Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

Ah. So a driver doesn't just get a simple 75% cut of an UberPool fare. That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Didn't all of the "scandals" start in Q4 2016 in the first place?

This is basically saying, look we were on a good trajectory from Q3-Q4.

But the question is, what happened after that?

Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. Uber won't own the market. There is zero lock-in. If Lyft is cheaper this week, I'm riding Lyft.

I sold my car over a year ago and use a mix of ridesharing and rentals for transportation. Uber and Lyft's greatest competition in my life is a small Google product where people pick up people on their daily commute to and from work and the drivers are compensated only for gas money.

Locally, there is a company that will allow you to rent an electric car for free for two hours (it has an electronic billboard on the ceiling).

In the future, cheap electricity and efficient manufacturing might make a world where rides of a certain distance would be free or extremely low cost in exchange for advertising.

Transportation is a commodity. For a short ride, I don't care that much about the differences, whether I'm sitting in a Toyota Corolla or Mercedes S-Class. It gets me from point A to point B.

In this environment, I think the VCs pouring billions of dollars into Uber are throwing their money away subsidizing Uber's leadership in commodity market. Cheaper wins. I get to choose on each ride. There's no lock-in, there's really no reason for brand loyalty. Whatever is cheaper wins. If it's free, whomever gets here first wins. If they are both available right now, it's who has the nicer seat.

This is a race to the bottom and as a customer I'm only going to remember negative experiences with the brand. Lyft is better by encouraging themed cars but, they've stopped doing that from what I've seen.

There's a good chance that Lyft and Uber might face huge backlash for bait and switching drivers when they roll out driverless cars.

I'm bearish on Uber in the long term.

*losing, every

Yeah, it's actually kind of amazing how many 'traditional' checkboxes Uber seems to miss with its 'rapid growth'. Little network effect lockin, low (ish) barrier to entry (with the hardest thing being brand recognition, with news of new/cheaper/'better' ridesharing plats potentially spreading like wildfire), opportunistic customers (and even drivers) without brand loyalty.

If Kalanick implements some sort of amazing plan to pull them through despite all of that (not counting the moonshot of expediting SDCs into the market) he'll be a walking testament to the whole 'market doesn't care who you are as a person, but if you can get the job done' maxim.

I'm not necessarily bearish - I'm not expecting an upset like that, but I'm not particularly invested in Uber so am more keeping an eye on it for the entertainment than anything.

Uber is demonstrating that they can sell $2 bills for a buck and that there's demand for that. They've not demonstrated they can establish a real business here in what has turned into a pure commodity market.

In competitive markets a lot of "me too" competitors pop up all the time. When you see consumers just picking the one that's the cheapest (i.e. with the most VC cash subsidizing the ride) and drivers rocking up with multiple phones on the dashboard as they too game these companies it's clearly all a fools game. This industry is a race to the bottom, but at least people get to enjoy cheap VC-subsidized rides while the party's still on!