71–80 of 133 posts
In other news, "Suits Make a Comeback!"[0]. Investors can't just sit on money. They have to get returns, and that means that they have to put capital to work. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I don't get how this article is related to the essay you linked to. Do you mean that this article is likely a PR piece? Who would be paying for it?
In other news, "Suits Make a Comeback!"[0]. Investors can't just sit on money. They have to get returns, and that means that they have to put capital to work. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I don't get how this article is related to the essay you linked to. Do you mean that this article is likely a PR piece? Who would be paying for it?
"SVB counts among its customers 65 percent of U.S. VC firms and half of all VC-backed companies."
That's the only complimentary sentence about any of the firms mentioned in the article. It's also a bit out of place - the article reads just fine without it, and that information isn't needed to make the article's point.
Plus, the tags at the bottom are "Silicon Valley Bank" and "Money".
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This is really interesting to me, because I've noticed the same thing in the Bay Area. I would conjecture that Uber constantly being under attack (i.e. having lots of negative articles about them) has played a significant role in this. So when people have to pick between Lyft and Uber, they go for the one that seems "less evil". Perhaps the reason Lyft doesn't come under fire as much is because they haven't grown eno…
Uber's problems aren't caused simply by being the frontrunner. They're cultural problems that come from straight the leaders of the company itself. They've repeatedly proven that they are misogynists[1][2][3], and that they don't have the same morals that most people value[4][5]. It's a disturbing trend that some of these unicorn startups are valuing growth at the expense of morals, and that VC's are complicit in pus…
To give you a comparison it's like those conspiracy theorists back in the days who claimed NSA was snooping on everyone and then later claimed the president is an Alien from planet Xenu.
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Can anyone make a rational argument why uber-type companies are winner takes all?
The network effects come from the driver side of the market. If you have all the drivers, then you have the quickest pick-up/most availability which means best passenger experience and then most customers. This in turn means best utilization for drivers, so you get more drivers etc etc etc.
And there are other factors. If a competing service let me choose what model of car turns up (say among nearby ones), I may pick that. After all, a big advantage of these over owning a car is that you can try different models.
I don't think the winner takes all, any more than restaurants are winner take all though in theory restaurants also benefit from higher utilisation, less food wastage, negotiating power over suppliers, etc, as the number of patrons increases. That hasn't led to there being only one restaurant in each neighborhood.
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> unless it's a "network effect" situation like a social network, you probably don't need to grow fast. Uber seems like a weird example of this. It was said (and remains said) that they're operating in a winner-take-all space, and they expanded as if they were a social network. Despite the aggressive expansion and marketing, a majority of people I know in the Bay Area now use Lyft exculsively. The last few times I've…
Uber's version of achieving loyalty/lock-in is literally to run the competition into the ground and make sure their customers have no other options. That's a long way from achieving it by offering the best service, and I don't think driver/passenger ratings bridge the gap: it's the difference between encouraging or rewarding good behaviour, and subtly threatening people for breaking the rules.
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The network effects come from the driver side of the market. If you have all the drivers, then you have the quickest pick-up/most availability which means best passenger experience and then most customers. This in turn means best utilization for drivers, so you get more drivers etc etc etc.
Network effect usually implies some kind of lock-in. Unless Uber is willing to go exclusive and qualify the drivers as employees, getting more drivers out on the road also means getting more Lyft and Gett drivers on the road, as most will just have multiple apps running.
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Uber's problems aren't caused simply by being the frontrunner. They're cultural problems that come from straight the leaders of the company itself. They've repeatedly proven that they are misogynists[1][2][3], and that they don't have the same morals that most people value[4][5]. It's a disturbing trend that some of these unicorn startups are valuing growth at the expense of morals, and that VC's are complicit in pus…
Those sources say more about your credibility than they do about Ubers. I think Uber actually relies on people like yourself, you have to understand that it's slowly harming your validity more than theirs. To give you a comparison it's like those conspiracy theorists back in the days who claimed NSA was snooping on everyone and then later claimed the president is an Alien from planet Xenu.
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The network effects come from the driver side of the market. If you have all the drivers, then you have the quickest pick-up/most availability which means best passenger experience and then most customers. This in turn means best utilization for drivers, so you get more drivers etc etc etc.
Only until a point, the point of diminishing returns. If an Uber turns up in 5 minutes and an Ola in 6, that's not a significant difference. Similarly, if I have to pay ₹130 for Uber and ₹140 for Ola, that again doesn't matter. And there are other factors. If a competing service let me choose what model of car turns up (say among nearby ones), I may pick that. After all, a big advantage of these over owning a car is…
However, I think uber pool/lyft line require a much higher critical mass of users to be effective than the basic lyft/uber services and there may not be enough users to fund more than one of those in some (many?) metro areas.
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For a while, before WW2, it looked like Germany was "doing fine" under Adolf Hitler too. Doing fine doesn't mean anything, you need to look deeper at the reasons people are hating Uber. There is growing evidence of systemic "social issues" that Uber is either amazingly still ignorant of, or more likely are being wilfully ignorant of in an attempt to maximise their profits. People are just reacting to this evidence ba…
Uber == Nazi Germany
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> unless it's a "network effect" situation like a social network, you probably don't need to grow fast. Uber seems like a weird example of this. It was said (and remains said) that they're operating in a winner-take-all space, and they expanded as if they were a social network. Despite the aggressive expansion and marketing, a majority of people I know in the Bay Area now use Lyft exculsively. The last few times I've…
Coke and Pepsi or, closer to the point, Coke and "sparkling water." Choice of how to reach your destination is less about product differentiation and more about personal differentiation. Some people don't want to be "the kind of person that uses an Uber."