51–60 of 291 posts
The irony of Uber and Lyft both losing so much money is Lyft especially is known for paying some of the highest SWE salaries in SF.
Disclaimer: I am a SWE at Uber.
I don't know what to say about this because as a lifelong value investor I cannot accept the valuation of Uber based on it's earnings. But the same logic held me back from investing in Facebook and Google, which did not make any sense to me at the moment of their IPO. How do I decide what Uber's earnings will be in five years?
He famously missed the dot com boom. And in the middle of it, gave a private speech about exactly why, about how few of those companies were likely to be around in a few years even if the internet were exactly as successful as hoped for.
He was widely derided as being behind the times, out of date, and so on for a couple of years. But looking back now, he looks prescient.
If you are a value investor and don't understand how to value it, don't invest.
What is Uber's long term moat/pricing power? To compete in a local market you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, most drivers already swap between Lyft/Uber. You could even form a drivers cooperative and just give all the charges to drivers (like farmers do). Regulatory capture seems like the only real route to sustainable profits with…
>At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, Uber can offer those drivers $10 not to switch and their capital will last longer than yours.
They can't actually do that because it messes with the contractor thing, but they can do what they are doing with the rewards for a certain amount of availability.
But still I could just halve the amount I take from the transaction and give it to drivers. That's surely better for the drivers.
Moat is about them having a long term advantage that makes it hard to compete against them. Lots of capital isn't enough in 2019.
Long term it seems like the restaurant business, where most are just scrounging for minimal profits all the time.
What is Uber's long term moat/pricing power? To compete in a local market you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, most drivers already swap between Lyft/Uber. You could even form a drivers cooperative and just give all the charges to drivers (like farmers do). Regulatory capture seems like the only real route to sustainable profits with…
> "...you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000." that's nowhere near the cost of acquisition for a driver. having worked on driver acquisition, i can tell you it's hundreds of dollars, not $5.
What is Uber's long term moat/pricing power? To compete in a local market you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, most drivers already swap between Lyft/Uber. You could even form a drivers cooperative and just give all the charges to drivers (like farmers do). Regulatory capture seems like the only real route to sustainable profits with…
>At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, Uber can offer those drivers $10 not to switch and their capital will last longer than yours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fairly rude to make them wait at all. They're not being paid while they're waiting for you.
If one could reliably order an Uber that would be great. But no way Im waiting outside in -10C while the app lies about someone about to pick me up.
While my story is anecdata I wonder if it speaks to a broader issue: I'm an Uber super-user. I used uber 400+ times per year in 2015, another 400 times 2016, and then again 400+ times in 2017. Then my rides per year went to 0 in 2018 and 0 in 2019 so far. It wasnt about price, the app just became too buggy to the point of being unusable. The customer service became unresponsive. I simply switched to Lyft/Careem/Via.…
Disclaimer: I am a SWE working at Uber.
What is Uber's long term moat/pricing power? To compete in a local market you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, most drivers already swap between Lyft/Uber. You could even form a drivers cooperative and just give all the charges to drivers (like farmers do). Regulatory capture seems like the only real route to sustainable profits with…
Over the long run, at least in the U.S. it seems like Uber/Lyft are edging towards a comfortable duopoly. Usually their prices move in lockstep (each has insights into the other company's prices through email receipt intelligence, credit card intelligence, webscraping, etc.). And their services are fairly exchangeable. For either one to win there needs to be either a massive cost advantage or some sort of stickiness…
A duopoly the likes of which not seen since that of Yellow and Checker.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wont switch. 80% of my ubers get expensed. Keep me fat and happy with rewards, and I'll keep expensing it regardless of the cost, which doesnt really effect me, only our controller.
So now Uber's competitors just have to market to your controller, which is in fact easier than marketing to everyone at your company.
It's not worth our controllers time to worry about something so insignificant.