211–220 of 257 posts
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Well restaurants do stiff the waitstaff by paying them less than minimum wage, but that doesn’t really apply here. Only would apply to Instacart.
No. If they do that they are breaking the law. Minimum wage is the floor. If tips don’t bring your cash wage up to minimum, the employee has to get paid.
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Where is the comparison to real estate agents coming from?
I'm sampling the world of commission-based connectors in a deliberately wide-ranging way. We could also include Hollywood agents (often 10%; sometimes 15% or even 20%). Or Eventbrite, where the base formula of 3.5% +$1.79 translates into an overall 14%. (I'm using an average ticket price of $17, which was correct in 2014.) No comparison to other businesses is exact, but the basic point is that if we make the rounds o…
The Eventbrite comparison honestly makes 22% sound reasonable. Uber does a lot that Eventbrite doesn't do:
- Make the market (you don't go to Eventbrite to find an event to go to, you find an event you want to go to and get routed through Eventbrite)
- Provide a form of ID verification on both buyer and seller
- Resolve disputes (Eventbrite probably does something like this at much lower volume).
- Navigate the regulatory environment.
- Provide real time assistance throughout the transaction (ie navigation for both buyer and seller)
Not to mention, event at that 14% Eventbrite stock is down nearly 50% on the year.
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if Analysts knew so much they would be rich instead of providing advice, which I've found to be hit or miss, to other people.
Of course, they might be totally off base and completely wrong and the company might go to $10 or $0. But when compared to the media who live and die by the dramatic story that garners the most interest and the markets which are amplified by many factors I personally prefer the opinion of those who at least spent time modeling it out. I also personally think transportation is a necessity and Lyft has levers it can pu…
I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.
I would. I hate regular taxis. I’d only use a taxi if I could order and pay for it via Uber or Lyft.
The problem with Lyft is that they are in a poorly understood market, in second place and burning cash at neck-breaking speed. Even if they manage to start making progress towards profitability, they might need more than that. The reality is that ride-sharing probably needs another lustrum or so to solidify and that seems excessively long for Lyft in its current state. Uber faces the same challenges but its way more…
And to top it off, this entire business model is temporary. The end game for all of these companies (and Tesla/etc as well) is to have autonomous fleets. They have to bleed cash to snap up as much of the market as possible before that happens so they're not starting from zero. At this point it feels like a game of who has enough funding to survive the interim to make it to a driverless service.
All these ride sharing companies are here to carry us seamlessly into the driverless future. Unless they're capable of pivoting to driverless technology they are mostly matching services for riders and drivers and Honestly, I dont think it should be uber or lyft's responsibility to build driverless technology - they should just focus on making the experience of getting a ride as excellent as possible. Leave driverles…
When Lyft was doing their road show there were a few analysts who had price targets of $45 as Lyfts fair value at IPO with an acknowledgement that the amount of shares available would double, and possibly triple when all shares were off restriction, meaning that the $45 price target was a best case and we would probably see far lower once people can sell. This is a company that has maybe 33 million shares outstanding…
> So whenever someone ask why you don't short an individual stock its always valid to answer that you believe you are right in the long term but the short term could wipe you out if you shorted. An example here, where everyone lost out https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/10/31/1540962002000/The-day...
Fundamentals question: Can somebody explain how these ridesharing companies expect to turn a profit, eventually? If you lose 50 cents on every ride, how do you make it up in volume? Every ride is subsidized by the Sand Hill Road crowd. They're a great deal. I took a 40-min ride yesterday for US$12.50 in a high-cost-of-living traffic-clogged city. How can that make sense? A ride in a sketchy 1970s-era New York City gy…
> Why should I invest for the long term in these companies? The pitch for Uber is that operating at a loss and aggressively capturing the market for point to point transit eventually puts their competition (mostly Lyft, often regional startups since the real opportunity cost to make an Uber competitor is so low) out of business that lets them jack up their prices. Basically, aggressively monopolize markets and then d…
This should be illegal. It's detrimental to society
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It doesn't actually work that way in reality. If it did, there would already be another massive Uber undercutting Uber in eg the US market and raising $10+ billion in VC money to do it. Because hey, a $75 billion valuation is sitting right there, so it's really easy: just put $10 or $20 billion into the company, undercut Uber, IPO, easy return. Everbody can do it, just add $20 billion. What's actually the case, is th…
There are a bunch of taxi apps in markets where uber is not allowed to enter and they are doing quite well too. This means thay if drivers are not happy with uber s pay, they can group together to creat their own gig. Users seem to go with whatever is cheapest. Uber doesn’t have entrenched anything
Even Lyfts subscription plan seems tailored to people who take one to work every day, and how many jobs really compensate you well enough to hail a private vehicle 10+ times a week? Maybe if you make north of 200k a year it seems great, but if I took one to work I'd be blowing $70-100+ a week on commuting alone, about the going rate of a bicycle on craigslist, and over twice as much as an unlimited NYC metro pass.
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Define unfair. How can we objectively determine what would be a fair wage for that work?
Minimum wage after all expenses (including depreciation) are subtracted seems like the absolute lowest wage that could be considered "fair". Or maybe whatever McDonald's/Walmart are paying in your area, since that is sometimes higher than minimum wage in urban markets.