121–130 of 430 posts
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Sure is. But remember, that playbook's almost exactly how Amazon became the largest company in the world.
Except that Amazon didn't have remotely close to the level of losses that Uber has. The year Amazon went public, they lost $30 million. Uber is losing a billion a quarter.
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The question (with Uber in particular) is that if this business model really covers up a huge ponzi scheme. Before the last decade (or even 5 years?) the amount of money some of these companies have been raising would have been unheard of and required an IPO. But if you can keep finding ever bigger investors to give you ever more money... It's a really weird reality, because typically the worst kind of place to start…
> with huge barriers to entry that requires a ton of money to get started Just a note that the proof of concept stage was very cheaply done. Travis hired someone to make an app and the "dispatch" system was just a single php page. He then tested it out with his friends. That said, I agree that ultimately to get to the position they are today required a ton of cash - just the getting started was pretty cheap. Actually…
Looking at Uber, WeWork, JustEat etc., I get the feeling there's a growing gap between what we were brought up to believe about entrepreneurship and innovation vs. what the reality is. We're all familiar with the '>50% of small businesses fail' stat (not the real number) and that we should be toiling and not taking a salary for years until we break even, i.e. reach a point where we're no longer losing money on every…
As long as the money printers, keep printing, and also keep interest rates at 0%, then all sorts of market distortions will continually be produced as the dream of some return is better than the promise of none.
What's the point of these speculative pieces that just list pros and cons? Give me actual projections, explore what it would take for them to be profitable. Otherwise it's just not that interesting
I think I'd have a hard time finding someone like this. You don't have to believe the company will make money, you just have to believe you can sell your piece of the company to the next guy for more.
"Any headline that ends
in a question mark can be
answered by the word no."[a]
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
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As it stands the price you pay for a ride in an uber is unfairly low. Driving it even lower would be irresponsible.
Call me a snob, but Uber's criteria for what qualifies as an acceptable car has dramatically declined to the point where even Taxis are sometimes "nicer". Combine that with the fact that the drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS (so tend to be worse drivers than a taxi). I'm left feeling like the fare - strictly from the perspective of a consumer - is actually too high.
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But in a way, that's the beauty of disruptive use of technology. Without the innovation of the Uber app, the traditional taxi cartels would have no incentive to improve their services and the fact that they have been forced to do so in order to compete benefits the consumer. They're not quite there yet, and are still catching up. The next logical step is a lift aggregation service that creates a marketplace. I want a…
As it stands the price you pay for a ride in an uber is unfairly low. Driving it even lower would be irresponsible.