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Is the Ride over for Uber?

smartcompany.com.au

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Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#271

Post by bobthepanda »

Nick87633 wrote: post #170
bobthepanda wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would guess that restaurants would get bigger checks on higher margin (less effort to cook) items in-person due to drinks and appetizers.

The simpler explanation is that there is no middle man demanding a 15%+ cut of the menu price. https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/uber-eat...

Restaurant margins are already thin. So they hike the prices to pay UberEats and co. their share.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#272

Post by admax88qqq »

nobody9999 wrote: post #269
admax88qqq wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is on a whole other scale than just about any other city in North America. The density of NYC changes the economics of just about anything drastically.

>NYC is on a whole other scale than just about any other city in North America. The density of NYC changes the economics of just about anything drastically. Absolutely. Which is why I qualified my statement with "YMMV." That said, I think one aspect is broadly applicable: Most low to mid-price restaurants (not chain restaurants) operate on pretty thin margins. And the 12-30% (just for "listing" on their website) can…

I'm unconvinced. Restaurants are not "forced" to eat those service fees, they can up their prices on delivery apps to compensate.

Does that make it a bad deal for the consumer? Maybe, but lots of people seem to be willing to pay the premium for the experience and convenience of ordering through the app.

Locally I've seen plenty of restaurants have different prices on UberEats than online.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#273

Post by erikpukinskis »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #67
tbrownaw wrote: post #53

Earlier 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".

I don’t think we need to jump to “these dummies can’t conceive of a world outside of VC”…

Uber already took a huge amount of VC funding, so mid-size strategies won’t work. Investors would rather risk the whole company on a 1% chance of becoming Google or Home Depot than take a 50% chance of becoming Applebees. Even though Applebees is presumably a nice, profitable business, those kind of numbers are not useful for the portfolio position they have Uber in.

That’s just the reality for the folks running Uber today. If they try to turn it into a mid-sized business, the board will fire them.

If I read the discussion charitably, someone up-thread wanted to shift the conversation to “what should’ve Uber done in 2012?” while their responders think they’re talking about “What can Uber do at this point?”

I don’t think you need to act like we’re incapable of thinking about building businesses smaller than Google.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#274

Post by prophesi »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #231
prophesi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only place that you saw people make the claim about driverless cars was on Reddit, management never made that claim...because it makes no sense. No need to insult me, you can read my response to another comment in this thread where I direct them where exactly in Uber's prospectus they make these claims. Whether they actually do what they said would make them profitable is another matter.

I didn't insult you.

Assuming I got my information from Reddit posts and not actual credible sources felt insulting to me, but if you didn't mean it that way then I have no qualms.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#275

Post by paulryanrogers »

mschuster91 wrote: post #225
astrange wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber was designed to be incredibly overcomplex and scaled from the beginning; you can read people’s accounts of the fancy technology they invented to scale other employees’ stuffing code in nonstop. Of course, those other employees had no reason to write that code, and were just doing it because Uber had a lot of money and decided to hire a lot of people to do random busywork. If “it could be done in a weekend with l…

The problem is legal regulations. Wanna know why SAP is so successful despite their software being practically a legend for horrible UI, slowness and other nightmares at an absurd-seeming price point? Because they invest an absurd amount of money into lawyers, process engineers, developers and QA to keep track on law, judicial precedent and XO changes all across the world, so that their customers only have to pull in…

Wasn't Uber famous for shirking regulations until it had cornered markets?

And FBA appears to be borderline fraudulent for both producers and consumers as Amazon comingles inventory with no guarantees.

That said I can see the legal-based marketing pitch. Not sure how well companies who advertise that actually deliver. There's also the risk it becomes theater or regulatory capture

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#277

Post by Apocryphon »

cinntaile wrote: post #202
Teever wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take the bus, but I noticed lately that I haven't seen a cab in my city in months, whereas pre Uber I used to see dozens of them a day. For better or worse I think that Uber destroyed the cab industry in my city. Either way, I still think that we could have some sort of decentralized ride sharing platform that doesn't suck so much money out of local communities. I think that this would be better for communities and…

Local cabs need to innovate and provide an app with similar features. If they do that, they'll probably stay in business. If not... Good luck.

The problem is what happens after Uber goes out of business, having taken out the local cab companies?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#279

Post by smoldesu »

ackbar03 wrote: post #45
oldstrangers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modesty is an underappreciated aspect of running a successful company. The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value." Just fucking create a killer product and work on refining that product to the best of your abilities. If you get bored, start a new company. You don't have to grow every company into the next Apple.

Yes but then the ceo can't walk off with a gazillion dollars

And more importantly, they lose the ability to liken themselves to Steve Jobs. This is often cited as the final stage of social suicide for many founders.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#280

Post by lazide »

hotpotamus wrote: post #99
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "small team of focused engineers" trope for apps like uber. It's so easy to blow past that number. Website? That's a team. iPhone app? That's a team. Android? Another team. Data collection and A/B testing platform for all the front ends? Another team. Backend? A team. Infrastructure? Another team. AI solutions for problems like delivery time estimation? Another very expensive team. BI for the executives? Y…

Fairly recently I moved from a company of about 8,000 to a company of 54 or so. At first I wondered how the tiny company got anything done, but they've been around for 30 years so I figured they must have some skill. Now I wonder what the hell all those 8,000 people actually did. Each team you just named is 1-2 people at the current gig.

The bigger the organization, the more calories have to be burned to keep the organization from flying apart at the seams, and the core value producing parts from being eaten, confused/mislead, or destroyed.

At big organizations, it’s often 90% or more of all work the entire organization is doing (depending on how you calculate kt).

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