CEOs often lead to partnerships and strategy. I wonder what connections in travel this new CEO is going to leverage and how that will affect the uber operations in the short term, and the ridesharing product itself in the long term.
Uber's success has been about evolving a core product in an emerging category whereas Expedia is all about maximizing revenue from the existing mess of travel product categories.
If uber starts to retain customers with miles or try to diversify revenue sources, I think it'd be a bad sign. But, who knows.
Amusingly, India is the only place where I've used Uber so far, precisely because using an app is the best way to not get screwed over as a foreigner.
I wouldn't be so sure - Ola is a lot more popular in India and using Uber is usually a giveaway that you may not be familiar with the routes.
I think the point is that as a foreigner, you're more likely to have Uber already installed than even knowing about Ola/Didi/whatever happens to be popular in a given country
https://twitter.com/dkhos/status/897660235313229824 When he was 9, he fled the Iranian Revolution, and became a refugee in the U.S. I have more respect for Uber today.
Is this a thing now? My family fled Russia when I was around 9, but I don't share that with the general public. There are millions of people like this in the U.S. This kind of thing is nothing special, unless you are living in a hole somewhere.
> You don't decide to go to B because Uber exists. Actually, I absolutely do. I've gone on many trips that I simply wouldn't have gone on pre-Uber. On a regular basis I'll decide to go somewhere (ex. a party in Brooklyn) which I wouldn't have bothered with if it meant a slow and unreliable taxi (or an even slower subway ride).
Just curious: What makes you call Uber fast and taxis unreliable in NYC? I would agree with you in almost any other market, but I find getting a taxi in NYC using Curb just as fast and reliable, yet cheaper.
Taxis are fine in Manhattan, but good luck getting one to reliably pick you up in a reasonable timeframe at 3am in Brooklyn.
Also being cyclist in NYC these yellow cab drivers are your worst enemies. I have almost got ran over more than once. You can listen to them moan about cyclists if you have been in enough yellow cabs. Having biked around in city for a while I personally go out of my way to avoid them. I only use them if I am in manhattan and have absolutely no patience or sobriety to call uber.
If there were fairness, police would have had a field day (except it'd have taken months) ticketing yellow cabs if they applied the same strict rigor of law as they did ~5 years ago with cyclists. And that's accounting for some really absurd laws NYC enforced just on cyclists (if there's a bike lane, and you're a bike, you must be in the bike lane).
Even if there's a car parked in the bike lane; you can get a ticket for going around it.
To paraphrase George Soros here: >The worse things look, the easier it is for it to get better
For most situations I disagree. There's a term I see floating around HN occasionally called "incident pit" which I think sums a lot of situations. The idea is for many situations each unit worse things get the harder it becomes for things to get a unit better, just like getting out of a pit. Eventually escape becomes impossible.
And i think Uber has been dealing with their own version of an incident pit lately.
https://twitter.com/dkhos/status/897660235313229824 When he was 9, he fled the Iranian Revolution, and became a refugee in the U.S. I have more respect for Uber today.
Khosrowshahi was born in Iran[3] to a prominent family that founded the Alborz Investment Company, a diversified conglomerate involved in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, distribution, packaging, trading, and services.[4] He is related to Canadian billionaire Hassan Khosrowshahi. His family immigrated to the United States just prior to the Iranian Revolution in 1978 after Alborz Investment was nationalized.[3] He graduated from the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York.[5] In 1991, he graduated with a B.A. in electrical engineering from Brown University.[6][7]
For instance, his brother Kaveh Khosrowshahi is a managing director at Allen & Co., the investment bank best known for its ultra exclusive Sun Valley conference. A few cousins are Google execs. His cousin Amir Khosrowshahi is at Intel after Intel bought the AI company he co-founded, Nervana, last year for $400 million. His twin cousins Ali and Hadi Partovi sold their startup to MySpace back in 2009 for $20 million and went on to become power angels backing Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, and Facebook and cofounding Code.org.
This is a thoughtful analysis into the whole Uber CEO opinion, but it is opinionated. Aggregation theory is one way to derive Uber's value, but you can make a compelling argument that supply drives demand. The reason why I don't use taxis in Australia is partly because the experience is far better with Uber and the cost is cheaper, but also because Uber is the most reliable. Without drivers and such reliability, I ca…
It's very interesting in India where you have enormous supply of auto-rickshaws ('tuk tuks') available in most public spaces. Often, when I'm in public, I'll choose an auto-rickshaw instead of an Uber because the rickshaw is right there. I don't have to wait for it, don't have to give it directions to find me. The service is worse - I have to haggle about prices, endure bumpy rides and dangerous driving - but the eas…
I'm from Chennai, where the auto-drivers are very very infamous. I usually don't mind waiting for the Uber if that means no interaction with auto drivers.
It's very interesting in India where you have enormous supply of auto-rickshaws ('tuk tuks') available in most public spaces. Often, when I'm in public, I'll choose an auto-rickshaw instead of an Uber because the rickshaw is right there. I don't have to wait for it, don't have to give it directions to find me. The service is worse - I have to haggle about prices, endure bumpy rides and dangerous driving - but the eas…
Amusingly, India is the only place where I've used Uber so far, precisely because using an app is the best way to not get screwed over as a foreigner.
While I didn't use Uber in India, Mexico City was the same experience for me. In fact our local office strongly encouraged us ONLY to use Uber over anything else. It was by far the quickest, and safest way to get around.