in short: lawyers, politicians (whether legal donations or illegal bribes), and accountants. each of which will vary by jurisdiction (city, county, state, natio

in short: lawyers, politicians (whether legal donations or illegal bribes), and accountants. each of which will vary by jurisdiction (city, county, state, nation, etc.) yes, the core server-side codebase design/code/operate will be about the same. yes, each taxi operator will own/buy/provide their own hardware. yes, the mobile platform app codebase is fairly unified/common. but... it's all those jurisdictional and market differences. plus, the advantage to subsidize and accelerate, that will likely cause the lion's share of thirst for bootup investor cash. Uber's biggest problem, as a 2000-ish YC/SF-style "software" startup is that there is no Amazon/AWS-like cloud provider of vehicular rides. Because you need, well, vehicles. Which are expensive and messy. Uber needs enough cash to ensure enough vehicles, plus those messy human drivers, plus all those locale/jurisdiction-specific requirements, are satisfied and ready. Human/political/legal costs don't scale up/down anywhere near as well as totally automatable solutions like pure software.