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Can Uber ever make money?

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Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#421

Post by dwild »

petra wrote: post #180
skywhopper wrote: post #15

There is literally no way for a mass-market taxi service to make money unless they have a monopoly, or some unexpected disruptive technology comes along that gives one company an unassailable advantage in lowering costs. The Uber app was the original innovation, but it's not particularly innovative anymore. Besides Lyft, traditional taxi companies have similar apps in some markets. Skirting regulation and good labor…

UBER won't be a monopoly. But UBER and Lyft could offer lower costs than taxis, because of cheap labor, no medalions, and less empty rides they could offer their drivers. So it's basically a UBER/Lyft duopoly, after the growing phase. And Duopolies are good businesses to be in.

> because of cheap labor, no medalions, and less empty rides they could offer their drivers.

You forget that dispatcher already take a pretty big cut already and I don't know where you live, but here in Montreal, we have a bunch of them that are all profitable. Sure dispatcher started to makes apps, but they only cover a tiny market (thus the apps is more expensive to develop per ride than Uber) and plenty of their clients prefer calling, thus an human operator (which Uber doesn't has to pay for).

Our government also decided a few years ago to force them to accept credit/debit card. One of my friend worked for one of the operator that rented terminal to taxis. They were profitable too.

If Uber can't make money by being much more efficient in MULTIPLE already profitable business and that's WORLDWIDE, there's something pretty wrong.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#422

Post by [deleted] »

dwild wrote: post #420
freyr wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's making money, and there's making enough money to justify an $84B valuation.

> to justify an $84B valuation He wasn't arguing that the investor were going to make money out of it. He was arguing that as a dispatcher, they can be more efficient than the current dispatcher, thus can make money.

[deleted]

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#423

Post by swordsmith »

URSpider94 wrote: post #347
Simon_says wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is how supply and demand works in a healthy market. Riders should pay higher prices for tasks that drivers are less willing to do, and concomitantly drivers should get paid more for those tasks.

Here are a couple of replies: 1. As a society, we don’t allow people to discriminate against protected classes in commerce. Most of those “bad” neighborhoods are actually not bad, they are just populated by people of different race or social status. 2. Unregulated auctions work well when there is symmetry of information and negotiating power. That is not the case when I’m standing on a street corner trying to get hom…

I think you are a bit sheltered about what "bad" neighborhoods can be like

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#424

Post by c0vfefe »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #410
ape4 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that this still isn't available. If you just want to drive for Uber for a couple hours you don't want to be taken to the other side of town

How profitable is "just driving Uber for a couple of hours"?

Not speaking from experience, but the earnings seem relatively linear. Two hours a week would tend towards the thirty hrs/wk hourly rate, I'd think.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#425

Post by c0vfefe »

dewitt wrote: post #195
monsieurbanana wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News about Dropbox (2007): "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" Hacker News about Uber (2019): "It's really not much of a shift from a phone call either"

Hasn't Dropbox lost market value every quarter since they went public while growth has been flat and operating at a loss? I'm not saying the HN crowd didn't miss a $10B opportunity, but they also weren't exactly wrong.

Judging by your parent's comment, HN would've been wrong to assume that the reason for Dropbox's decline is a mass movement of users towards rolling their own linux hosting stack.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#426

Post by bananaeater »

jv22222 wrote: post #108
JimboOmega wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What motivated Travis's decision to hire someone else rather than develop the initial version himself?

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#427

Post by jacksproit »

kelnos wrote: post #234
caseyohara wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A driver who doesn't talk to me I wish "Quiet Ride, Please" was an option in the app.

I wish drivers that pick me up from the airport (or who are taking me to the airport at an early hour) would have some sense of situational awareness and realize that someone who just got off a plane (or is waking up early to catch a flight) might not be feeling all that chatty, and just wants to sit back, close their eyes, and enjoy some peace and quiet.

You could always ask....

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#428

Post by misiti3780 »

jv22222 wrote: post #133
misiti3780 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent 10 minutes looking for it and couldnt find it.

Well as I said above it's not one episode it's a lot of them. But actually I just searched and this is the first time that Uber was mentioned in the show notes: http://techzinglive.com/page/581/95-tz-discussion-lost-in-la So looks like 95+

thanks!

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#429

Post by plankers »

LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #388
fwip wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing a loaded gun with you is a good way to end up dead.

Yes, but the criminal always has first draw, first action. Unless the criminal is a bad shot or otherwise unlucky, you just escalate a situation in which you are already on the losing end of a stick. Just explain to me the game theory plus of a main-street battle, where the bad guy already holds you at gun point- and you have the chance to accelerate towards the bitter end?

And if the criminal doesn't have a gun, crime averted. Pretty useful, I'd say.
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