11 ms·

The Uber Dilemma

301 points by darwhy 9y ago

whipoodle 9y ago
Uber already is one of the grand slams, so it would make sense to take action to protect that success (I'm not saying Benchmark is definitely doing that, but I'm sure they think so). Even if you don't agree with what Benchmark is doing, I think it's hard to see this as anything other than a fight between billionaires. If you're just starting out, deciding to hold a grudge against them over this is getting way ahead of yourself.
- psadri 9y ago
  This kind of stuff plays out at much smaller scale too. You just don't hear about it in the national news. So some due diligence on your investors is worthwhile if you are going to pour the next 5 years of your life into something.
elmar 9y ago
“There was no way we were ever going to take money from Sequoia, given what they’d done to me,” says Parker. For those who don't know the story. Mark Zuckerberg's Brutal Prank On Sequoia (2010) http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-prank-on-sequoia-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-prank...
- jszymborski 9y ago
  the full excerpt is on Fortune... great read http://archive.fortune.com/2010/05/06/technology/facebook_excerpt_early.fortune/index.htm http://archive.fortune.com/2010/05/06/technology/facebook_ex...
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Does anyone recall which VC firm Jim Clark had beef with after being betrayed during his time at Silicon Graphics?
  - 2arrs2ells 9y ago
    KPCB, I believe. ("The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis is a great retelling of Jim Clark's adventures)
    - hkmurakami 9y ago
      Huh interesting (and my first hunch was KPCB as well), since he works with KPCB in his subsequent ventures, including Netscape (I seem to recall that his beef was with one particular partner rather than the firm as a whole, so maybe that is why). The valley grudges by top executives has always been amusing and entertaining to me -- for example, Ben Horowitz's refusal to work with E&Y after they nearly blocked their acquisition by HP.
      - elmar 9y ago
        As a side note the cap table of Netscape Why was Netscape a weird example (to me) of Equity Sharing between Founders http://www.startup-book.com/tag/kleiner-perkins/ http://www.startup-book.com/tag/kleiner-perkins/
  - temp20160423 9y ago
    New Enterprise associates. It's in the New New Thing by Michael Lewis. I'm not entirely sure now. But it's covered in the book mentioned here and by the other poster.
damnfine 9y ago
So cash out or grow, but they're already shrinking and cashing out is looking increasingly hard and with diminishing returns. This may not end well, but presents a lot of opprotunities for those with the right eyes.
saosebastiao 9y ago
Realistically, how long do I have before Silicon Valley stops subsidizing my transportation?
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  Honestly, I think they are subsidizing the drivers. I think the play is to subsidize rides to prop up user counts until they can sell those users to a self-driving car fleet. (or own one themselves). This would be my guess why a GM or ford (Can't remember which) would invest in someone like lyft. There's nothing to crazy here outside of an app that pairs two GPS coordinates. Access to user pools for self driving car fleets is going to be big money though. This is why uber could be in so much trouble over the otto/waymo thing. If they get barred from self driving cars, their competators will be able to offer the same or lower rates without having to pay drivers. Uber will have to continue to subsidize until then or loose mass user base.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    But the drivers really don't make anything.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    The numbers just don't add up for this scenario: Current valuation is 70 billion, Last known monthly active users is 40 million. Monthly spend per user is $50. Meaning: instead of buying those users for 70 billion, a car company could offer each one of those users $1700 of free credits, or about 3 years of their typical use. Considering that switching is as easy as installing some other app, I'm pretty sure they could buy marketshare for less than a 10th of that. ...and I haven't even factored in that the novelty of self-driving cars would probably make it incredibly easy to sign up users for whatever car company is first-to-market.
- pgwhalen 9y ago
  Haha I have the same question. Until self driving cars are common presumably, but I think a lot of people are deluded about how soon that will be.
dracodoc 9y ago
The summary on TIT FOR TAT is not complete: when you’re playing for the long run it is better to be nice — you’ll make up any short-term losses with long-term gains. It also depend on the population distribution. If everybody else is mean, being nice in long run still lose. So the optimal strategies in different culture are obviously different. I think TIT FOR TAT is good because: 1. it give a gesture for cooperation at first 2. but respond immediately if the response is hostile. There were some variations of TIT FOR TAT, like being nice for several rounds, then revenge later. Those variations didn't work well. The random strategy(being nice or mean randomly) also doesn't work because it's difficult for others to predict your behavior. The experiment was designed for long term survival, so it doesn't apply to these cases: Being nice for all the time, then use the reputation to scoop the biggest gain in the last step. So the experiment is very interesting and revealed a lot of points, but the simple takeaway of "being nice is good for long term" is just too limited.
- hammock 9y ago
  >when you’re playing for the long run it is better to be nice — you’ll make up any short-term losses with long-term gains. It also depend on the population distribution. If everybody else is mean, being nice in long run still lose. So the optimal strategies in different culture are obviously different. Hence the age-old debate over whether God is vengeful or compassionate
- sunsetMurk 9y ago
  Here is a fun 'game' to illustrate some scenarios around this. http://ncase.me/trust/ http://ncase.me/trust/ Here it's framed as the game theory for the Evolution of Trust.
- occultist_throw 9y ago
  How interesting. If I read between the lines, it would make fiscal sense to be ruthless and Cutthroat early on. Then after guaranteeing some certainty of income, sell the business to a nice player. That way, you could get the best of both worlds being a bad actor in the prisoner's dilemma and being a tit-for-tat member. They only hope would be is that nobody finds out this grift.
msabalau 9y ago
I am not certain I understand how the reputation damage is supposed to occur in this case. According to the article Sequoia had a long standing willingness to play hardball. A reputation earned through consistent long term behavior. It's hard to see how a one time event in extreme circumstances leads to a change in reputation. Presumably any rational founder would assume that any rational VC firm would act the same way in similarly extreme circumstances. One doesn't earn a reputation by being struck by lightning or spraining your ankle falling over a turkey in a city street or any unrepeated unlikely events. And, if you believe you can clearly prove "fraud, break of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty" presumably you are only discouraging bad actors with whom you wouldn't want to get into bed with in any event.
- amrrs 9y ago
  It does. Benchmark played along with Kalanick until they realised this guy isn't in for making money (right now) but highly egoistic like Bezos to build a global economy. But now that they're suing the guy whom they supported for fraud means they play at crucial right time and no Founders vision matters to them!
- lmm 9y ago
  Suing a company you funded is extreme enough that doing it even once attracts a reputation. Would future founders considering potential investors assume that Kalanick was so far out of line that there's no way anything similar could happen to them? Or would they think that there's probably blame on both sides, and there are better investors around?
  - zangiku 9y ago
    Why does funding a company have to mean that you are forever beholden to the CEO's bad decisions? Extreme this is not, and founders should take this as a signal that Benchmark will bring reason to the board.
    - Trundle 9y ago
      >Why does funding a company have to mean that you are forever beholden to the CEO's bad decisions? Huh? It doesn't?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fragmede 9y ago
This is compounded by the fact that brand names don't get tracked but this post, ostensibly by someone in the VC business, doesn't even mention: who is Benchmark? Starting a new firm with a new name might have zero reputation, but it's better than a negative reputation, and who's going to do extensive research on the founders of a new VC fund, as long as they're interested in your new app, and you weren't personally aggrieved by them in a previous round.
- __jal 9y ago
  > and who's going to do extensive research on the founders of a new VC fund ...Anyone who actually cares about their firm and is smart enough to actually attract VC interest?
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    False although I grant some will.
driverdan 9y ago
> Does it give the firm a bad reputation, potentially keeping it out of the next Facebook? Unquestionably. I question this assertion. As others pointed out in the HN comments for the lawsuit announcement, the only people who have to worry are those with questionable ethics. We need fewer of those people in startups so this is a positive signal to me.
sunsetMurk 9y ago
Here is an educational game which describes this in a fun way. http://ncase.me/trust/ http://ncase.me/trust/ I enjoyed going through these scenarios quite a bit. Now with the context of this Uber Dilemma post, it's reinforced further.
- saganus 9y ago
  Awesome game! I'm guessing game theorists have these kind of tools, albeit more complex ones. DO you know of any of them? I'm sure this has been studied a lot so I'm guessing there are graphs about the different rules and outcomes and such?
- adrianpike 9y ago
  That's really neat, thanks for the link!
- marnett 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this! Loved playing it.
- amoorthy 9y ago
  So cool, thank you for posting. I shared with my nephew and he loved it. Made game theory really come alive for him. I also became a patron to the author. My first time ever doing so on Patreon. Way to go Nicky Case and please keep up these amazing programs.
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  How accurate are these simulations compared to the real world ? I understand the reasoning behind it, and it makes sense, but it strucks as an oversimplification of really complex things.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    Kind of inevitable. We're trying to model complex things in a way we can understand, and that necessarily involves simplifying it until it's... simple enough. Simple usually means coarse. If your model is coarse, does that make it invalid? No, but the coarser it is, the less accurate & predictive it is across all values of the inputs.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
That is the first time I've heard the theory that the lawsuit might be a sort of stealth way of Benchmark getting on the record as not having anything to do with the current Waymo issue. Does anyone know if a board member can separate themselves that way from a suit in order to shield themselves from damages? If I understand the risk correctly it would be that Waymo prevails, gets a huge damage settlement which the company has to pay, but doesn't have the cash to pay so the board of directors have to go to their resources to pay. Is this understanding correct? Does anyone have a precedent for this? I'd be interested in reading it if they did.
- harryh 9y ago
  It would be highly unusual and I dare say impossible for Uber shareholders to ever have to pay a settlement out of funds not already invested in the company. This is the essence of limited liability.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    AIUI the "Limited" company in the UK limits a shareholder's liability to the value of the shares they hold - so if you hold £1M of shares that's your liability. I assume it works similarly in USA?
    - harryh 9y ago
      Yes correct. The worst financial outcome for holders of Uber stock is that their shares become worth zero. They can't go negative.
      - freyir 9y ago
        If the Saudis were misled in their $3.5B investment? IANAL, but individuals might be held accountable.
  - venantius 9y ago
    The exception here is if the firm is found guilty of criminal activity and evidence emerges to suggest that Benchmark knew about it. In that case I don't know that they would be financially liable, but directors and board members would stand the risk of jail time.
_RPM 9y ago
Did anyone do the math on using Uber vs buying a car? I probably spend like 100 per month on Uber
- anthonybsd 9y ago
  Depends if you need to travel long distances (over 50 miles). If the answer is yes, Uber is simply not a good option. Otherwise no.
  - Sleeep 9y ago
    Not quite, it depends how often you need to travel long distances and what the other options are for that travel. If you only need to drive 100 miles four times a year and otherwise have zero everyday commute costs because you ride a bicycle to work then renting a car four times a year is almost certainly a better option than buying a car just for those trips. Additionally, if there is frequent and reliable train or bus service to your destination that may be a better option than driving. I know several people who don't own cars but travel 100+ miles via bus on a regular basis. On the other hand, I travel 100+ miles regularly but buses and trains don't go to where I am going. (There's people who justify buying a truck because they need to haul stuff twice a year at the most. Renting a truck twice a year is almost guaranteed to be a better option financially. That being said, if you want a truck because you like trucks, that's also a perfectly valid reason to buy one.)
    - anthonybsd 9y ago
      Agreed, I greatly oversimplified things. There's the whole matter of convenience too which I didn't even touch upon. As it happens I have a car (weekend trips) and use Uber too (during the week), and use public transportation. Convenience is the driving force behind my usage.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It really depends on a lot of things. -- Amount that you drive -- Availability of Uber when/where you need it -- Whether you have to pay for parking -- Whether you also take a lot of weekend trips -- etc. $100 per month is actually not very much. That suggests you're only traveling 100 miles per month or so on Ubers which is nothing. By contrast, that would basically take me to the nearest large city and back once or get me back and forth to my office a couple of times. If you live in a city, you'd probably pay a pretty decent chunk of that amount just in auto insurance.
fragmede 9y ago
Thanks for an extra 1000 words explaining the prisoner's dilemma. Edit: that was sarcasm
- anthonybsd 9y ago
  The article was mostly about VC-Uber tug of war, though. That's the essential point of the whole debacle.
fragmede 9y ago
The blog pushes two potential outcome, but fails to realize a third - Benchmark, as one of the most successful VC firms ever, is messaging to CEOs that certain behavior will not be tolerated, even if they are going to be the next Google and Facebook.
- dandare 9y ago
  Maybe as a by product :)
- TheCondor 9y ago
  That is an awfully expensive way to send a message to someone that may not exist
SCAQTony 9y ago
So Lyft played nice and is having more long term success as a result?
- ndirish1842 9y ago
  Not really. Yes Lyft has gained some marketshare in the past 6 months. But Uber still dominates the US rideshare market (Uber by public accounts still has greater than 70% Market Share). Uber dominates in several other regions (Western Europe, Latin America) and is competing in several other huge markets (India and SouthEast Asia). Uber also has significant stakes in the dominant ride hailing companies in China and Russia. This is not to diminish what Lyft has done. They're successful company. But they are in no way seeing more long term success compared to Uber as of today
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    Any pointer to "Uber dominating in Western Europe?" Only in a two horses race with Lyft, but as you know there are many other racers, including traditional taxies which are well organized in Western Europe, not only a vested interest.
    - ndirish1842 9y ago
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/uber-is-the-most-popular-ride-hailing-app-in-108-countries https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/uber-is-t... To be fair, this doesn't (I believe) take into account if traditional taxis are still dominant in some countries
zackmorris 9y ago
I feel like these simulations refute "if you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. if you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain": http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/ The older I get, the more it seems to me that context is the basis of strongly held political beliefs. Growing up in Idaho, I'm often dismissed out of hand when I offer my (by regional standards) liberal opinions. I've met many people from liberal states (even California) who offer conservative opinions, which always struck me as ironic. How would our positions hold up when confronted with a change of context, if we saw how their application backfired? I'm wondering if there is a duality here, where different approaches can both be right but one could and should be chosen based on desired outcome. People unaccustomed to pragmatism may be performing a logical fallacy by assuming that their way works in all cases, when it practice they would lose to experience (and in the case of the prisoner's dilemma, cooperation).

301 points by darwhy 9y ago

Uber already is one of the grand slams, so it would make sense to take action to protect that success (I'm not saying Benchmark is definitely doing that, but I'm sure they think so). Even if you don't agree with what Benchmark is doing, I think it's hard to see this as anything other than a fight between billionaires. If you're just starting out, deciding to hold a grudge against them over this is getting way ahead of yourself.

psadri 9y ago
This kind of stuff plays out at much smaller scale too. You just don't hear about it in the national news. So some due diligence on your investors is worthwhile if you are going to pour the next 5 years of your life into something.

elmar 9y ago

“There was no way we were ever going to take money from Sequoia, given what they’d done to me,” says Parker. For those who don't know the story. Mark Zuckerberg's Brutal Prank On Sequoia (2010) http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-prank-on-sequoia-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-prank...

jszymborski 9y ago
the full excerpt is on Fortune... great read http://archive.fortune.com/2010/05/06/technology/facebook_excerpt_early.fortune/index.htm http://archive.fortune.com/2010/05/06/technology/facebook_ex...
hkmurakami 9y ago
Does anyone recall which VC firm Jim Clark had beef with after being betrayed during his time at Silicon Graphics?
- 2arrs2ells 9y ago
  KPCB, I believe. ("The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis is a great retelling of Jim Clark's adventures)
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Huh interesting (and my first hunch was KPCB as well), since he works with KPCB in his subsequent ventures, including Netscape (I seem to recall that his beef was with one particular partner rather than the firm as a whole, so maybe that is why). The valley grudges by top executives has always been amusing and entertaining to me -- for example, Ben Horowitz's refusal to work with E&Y after they nearly blocked their acquisition by HP.
    - elmar 9y ago
      As a side note the cap table of Netscape Why was Netscape a weird example (to me) of Equity Sharing between Founders http://www.startup-book.com/tag/kleiner-perkins/ http://www.startup-book.com/tag/kleiner-perkins/
- temp20160423 9y ago
  New Enterprise associates. It's in the New New Thing by Michael Lewis. I'm not entirely sure now. But it's covered in the book mentioned here and by the other poster.

damnfine 9y ago

So cash out or grow, but they're already shrinking and cashing out is looking increasingly hard and with diminishing returns. This may not end well, but presents a lot of opprotunities for those with the right eyes.

saosebastiao 9y ago

Realistically, how long do I have before Silicon Valley stops subsidizing my transportation?

jethro_tell 9y ago
Honestly, I think they are subsidizing the drivers. I think the play is to subsidize rides to prop up user counts until they can sell those users to a self-driving car fleet. (or own one themselves). This would be my guess why a GM or ford (Can't remember which) would invest in someone like lyft. There's nothing to crazy here outside of an app that pairs two GPS coordinates. Access to user pools for self driving car fleets is going to be big money though. This is why uber could be in so much trouble over the otto/waymo thing. If they get barred from self driving cars, their competators will be able to offer the same or lower rates without having to pay drivers. Uber will have to continue to subsidize until then or loose mass user base.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  But the drivers really don't make anything.
- matt4077 9y ago
  The numbers just don't add up for this scenario: Current valuation is 70 billion, Last known monthly active users is 40 million. Monthly spend per user is $50. Meaning: instead of buying those users for 70 billion, a car company could offer each one of those users $1700 of free credits, or about 3 years of their typical use. Considering that switching is as easy as installing some other app, I'm pretty sure they could buy marketshare for less than a 10th of that. ...and I haven't even factored in that the novelty of self-driving cars would probably make it incredibly easy to sign up users for whatever car company is first-to-market.
pgwhalen 9y ago
Haha I have the same question. Until self driving cars are common presumably, but I think a lot of people are deluded about how soon that will be.

dracodoc 9y ago

The summary on TIT FOR TAT is not complete: when you’re playing for the long run it is better to be nice — you’ll make up any short-term losses with long-term gains. It also depend on the population distribution. If everybody else is mean, being nice in long run still lose. So the optimal strategies in different culture are obviously different. I think TIT FOR TAT is good because: 1. it give a gesture for cooperation at first 2. but respond immediately if the response is hostile. There were some variations of TIT FOR TAT, like being nice for several rounds, then revenge later. Those variations didn't work well. The random strategy(being nice or mean randomly) also doesn't work because it's difficult for others to predict your behavior. The experiment was designed for long term survival, so it doesn't apply to these cases: Being nice for all the time, then use the reputation to scoop the biggest gain in the last step. So the experiment is very interesting and revealed a lot of points, but the simple takeaway of "being nice is good for long term" is just too limited.

hammock 9y ago
>when you’re playing for the long run it is better to be nice — you’ll make up any short-term losses with long-term gains. It also depend on the population distribution. If everybody else is mean, being nice in long run still lose. So the optimal strategies in different culture are obviously different. Hence the age-old debate over whether God is vengeful or compassionate
sunsetMurk 9y ago
Here is a fun 'game' to illustrate some scenarios around this. http://ncase.me/trust/ http://ncase.me/trust/ Here it's framed as the game theory for the Evolution of Trust.
occultist_throw 9y ago
How interesting. If I read between the lines, it would make fiscal sense to be ruthless and Cutthroat early on. Then after guaranteeing some certainty of income, sell the business to a nice player. That way, you could get the best of both worlds being a bad actor in the prisoner's dilemma and being a tit-for-tat member. They only hope would be is that nobody finds out this grift.

msabalau 9y ago

I am not certain I understand how the reputation damage is supposed to occur in this case. According to the article Sequoia had a long standing willingness to play hardball. A reputation earned through consistent long term behavior. It's hard to see how a one time event in extreme circumstances leads to a change in reputation. Presumably any rational founder would assume that any rational VC firm would act the same way in similarly extreme circumstances. One doesn't earn a reputation by being struck by lightning or spraining your ankle falling over a turkey in a city street or any unrepeated unlikely events. And, if you believe you can clearly prove "fraud, break of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty" presumably you are only discouraging bad actors with whom you wouldn't want to get into bed with in any event.

amrrs 9y ago
It does. Benchmark played along with Kalanick until they realised this guy isn't in for making money (right now) but highly egoistic like Bezos to build a global economy. But now that they're suing the guy whom they supported for fraud means they play at crucial right time and no Founders vision matters to them!
lmm 9y ago
Suing a company you funded is extreme enough that doing it even once attracts a reputation. Would future founders considering potential investors assume that Kalanick was so far out of line that there's no way anything similar could happen to them? Or would they think that there's probably blame on both sides, and there are better investors around?
- zangiku 9y ago
  Why does funding a company have to mean that you are forever beholden to the CEO's bad decisions? Extreme this is not, and founders should take this as a signal that Benchmark will bring reason to the board.
  - Trundle 9y ago
    >Why does funding a company have to mean that you are forever beholden to the CEO's bad decisions? Huh? It doesn't?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fragmede 9y ago

This is compounded by the fact that brand names don't get tracked but this post, ostensibly by someone in the VC business, doesn't even mention: who is Benchmark? Starting a new firm with a new name might have zero reputation, but it's better than a negative reputation, and who's going to do extensive research on the founders of a new VC fund, as long as they're interested in your new app, and you weren't personally aggrieved by them in a previous round.

__jal 9y ago
> and who's going to do extensive research on the founders of a new VC fund ...Anyone who actually cares about their firm and is smart enough to actually attract VC interest?
- mrgordon 9y ago
  False although I grant some will.

driverdan 9y ago

> Does it give the firm a bad reputation, potentially keeping it out of the next Facebook? Unquestionably. I question this assertion. As others pointed out in the HN comments for the lawsuit announcement, the only people who have to worry are those with questionable ethics. We need fewer of those people in startups so this is a positive signal to me.

sunsetMurk 9y ago

Here is an educational game which describes this in a fun way. http://ncase.me/trust/ http://ncase.me/trust/ I enjoyed going through these scenarios quite a bit. Now with the context of this Uber Dilemma post, it's reinforced further.

saganus 9y ago
Awesome game! I'm guessing game theorists have these kind of tools, albeit more complex ones. DO you know of any of them? I'm sure this has been studied a lot so I'm guessing there are graphs about the different rules and outcomes and such?
adrianpike 9y ago
That's really neat, thanks for the link!
marnett 9y ago
Thanks for sharing this! Loved playing it.
amoorthy 9y ago
So cool, thank you for posting. I shared with my nephew and he loved it. Made game theory really come alive for him. I also became a patron to the author. My first time ever doing so on Patreon. Way to go Nicky Case and please keep up these amazing programs.
stingraycharles 9y ago
How accurate are these simulations compared to the real world ? I understand the reasoning behind it, and it makes sense, but it strucks as an oversimplification of really complex things.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Kind of inevitable. We're trying to model complex things in a way we can understand, and that necessarily involves simplifying it until it's... simple enough. Simple usually means coarse. If your model is coarse, does that make it invalid? No, but the coarser it is, the less accurate & predictive it is across all values of the inputs.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

That is the first time I've heard the theory that the lawsuit might be a sort of stealth way of Benchmark getting on the record as not having anything to do with the current Waymo issue. Does anyone know if a board member can separate themselves that way from a suit in order to shield themselves from damages? If I understand the risk correctly it would be that Waymo prevails, gets a huge damage settlement which the company has to pay, but doesn't have the cash to pay so the board of directors have to go to their resources to pay. Is this understanding correct? Does anyone have a precedent for this? I'd be interested in reading it if they did.

harryh 9y ago
It would be highly unusual and I dare say impossible for Uber shareholders to ever have to pay a settlement out of funds not already invested in the company. This is the essence of limited liability.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  AIUI the "Limited" company in the UK limits a shareholder's liability to the value of the shares they hold - so if you hold £1M of shares that's your liability. I assume it works similarly in USA?
  - harryh 9y ago
    Yes correct. The worst financial outcome for holders of Uber stock is that their shares become worth zero. They can't go negative.
    - freyir 9y ago
      If the Saudis were misled in their $3.5B investment? IANAL, but individuals might be held accountable.
- venantius 9y ago
  The exception here is if the firm is found guilty of criminal activity and evidence emerges to suggest that Benchmark knew about it. In that case I don't know that they would be financially liable, but directors and board members would stand the risk of jail time.

_RPM 9y ago

Did anyone do the math on using Uber vs buying a car? I probably spend like 100 per month on Uber

anthonybsd 9y ago
Depends if you need to travel long distances (over 50 miles). If the answer is yes, Uber is simply not a good option. Otherwise no.
- Sleeep 9y ago
  Not quite, it depends how often you need to travel long distances and what the other options are for that travel. If you only need to drive 100 miles four times a year and otherwise have zero everyday commute costs because you ride a bicycle to work then renting a car four times a year is almost certainly a better option than buying a car just for those trips. Additionally, if there is frequent and reliable train or bus service to your destination that may be a better option than driving. I know several people who don't own cars but travel 100+ miles via bus on a regular basis. On the other hand, I travel 100+ miles regularly but buses and trains don't go to where I am going. (There's people who justify buying a truck because they need to haul stuff twice a year at the most. Renting a truck twice a year is almost guaranteed to be a better option financially. That being said, if you want a truck because you like trucks, that's also a perfectly valid reason to buy one.)
  - anthonybsd 9y ago
    Agreed, I greatly oversimplified things. There's the whole matter of convenience too which I didn't even touch upon. As it happens I have a car (weekend trips) and use Uber too (during the week), and use public transportation. Convenience is the driving force behind my usage.
ghaff 9y ago
It really depends on a lot of things. -- Amount that you drive -- Availability of Uber when/where you need it -- Whether you have to pay for parking -- Whether you also take a lot of weekend trips -- etc. $100 per month is actually not very much. That suggests you're only traveling 100 miles per month or so on Ubers which is nothing. By contrast, that would basically take me to the nearest large city and back once or get me back and forth to my office a couple of times. If you live in a city, you'd probably pay a pretty decent chunk of that amount just in auto insurance.

fragmede 9y ago

Thanks for an extra 1000 words explaining the prisoner's dilemma. Edit: that was sarcasm

anthonybsd 9y ago
The article was mostly about VC-Uber tug of war, though. That's the essential point of the whole debacle.

fragmede 9y ago

The blog pushes two potential outcome, but fails to realize a third - Benchmark, as one of the most successful VC firms ever, is messaging to CEOs that certain behavior will not be tolerated, even if they are going to be the next Google and Facebook.

dandare 9y ago
Maybe as a by product :)
TheCondor 9y ago
That is an awfully expensive way to send a message to someone that may not exist

SCAQTony 9y ago

So Lyft played nice and is having more long term success as a result?

ndirish1842 9y ago
Not really. Yes Lyft has gained some marketshare in the past 6 months. But Uber still dominates the US rideshare market (Uber by public accounts still has greater than 70% Market Share). Uber dominates in several other regions (Western Europe, Latin America) and is competing in several other huge markets (India and SouthEast Asia). Uber also has significant stakes in the dominant ride hailing companies in China and Russia. This is not to diminish what Lyft has done. They're successful company. But they are in no way seeing more long term success compared to Uber as of today
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  Any pointer to "Uber dominating in Western Europe?" Only in a two horses race with Lyft, but as you know there are many other racers, including traditional taxies which are well organized in Western Europe, not only a vested interest.
  - ndirish1842 9y ago
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/uber-is-the-most-popular-ride-hailing-app-in-108-countries https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/uber-is-t... To be fair, this doesn't (I believe) take into account if traditional taxis are still dominant in some countries

zackmorris 9y ago

I feel like these simulations refute "if you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. if you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain": http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/ The older I get, the more it seems to me that context is the basis of strongly held political beliefs. Growing up in Idaho, I'm often dismissed out of hand when I offer my (by regional standards) liberal opinions. I've met many people from liberal states (even California) who offer conservative opinions, which always struck me as ironic. How would our positions hold up when confronted with a change of context, if we saw how their application backfired? I'm wondering if there is a duality here, where different approaches can both be right but one could and should be chosen based on desired outcome. People unaccustomed to pragmatism may be performing a logical fallacy by assuming that their way works in all cases, when it practice they would lose to experience (and in the case of the prisoner's dilemma, cooperation).