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Uber's New CEO

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Re: Uber's New CEO

#61

Post by dopamean »

leoharsha2 wrote: post #51

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…

Are we just copying people's comments from previous threads now? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15113793

Re: Uber's New CEO

#62

Post by iamcasen »

tmh79 wrote: post #48
cmurf wrote: post #38

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.

The CTO fled Vietnam on a boat during the Vietnam war and arrived in the US with basically nothing as a refugee. Extraordinary circumstances can make extraordinary people.

The CTO is also a ruthless, cut-throat businessman. There is a reason Travis brought him on...

Re: Uber's New CEO

#63

Post by shostack »

bbarn wrote: post #24
dannyw wrote: post #4

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…

> the company offers a compelling service for riders, an economically attractive one for drivers (who drive by choice), and makes the cities within which it operates better. Incredibly opinionated. It's a pretty disputed claim that more single passenger traffic improves a city.

I'm curious how it cuts down on parking. And once autonomous vehicles are mainstream, I think this argument will only solidify.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#64

Post by shostack »

20170319 wrote: post #58

lol 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 millio…

Wow. How does a whole family succeed at that level? Presumably some of it is connections, but connections only get you part of the way.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#65

Post by ch4s3 »

icebraining wrote: post #36
bbarn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company offers a compelling service for riders, an economically attractive one for drivers (who drive by choice), and makes the cities within which it operates better. Incredibly opinionated. It's a pretty disputed claim that more single passenger traffic improves a city.

Cheap, reliable on-demand trips make it easier to avoid owning a car at all and use public transport 99% of the time, whereas if you have to buy one anyway, you're more likely to use it even if you could have taken the metro instead, since after sinking the fixed costs, the cost per trip is not that different.

That isn't how traffic works in theory or practice.

Driving, or taking car trips has a high price elasticity. Lowering the cost of a car trip even a litte increases demand a lot. So Uber's subsidy of trips should increase demand a lot, which it does. Additionally the convenience of the app, and not having to find parking, or maintain a car also increase demand. If all of that outweighs the individuals cost of sitting in increased traffic, demand will continue to rise.

Because the costs are socialized, they affect people who don't drive or take car trips, i.e. bus trips take longer, transportation spending gets soaked up by road repairs due to extra maintenance costs incurred by increased traffic, etc.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#66

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #47
bbarn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company offers a compelling service for riders, an economically attractive one for drivers (who drive by choice), and makes the cities within which it operates better. Incredibly opinionated. It's a pretty disputed claim that more single passenger traffic improves a city.

Especially since there is data from NYC that shows that Uber is making traffic congestion worse. In general major cities are trying to reduce automobile traffic and are giving more space to pedestrians and cyclists. In the future as cities consider mobility pricing to control congestion and further limit car use, it's quite likely that ride hailing services like Uber will have caps placed on them much like how taxis…

I'm curious, is there data to show if parking demand is dropping with Uber making congestion worse? I mean in my head it makes sense that more people driving would lead to less parking but I don't know if that's true or not.

While congestion is not optimal I wonder if parking drops if space can be reclaimed to make other improvements.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#67

Post by ch4s3 »

te_chris wrote: post #31
malandrew wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber at least always shows you both Pool and X trip times and prices at the same time when ordering. This at least gives every X passenger the opportunity to consider a Pool trip first.

Yes but why would you choose it? It's the most awkward experience I've ever had in my life

Despite having a dim view of Uber and Lyft generally, I've had good experiences in Pools. I find that they're a great way to get recommendations for bars/restaurants/events in the area, and you have either a source or destination in common. People are usually either friendly or silent.

Not only that, but Pool encourages better transport resource utilization.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#68

Post by icebraining »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #47
bbarn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company offers a compelling service for riders, an economically attractive one for drivers (who drive by choice), and makes the cities within which it operates better. Incredibly opinionated. It's a pretty disputed claim that more single passenger traffic improves a city.

Especially since there is data from NYC that shows that Uber is making traffic congestion worse. In general major cities are trying to reduce automobile traffic and are giving more space to pedestrians and cyclists. In the future as cities consider mobility pricing to control congestion and further limit car use, it's quite likely that ride hailing services like Uber will have caps placed on them much like how taxis…

Why, do you think Uber drivers will start rioting and setting stuff on fire, like taxi drivers did to get those caps in place?

http://untappedcities.com/2015/02/05/today-in-nyc-history-th...

Re: Uber's New CEO

#69

Post by bgun »

shostack wrote: post #64
20170319 wrote: post #58

lol 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 millio…

Wow. How does a whole family succeed at that level? Presumably some of it is connections, but connections only get you part of the way.

Saying (of business) that "connections only get you part of the way" is like saying of getting into orbit that "rocket fuel only gets you part of the way". It is technically true, and a massive understatement.

Re: Uber's New CEO

#70

Post by icebraining »

ch4s3 wrote: post #65
icebraining wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap, reliable on-demand trips make it easier to avoid owning a car at all and use public transport 99% of the time, whereas if you have to buy one anyway, you're more likely to use it even if you could have taken the metro instead, since after sinking the fixed costs, the cost per trip is not that different.

That isn't how traffic works in theory or practice. Driving, or taking car trips has a high price elasticity. Lowering the cost of a car trip even a litte increases demand a lot. So Uber's subsidy of trips should increase demand a lot, which it does. Additionally the convenience of the app, and not having to find parking, or maintain a car also increase demand. If all of that outweighs the individuals cost of sitting…

Right, but Uber is not cheaper than owning and using one's own car, so they haven't actually lowered the cost of a car trip, only of a taxi trip. Own cars are not only still much cheaper, as the cost per trip actually goes down as you use it more, making Uber even less attractive as the number of trips increases.

It's exactly for people who take very few car trips, like me, since they use mostly public transport, that Uber is actually more attractive than car ownership, since it avoids the fixed costs.

As for road repair costs, that's usually paid off from gas taxes, which Uber pays linearly according to their used miles, so it's not "socialized" in any meaningful way.

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