11 ms·

Maybe because I'm outside the unicorn bubble I can't see the magic, but I find something very warped about a business strategy that combines stratospheric valua

• stephencoyner 8y ago
  Riders won big. The ability to order a car and get a ride in minutes is now engrained into society. Who can imagine major metros in the US without ride share? The continued capital injections and subsidized prices have been great for consumers.
  • masonic 8y ago
    One needs to include in their calculation of winning and losing whether their private data means anything to them. Uber, for example, sucks from your phone access to your camera, all of your contacts, your location at all times, your microphone at all times, and the ability to dial or text from the phone itself. At the same time, all of the people in your contacts have their privacy productized as well, involuntarily and silently. The ride isn't the product. The riders are.
    • orbifold 8y ago
      You can order an Uber from Maps and don’t have that problem.
      • masonic 8y ago
        Only if your device has Uber installed on it AND you are logged into the Uber app. By then, they already have all your data, and that ride is fully linked with your other usage. And as a bonus, Google also now has those details added to youf dossier. It's sad how easily people can be duped transparently. If you don't have Uber installed, Maps doesn't even show you the option.
        • orbifold 8y ago
          Ah my bad I just vaguely remembered having this option when I was in Vienna, I guess I must have had Uber installed at that time.
• erikpukinskis 8y ago
  > the taxi industry didn't need disruption - it desperately needed a modern ride calling and fare estimating feature What about areas that had little to no taxi dispatch service before Uber/Lyft? And what about regions where supply of cab driving licenses was artificially constrained?
  • mertd 8y ago
    Or where drivers: - could refuse service based on factors like customer's race without repercussions. - accept nothing but cash as payment. - take the "scenic" route when they realize you're from out of town. I'm not happy about the way Uber got here but I also don't want to go back to the world before it.
• capsulecorp 8y ago
  Progress won. It is infinitely easier, more affordable, transparent, convenient, and the overall experience of riding uber is hands down better than any Taxi experience I've ever had by a an extremely long shot, anyone I've spoken to agrees. Sure there are still improvements, but all in all, as a frequent user, I have to say getting a ride is hands down better with uber than before it.
  • ithinkinstereo 8y ago
    Well it's easy to produce "progress" when you're willing to operate with massive losses fueled by other people's money. Take any customer experience that sucks and inject billions of dollars into it and lo and behold the experience improves mightly.
    • Apocryphon 8y ago
      It's a little like saying the theater-going experience has been improved thanks to MoviePass.
      • alimhaq 8y ago
        This is an incredibly shortsighted view of Uber if you're being serious. MoviePass doesn't alter the end experience of watching a movie at all, but Uber significantly changes the experience of getting a ride. I'm sure most people would agree that even if they had to pay the same price as a cab, they would prefer the Uber experience over the old model.
        • Apocryphon 8y ago
          MoviePass makes going to the movies far more bearable, for expensive ticket prices have long made theaters not worth going for a long time. If Flywheel and similar taxi apps were priced the same as ride-sharing apps there would be greater competition with Uber and Lyft.
    • capsulecorp 8y ago
• bduerst 8y ago
  Passengers won, since most rides were (or still are) subsidized from venture capital raised by the company. It's almost like a wealth distribution of it's own, through the value of on-demand transportation. You could also talk about how it disrupted the taxi medallion market, which was an older solution to the trust problem of getting into a car with a stranger, but for many cities that wasn't really in need of disruption, just optimization.
  • eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Passengers win for now, not necessarily won for good. Do you think the public markets are going to allow Uber to keep bleeding this much cash year over year? Prices will go up on consumers just as Uber has completely dominated the market and effectively has no competition. They’ll be able to charge whatever they want.
    • bduerst 8y ago
      Who cares? Markets are fluid and dynamic. Passengers won for a while, and may keep winning, but nobody expects them to win to perpetuity just like nobody expects a market to remain static. If anyone is going to end up worse than before ridesharing, it's the people who put the money into the VC funds propping up the market.
• teen 8y ago
  Not sure how all three of drivers, Uber's profit, and passengers could all be losing. I think passengers are making out quite well atm. I haven't owned a car since Uber has been around, and get chaffeured around at a super affordable price.
  • sokoloff 8y ago
    Most of the Uber drivers I speak with are also doing better than if Uber didn't exist. (Naturally, if they didn't believe that, they wouldn't be driving for Uber still, but even as I engage halfway deeply into how it's going for them, most of them seem to genuinely understand the costs and have good reason to believe they're being made [sometimes much] better off by driving for Uber.)
• treis 8y ago
  >Maybe because I'm outside the unicorn bubble I can't see the magic, but I find something very warped about a business strategy that combines stratospheric valuation, intentional regulatory non-compliance, perpetual capital injections, service misrepresentation, and unprofessional corporate behavior... and results in massive financial losses year after year. >When I try to balance the elements, it frankly looks like an enormous grift. Some key early investors have probably made out really well, but at what cost to others involved? I think you're way too pessimistic here: (1) A whole industry of rent seekers (medallion owners) was mostly run off (2) The taxi experience in cities other than NYC, Chicago, and SF got a million times better. Before Uber in a city like Nashville you call for a taxi and maybe one shows up at some point. Since Uber you can reliably get a ride whenever you want. And that's not even talking about discrimination. (3) Uber caused a dramatic decline in drunk driving. Likely because of (2) (4) It allowed people to make some money with a flexibility that traditional jobs don't offer For me, Uber/Lyft has definitely had the biggest positive impact on my life out of any tech company in the last decade. The only close competitor would be Android/iPhone. I don't know if Uber is worth the ~60 billion that they were last valued at, but they definitely fill a legitimate role.
  • therein 8y ago
    > The taxi experience in cities other than NYC, Chicago, and SF got a million times better. Before Uber in a city like Nashville you call for a taxi and maybe one shows up at some point. Since Uber you can reliably get a ride whenever you want. And that's not even talking about discrimination. That is a good point I hadn't considered until now. I remember back in my college days in Champaign, IL right before Uber's debut, I would have to call three separate cab companies a day ahead of time and then the day of to get a ride to the airport, and only one would maybe show up. I ended up befriending an Ethiopian cab driver that was really kind and responsible and only then this challenge came to an end.
    • da02 8y ago
      What do you mean by, "and only then this challenge came to an end."? You simply stopped calling him?
• dnautics 8y ago
  I definitely won! An early driver (2009), I'd just quit a low pay postdoc job, and 1.5x'ed my take home pay. Since I was a Lyft driver, Uber gave me a crazy signing bonus including 50 hours a week at 40 an hour (I found the farthest Starbucks in the service area and worked on coding katas). At the end of the year when I got my 1099 I calculated that Uber lost $8k on me, which is about as much as I put in the crypto currency markets around that time...
• pochamago 8y ago
  I certainly won. In my city of 400,000 we only had one unreliable cab company, Uber is much better than the alternative. Uber Eats also destroys the previous delivery service that was around. They're a really valuable service to me
• justapassenger 8y ago
  That strategy works, even on public market - check Tesla.
• dralley 8y ago
  https://qz.com/1540608/the-problem-with-silicon-valleys-obsession-with-blitzscaling-growth/ https://qz.com/1540608/the-problem-with-silicon-valleys-obse...
• Axsuul 8y ago
  The consumers won. Before Uber, traveling abroad in another country meant getting scammed by taxi drivers. After Uber, there is now a safe, trustworthy, and familiar mode of transportation when in a foreign place. Note: Lyft is only domestic.
  • grvdrm 8y ago
    Incredibly useful point. It's easy to look at these companies through the U.S. lens but they have changed the game for international travel as well.
  • sasper 8y ago
    Precisely this. I'm an expat and have lived abroad for the last 10 years. Uber has made my life more simple and less stressful when traveling. No longer do I have to figure out how to book a cab at an airport after landing, or how much it really should cost me. I no longer have to hail a taxi on the street and be charged 5x what a normal fair would be because of the color of my skin or the accent in my speech. Uber has revolutionized transport in all of the areas it has disrupted. Bad comes along with the good, but for consumers, the good outweighs the bad (at least for now while the prices are VC subsidized).
• makeitstop 8y ago
  “desperately” Are you sure you’re outside the bubble? Because the taxi industry could have done with some improvement, but it didn’t “desperately” need “disruption”. People got from a to b just fine, and drivers got paid. The only thing that desperately needs disruption is the destructive influence SV has on societies that were doing just fine before its “disruption”.
  • xixixao 8y ago
    Don't know where you've been getting taxis, but they were literally one of the worst services anywhere I've ever been to. Prague: ton of documented defrauding of customers, taxi drivers making little money otherwise, fights over stations, literally mafia stuff. London: You know how everyone is lovely and polite, say in restaurants? Not so in London taxis, you'd hardly get a hello, drivers would always purposefully drive you as long as possible to make the most amount of money, etc etc It was heavily unionized and the only people winning were at the top of unions, everyone else was losing. Yes, it desparately needed disruption.
    • ghaff 8y ago
      London is one of the last cities I would complain about taxis in—and one city where I don’t use Uber. (Not that I use a lot of cabs because the transit system is good.)
  • samsolomon 8y ago
    Are you the one in a bubble? The taxi industry was an absolute mess outside a few select cities—at least here in the US.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• barry-cotter 8y ago
  Everyone except owners of taxi medallions and maybe Uber investors and taxi drivers won. Black people who could actually now get a taxi won. People who wanted to reserve a car and have it show up on time won. People who wanted service in places taxi drivers didn’t want to go won. Taxi regulation was so comprehensively captured and rider hostile, and this was true for so long, that there was never any reason to believe it would improve. If all Uber achieved was coming close to burning that entire industry structure to the ground Uber is a massive boon to everyone who wants a ride and doesn’t want to deal with lying, cheating, lying, racist taxi service.
• sfcguyus 8y ago
  Lance Armstrong