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Doesn't this analogy stop holding with self-driving cars?

• MarkMc 10y ago
  Yes, it probably does - good point! When that happens the Taxi market will probably be analogous to airlines: companies will have huge capital investments but will receive low returns on that investment because the service they are selling is essentially a commodity.
• adventured 10y ago
  Only if you assume Uber isn't going to get there first, with their billions in capital and other vast resources. Meanwhile you have to convince a VC firm or similar to give you an extremely large amount of capital, to build out your fleet, enable/create the self-driving car tech, hire the people to make it all work, market to customers / convince them to even try you, all the while Uber is racing forward. Uber's present advantages are providing the springboard to lead in the next evolution of that business. Similar conceptually to what Netflix managed in transitioning from physical to digital. The advantages of your present can provide for your continued dominance in the future if you're willing to eat your own business when necessary. In five to ten years when self-driving cabs are increasingly common, Uber will already have been there the entire time. You still have to steal their customers (a lot of marketing $$$), build out a huge infrastructure, have a large fleet of vehicles, convince someone to give you a lot of money, compete against a super famous brand (that has already achieved Kleenex type status), and be able to survive the blood-letting competition with a very entrenched and very rich company (see Amazon vs Diapers.com).