Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 424 posts

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#411

Post by cderwin »

user5994461 wrote: post #377
cderwin wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people use Uber almost entirely in a single city. This is obviously not true for those who travel a lot, but for most people they only need a single app (whether or not it be Uber) for their home city. The real advantage Uber has is brand trust when taxis go back to their shady and anti-competitive business practices and the regulatory environment relaxes. The important question is if brand trust will be worth a…

Taxis and their local apps have zone limitations. They arbitrary bounds, within parts of your "home city". They may not go where you want, they may not be available where you are, because you are not in the right part of the city.

But does Uber really have a competitive advantage here? In the multiple cities I have lived in in the past couple years (Boston, Austin, Dallas) I have never noticed Uber's range being greater than any particular taxi. I do prefer uber do to brand trust, but I had no issue switching to RideAustin after uber left the city.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#412

Post by xapata »

function_seven wrote: post #293
xapata wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the chat app comparison, your cousin Alice is the driver. Saying that the roads are the network is like saying the internet is the network.

But Alice is NOT the driver. Alice is whatever destination I want to get to. And any taxi company will be able to get me there. > Saying that the roads are the network is like saying the internet is the network. Fair enough.

Not every taxi company is willing to pick you up in a reasonable time frame and take you wherever you want to go. In many cities, on many occasions, I have had significant trouble hailing or calling for a cab. Further, I've often had them (illegally) refuse to take me to my desired destination.

Uber and Lyft are wonderful, because the drivers show up and don't complain about where you're going.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#413

Post by SamPhillips »

antiviral wrote: post #206
guiambros wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key part is " ...has a dangerous probability of creating a monopoly for the discounting firm ". That's not the case here. I don't see Uber creating a monopoly in any way. If they raise prices to unreasonable levels (i.e., more than people used to pay for regular cabs), people will go to Lyft, Juno, or the next ride-hailing startup. If there's no competitor remaining, new ones will show up. Or regular cabs will be…

Amazon had a structural advantage built into their more efficient online operations vs. a traditional brick and mortar store. Regarding your point about probability of creating a monopoly: "Brishen Rogers, an associate professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law who has studied Uber’s effects on the taxi market, said traditional cab companies are clearly threatened by newer competitors, and he expects many…

The lack of medallion rent-seeking could be Uber's structural advantage against taxis.

The framing I see sometimes of Big Mean Uber vs 'poor little guy cab driver' seems wholly out of touch with my experience. At least in Boston the taxi system is/was rife with corruption and cronyism. Neither riders or drivers get a good deal, just medallion owners and the regulators they captured[0]. The money isn't staying in the 'local economy', to 'small business owners', it is, by and large, going to rent-seeking medallion owners, many of whom live out of state to monopoly holders who use that power to prevent competition through regulation. I'd happily pay the same to take an Uber driven by someone who wasn't being exploited and who was accountable for the quality of the ride than a crappy medallion cab with a driver who is on the phone, the whole time being forced to watch ads on their "entertainment screen" with no off button.

Uber isn't a monopoly (yet), but they are breaking a monopoly, and that's a good thing.

[0] http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/specials/taxi

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#414

Post by vertex-four »

mindcrime wrote: post #370
vertex-four wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a leftist, Hacker News is very, very libertarian-leaning most of the time by nature of its general support for startup companies no matter what laws they break and its general dislike of laws and systems designed to protect people from the sociopathic entities we call companies. There's some dissent, but it's certainly not a progressive haven. This is one of those places where people will happily sit around an…

HN is very far from being "libertarian leaning". It might have been so in the past, but that time is long gone. This is one of those places where people will happily sit around and argue that breaking laws is moral and necessary, no matter what the law. It looks like there are about two of us in that camp, in this discussion, versus pretty much everybody else. It's pretty clear the pendulum has swung and this site is…

You should go back and look at some of the Uber posts from when they were still spreading across the US - HN broadly agreed that it was moral to, instead of fighting taxi regulations at the relevant levels (politics or court), just violate them. That HN has stopped being pro-Uber is mostly the result of people realising that Uber is not trustworthy, not a radical change in belief, combined with the fact that Uber apparently gets to do things we as people don't (and believe we shouldn't).

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#415

Post by apapli »

moxious wrote: post #403
apapli wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because VCs are using investor money and their investors are looking for a return. Someone along the line will be pissed off of their investments don't pay off. Burning up $800m to subsidise an app with the justification of "market share" decades before self driving vehicles become the norm is totally fine by me, as long as it's not my money being incinerated.

I use Uber. I like cheap rides. Probably not going to invest, but maybe we shouldn't speak too loudly about this.

I'm with you on that :)

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#416

Post by majani »

Guest98123 wrote: post #195
potatolicious wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Would the monopoly plan really work?" IMO no. Others mention the network effect, and while it will certainly be a factor, I don't think it will be anywhere near strong enough to make the monopoly plan work. The network effect for Uber is really local - at the city level. An "Uber, but only in Austin" service can easily compete with a national-level Uber, since the vast majority of cab rides are taken within a user…

I think Uber has a huge advantage. If you start a new transportation service in NYC, Uber can just flip a switch, undercut your NYC prices by $2 per ride, and make up the difference by raising prices $0.10 per ride in other cities without competition. How do you compete with that? You'd be burning money to compete, and Uber would just wait it out until you're bankrupt. If you launch a global competitor that gains tra…

China was the ultimate test of your theory and Uber didn't pass

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#417

Post by majani »

deepnotderp wrote: post #259
jeffdavis wrote: post #253

Sincere question: what protects Uber from competition enough to imply huge profits in the future? Network effects don't seem that strong. People will download an app to save money, and drivers will download an app to make money. It doesn't cause any major inconvenience. In fact, it seems like a market that may approach perfect competition in a matter of years. There are only two companies now because there are only t…

Self driving cars change everything.

self driving cars will bring Uber into the black, but it'll make competing with them so much easier, since signing up self-driving fleets will be way easier than signing up individual drivers.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#418

Post by majani »

toasted wrote: post #355

Off-topic - but currently in India and the uber experience is absolutely amazing. The handful of times we have used taxi drivers, none of them can find the place where we are staying even with written directions in english and in hindi or even with a hindi speaking person instructing them via the phone. There is always some niggle over pricing and whatever you pay them they claim you are shortchanging them. With uber…

Yes, in 3rd world countries, Uber is an improvement of several orders of magnitude over traditional cabbies and cab companies. Even moreso for tourists. For this reason I think they'll hold steady in these regions even if there is a big change in their economics in the future.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#419

Post by dwightgunning »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #402
dwightgunning wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its nice that if Uber does implode (not that they will) that only VC's will lose their money... Although don't forget the VC funds' lending partners are often pension funds and other traditional investment vehicles that you or I might use.

True but if the pension fund has more than a fractionally small percentage of their fund in startups then they don't deserve to be pension fund managers. When an Australian pension fund joined one of Blekko's funding rounds the amount their manager was spreading around the valley seemed like a lot of dollars but was less than .1% of the funds under management. So losing all of it had very little material impact on th…

Agreed.

I thought it worth clarifying for people like those I regularly meet who aren't aware of the LP role in the industry. There's a misconception that the VCs are just investing their own money.

Post reply on HN