11 ms·

The interesting question is how much of that is due to hard advantages:discounts, lower costs, and better technology, having access to drivers vs branding ? be

by petra 9y ago

The interesting question is how much of that is due to hard advantages:discounts, lower costs, and better technology, having access to drivers vs branding ? because if the model changes(self-driving, or shuttles) and big competitors attack, the hard advantages will look quite different.

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
It simply underscores the fact that ridesharing is a commodity. If the price or experience is in any way different users will happily jump ship. I don't fear monopolization of the technology too much as it's relatively easy to bootstrap one of these companies in a short amount of time (options, while most would say are and were inferior, popped up in Austin within a month after Uber and Lyft's departure). As these apps grow, I think there will be an eventual ceiling on the experience part of it (there's only so much you can improve on the app experience of getting from point a to point b before you start to face diminishing returns). Eventually like gasoline the price of the service will be the main deciding factor in the future. This train of thought does not take into account the game-changing possibility of self-driving cars.
- adventured 9y ago
  > If the price or experience is in any way different users will happily jump ship And that's one of the many reasons why users will not jump ship. It'll cost billions of dollars in red ink to compete with Lyft and replicate the price & experience. It costs more to successfully compete with Uber. Which is why there aren't / haven't been tons of successful competitors to Uber in the US market. No, you can't bootstrap a competitor to Lyft's $2 billion VC blackhole. No, it's not easy to do. No, users won't just bail on Uber to try your start-up. No, ridesharing isn't a commodity, precisely because the experiences are not all the same and never will be. It'd be like claiming that retailing is a commodity (it's not), so therefore you can bootstrap a competitor to Walmart or Amazon. Except, you know, for the hyper scale that enables them to operate at slimmer margins than you can (your ability to compete with them at what they do declines at an accelerating rate as they increase scale), and the vast data they have on every angle of customer behavior (which you entirely lack, which negatively impacts your business in a thousand ways vs Walmart or Amazon). One of the things that protects a Walmart from being susceptible to commodity-style competition, is among other things their incredible data and national consistency (which small time operators and start-ups can never replicate; if I go to a Walmart in Texas it'll be similar to one in Virginia, I can be relatively confident in the results of my shopping trip there).

by petra 9y ago

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago

It simply underscores the fact that ridesharing is a commodity. If the price or experience is in any way different users will happily jump ship. I don't fear monopolization of the technology too much as it's relatively easy to bootstrap one of these companies in a short amount of time (options, while most would say are and were inferior, popped up in Austin within a month after Uber and Lyft's departure). As these apps grow, I think there will be an eventual ceiling on the experience part of it (there's only so much you can improve on the app experience of getting from point a to point b before you start to face diminishing returns). Eventually like gasoline the price of the service will be the main deciding factor in the future. This train of thought does not take into account the game-changing possibility of self-driving cars.

adventured 9y ago
> If the price or experience is in any way different users will happily jump ship And that's one of the many reasons why users will not jump ship. It'll cost billions of dollars in red ink to compete with Lyft and replicate the price & experience. It costs more to successfully compete with Uber. Which is why there aren't / haven't been tons of successful competitors to Uber in the US market. No, you can't bootstrap a competitor to Lyft's $2 billion VC blackhole. No, it's not easy to do. No, users won't just bail on Uber to try your start-up. No, ridesharing isn't a commodity, precisely because the experiences are not all the same and never will be. It'd be like claiming that retailing is a commodity (it's not), so therefore you can bootstrap a competitor to Walmart or Amazon. Except, you know, for the hyper scale that enables them to operate at slimmer margins than you can (your ability to compete with them at what they do declines at an accelerating rate as they increase scale), and the vast data they have on every angle of customer behavior (which you entirely lack, which negatively impacts your business in a thousand ways vs Walmart or Amazon). One of the things that protects a Walmart from being susceptible to commodity-style competition, is among other things their incredible data and national consistency (which small time operators and start-ups can never replicate; if I go to a Walmart in Texas it'll be similar to one in Virginia, I can be relatively confident in the results of my shopping trip there).