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Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

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Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#111

Post by brackin »

untog wrote: post #23
austenallred wrote: post #4

The "this valuation is crazy" and "this proves a bubble" comments are filling up my Twitter feed and HN, but I couldn't disagree more. Call me crazy, but I think this valuation is completely fair. For a few reasons: Uber has serious revenue. They do more trips in San Francisco than taxis do. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky "there will be money there, I'm sure of it" thing. They bring in billions, and they're starting to…

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

For years people said this about Uber in London but now the cabbies are protesting them because they're getting a lot of traction. It's important to remember that Uber is cheaper than cabs in almost all of the markets they're in. In SF they're more than 50% cheaper.

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#112

Post by krrrh »

untog wrote: post #23
austenallred wrote: post #4

The "this valuation is crazy" and "this proves a bubble" comments are filling up my Twitter feed and HN, but I couldn't disagree more. Call me crazy, but I think this valuation is completely fair. For a few reasons: Uber has serious revenue. They do more trips in San Francisco than taxis do. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky "there will be money there, I'm sure of it" thing. They bring in billions, and they're starting to…

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

One of the top apps in Vancouver is from the yellow cab taxi company and it basically replicates Über's functionality except there is a huge existing fleet behind it and the prices are about half what Über charged before the regulators shut them down. Re-creating the über app is not too difficult, especially since most taxi companies already have sophisticated backend dispatching systems that apps can tie into. I'm guessing that the firms that sell this dispatching software got woken up by über and are offering white labeled apps to their taxi company customers. This will make it much harder for üÜber to break into new markets.

Now car2go, there's the future of cars on call. Especially in a city like Vancouver where you can nearly always find one within a couple of blocks.

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#113

Post by vehementi »

JonFish85 wrote: post #75
DanBC wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The London black cab has a meter that prices the journey. Other taxis in London do not have a price meter. Uber needs to obey the regulatory rules of the industry. Either they don't have a pricing meter (and thus journey price is agreed before hand) or they do have a price meter and all Uber drivers are regulated like any other black cab driver. They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them.

"They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them." I completely agree with you, but at the same time, for whatever reason companies (Uber / Airbnb) have been able to completely ignore rules & laws to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (in valuations). It's almost "might makes right": ignore rules and grow as fast as possible, with the hope that you'll grow faster than the legal system can…

Big enough to change the rules, or big enough to absorb whatever fine they wreck you with. $1 billion in fines for making $10 billion you shouldn't've been able to make in the first place? Good deal!

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#114

Post by walterbell »

ghaff wrote: post #91
milesskorpen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Google has a huge stake in Uber, I think an Amazon acquisition is unlikely. I see Uber as Google's go-to-market plan for driverless cars (along with the trucking industry) ... if they can pull that off, something like this valuation is justified.

>Google's go-to-market plan for driverless cars Robo-Uber as I like to call it is all very exciting and transformative. And I have little doubt that it will happen someday. But we're talking decades according to many people who really know the topic. For example, John Leonard who was on the MIT DARPA Challenge team has said "I don’t expect to have truly driverless taxis in Manhattan in my lifetime." http://digitalcom…

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/michigan-is-building-a-mode...

"The University of Michigan, along with the local government and major automakers, is building a model town to test a system of self-driving "connected" cars.

.. It's laying the groundwork for the real-world system planned for 2021 in Ann Arbor."

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#115

Post by ghaff »

ef4 wrote: post #102
ghaff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google's go-to-market plan for driverless cars Robo-Uber as I like to call it is all very exciting and transformative. And I have little doubt that it will happen someday. But we're talking decades according to many people who really know the topic. For example, John Leonard who was on the MIT DARPA Challenge team has said "I don’t expect to have truly driverless taxis in Manhattan in my lifetime." http://digitalcom…

Google has done an end-run around the challenges that make something like the DARPA Challenge difficult. Driving an autonomous vehicle in an unknown environment is still hard. But that's not the problem Google is tackling. They're solving autonomous vehicles for known environments that are mapped down to extremely high resolution. Once you have that solid ground truth, adapting to changing conditions on top of it is…

>it turns out to be easier to make the whole world[1] into a well-known environment than make a car than can handle unknown environments.

I fully agree. And it's the reason we could probably see fully autonomous operations on designated sections of limited access roads in the relatively near future. The unknowns in that environment--mostly other vehicles--are relatively well-defined.

The reason for the skepticism about more general self-driving without even a human backup available is that even if the roads are precisely mapped the environment in a city is still largely "unknown." (Although obviously some cities are more complex than others.)

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#116

Post by phil21 »

_delirium wrote: post #67
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. One reason is that a good part of their claimed novelty is being able to hail a cab via mobile-phone app (as well as get pricing and such), which is not actually novel in many markets. In much of Europe the existing taxi companies have that feature and it works just fine; it's not too hard to add it as an incremental improvement t…

Not sure how that app works - but basically I don't have to deal with payment information (e.g. I don't need to carry cash), and I don't have to worry about tipping.

Both important to me, and I'd at least assume a few others. I absolutely hate the stress of having to deal with some angry cabbie and 5 minutes of BS because I dare use a credit card vs. pay cash.

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#117

Post by untog »

davidu wrote: post #85
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

The average wait time in NYC is between 5 and 9 minutes depending on time of day. But many people would say it feels worse than that at peak times (and it likely is). People finding cabs on 5th avenue at 6pm know there are no cabs to be had. You can't just raise your hand. It could take 15 to 20 minutes to find a cab. So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.…

Right, so Uber is a premium product. It has surge pricing, if you want to ride at peak, you pay.

That's fine. But it means that it isn't going to dislodge yellow cabs any time soon because the price point is entirely different.

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#119

Post by skizm »

davidu wrote: post #85
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

The average wait time in NYC is between 5 and 9 minutes depending on time of day. But many people would say it feels worse than that at peak times (and it likely is). People finding cabs on 5th avenue at 6pm know there are no cabs to be had. You can't just raise your hand. It could take 15 to 20 minutes to find a cab. So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.…

> So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.

I would have to disagree. I work near the Empire State building and have taken cabs home after work (6pm) plenty of times and have never had to wait more than two red lights to get a cab (lights going N/S take about 45s so that's around 2-3 minutes).

The times you have to worry about is Friday/Saturday night if it is raining. You might have to wait a few minutes then if you want a yellow cab. Black cabs are almost always instantly available but they are a little pricier so I don't count them.

Re: Uber Sets Valuation Record of $17B in New Funding

#120

Post by gergles »

colmvp wrote: post #68
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be successful in San Francisco, of that I have no doubt. From what I understand the taxi market there is horribly broken, Uber saw a gap in the market and leapt at it. The mistake, IMO, is assuming that they will be able to replicate that in other cities. In NYC you can get a taxi 90% of the time by holding your hand up in a street corner. At peak times that's more difficult, but that's also when Uber has s…

Even finding a cab in NYC is a pain in the ass. If you're in Manhattan, cab drivers can deliberately discriminate against you if you want to travel to Brooklyn or Queens. The number of times I've had it happen to me makes me have zero sympathy about the idea of Lyft or Uber owning the NYC market. On top of that, Queens and Brooklyn are big, so it's improbable to flag a cab outside of very specific neighbourhoods.

Get in the cab, shut the door, tell them you're going to BK or Queens. Problem solved. If you act like a rube, you're gonna get hustled. I'd rather have that (and be able to call the city government and potentially have the person's livelihood terminated in the event of shenanigans) than 8x surge pricing because a middleman feels like it.
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