

Getting the balance between aggregator and local drivers coop would be hard, because aggregators love to squeeze.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#190

Post by EliRivers »

pjmorris wrote: post #161
nabla9 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.

I've read that grocery stores operate on a ~2% profit margin. Is a high-margin business a sign of market inefficiency that will eventually be stamped out?

Or they've got a moat. Warren Buffet likes moats.

If your potential competition is stymied by huge costs of startup or catchup, or you've got the government (be it national or local) on side to help you maintain a monopoly or cartel (I'm looking your way, numerous US internet service providers...), then your high margin can exist for a very long time. I don't know if I'd like to say "indefinitely" but with the right moats, yeah, maybe indefinitely.

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