51–60 of 95 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your "mom test"? My (mid-60s) mother uses Uber, as do some of my middle-aged friends, even if it's far less popular there than it is among my friends in their 20s.
My mom doesn't really know what it is. Mind you, she lives in suburbia and has her own car.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presuming you can block your drivers from working for rival services simultaneuosly.
Hardly difficult. Once you have a monopoly position you just add a clause to the terms and conditions that you may only use Uber if it's the only service you're signed into at the time.
Umbrellas at the ready, the mess is going to be big when this bubble eventually bursts. Sure, I see the value of services like Uber, but there are so many ridesharing services in the market offering a decent product, Lyft arguably has a better app. While I don't doubt its usefulness, I don't think Uber is worth $40b. Especially considering it was only valued at roughly $17b in the summer which was what, like 6 months…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't want to see Uber fail, because I hate catching taxis I want to see Uber in particular fail because of their horrible treatment of drivers, spying on (and publicly shaming the habits of) their riders, threatening journalists over negative press, and because of their shady business practices in general. I want to see ridesharing as a service succeed, as I think it is the future of taxi service. But I want Ube…
Those are pretty strong words, "a cancer with douchebags at the helm." Any personal experiences that motivated these words other than joining in the hatred hive mind fostered by the media?
Pretty strong words on your part as well, but whatever, I'll answer. No, I decided a while back that if I ever need a ride, it won't be in an Uber car. This decision was based not only on what's in the regular media, but from reading personal experiences of riders and drivers in forums like this and larger media like Facebook and Twitter. I've read a few good, positive things about Uber in the past few years, but as a whole I consider them to be hostile and extremely slimy.
Simply put, I formed an opinion, as is my right, and it's a strong opinion so I use strong words to convey it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't want to see Uber fail, because I hate catching taxis I want to see Uber in particular fail because of their horrible treatment of drivers, spying on (and publicly shaming the habits of) their riders, threatening journalists over negative press, and because of their shady business practices in general. I want to see ridesharing as a service succeed, as I think it is the future of taxi service. But I want Ube…
Hm... it might be a stupid question, but by "ridesharing service", do you mean Uber, or something else? To me, Uber doesn't seem a ride sharing service, merely a Taxi on demand with a nice phone+GPS app.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how do you get the monopoly position in the first place? Also, that assumes the law doesn't invalidate those clauses.
As I said in the original post, by using VC cash to undercut competition and drive them out of business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think renting a medallion for a year in New York is going to cost you several tens of thousands of dollars a year. With medallions costing 800k, it doesn't really matter whether you're renting by the shift or paying interest on a loan used to purchase the medallion, it's going to be a significant expense.
The medallions are a perfect commodity and there's very little risk, and there are banks that specialize in loans for tax medallions, so the interest rates you can get for them is extremely low. Historically you'll very probably make more back on it than you ever paid for it.
Umbrellas at the ready, the mess is going to be big when this bubble eventually bursts. Sure, I see the value of services like Uber, but there are so many ridesharing services in the market offering a decent product, Lyft arguably has a better app. While I don't doubt its usefulness, I don't think Uber is worth $40b. Especially considering it was only valued at roughly $17b in the summer which was what, like 6 months…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't want to see Uber fail, because I hate catching taxis I want to see Uber in particular fail because of their horrible treatment of drivers, spying on (and publicly shaming the habits of) their riders, threatening journalists over negative press, and because of their shady business practices in general. I want to see ridesharing as a service succeed, as I think it is the future of taxi service. But I want Ube…
Those are pretty strong words, "a cancer with douchebags at the helm." Any personal experiences that motivated these words other than joining in the hatred hive mind fostered by the media?
It must be hard for Travis to manage all this growth. I always wondered what the next Google was and I never expected it would be a taxi ride sharing company.
Google, if you remember its growth period, basically came out of nowhere. It was beloved by users and adoption grew rapidly, but they didn't start getting serious publicity (nor did they seek it) until around 2004. They, AFAICT, took only one round of funding, $25M in 2000, before attaining profitability sometime in 2002. And they worked very hard to seem non-threatening until they were big enough to actually be a threat: remember "we do only one thing and one thing well - Search", "Don't be evil", their cordial relationship with Apple, the explicit decision not to challenge Microsoft, and how they only took advantage of companies that were going out of business anyway?