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The last time I had this feeling was when shorting groupon. The emperor has no clothes, I can't see how UBER ends up being materially different from a donut.

• arcticbull 7y ago
  The only thing I can see being successful for them is JUMP. It's an awesome service, there's no better way to get around San Francisco -- and Seattle! I assume it's as effective in other cities too. On the other hand scaling and acceptance seem pretty far off.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    It might be hard to compete with municipal systems; the one in my city already has electric bikes, and it costs €25/year (~$30). The advantage of JUMP is being able to leave them anywhere, but that probably won't last once cities get enough complaints. The bikes are nicer too, but not enough to justify the massive price difference.
    • malandrew 7y ago
      Go to Berlin and see how amazing dockless bikes are for getting around when the city doesn't artificially limit their availability. It's trivial to find them when you need them. The problem here isn't the product. It's governance.
  • twelve40 7y ago
    you're kidding, right? I gave up on using jump bikes for my own travel needs long time ago, better off just walking and getting some exercise instead of hunting down some random thing in some random direction. But I try to use the bikes (the actual ride is pretty good, if you manage to get one) to show my friends around SF when they visit. In my experience, it's almost impossible to get two (or more, god forbid) bikes without spending up to an hour dragging through the dirties parts of Tenderloin just to hunt down the thing. By the time we manage to line up two bikes, everyone is fed up and sick of shitty neighborhoods, too - easier to just uber and go where we actually need to go.
    • icebraining 7y ago
      Your difficulty in finding available bikes might be because they're very popular and constantly in use, no?
      • malandrew 7y ago
        It's also government artificially restricting supply to certain numbers. Asymptotic regulations are bad regulations. Variable regulations are better. For example, instead of saying that there can be N bikes allowed, they should instead determine metrics they want to achieve like utilization (rides per day) or complaints per number of bikes and let operators put as many bikes on the streets so long as the quality of life metrics they establish are satisfied.
    • arcticbull 7y ago
      Take another look, they’ve doubled the number of bikes in the city. They were originally limited by the city as part of their pilot program which is since expanded.
• inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Don't be ridiculous, donuts are both tasty and worth paying for.
  • smartbit 7y ago
    Donuts are very unhealthy for humans
    • inflatableDodo 7y ago
      Am immediately suspicious that you may travelled here from a very long way away in order to steal all the donuts.