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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#301

Post by chrischen »

cameronh90 wrote: post #161
axg11 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting perspective, but I think the key difference is that Uber has built no lasting infrastructure. I do agree that Uber has improved the taxi/private vehicle transport industry in essentially every market it entered. In London (UK) for example, taxis were previously mainly used by tourists, the rich, or the very drunk. Uber changed this completely, making it accessible for many more people. If Uber disappea…

I suppose it's hard to see what the future will hold, but at least in London there's Gett and Freenow, and a lot of the traditional players like Addy Lee now have apps of varying quality. As you point out, stuff like Deliveroo might not have existed without Uber. Not quite the same as metal rails running up the country I agree, but I think in hindsight Uber will be remembered as a significant innovation. Think Napste…

Well if I’m thinking Napster then first to mind is Spotify and Apple music, both of which are profitable and here to stay. But even if Uber gets mismanaged and driven into the ground Lyft or one of the other competitors would take over with more or less the same product.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#302

Post by chrischen »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #226
axg11 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting perspective, but I think the key difference is that Uber has built no lasting infrastructure. I do agree that Uber has improved the taxi/private vehicle transport industry in essentially every market it entered. In London (UK) for example, taxis were previously mainly used by tourists, the rich, or the very drunk. Uber changed this completely, making it accessible for many more people. If Uber disappea…

uber let the cat out of the bag… this model might not exist forever, but maybe it’ll last long enough for someone else to capitalize on its ghost

Uber’s model is basically the same as the cab/taxi model, but likely much more efficient due to software. That business model (hiring private drivers for point to point public transit) has been profitably working for over a century now.

Also keep in mind Taxis, unlike buses and trains, are usually not even subsidized, which lends even more credence to the business model.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#303

Post by jackcosgrove »

criddell wrote: post #29
jsemrau wrote: post #8

By the measure of growth and market penetration, Uber has been successful. By the measure of establishing a globally operating business that employs thousands of people, Uber has been successful (mostly). By the measure of establishing a profitable business we might argue that they likely will never achieve that. If you look at their SEA competitors who already earlier on introduced financial debt as a tool to create…

> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.

Uber has always struck me as something of an engineer's sandbox. They hire too many engineers who build (and re-build) over-engineered solutions, and who are paid a lot. They have thousands of microservices for example.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#304

Post by chrischen »

acchow wrote: post #178
cameronh90 wrote: post #118

Do people actually claim Uber is a successful business? In the UK, none of the original companies that built the railroads still exist. Many of the railway companies were never particularly profitable and the railway boom was a stock market bubble. Lots of them were fraudulent or poorly run. Eventually they all either went out of business, or amalgamated and ultimately got nationalised. Nevertheless, they proved the…

> I can't see Uber as a company surviving the next few decades, but without them the taxi experience would likely still be as horrific as it was in the 90s. 100% this. Uber made "Uber" a solved problem, so spinning off clones became cheap and easy.

Usually markets consolidate, rather than fragment, especially in the software industry. We actually had more Uber competitors early on (Sidecar et al) and that died off. Most uber competitors are now just regional ones, with geographically segregated markets.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#305

Post by psyc »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #300

> Oracle founder Larry Ellison noted that Uber’s app was less sophisticated than something his cat could have developed. That is the equivalent of "I could build that in a weekend" that you often hear from inexperienced devs that have no idea what they're talking about. In fact, we had the perfect experiment in Austin, TX, where a couple years ago the city essentially voted to kick out Uber and Lyft (required fingerp…

Didn't I read somewhere that all of Uber's complexity is in making it work correctly in every jurisdiction that it works in?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#306

Post by wonnage »

jmyeet wrote: post #275
podviaznikov wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5. I don’t think you address issue with cherry picking the price with part timers. Which is I know is the real one, because I realized I did it myself and it’s not very fair. Your answer is more like “what about taxi services, they also have edge cases” 2. But there are also taxi services that allow you too book ahead of time. Many cities in Europe had phone booking of the taxi for specific times at least 20 years ag…

I'm not ignoring the cherry-picking issue. I, as a passenger, do not care. Straight up. I consider this supply and demand and market pricing doing what it's supposed to. The tax medallion system was invented to solve such an oversupply problem. It led to times when it's impossible to get a taxi. Practically speaking, this just isn't a problem you can solve because you're trying to limit supply. If Uber starts giving…

The problem is surge pricing isn't solving the underlying problem (i.e, undersupply of drivers). Uber recently moved to a model where the driver bonuses are disconnected from the actual surge amount: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/uber-ly...

Presumably if surge was focused on maximizing completed trips, then the goal is to find a price that matches riders to drivers.

In reality, riders are more interested in riding than drivers are in driving (this is how we got into this situation in the first place). You can easily charge 2x surge without killing demand, but supply won't rise by the corresponding amount.

Uber found a way to take advantage of this - fixed bonuses to attract the same amount of supply as before, but now surge is an independent variable that they can fine-tune to demand.

Your ride quality isn't improving with surge pricing, it's just getting more expensive.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#307

Post by smilespray »

chrischen wrote: post #291
chupchap wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no longer the case. It was the situation at the beginning, but multiple cab folks have told me that incentives have really reduced in the last four years.

To be fair the last two years were not kind to ride sharing.

I wish people would stop calling it ride sharing, as it implies that one of your buddies is giving you a lift. It's just a marketing term.

Uber and Lyft are (gig economy) cab companies.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#308

Post by chrischen »

smilespray wrote: post #307
chrischen wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair the last two years were not kind to ride sharing.

I wish people would stop calling it ride sharing, as it implies that one of your buddies is giving you a lift. It's just a marketing term. Uber and Lyft are (gig economy) cab companies.

Well, shared rides were pretty popular pre-pandemic. Cabs never really did shared rides (at least not legitimately). I pretty much always opted for the shared option whenever I Uber’d or Lyfted.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#309

Post by computator »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #179
mupuff1234 wrote: post #23

Why are there so many competitors in the delivery/taxi type services, but in the short term rental industry Airbnb seems to be mostly unchallenged? I would've expected to see a lot of VC money being thrown there as well, but I'm only seeing Airbnb raising their fees and actually making a profit.

The history of AirBnB is very different in term of the market it entered. 1. Taxies had government enforced monopolies. Vacation rentals had practically 0 regulation. 2. The vacation rental market that already undergone a VC backed "freemarket" consolidation into a single global provider. HomeAway owned effectively everything with VRBO/VacationRentals.com/bedandbreakfast.com/abritel/stayz, etc. With "kept opposition"…

> So Taxi services have gone through these stages ... Defacto de-regulation (via effective non-enforcement)

Could you talk a bit more about that part? I'm glad that Uber exists, but I don't understand how they got around the "government enforced monopoly" you mentioned. Why didn't the local taxi companies go to their city government and get Uber shut down as soon as Uber starting operating in their city? Wouldn't the city government be far more receptive to the local taxi company than to an upstart 1000 miles away? Did Uber spend a fortune to fight this city by city in court? If someone told me Uber's business plan 13 years ago, I would have said it'd be shut down instantly by the local regulators.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#310

Post by xapata »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #278
mikeryan wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes. That’s not how it worked, or works (see Curb). You didn’t schedule a particular cab you call the cab service and the dispatcher sends a cab to you and makes sure they got there. If they didn’t show up you call dispatch back and they call the guy and find out what th…

That's definitely how it **ing worked, man. I came so close to missing so many damn flights before Uber came around, because I'd book a car the day before and it would just ghost me. I had to aim to get to the airport 4 hours early because half the time I had to reorder a fresh cab and hope for the best. Cabs had a 45+ minute lead time in the evenings and at night too, when I could order them by phone at all. It was…

Yeah, my company paid the premium for car service because taxi dispatch was too unreliable.
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