16 ms·
Gett in advanced talks to buy Juno for $250M as Uber rivals consolidate
- curiousDog 9y agoThe more the merrier. At this point, I'd hate for Uber to have a monopoly in this market.
- braymundo 9y agoCabify is pretty strong in South America and, at least anecdotally, seems to be winning hearts and minds around here.
- classybull 9y agoLyft?
- colmvp 9y agoLyft isn't available in a LOT of places. Not even in all the major cities in North America unlike say, Uber.
- slap_shot 9y agoJuno pledged to give away 50% of the founding shares to drivers via RSUs over a 10 year period [0]. I wonder how units many were issued, if they had accelerated vesting upon an acquisition, and if so, what drivers actually got in the transaction. [0] https://gojuno.com/drive/meet/ https://gojuno.com/drive/meet/ Over a period of ten years, we intend to distribute to drivers a number of RSUs that would give drivers the same ownership interest as our founders upon an IPO or sale assuming all such RSUs vest.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CaliforniaKarl 9y agoSomething about this headline interests me, along with the title that appears here on HN: Article: "Gett in advanced talks to buy Juno for $250M as Uber rivals consolidate" HN: "Ubser rivals consolidating: Gett to buy Juno for $250M" I wonder if the HN headline is as-submitted or mod-ified. The latter title leans much more on the Uber link, while TC's headline puts it at the end. If we didn't have all of Uber scandal stuff going on, I wonder which title would've been submitted to HN: "Uber rivals scrambling as Gett buys Juno for $250M", maybe? Here's a fun query to run: Pull HN submissions and go back to the linked articles. Pull those headlines, and then remove ones too long for HN's length limit. Of the remaining headlines, normalize and see how many HN posts modified the title in some way.
- chronic940 9y agoVery few people on HN actually care about the Uber scandals. Almost no one has changed their daily behavior. They all still use Uber. It's exactly how Trump won the US election. A small group of people spread the idea Uber is doing poorly when in reality they're not.
- sdflkd 9y agoHN is full of the relatively privileged/wealthy. They don't need to care in their eyes.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 9y agoI'm skeptical about the business model in general, not related to any recent scandal. The leaked financials[1] seem to indicate it's a losing proposition until self driving cars are relatively ubiquitous. So whenever it does become financially viable, there's a pretty long payback cycle. And no obvious iron clad moat that keeps competitors at bay...ones that aren't under pressure to pay back investors for years of subsidized prices. Of course, the leaked data is incomplete, and using unusual accounting, so perhaps I'm wrong. [1] http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove-uber-is-a-mo-1704234157 http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove... and http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver...
- yeukhon 9y agoI prefer Gett for long commute. It gives you a firm quote so if your Uber/Lyft/Juno driver messed up enroute or there's a traffic, you don't pay the extra. From a user's perspective, this saves me money. I would take Gett to Barclay Center knowing Uber and Lyft would charge me high premium after game. Or trip from Manhattan back to Queens. There's also an option to make extra stop which is nice! Gett cars are the regular black SUV cars so much more comfortable. This acquisition is nothing but acquiring users (although Junos has fewer drivers so fewer active users) and talents, as Gett itself can already do what Juno and other rider-service apps can do. I wonder if they will continue to run Juno as a standalone app like Seamless and Grubhub but share the same user database. I still wonder why Seamless and Grubhub can't shut down one of them, this seems like a marketing tactic than anything else, creating a diversion that there are other players in the market. Who knows, maybe there's tax advantage.
- WellDressed 9y agoLiving in NYC also, I use Gett mostly and sometimes Juno (due to 30% off limited time promotion). I always ask drivers which service they like. Many do not like Uber or Lyft due to the % they take, compared to Gett/Juno. Also, I found it interesting that nearly all drivers have multiple cell phones logged into separate services, sometimes Gett and Juno! I wonder what the percentage of drivers Gett will be picking up that were already Juno drivers.
- Eridrus 9y agoDo you just not use Uber Pool/Lyft Line? Those provide fixed prices and seem many times cheaper than the rates on Gett/Juno. Currently Lyft line is $25 to get me to Brooklyn, while Gett is $60.
- yeukhon 9y agoI used them too but at peak hours when demand is high Uber and Lyft quite goes up. Gett usually doesn't.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- avip 9y agoThe headlines I see in Hebrew (both Gett and Juno's founders are Israelis) are somewhat more low-key: the undisclosed price tag is estimated at "few tens of millions", to be paid in shares of privately held Gett.
- aomurphy 9y agoCould you link to some of them?
- doubleplusgood 9y agoSure: http://www.themarker.com/technation/1.4049196 http://www.themarker.com/technation/1.4049196
- peternicky 9y agoBeen using Gett in NYC with excellent results. Car availability is hard to beat, even during peak hours and the special flat $10 rate in manhattan is quite the deal. Never tried Juno but will check it out.
- skdotdan 9y agoInstead of burning cash by subsidizing travels, Uber could have just bought some competitors but still... The only chance Uber has is becoming a monopoly, and I don't see how they can achieve it.
- notyourwork 9y agoWhy do they need to be a monopoly to succeed? I personally dislike Uber based on all the latest PR but what if they actually achieve a self driving car? If so, this would change the business entirely because no more contractor's to pay. Do you think if one company has self driving cars and the rest don't this is a competitive advantage? Perhaps they license the self driving car software to other companies which also presents revenue options.
- ghaff 9y agoSelf-driving is so far out as a door-to-door taxi service as to be utterly irrelevant to Uber's business model.
- technotony 9y agoI'm not sure it's 'so far out' Waymo is running such a service in Phoenix: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/waymo-begins-first-public-on-demand-self-driving-service-test-in-arizona/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/waymo-begins-first-public-...
- ghaff 9y agoRight. Because the fact that there's a Google employee in the driver's seat ready to take over control makes no difference whatsoever.
- notyourwork 9y agoIt isn't irrelevant in the slightest if their plan is to replace all these contract drivers with automated cars. That would in fact be a long term business strategy. Considering waymo's lawsuit for alleged theft and their large monetary investment in self driving I disagree with being utterly irrelevant.
- coleca 9y agoAm I the only one that was wondering why the dialup ISP Juno.com was considered a rival to Uber? Guess it's a different Juno.. TIL Juno.com still offers dial-up for $15.95/mo. Gone are the days of free dial-up with obnoxious banner ads.
- ghaff 9y agoHeh. I used their free service on occasion for a few years during the period when it was no longer worth it for me to pay for monthly dial-up but broadband wasn't always available when traveling. (And pre-mobile data.)
- bokchoi 9y agoI was confused why Juno Therapeutics would be competing with Uber. They have the ticker symbol JUNO on Nasdaq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Therapeutics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Therapeutics
- doctorshady 9y agoThere are a few who still offer free dial-up. No banner ads, since they make money by doing traffic pumping.
- 9y ago
- nathanvanfleet 9y agoWait, the article says that if Gett and Juno combine they'd beat Lyft? It doesn't look like they are even close to Lyft's size...
- douche 9y agoSo I assume these must be rival alt-taxi companies, but I have never heard a whisper of their existence before this story. Uber, despite the seemingly coordinated smear campaign, reigns supreme in this area.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]