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

Uber S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 559 posts

Re: Uber S-1

#471

Post by andkenneth »

mlinsey wrote: post #448
halr9000 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I know hate taxis. Uber can nearly raise prices to parity with cabs.

Hailing cabs by phone (and later on, using the non-Uber hailing services that interact directly with cabs) never worked as well for me as Uber. Takes too long for them to get there, and the incentive for them to abandon your request and pick up a fare they find on the way is too strong. Taxis only make sense in the very small perecent of the US where you can walk outside and hail one coming down the street.

Reminds me of a story I saw (I think on reddit) where someone had booked a cab for a 5am trip to the airport, and after it didn't show up after 30 minutes they just called an uber. They hadn't taken a cab since.

I know it can be an issue on the driver side in terms of job security, but poor customer service and behaviour is weeded out much better on ridesharing apps due to how their rating and tracking systems work.

Re: Uber S-1

#472

Post by zby »

ManishR wrote: post #355

People here seem to think that Uber/Lyft do not have any competitive moat. I disagree. What we seem to forget is that just because a VC can burn boatloads of money to capture ridesharing market from Uber/Lyft doesn't mean that they would. From a game theoretic POV, Uber and Lyft have signaled that they're ready to fight for survival in markets they are established in. Unless as a startup founder you can demonstrate t…

Ubers problem is that it needs to compete locally: https://thinkgrowth.org/uber-is-going-to-0-and-benchmark-kno... . A taxi company does not need to challenge Uber globally to compete with it in any given city - because most taxi rides are from local population. This is different from AirBnB - where the customers need something that can be trusted globally.

Re: Uber S-1

#473

Post by Semaphor »

mlinsey wrote: post #448
halr9000 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I know hate taxis. Uber can nearly raise prices to parity with cabs.

Hailing cabs by phone (and later on, using the non-Uber hailing services that interact directly with cabs) never worked as well for me as Uber. Takes too long for them to get there, and the incentive for them to abandon your request and pick up a fare they find on the way is too strong. Taxis only make sense in the very small perecent of the US where you can walk outside and hail one coming down the street.

Wait, is that how shitty cabs are in the US?

In Germany, we have two types: Funkmietwagen (kinda "callable cabs") which can't pick up someone without being called and proper taxis which both get dispatched but can also wait at taxi ranks to pick people up (or pick someone up on their way somewhere when empty).

Neither of those would abandon someone they've been dispatched to and dispatcher estimations are usually pretty accurate.

Re: Uber S-1

#474

Post by Bajeezus »

c1b wrote: post #366
ajayjain wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss aversion tells us that gains and losses have different emotional impact. In particular, perceived losses supposedly have a strong negative impact on people. [1] If Lyft employees value their shares at the IPO price, they might be feeling a loss all the way from 72 to 61. [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137544254_13

You’re just arguing for the sake of arguing. It’s a net positive. Positive is good.

He's got an extremely valid point, and morale at Lyft IS low, largely because of the reason above. Definitely not arguing for the sake of arguing.

Re: Uber S-1

#475

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

xiphias2 wrote: post #410
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious to know more about ridesharing in South America, specifically the haggle portion. If the credit card was allowed it seems like it would alleviate a decent amount of the issues you named in your post. Why would they disallow credit cards? Is it a cultural problem, infrastructure problem or something else? The other issues you mentioned seem to be tech related in that as companies that offer navigation serv…

I select credit card, but at some places the drivers wait 5-10 minutes, ask where I'm going and write that I should cancel the ride and they bring me for double the cash. At that point I also have to pay for cancelling the ride, and I'm also late, so I have ti accept their offer. They use the Uber messaging system and Uber doesn't catch these drivers (they should just filter for drivers that want users to cancel), al…

I had similar experience living in Sweden, where the market is present but ride sharing has not quite penetrated yet. For the most part (90% of the time in my experience) the ride share driver wouldn’t try to pull anything like you describe. About 10% of the time I would have an experience very similar to what you describe. Every time I was able to continue the normal transaction, however, by being firm with the driver and insisting that they continue the ride. It’s an interesting power dynamic that reflects supply and demand though, because I noticed that if you’re calling the ride at a time where there aren’t going to be a whole lot of drivers, the driver was a lot more insistent and willing to fight back on the deal set by the rideshare company.

Re: Uber S-1

#476

Post by hnra »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #467
rezbull wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try adding a $ in front of the ticker and Google will take care of it for you.

Hmm I just tried on an iPhone 8+ googling $lyft on safari and nothing I got back in the top results are stock related. Then I tried on my home desktop with DDG with FireFox and had similar results. Perhaps the behavior is tied to the “google bubble”?

FWIW, it didn't work for me either.

Re: Uber S-1

#477

Post by roenxi »

zby wrote: post #472
ManishR wrote: post #355

People here seem to think that Uber/Lyft do not have any competitive moat. I disagree. What we seem to forget is that just because a VC can burn boatloads of money to capture ridesharing market from Uber/Lyft doesn't mean that they would. From a game theoretic POV, Uber and Lyft have signaled that they're ready to fight for survival in markets they are established in. Unless as a startup founder you can demonstrate t…

Ubers problem is that it needs to compete locally: https://thinkgrowth.org/uber-is-going-to-0-and-benchmark-kno... . A taxi company does not need to challenge Uber globally to compete with it in any given city - because most taxi rides are from local population. This is different from AirBnB - where the customers need something that can be trusted globally.

I doubt AirBnB actually has a moat either, in practice. I think I'm using the right income - AirBnB's profit margin is something like 3.5% [0]. You don't need much of a moat to defend 3.5% profit margins. JP Morgan is sitting at around 30% [1] - that is the sort of margin that needs a bit of defense.

That aside, yeah, Uber has a negative moat; I don't see why the car drivers themselves couldn't band together to make a competing app if the mother company started to take a real cut.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPMorgan_Chase

Re: Uber S-1

#478

Post by lsc »

halr9000 wrote: post #403
benburleson wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't just raise prices willy-nilly; taxis still exist.

Most people I know hate taxis. Uber can nearly raise prices to parity with cabs.

>Most people I know hate taxis. Uber can nearly raise prices to parity with cabs.

If they are willing to let their ridership fall to just above cab ridership numbers? sure.

That's the biggest problem with the market; demand is elastic. Uber's major competitor for my transportation dollars isn't lyft; it's me going out and buying a honda and driving myself. If they charged taxi prices, I'd buy a honda, and I'd use the rideshare less than 5% of the time I use it now.

Re: Uber S-1

#479

Post by YjSe2GMQ »

tyrust wrote: post #268
dockd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most index funds, almost by definition, required to buy their shares? If Vanguard owns a piece of every listed company, they're going to buy Uber at pretty much any price, right?

>Vanguard owns a piece of every listed company I doubt this is true, at least not across their primary stock market index funds. For example, VTSAX only holds about 3500 stocks [0]. I don't know how the fund usually treats new, large IPOs, but I highly doubt that they would just blindly buy it at "any price" EDIT: I just checked the holdings of VTSAX [1] and VGT [2], neither holds Lyft. [0] - https://investor.vanguar…

If it falls within fund's target they should just buy it, without thinking. That's the point of low cost ETFs.

There's even a known arbitrage opportunity with things like S&P500. When the S&P committee decides to include a new stock (and delist some other stock) you can front-run the purchases by the giants like SPY or VOO, slightly inflating the stock's value just when the ETFs buy it from you.

Re: Uber S-1

#480

Post by gnicholas »

mypalmike wrote: post #417
nostrademons wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aliston is referring to a specific circumstance that screwed many employees during the dot-com boom. If you exercise your options , that creates a taxable event for the difference between your option strike price and the fair market value of the stock on date of exercise. If the stock price subsequently goes down a lot, you can end up with a tax bill greater than the market value of the stocks when the lock-up period…

Pigs get slaughtered. Trying to time your options on a volatile stock to avoid short-term capital gains is gambling. Same-day exercise + sell is what any financial advisor will recommend. RSU risk is worse because it is outside of your control, unless of course you don't have RSUs. You get taxed on the vest date. Withholding is often at the 25% minimum government rate. Assuming you're in a no-sell window, any downwar…

I thought the saying was “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered”?

Also, with $1M in losses, one would not be limited to the $3k offset against ordinary income. Presumably one would have other gains along the way from other investments.

Post reply on HN