19 ms·

Read This Before You Build Uber for X

231 points by capocannoniere 9y ago

capocannoniere 9y ago
Submitted this article as I'm curious about what the HN community has to say. Apologies if this is a re-post
- grzm 9y ago
  You can use the search form in the footer to determine whether a post has been submitted before. In this case, it was submitted two weeks ago, though it garnered very little attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15042817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15042817 In general, it is good to check to confirm whether it's a dupe. In the case of submissions that haven't had much discussion, it's okay to resubmit.
tedsanders 9y ago
This article is excellent. It takes a common idea (Uber for X), puts it through a simple but appropriate 2x2 lens (skill & scheduling), and produces a valuable insight with broad applicability (most markets are not like taxis). Thanks to Sam Madden for writing it and to you for sharing it.
kbenson 9y ago
Am I the only one that sees "Uber for X" in a somewhat negative light? In my mind Uber does relate to dominating an industry and getting big, but more in a Microsoft of the 90s sort of way, where there a lot of negative baggage associated with it because of what looks to be unrestrained greed. For example, I'm not sure I would want to advertise my actions as trying to be the next Oracle. That probably only comes across as entirely positive to those that don't know much about Oracle or only care that they make an obscene amount of money. Is this just me? Or is it perhaps time to retire this idiom?
- msla 9y ago
  "Uber For X": "Grab as much as you can by playing match-maker for customers and employees you refuse to classify as employees or treat as employees. Works well if the system you're replacing is so terrible and ossified people are happy to see it go even though drivers may well be making less than minimum wage once gas and other costs are factored in."
  - manigandham 9y ago
    100% of the thousands of drivers I have ridden with have said they do not want to be employees and that it's one of the primary reasons for driving for Uber. The job of professional full-time employed driver already exists and has for decades. Nobody is stopping anyone from doing so and Uber specifically has their Uber Black ride class for it.
    - danans 9y ago
      You mean 100% of those you have asked, right? Or do you ask that question to every Uber driver you ride with?
      - manigandham 9y ago
        I've asked all of them except an early few rides in 2012 when it was only Uber Black in Los Angeles. Talking about Uber is almost always how every conversation has started.
    - gaius 9y ago
      they do not want to be employees If thats all it was, OK. But the reality is they also don't want to pay their fair share for road maintenance or the NHS or anything else the country provides.
      - manigandham 9y ago
        What do you mean? Not being an employee doesn't mean you don't pay taxes on income.
undoware 9y ago
X11 is getting a rideshare service? Sigh well I guess it has modules for everything else
- mikeash 9y ago
  Getting remote display working can be a major pain. An app which handles the work of bringing together your X server and a remote client could really be valuable!
s17n 9y ago
The article doesn't mention providers dealing directly with the customer to avoid paying a percentage to the app. In any service business like housekeeping where you have a long term relationship between the customer and the provider, this is going to be an issue. The article indirectly discusses this by talking about how an app can provide value to pros in specialties with various characteristics, but I think that it should have started with by saying "if you think you can take a 30% cut of every transaction in a service business without actually providing substantial value in every transaction, it's not going to happen."
- nkrisc 9y ago
  If I recall, this is one of the problems Homejoy had. What incentive was there to keep using a matchmaker once you've found your match? It was beneficial for both parties to form their own, direct relationship.
slg 9y ago
The way I see it, there are three main things that contributed to Uber's success: 1. As discussed in the article, the service they provide is commoditized making both employee skill and customer to employee relationships irrelevant. If I like the person providing the service, what incentive is there for me to not to continue to work with that person outside of the app? 2. They connect people who are looking for a service with an untapped market of unskilled contractors who can provide that service. I would never become a full time taxi driver but I might consider driving for a ride sharing service if I needed extra cash. A layperson like me is never going to work for an Uber for massages. 3. There is preexisting regulatory capture in the market that allows the new entrant to provide a much better or cheaper service than the incumbents (although here be legal dragons). Ideas like Uber for massages or Uber for housecleaning don't work because they fail all three of those conditions. Companies that meet multiple conditions tend to be more successful. Postmates for example meets the first two conditions while Airbnb meets all three.
- jedberg 9y ago
  > while Airbnb meets all three Heh. Given that AirBnB is a year older, really we should call Uber the "AirBnB for car rides".
  - dismantlethesun 9y ago
    Perhaps. But Uber found product-market fit faster than AirBnB, which if I remember correctly took a while to grow from being "just for actual airbeds" for concert attendees to offering private rooms. In the beginning, AirBnB was like Couchsurfer but with payments.
ahh 9y ago
This is pretty interesting and apt. One thing I'd quibble with is their claim that many professional skills aren't fungible; this is true in general but there are many cases where a non-fungible skill is fungible for a major use case. In particular I'm thinking of doctors. I care a lot about having exactly the right doctor (a good one, a specialist, etc) much of the time, but there are many medical services where I simply need anyone competent to pass their boards with a prescription pad. (I have been taking the same three or four prescriptions since I was six for a few common ailments--I don't need someone to tell me special information about albuterol.)
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Right. And there is an app for that called Doctor On Demand which is where I have been getting my Albuterol prescriptions. There are other similar apps I believe but none that seemed too competitive.
grabcocque 9y ago
Uber's main success was to take something that already existed (taxi services) but then found a way to work around local labour laws on a technicality. Because Uber drivers are all self-employed, they're not unionised or protected in any way. Thus, Uber pays its drivers a pittance, and is able to undercut and undermine existing taxi services who are forced by unions and law to pay drivers a living wage. That's the key to being Uber for X. Ask: can I use the internet and shady business practices to exploit workers to undercut a business that previously workers were protected in? If the answer is Yes, then you can be Uber for X.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Which is the main reason why I will never use any Über for anything.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  The Taxi medallion system is more exploitative of labor than Uber, forcing poor people to prepay for the right to work. It's as close to indentured servitude as you can get.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    Those are two extraordinary claims. Let's see some equally extraordinary evidence.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      It's how the medallion system works, you prepay for the right to work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Medallions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Meda...
      - enraged_camel 9y ago
thwarted 9y ago
This is a decent writeup because it defines what "an uber" is and what it means to be a business like that. How many "Uber for X" businesses label themselves that way because of interactions like this one, where customers and investors are so focused on Uber as some kind of canonical startup that there's attempts to squeeze unrelated business models into it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48#t=19m31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48#t=19m31 (specifically 21m56s and 24m9s) This video is four years old, so it's good to know that claims of "Uber of X" are getting long in the tooth. It'll help to start agreeing on definitions and get away from the buzzwords.
ap46 9y ago
Way to demotivate other startups!
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  It should only demotivate doomed startups.
- jeddawson 9y ago
  I've actually been working on something that this article applies to and it was refreshing to step out of my comfort zone and reanalyze how things might work out with a fresh perspective. I found it helpful to think through the new challenges that were created by the change in viewpoint and I feel reassured that I have solutions ready.
mooneater 9y ago
I think this misses another critical point. The platform owner only retains control of the transactions, if they keep the buyer and seller from getting to know one another. For Uber, thats easy, because the nature of the service means you want a close car (typically, a different one each time) But for Uber for local babysitting, why would the buyer and seller not just leave the platform permanently after meeting, and transact directly, saving both the fee? "Sharing economy platform" commercial success depends on avoiding lasting local human connection.
- damnfine 9y ago
  Man, that just kinda feels dirty, but its true. Even for uber! An (ex?)uber driver I know in a semi rural area now just connects directly with locals and runs a charter to and from the nearby city, as those were most of his fares. It also kinda hurts that the isolation of people is seen as financially viable. I would argue, but with very little to back me up, that there is an intangible (and perhaps a tangible) benefit from closeness to those we associate or do business with, that we are losing.
  - cvsh 9y ago
    I've long thought the endgame of Uber is open-source software that continually automatically adjusts how much of the transaction it skims off so that it always has just enough to pay its own AWS bills.
    - tomcam 9y ago
      Who would do dispute resolution, driver verification, and background checks? Who would get sued when a driver assaulted a passenger or vice versa?
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Just thinking aloud: Uber doesn't actually run driver verification and background checks, they hire other companies for that. In a more decentralized world, drivers would pay for that service themselves and get a digitally-signed certificate that they could upload to the software. Same for being sued: the driver would have to get insurance or escrow a certain lump sum (and upload proof too), so that if someone sued and won, the money could be used to pay for that.
jonny_eh 9y ago
Web design is less skilled than life coaching?
- wrs 9y ago
  And dog training.
cjcole 9y ago
The "skill versus urgency" illustration has me wondering if the author foresaw or even intended the resulting arguments over whether or not, for example, web design requires more skill than dog training. It's one way to get people talking about the article, I suppose.
jaypaulynice 9y ago
Uber succeeded because they can reliable predict demand for services. They have both historical data (rush hours, regular commute, etc.) and also future data (sporting events, concerts, night life, etc.) I looked at starting an Uber for healthcare when it was getting hot, but I thought again about the problem. It's not possible to predict who will be sick when and where and doctors are very expensive. Having doctors go to people's homes is a lose lose situation because the time they spend driving is time they could spend helping patients.
mindhash 9y ago
I think urgency should be driven by lead time (when i want it - when i get it).. for e.g. Getting a web design guy may take you upto 3 weeks or more or 45 days if you hire but if you get the same guy in a week or less then the model still works. Comparing Web design urgency with taxi doesnt make sense.
throwaway100z 9y ago
Apologies for an unrelated question but, what is the formal name of this chart indicated in the blog? Scatter plot? https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Before-You-Build-Uber-For-X-Chart-1024x731.png https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Befo...
- thedirt0115 9y ago
  Yeah, it's a 2d scatter plot.
clairity 9y ago
the article nailed it: for an "uber for x" to work, it requires (1) commodity, low skill service combined with (2) on demand scheduling. one thing it's 2x2 matrix implies is that both taxi services and delivery services share a common appropriateness as "good" automatable services. but that's not true. they certainly differ on the scheduling metric - delivery is not nearly as on-demand as taxi service. but there is another, more important variable that differentiates these two: lcationality. while a taxi service can start and end anywhere, delivery services are constrained to start at particular locations, which makes logistics and routing the primary challenge to overcome. you have to get vehicles to the pickup point each time, which wastes time and money. delivery companies try to overcome this in a variety of ways: 1) trying to deliver "anything" (deliv, postmates) to approximate a more even geographic distribution of pickup points 2) subsidizing delivery through membership (amazon) 3) making delivery incidental to the core service (instacart is a marketing channel disguised as a delivery service) i'm sure there are dozens of other ways that companies are trying to overcome this inherent last-mile logistics problem, but it's a real differentiator between taxi and delivery.
odammit 9y ago
I only build the Netflix of Ubers. I seriously hate these phrases. It's OK to use adjectives, nouns, verbs and to say the word "app". I was talking to a guy at SBYP once that said he was building "the Netflix of snacks" and I asked the guy how he planned to digitize said snacks and he looked at me like I was the asshole. I get it but use some words to describe your thing, man.
jkingsbery 9y ago
"It is rare that one plans their day around transportation" - it wasn't the main point of the article, but that's not my experience. Many of the people I know who, like me, commute into New York from the suburbs plan their day around the train (when is the express train, when is the last train that runs every 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes, and so on).
zengid 9y ago
Minor side-note, but I think that 'skill vs urgency' graph underestimates the skills required for delivery service providers. Source: I work for UPS.
- teej 9y ago
  I assumed delivery in this case meant local delivery like food.
the_stc 9y ago
Nice timing. We are working on "Uber for Sex" or "Tinder + Buy It Now". On the lower end of the market, it can be a low skilled job in the sense that a lot of people know how to have sex well enough to satisfy a lot of clients. Certainly going upscale or into niche offerings that doesn't hold true. So our system is somewhat split into people primarily booking on cost and schedule, versus people booking on the entire experience. I think we'll manage to handle both acceptably enough for all parties involved. On-demand? There are a lot of scheduling difficulties. Getting a sex worker on short notice, even in a popular and mostly-legal city is a nightmare. And it runs into the Airbnb-pre-instant-booking issue: You contact several people, they don't all get back right away. Then an hour later, you have several replies, and since you can't book them all, some end up annoyed you're wasting their time. Not to mention any screening issues or other deal-breakers. And if someone does have some last-minute availability? They can't easily fill that slot. It's hard to just offer sex work in a few hours here and there - you'll spend all your time answering phones. But it isn't just the "Uber" aspect that we're working. Sex workers lack cohesive unions and shared resources. We'll be able to pool for things like security agents. We can handle client verification one time and be done. We'll do photography of workers, then advertising and bring clients in. This benefits less entrepreneurial workers that don't want to try to manage an online presence, deal with SEO, try to A/B test their photos and copy, etc. There are other similarities. Uber had to avoid LE, so do we. Uber has to deal with partial cash payments and reconcile, so do we. Uber offers some insurance, so do we (legal). But we'll be far less sexist than Uber, that's for sure.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- venantius 9y ago
  There's no way you survive the eventual law enforcement issues here. Uber circumvented law enforcement on certain issues by operating in a legal gray zone - you're offering a platform that will unquestionably make you a prime target for an FBI investigation, at the very least. EDIT: And it's not just the sex aspect of what you're doing. Your business model is going to be so ripe as a target for a money laundering investigation.
ilaksh 9y ago
Great article. Another thing to consider before you build Uber for X: there will come a time, perhaps in the next couple of years, when people stop tolerating having monopoly technology companies as intermediaries for everything. Or they will tolerate some business involvement when it really is a deep value add, but there will be much more competition and the types of fees being charged will have to be much more reasonable. The reason these companies become so huge so fast is of course because what they are mainly doing is managing basic logistics and information flow (payment being part of that). The reason we need these companies, or think we need them, is because we do not yet have practical and popular decentralized systems that can replace them. Most people are not aware of the existence of decentralized platforms that could possibly replace the centralized servers and banks. But these decentralized platforms do exist and more innovations happen every day. Popular examples are Bitcoin and Ethereum but that barely scratches the surface of what is actually already a large ecosystem of peer-based systems with many types of capabilities. And I know that it will be really hard to convince most people that these services could exist without centralized servers or payment intermediaries. But maybe look into places like reddit.com/r/rad_decentralization or r/Ethereum to start to get an idea.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Has that ever happened before in the history of mankind with something significant?
  - ilaksh 9y ago
    Well, have any two parties ever switched from transferring money via bank to sending each other Bitcoin in the history of mankind? Have any people switched from using Skype to using a p2p webrtc video chat service in the history of mankind? Have any people switched from using a proprietary network service like Prodigy to using the internet in the history of mankind?
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Not in any significant numbers. Skype is still the king of video chat, most people (all who aren't in tech) have never heard of bitcoin.
smacktoward 9y ago
The fascinating thing about this writeup is that it's even necessary. The analysis it presents is a pretty straightforward one. It's the kind of basic contemplation of product-market fit I'd expect anyone starting a new business to undertake before spending a significant amount of time or money on it. In other words, it's a simple sanity check. What makes this one fascinating is that apparently so many people out there have tried to start "Uber-for-X" businesses without even doing a simple sanity check first that it's necessary for a third party to do it just to prevent even more lemmings from marching off the cliff.
wellboy 9y ago
Insightful article, but a bit hard to distill the distinct points. From my own experience at an Uber for X, there is one overarching theme that dictates the whole dynamic that I think isn't addressed. The article makes the following points. 1. "The more skilled the service, the harder is to gain traction, because quality in service isn't reliable." This is true to some extent, but there is a bigger underlying dynamic, namely that the fewer people can offer that service, the harder it is to gain traction, because it takes longer to get that service on demand (e.g. 20 mins instead of 1 min), which decreases the user experience. 2. "There are services that require more time for for scheduling and some require less." The article doesn't really say which one is better, but the latter is better, because it makes it more spontaneous, people can make the decision to demand the service easier and do it more often. 3. "Maximizing conversion through services where no sales pitch is required, because quality is almost always the same (taxi)." This goes back into point 1, where low skill all have the same quality. It adds the factor that when quality is the same, people are less picky and make more purchases. 4." Maximizing profits through retention to get repeat customers." I didn't understand this point, since critique for Uber for X is that repeat customers would bypass Uber for X, in order to avoid fees, such as it happened with Homejoy, Plumbers etc. This can be prevented through making ratings valuable, i.e. giving pros incentives to not bypass the platform. The overarching themse is critical mass. All of the mentioned points explain what factors prevent critical mass form being accomplished. Summing up these are 1. The more skill you need, the less service providers you can get per square mile, the longer it takes to fulfill a service, the harder this makes it to get traction. 2. The shorter it takes to schedule the service, the more people will make the decision and book the service. 3. The less the quality is a factor, the less people will worry about making the purchase. 4. Repeat customers is where the money is. Make it easy for the consumer and pro to maintain these relationships, BUT, keep them on the platform. 5. This point I add myself, it is locality and it is the most important point. It means that you have to figure out a way to get traction in a new city in a scalable way, because you can get traction in SF with masseurs and clients, but you need to do it all over again in Fresno, Seattle, London, etc. There is some traction that comes from other cities, but it is little. For some services, traction in a handful city is enough and you cna be a $100m company, but for most, you need to be able to get traction in several dozens of cities quickly.
cossatot 9y ago
What is an example of an on-demand, app-mediated service that is actually profitable, regardless of whether labor is contract, etc.? Is any one in this space actually making money off customers?
michaelmior 9y ago
> It is rare that one plans their day around transportation I do this pretty regularly as do many people who rely on public transit.
Triiistan 9y ago
"It worked great for local transportation services, so why could it not be applicable across all types of industries?" Dit it really work that great for Uber? Are the drivers doing all right? Did the company make the world progress? Is it even profitable? Are the clients happy about Uber's service? These are important questions to consider before trying to replicate their model, and I'm pretty sure not everybody feel the same way about this success.
rdtsc 9y ago
> The reason for this high failure rate is most founders underestimate the intricacies and nuances of the specific service industries they are trying to uberize. (tongue in cheek) So build a platform which allows startups to build Uber for X. The real market is a desire to emulate Uber with lots of VC money pouring in. This is not unlike selling shovels during gold rush.
swsieber 9y ago
The solution I think is a little more like what a salon does - a good, shared platform. I think if somebody wrote a Uber for x planning on the 1 on 1 repeat business, they'd be fine... and how? 1) Provide real value for provider - an easy to use billing platform, scouting out of the upfront work and risk, and classification of the customer and (here's what I think would be the big one) work schedule management. 2)Provide real value for the customer, it be being able to evaluate a provider, get good ratings (and here's the kicker) if the preferred provider isn't available, they don't have to go hunting. 3) Let providers recommend each other. Temper that with user ratings and platform specific ratings. Have users report when a job isn't done right, or another visit needs to be made, etc. But the provider peer ratings are like "I have too much work to provide x, you should try John, I trust his work." 4) The categorization of work could have meaningful use to the providers - it lets providers specialize further than they normally could otherwise, and provide a platform to fall back on.
b1daly 9y ago
I'm amazed that this article and most of the comments implicitly assume that Uber is succeeding, and therefore useful as a an example of a successful platform startup. Uber seems to be failing badly so far, losing increasing amounts of money. The ridiculous corporate shenanigans Uber has been generating seem of a piece with a company that had massive investments, with expectations, and no clear path to profitability. Here's a link to a page that has some detailed, and damning, critical analysis of Uber's prospects. The gist of his argument is that Uber is gaining market share by substantially selling their product below cost. But they have not found some kind of magic solution to lowering the cost of providing their services by taking advantage of scale or network effects. The author argues that Uber is actually a high cost provider, in comparison to traditional taxi services. http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html
Grustaf 9y ago
>Technology cannot necessarily miraculously make the pro more skilled at their job Well, in the case of Uber that's exactly what it did. Uber wouldn't be possible at all without consumer GPS routing apps, that's one of the reasons (at least ostensibly) for regulating taxis. Cf The Knowledge, London taxi drivers' training that is so extensive it actually can be detected on a brain scan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom...

Submitted this article as I'm curious about what the HN community has to say. Apologies if this is a re-post

grzm 9y ago
You can use the search form in the footer to determine whether a post has been submitted before. In this case, it was submitted two weeks ago, though it garnered very little attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15042817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15042817 In general, it is good to check to confirm whether it's a dupe. In the case of submissions that haven't had much discussion, it's okay to resubmit.

This article is excellent. It takes a common idea (Uber for X), puts it through a simple but appropriate 2x2 lens (skill & scheduling), and produces a valuable insight with broad applicability (most markets are not like taxis). Thanks to Sam Madden for writing it and to you for sharing it.

kbenson 9y ago

Am I the only one that sees "Uber for X" in a somewhat negative light? In my mind Uber does relate to dominating an industry and getting big, but more in a Microsoft of the 90s sort of way, where there a lot of negative baggage associated with it because of what looks to be unrestrained greed. For example, I'm not sure I would want to advertise my actions as trying to be the next Oracle. That probably only comes across as entirely positive to those that don't know much about Oracle or only care that they make an obscene amount of money. Is this just me? Or is it perhaps time to retire this idiom?

msla 9y ago
"Uber For X": "Grab as much as you can by playing match-maker for customers and employees you refuse to classify as employees or treat as employees. Works well if the system you're replacing is so terrible and ossified people are happy to see it go even though drivers may well be making less than minimum wage once gas and other costs are factored in."
- manigandham 9y ago
  100% of the thousands of drivers I have ridden with have said they do not want to be employees and that it's one of the primary reasons for driving for Uber. The job of professional full-time employed driver already exists and has for decades. Nobody is stopping anyone from doing so and Uber specifically has their Uber Black ride class for it.
  - danans 9y ago
    You mean 100% of those you have asked, right? Or do you ask that question to every Uber driver you ride with?
    - manigandham 9y ago
      I've asked all of them except an early few rides in 2012 when it was only Uber Black in Los Angeles. Talking about Uber is almost always how every conversation has started.
  - gaius 9y ago
    they do not want to be employees If thats all it was, OK. But the reality is they also don't want to pay their fair share for road maintenance or the NHS or anything else the country provides.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      What do you mean? Not being an employee doesn't mean you don't pay taxes on income.

undoware 9y ago

X11 is getting a rideshare service? Sigh well I guess it has modules for everything else

mikeash 9y ago
Getting remote display working can be a major pain. An app which handles the work of bringing together your X server and a remote client could really be valuable!

s17n 9y ago

The article doesn't mention providers dealing directly with the customer to avoid paying a percentage to the app. In any service business like housekeeping where you have a long term relationship between the customer and the provider, this is going to be an issue. The article indirectly discusses this by talking about how an app can provide value to pros in specialties with various characteristics, but I think that it should have started with by saying "if you think you can take a 30% cut of every transaction in a service business without actually providing substantial value in every transaction, it's not going to happen."

nkrisc 9y ago
If I recall, this is one of the problems Homejoy had. What incentive was there to keep using a matchmaker once you've found your match? It was beneficial for both parties to form their own, direct relationship.

slg 9y ago

The way I see it, there are three main things that contributed to Uber's success: 1. As discussed in the article, the service they provide is commoditized making both employee skill and customer to employee relationships irrelevant. If I like the person providing the service, what incentive is there for me to not to continue to work with that person outside of the app? 2. They connect people who are looking for a service with an untapped market of unskilled contractors who can provide that service. I would never become a full time taxi driver but I might consider driving for a ride sharing service if I needed extra cash. A layperson like me is never going to work for an Uber for massages. 3. There is preexisting regulatory capture in the market that allows the new entrant to provide a much better or cheaper service than the incumbents (although here be legal dragons). Ideas like Uber for massages or Uber for housecleaning don't work because they fail all three of those conditions. Companies that meet multiple conditions tend to be more successful. Postmates for example meets the first two conditions while Airbnb meets all three.

jedberg 9y ago
> while Airbnb meets all three Heh. Given that AirBnB is a year older, really we should call Uber the "AirBnB for car rides".
- dismantlethesun 9y ago
  Perhaps. But Uber found product-market fit faster than AirBnB, which if I remember correctly took a while to grow from being "just for actual airbeds" for concert attendees to offering private rooms. In the beginning, AirBnB was like Couchsurfer but with payments.

ahh 9y ago

This is pretty interesting and apt. One thing I'd quibble with is their claim that many professional skills aren't fungible; this is true in general but there are many cases where a non-fungible skill is fungible for a major use case. In particular I'm thinking of doctors. I care a lot about having exactly the right doctor (a good one, a specialist, etc) much of the time, but there are many medical services where I simply need anyone competent to pass their boards with a prescription pad. (I have been taking the same three or four prescriptions since I was six for a few common ailments--I don't need someone to tell me special information about albuterol.)

ilaksh 9y ago
Right. And there is an app for that called Doctor On Demand which is where I have been getting my Albuterol prescriptions. There are other similar apps I believe but none that seemed too competitive.

grabcocque 9y ago

Uber's main success was to take something that already existed (taxi services) but then found a way to work around local labour laws on a technicality. Because Uber drivers are all self-employed, they're not unionised or protected in any way. Thus, Uber pays its drivers a pittance, and is able to undercut and undermine existing taxi services who are forced by unions and law to pay drivers a living wage. That's the key to being Uber for X. Ask: can I use the internet and shady business practices to exploit workers to undercut a business that previously workers were protected in? If the answer is Yes, then you can be Uber for X.

pjmlp 9y ago
Which is the main reason why I will never use any Über for anything.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
WillPostForFood 9y ago
The Taxi medallion system is more exploitative of labor than Uber, forcing poor people to prepay for the right to work. It's as close to indentured servitude as you can get.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  Those are two extraordinary claims. Let's see some equally extraordinary evidence.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    It's how the medallion system works, you prepay for the right to work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Medallions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Meda...
    - enraged_camel 9y ago

thwarted 9y ago

This is a decent writeup because it defines what "an uber" is and what it means to be a business like that. How many "Uber for X" businesses label themselves that way because of interactions like this one, where customers and investors are so focused on Uber as some kind of canonical startup that there's attempts to squeeze unrelated business models into it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48#t=19m31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48#t=19m31 (specifically 21m56s and 24m9s) This video is four years old, so it's good to know that claims of "Uber of X" are getting long in the tooth. It'll help to start agreeing on definitions and get away from the buzzwords.

ap46 9y ago

Way to demotivate other startups!

jonny_eh 9y ago
It should only demotivate doomed startups.
jeddawson 9y ago
I've actually been working on something that this article applies to and it was refreshing to step out of my comfort zone and reanalyze how things might work out with a fresh perspective. I found it helpful to think through the new challenges that were created by the change in viewpoint and I feel reassured that I have solutions ready.

mooneater 9y ago

I think this misses another critical point. The platform owner only retains control of the transactions, if they keep the buyer and seller from getting to know one another. For Uber, thats easy, because the nature of the service means you want a close car (typically, a different one each time) But for Uber for local babysitting, why would the buyer and seller not just leave the platform permanently after meeting, and transact directly, saving both the fee? "Sharing economy platform" commercial success depends on avoiding lasting local human connection.

damnfine 9y ago
Man, that just kinda feels dirty, but its true. Even for uber! An (ex?)uber driver I know in a semi rural area now just connects directly with locals and runs a charter to and from the nearby city, as those were most of his fares. It also kinda hurts that the isolation of people is seen as financially viable. I would argue, but with very little to back me up, that there is an intangible (and perhaps a tangible) benefit from closeness to those we associate or do business with, that we are losing.
- cvsh 9y ago
  I've long thought the endgame of Uber is open-source software that continually automatically adjusts how much of the transaction it skims off so that it always has just enough to pay its own AWS bills.
  - tomcam 9y ago
    Who would do dispute resolution, driver verification, and background checks? Who would get sued when a driver assaulted a passenger or vice versa?
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Just thinking aloud: Uber doesn't actually run driver verification and background checks, they hire other companies for that. In a more decentralized world, drivers would pay for that service themselves and get a digitally-signed certificate that they could upload to the software. Same for being sued: the driver would have to get insurance or escrow a certain lump sum (and upload proof too), so that if someone sued and won, the money could be used to pay for that.

jonny_eh 9y ago

Web design is less skilled than life coaching?

wrs 9y ago
And dog training.

cjcole 9y ago

The "skill versus urgency" illustration has me wondering if the author foresaw or even intended the resulting arguments over whether or not, for example, web design requires more skill than dog training. It's one way to get people talking about the article, I suppose.

jaypaulynice 9y ago

Uber succeeded because they can reliable predict demand for services. They have both historical data (rush hours, regular commute, etc.) and also future data (sporting events, concerts, night life, etc.) I looked at starting an Uber for healthcare when it was getting hot, but I thought again about the problem. It's not possible to predict who will be sick when and where and doctors are very expensive. Having doctors go to people's homes is a lose lose situation because the time they spend driving is time they could spend helping patients.

mindhash 9y ago

I think urgency should be driven by lead time (when i want it - when i get it).. for e.g. Getting a web design guy may take you upto 3 weeks or more or 45 days if you hire but if you get the same guy in a week or less then the model still works. Comparing Web design urgency with taxi doesnt make sense.

throwaway100z 9y ago

Apologies for an unrelated question but, what is the formal name of this chart indicated in the blog? Scatter plot? https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Before-You-Build-Uber-For-X-Chart-1024x731.png https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Befo...

thedirt0115 9y ago
Yeah, it's a 2d scatter plot.

clairity 9y ago

the article nailed it: for an "uber for x" to work, it requires (1) commodity, low skill service combined with (2) on demand scheduling. one thing it's 2x2 matrix implies is that both taxi services and delivery services share a common appropriateness as "good" automatable services. but that's not true. they certainly differ on the scheduling metric - delivery is not nearly as on-demand as taxi service. but there is another, more important variable that differentiates these two: lcationality. while a taxi service can start and end anywhere, delivery services are constrained to start at particular locations, which makes logistics and routing the primary challenge to overcome. you have to get vehicles to the pickup point each time, which wastes time and money. delivery companies try to overcome this in a variety of ways: 1) trying to deliver "anything" (deliv, postmates) to approximate a more even geographic distribution of pickup points 2) subsidizing delivery through membership (amazon) 3) making delivery incidental to the core service (instacart is a marketing channel disguised as a delivery service) i'm sure there are dozens of other ways that companies are trying to overcome this inherent last-mile logistics problem, but it's a real differentiator between taxi and delivery.

odammit 9y ago

I only build the Netflix of Ubers. I seriously hate these phrases. It's OK to use adjectives, nouns, verbs and to say the word "app". I was talking to a guy at SBYP once that said he was building "the Netflix of snacks" and I asked the guy how he planned to digitize said snacks and he looked at me like I was the asshole. I get it but use some words to describe your thing, man.

jkingsbery 9y ago

"It is rare that one plans their day around transportation" - it wasn't the main point of the article, but that's not my experience. Many of the people I know who, like me, commute into New York from the suburbs plan their day around the train (when is the express train, when is the last train that runs every 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes, and so on).

zengid 9y ago

Minor side-note, but I think that 'skill vs urgency' graph underestimates the skills required for delivery service providers. Source: I work for UPS.

teej 9y ago
I assumed delivery in this case meant local delivery like food.

the_stc 9y ago

Nice timing. We are working on "Uber for Sex" or "Tinder + Buy It Now". On the lower end of the market, it can be a low skilled job in the sense that a lot of people know how to have sex well enough to satisfy a lot of clients. Certainly going upscale or into niche offerings that doesn't hold true. So our system is somewhat split into people primarily booking on cost and schedule, versus people booking on the entire experience. I think we'll manage to handle both acceptably enough for all parties involved. On-demand? There are a lot of scheduling difficulties. Getting a sex worker on short notice, even in a popular and mostly-legal city is a nightmare. And it runs into the Airbnb-pre-instant-booking issue: You contact several people, they don't all get back right away. Then an hour later, you have several replies, and since you can't book them all, some end up annoyed you're wasting their time. Not to mention any screening issues or other deal-breakers. And if someone does have some last-minute availability? They can't easily fill that slot. It's hard to just offer sex work in a few hours here and there - you'll spend all your time answering phones. But it isn't just the "Uber" aspect that we're working. Sex workers lack cohesive unions and shared resources. We'll be able to pool for things like security agents. We can handle client verification one time and be done. We'll do photography of workers, then advertising and bring clients in. This benefits less entrepreneurial workers that don't want to try to manage an online presence, deal with SEO, try to A/B test their photos and copy, etc. There are other similarities. Uber had to avoid LE, so do we. Uber has to deal with partial cash payments and reconcile, so do we. Uber offers some insurance, so do we (legal). But we'll be far less sexist than Uber, that's for sure.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
venantius 9y ago
There's no way you survive the eventual law enforcement issues here. Uber circumvented law enforcement on certain issues by operating in a legal gray zone - you're offering a platform that will unquestionably make you a prime target for an FBI investigation, at the very least. EDIT: And it's not just the sex aspect of what you're doing. Your business model is going to be so ripe as a target for a money laundering investigation.

ilaksh 9y ago

Great article. Another thing to consider before you build Uber for X: there will come a time, perhaps in the next couple of years, when people stop tolerating having monopoly technology companies as intermediaries for everything. Or they will tolerate some business involvement when it really is a deep value add, but there will be much more competition and the types of fees being charged will have to be much more reasonable. The reason these companies become so huge so fast is of course because what they are mainly doing is managing basic logistics and information flow (payment being part of that). The reason we need these companies, or think we need them, is because we do not yet have practical and popular decentralized systems that can replace them. Most people are not aware of the existence of decentralized platforms that could possibly replace the centralized servers and banks. But these decentralized platforms do exist and more innovations happen every day. Popular examples are Bitcoin and Ethereum but that barely scratches the surface of what is actually already a large ecosystem of peer-based systems with many types of capabilities. And I know that it will be really hard to convince most people that these services could exist without centralized servers or payment intermediaries. But maybe look into places like reddit.com/r/rad_decentralization or r/Ethereum to start to get an idea.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Has that ever happened before in the history of mankind with something significant?
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Well, have any two parties ever switched from transferring money via bank to sending each other Bitcoin in the history of mankind? Have any people switched from using Skype to using a p2p webrtc video chat service in the history of mankind? Have any people switched from using a proprietary network service like Prodigy to using the internet in the history of mankind?
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Not in any significant numbers. Skype is still the king of video chat, most people (all who aren't in tech) have never heard of bitcoin.

smacktoward 9y ago

The fascinating thing about this writeup is that it's even necessary. The analysis it presents is a pretty straightforward one. It's the kind of basic contemplation of product-market fit I'd expect anyone starting a new business to undertake before spending a significant amount of time or money on it. In other words, it's a simple sanity check. What makes this one fascinating is that apparently so many people out there have tried to start "Uber-for-X" businesses without even doing a simple sanity check first that it's necessary for a third party to do it just to prevent even more lemmings from marching off the cliff.

wellboy 9y ago

Insightful article, but a bit hard to distill the distinct points. From my own experience at an Uber for X, there is one overarching theme that dictates the whole dynamic that I think isn't addressed. The article makes the following points. 1. "The more skilled the service, the harder is to gain traction, because quality in service isn't reliable." This is true to some extent, but there is a bigger underlying dynamic, namely that the fewer people can offer that service, the harder it is to gain traction, because it takes longer to get that service on demand (e.g. 20 mins instead of 1 min), which decreases the user experience. 2. "There are services that require more time for for scheduling and some require less." The article doesn't really say which one is better, but the latter is better, because it makes it more spontaneous, people can make the decision to demand the service easier and do it more often. 3. "Maximizing conversion through services where no sales pitch is required, because quality is almost always the same (taxi)." This goes back into point 1, where low skill all have the same quality. It adds the factor that when quality is the same, people are less picky and make more purchases. 4." Maximizing profits through retention to get repeat customers." I didn't understand this point, since critique for Uber for X is that repeat customers would bypass Uber for X, in order to avoid fees, such as it happened with Homejoy, Plumbers etc. This can be prevented through making ratings valuable, i.e. giving pros incentives to not bypass the platform. The overarching themse is critical mass. All of the mentioned points explain what factors prevent critical mass form being accomplished. Summing up these are 1. The more skill you need, the less service providers you can get per square mile, the longer it takes to fulfill a service, the harder this makes it to get traction. 2. The shorter it takes to schedule the service, the more people will make the decision and book the service. 3. The less the quality is a factor, the less people will worry about making the purchase. 4. Repeat customers is where the money is. Make it easy for the consumer and pro to maintain these relationships, BUT, keep them on the platform. 5. This point I add myself, it is locality and it is the most important point. It means that you have to figure out a way to get traction in a new city in a scalable way, because you can get traction in SF with masseurs and clients, but you need to do it all over again in Fresno, Seattle, London, etc. There is some traction that comes from other cities, but it is little. For some services, traction in a handful city is enough and you cna be a $100m company, but for most, you need to be able to get traction in several dozens of cities quickly.

cossatot 9y ago

What is an example of an on-demand, app-mediated service that is actually profitable, regardless of whether labor is contract, etc.? Is any one in this space actually making money off customers?

michaelmior 9y ago

> It is rare that one plans their day around transportation I do this pretty regularly as do many people who rely on public transit.

Triiistan 9y ago

"It worked great for local transportation services, so why could it not be applicable across all types of industries?" Dit it really work that great for Uber? Are the drivers doing all right? Did the company make the world progress? Is it even profitable? Are the clients happy about Uber's service? These are important questions to consider before trying to replicate their model, and I'm pretty sure not everybody feel the same way about this success.

rdtsc 9y ago

> The reason for this high failure rate is most founders underestimate the intricacies and nuances of the specific service industries they are trying to uberize. (tongue in cheek) So build a platform which allows startups to build Uber for X. The real market is a desire to emulate Uber with lots of VC money pouring in. This is not unlike selling shovels during gold rush.

swsieber 9y ago

The solution I think is a little more like what a salon does - a good, shared platform. I think if somebody wrote a Uber for x planning on the 1 on 1 repeat business, they'd be fine... and how? 1) Provide real value for provider - an easy to use billing platform, scouting out of the upfront work and risk, and classification of the customer and (here's what I think would be the big one) work schedule management. 2)Provide real value for the customer, it be being able to evaluate a provider, get good ratings (and here's the kicker) if the preferred provider isn't available, they don't have to go hunting. 3) Let providers recommend each other. Temper that with user ratings and platform specific ratings. Have users report when a job isn't done right, or another visit needs to be made, etc. But the provider peer ratings are like "I have too much work to provide x, you should try John, I trust his work." 4) The categorization of work could have meaningful use to the providers - it lets providers specialize further than they normally could otherwise, and provide a platform to fall back on.

b1daly 9y ago

I'm amazed that this article and most of the comments implicitly assume that Uber is succeeding, and therefore useful as a an example of a successful platform startup. Uber seems to be failing badly so far, losing increasing amounts of money. The ridiculous corporate shenanigans Uber has been generating seem of a piece with a company that had massive investments, with expectations, and no clear path to profitability. Here's a link to a page that has some detailed, and damning, critical analysis of Uber's prospects. The gist of his argument is that Uber is gaining market share by substantially selling their product below cost. But they have not found some kind of magic solution to lowering the cost of providing their services by taking advantage of scale or network effects. The author argues that Uber is actually a high cost provider, in comparison to traditional taxi services. http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html

Grustaf 9y ago

>Technology cannot necessarily miraculously make the pro more skilled at their job Well, in the case of Uber that's exactly what it did. Uber wouldn't be possible at all without consumer GPS routing apps, that's one of the reasons (at least ostensibly) for regulating taxis. Cf The Knowledge, London taxi drivers' training that is so extensive it actually can be detected on a brain scan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom...