"leaked"
Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
61–70 of 107 posts
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private monopolies are largely unproblematic as they will be destroyed by more effective competitors eventually. I'm way more afraid of government monopoly. Point in case: The protectionism and government interference that has kept the taxi business shitty for so long.
I find it ironic that people are warning about 'oooh, Uber monopoly' when their business model is all about deconstructing actual government monopolies. Uber already has competitors in major markets. The market has very low switching costs. A new competitor doesn't even have to educate the customer on what to expect, or how it works, or even how to find drivers. All this has now been worked out, so any price gouging…
Many countries, eg much of Europe, already have largely deregulated taxis, eg the complaints in London are just about the legal requirement to declare the fare upfront for private hire vehicles. In Sweden taxis are completely deregulated. People seem to assume that the situation is like the US taxi monopolies everywhere.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private monopolies are largely unproblematic as they will be destroyed by more effective competitors eventually. I'm way more afraid of government monopoly. Point in case: The protectionism and government interference that has kept the taxi business shitty for so long.
I find it ironic that people are warning about 'oooh, Uber monopoly' when their business model is all about deconstructing actual government monopolies. Uber already has competitors in major markets. The market has very low switching costs. A new competitor doesn't even have to educate the customer on what to expect, or how it works, or even how to find drivers. All this has now been worked out, so any price gouging…
I can only conclude those who want to 'regulate' Uber for the 'betterment of society' are severely long Taxi licences, or are hardcore socialists who abhor any economic freedom of agency, or maybe both.
That's a pretty stupid thing to say.
Regulation of taxi services does exist for a reason other than corruption or general malfeasance. On the one hand, deregulation might increase competition and reduce fares. On the other, regulation might help to avoid price gouging or ride refusals. There's a coherent discussion to be had there.
Your shallow dismissals of all attempts as regulation as by 'hardcore socialists' or 'Taxi licenses' contributes absolutely nothing.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it ironic that people are warning about 'oooh, Uber monopoly' when their business model is all about deconstructing actual government monopolies. Uber already has competitors in major markets. The market has very low switching costs. A new competitor doesn't even have to educate the customer on what to expect, or how it works, or even how to find drivers. All this has now been worked out, so any price gouging…
I can only conclude those who want to 'regulate' Uber for the 'betterment of society' are severely long Taxi licences, or are hardcore socialists who abhor any economic freedom of agency, or maybe both. That's a pretty stupid thing to say. Regulation of taxi services does exist for a reason other than corruption or general malfeasance. On the one hand, deregulation might increase competition and reduce fares. On the…
I'm talking about the ability of Uber to become a private monopoly. My comment about monopolies is meant to highlight the disconnect of people arguing they might form a monopoly when most places already have a monopoly.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private monopolies are largely unproblematic as they will be destroyed by more effective competitors eventually. I'm way more afraid of government monopoly. Point in case: The protectionism and government interference that has kept the taxi business shitty for so long.
Private monopolies are in some theoretical circumstances unproblematic because according to extremist free-market ideologues they are destroyed by more effective competitors. In reality they are broken up by governments, regulated into the ground, or destroy a nation/society, and they manage to make a society/market a whole lot worse before this long-term and extreme regulatory action obliterates them and fixes the p…
> they manage to make a society/market a whole lot worse
I can imagine this argument holding true for resource-based businesses, say, oil and gas. I can't imagine a taxi services aggregator having that substantial an impact on a nation
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#66What is interesting is that those volumes put Uber no where close to a monopoly player in the taxi/"car lifts" market. They are just 1 player and I think people use them because their app is cooler than calling a taxi by phone or razing your hand. I don't know, I wouldn't put money on them. Maybe their app, who knows, could be useful for taxis once uber goes away?
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
In transportation business major costs are vehicle depreciation/maintenance/consumables (fuel, insurance, tires, etc), wages and you can include domain specific expenses (insurance, driver health chek-ups). * You can't reduce DS expenses. You can offload them to drivers, but that will still be reflected in prices * You can reduce wage cost by eliminating administrative load by having tools (apps, backends) do the job…
The valuation for Uber has got to be based on #2. Specifically that you can drive down wage costs by having a fleet of self driving cars. And that the current app/business model is just to get the app installed onto as many phones as possible.
You mean like how all the horse and buggy companies became highly successful car manufacturers? I can see the Uber logic - we will sell buggies now since we don’t have the technology to make cars and when the technology eventually arrives we will be able sell cars because we have such a great buggy customer network.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#68Basic rundown of Rev / Loss from reports: Q1.12: 1.4M / 3.4M Q2.12: 2.1M /2.3M Q3.12: 4.3M / 5.4M Q4.12: 8.2M / 7.0M Q1.13: 12.9M / 7.3M Q2.13: 19.3M / 8.1M 2013 (total): 104M / 56M Q1.14: 45.6M / 52.2M Q2.13: 56.9M / 108.8M Rev grew faster than losses consistently all through 2012 and 2013 which is really amazing (2013 is when Uber jumped from a 330M valuation to a 3.5B valuation so investors noticed too)...then los…
So what happens when they've aggressively expanded into all their target markets and are still not profitable and have nowhere else to go? Pure expansion is pretty much the sign of a first-mover bubble company who will collapse with their advantage being copied by calmer second-movers...
Expansion costs money, running operations is cheaper. So when growth stops, profit happens almost by default.
Simple math. Suppose opening a city costs $10 (once) and returns $1/year in revenue.
Year 1: Open 1 city, loss = $10.
Year 2: Open 3 cities, loss = $29 (spending $30 on new cities, gaining $1 from year 1's city).
Year 3: Open 9 cities, loss = $86.
Year 4: expansion stops, profit = $13.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually build a better service, give each user subsidized (or free) rides so they get to experience how much better the new service is, then stop handing out free rides like candy.
You just said the same thing, but framed as a positive. Use VC money to put taxis out of business then jack up the price and let the service level plummet as cheap immigrants become the drivers.
Uber doesn't have to put taxis out of business, it's growing the market - getting a lot more people using taxi-like services. Both people who aren't willing to shell out how much cabs charge in their artificially restricted markets and people who've had shitty experiences with cabs in the past. Not to mention how poor taxi service is in the vast majority of US cities.
I personally use Uber because I hate calling a cab company, finding out it does or doesn't have a cab to send, figuring out the address I need it to come to, getting a very general estimate of when it'll be there (8-15 minutes), etc. With uber I drop the pin in the exact spot I want it, I know the minute my cab is there. If cab companies had an app like that, they'd have my business.
Re: Leaked Uber financials from 2012 to 2014
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
In transportation business major costs are vehicle depreciation/maintenance/consumables (fuel, insurance, tires, etc), wages and you can include domain specific expenses (insurance, driver health chek-ups). * You can't reduce DS expenses. You can offload them to drivers, but that will still be reflected in prices * You can reduce wage cost by eliminating administrative load by having tools (apps, backends) do the job…
The valuation for Uber has got to be based on #2. Specifically that you can drive down wage costs by having a fleet of self driving cars. And that the current app/business model is just to get the app installed onto as many phones as possible.
Self driving cars aren't coming tomorrow. They are years away. Maybe a decade. How long can uber coast on VC money before that happens? And then how do they guarantee dominance in the self-driving taxi market? Basing their value solely on this shoot-the-moon project is problematic.