Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
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Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#2> The $130 million in revenue for 2014 is based on the combined net revenue from Lyft Classic and gross revenue from Lyft Line during the month of December, which implies $10.8 million in revenue during that month.
What is this sentence supposed to mean?
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#3> The $130 million in revenue for 2014 is based on the combined net revenue from Lyft Classic and gross revenue from Lyft Line during the month of December, which implies $10.8 million in revenue during that month. What is this sentence supposed to mean?
They took the $10.8m in December 2013 revenue and multiplied by 12 to get the $130m number.
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#4> The $130 million in revenue for 2014 is based on the combined net revenue from Lyft Classic and gross revenue from Lyft Line during the month of December, which implies $10.8 million in revenue during that month. What is this sentence supposed to mean?
They took the $10.8m in December 2013 revenue and multiplied by 12 to get the $130m number.
Also commonly referred to as "revenue runrate".
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#5What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where's their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business?
Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to the cab, which kind of highlights the commodity nature of rides--especially in the unregulated environment they themselves advocate. Maybe the long-term plan is de-regulate and re-regulate in favor of Uber?
Just thinking out loud because I'm genuinely curious what the strategy is.
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#6What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where's their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business? Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to t…
> Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to the cab, which kind of highlights the commodity nature of rides
In that scenario, Uber should be charging you a penalty for the cancelled ride.
> Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time.
I certainly hope they're not losing money on each ride right now.
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#7What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where's their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business? Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to t…
There is no barrier to entry. Seriously. Mobile apps? Backend infrastructure? Trivial. I take that back; the biggest barrier to entry might be a massive trove of ride data for machine learning used to predict capacity requirements. In large metro areas, you might be able to get this data in an open format, obviating the need for you to gather the data yourself (the recently FOILd New York Cab Ride data comes to mind [1]).
Anyway! I see Uber going the way of webvan. Great proof of concept that VC money is going to burn through, followed up by some combination competitors, self-driving cars, and local/state government transportation agencies putting together federated/open APIs to perform the same services but in a regulated manner (or governments contracting with smaller players to perform the same services).
No amount of VC is going to remove a government's ability to regulate transportation (Montreal, Canada impounded 40 Uber drivers' vehicles the other day [2]). Then again, it shouldn't. Transportation should be regulated, but not for monopolistic reasons.
Anyone want to make a cheap long bet for funsies?
[1] http://www.andresmh.com/nyctaxitrips/
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-taxi-bureau-...
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#8What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where's their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business? Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to t…
> Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to the cab, which kind of highlights the commodity nature of rides In that scenario, Uber should be charging you a penalty for the cancelled ride. > Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. I certainly hope they're not losing money on each ride right now.
> In that scenario, Uber should be charging you a penalty for the cancelled ride.
Which would drive users to Lyft or other ridesharing services.
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#9What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where's their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business? Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to t…
>Maybe the long-term plan is de-regulate and re-regulate in favor of Uber?
That's one option. Grow until they are dominant, then support greater regulation. They can afford it, new competitors can't. Similar to Amazon and sales tax.
Re: Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to the cab, which kind of highlights the commodity nature of rides In that scenario, Uber should be charging you a penalty for the cancelled ride. > Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. I certainly hope they're not losing money on each ride right now.
> In that scenario, Uber should be charging you a penalty for the cancelled ride. Which would drive users to Lyft or other ridesharing services.
Lyft penalizes you $5 for cancelled rides after some amount of time, at least in SF. Also when the app makes a request on its own and you're not there.