60m operating loss on 6 billion revenue = 1%. So raise prices by 10% and your making 540m. The market can bear that increase, but they still rather be a solo player and destroy Lyft first. All this doom and gloom is hubris.
Is the Ride over for Uber?
141–150 of 304 posts
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber crushed themselves in food. As a customer, I would get the wrong food about half the time in NYC even pre-pandemic. I complained and got a refund the first couple of times but then they stopped refunding me when it kept happening. Clearly thought I was fraudulently trying to get meals for free. Thing is, I’ve been a customer since the black car only days. Been Uber VIP for my high rating as a customer. Problem w…
Most restaurants are horrendously incompetent when dealing with delivery apps. I know because I once drove delivery for a few apps for about 6 months. The vast majority of restaurants treat delivery apps as easy side cash and don't take it very seriously. Depending on the restaurant, since the employees don't see you as a real customer, they'll rush things and miss items. They almost never report orders as being read…
Can you elaborate more?
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value." Previous discussions here have repeatedly told me that it's a condition for or result of getting vc funding.
There is more to life, and indeed more to the economy , than "getting vc funding". There is also such a thing as "HN bias".
You're absolutely correct. The fact you're being downvoted rather than rebutted speaks volumes.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that if there was just one delivery service, they could absolutely make a good business. Now, I mean, would it be a good business that was used by 80% of the population multiple times per week? No. As you point out, it's intractably expensive. But there's nothing wrong with a business that sells a relatively expensive luxury, and it's not sooo expensive to have a meal delivered that only a tiny fraction of th…
The question is why restaurants would sign up to a niche boutique service. They are super unhappy about the cut UberEats and friends charge, and the only real impetus to get them on was a pandemic that shut down restaurants totally. Nowadays, I see restaurants charging easily $5-10 above their in-person list price on delivery apps, and some have left entirely now that normalcy has returned and they don’t have to put…
Restaurants would do it to increase sales, of course. There simply is demand for delivered food; there always has been, and in a world where more and more families are dual-income and have more money than time, there always will be.
During the pandemic, there was certainly more pressure on the restaurants. After it, the restaurants may get a better deal -- none of that is a particular reason not to comply with the service, it's just one to negotiate more of the costs onto the end user instead of the restaurant.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's mind boggling how most people think it's a simple matching FIFO matching algorithm, instead of how mind bogglingly complex making ride-sharing happen at scale is I would know.
I think people don't care about it because at the end of the day all this mind bogglingly complex stuff just exists skim money off a transaction that should ideally be done between two individuals -- a buyer and a seller. Uber is nothing more than a rent-seeking middle man and no one cares about how complicated their rent-seeking activities are behind the curtain. Why can my ISP string up fiber optic all over my city…
Uber facilitates matching and routing and many other things. Don't you think that those features are worthy of paying for them?
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
it always makes me happy to see the "tech bros come in here and think that everything we do is simple and easy to replicate" trope every other industry complains about holds true even when applied to the tech industry.
Nowhere did voz_ say or imply that Uber was simple or easy to replicate. In fact he didn't say anything all about replicating them. What he is speculating about is a hypothetical where Uber itself stops development and just maintains their existing systems.
Maintaining a large system like Uber requires redeveloping a large chunk of it constantly to keep up with the growing demand as the app scales.
On top of that, Uber is constantly working of features to maintain regulatory compliance
And then there is the need for security teams to ward of hacking attempts and keep the system secure over time
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#147They were probably counting on AI driving to be fully capable by now for it to be profitable. Obviously that hasn't panned out so their time may be up.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#14860m operating loss on 6 billion revenue = 1%. So raise prices by 10% and your making 540m. The market can bear that increase, but they still rather be a solo player and destroy Lyft first. All this doom and gloom is hubris.
Uber isn't trying to be a solo player. That would be bad, gov would just break them up. Uber is trying to have #1 market share
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#149The problem with Uber Eats is exactly the same as the problem with Uber's rideshare: there's no difficult-to-copy element of it. It's been clear for at least seven years that it's easy to spin up a food delivery service, just the same way it's easy to spin up a rideshare service. The basic technology is something a small team can conjure up out of nowhere in a few months, the two sided marketplace is heavily incented…
Why aren't there a ton of uber competitors around here then? It's been Uber and Lyft and taxi companies and that's been it... Am I missing something with your argument?
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#15060m operating loss on 6 billion revenue = 1%. So raise prices by 10% and your making 540m. The market can bear that increase, but they still rather be a solo player and destroy Lyft first. All this doom and gloom is hubris.
Are you raising prices 10% and take it all to your bottom line? That's impressive. Have credit cards stopped charging for their services? Do your drivers not want more of the money when you raise prices? And of course you're assuming that you don't lose volume when you raise prices, because apparently we're in fantasy land right now.
$60M loss is small enough that Uber can almost certainly get to breakeven or a tiny profit -- but a tiny profit isn't enough to justify their current valuation. They have always needed a business that is solidly profitable on great revenue to justify the valuations they've had since the mid-teens, and they'd rather try to convince people that those profits are coming someday than to try to make it as an extremely low-margin company (which is the correct thing for them to do in service to their shareholders, who would presumably be very sad if Uber contracted to like a $10B valuation company).