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What’s Uber?

corodra 7y ago
A taxi company with an app that decided to just sub-contract its workforce. Which was obviously brilliant and they don't need me to say that. But, I don't think it's a tech company. Adding drivers is not necessarily that easy. I know there's a metric-fuck-ton of them right now. But bandwidth to send a copy of software and hiring a new driver are two different things. Same with allocating cloud server space and doing a background check on someone. I think the definition needs somewhere in there, humans cannot be the bottleneck. Uber's bottleneck is in drivers (and municipal policies), not getting people to download and sign up for their app/service. I mean seriously. What scales easier? Getting people to download an app or hiring drivers across the country that don't shank their passengers? Yes they did a good job at hiring a fuck ton of drivers quickly. But Carnegie did a great job at mass producing steel when others said it couldn't be done. Didn't make that a tech company either.
- Bagel 7y ago
  Acquiring drivers can be seen equal to customer acquisition within a software company. Yes the bottleneck of Uber is recruitment, but is it also not customer acquisition at any software/“tech” company?
Bagel 7y ago
By the definition above, clearly a “tech company”, no? Uber produces highly scalable tech, and can deploy it rapidly amongst a sea of contractors and riders- who are essentially consumers of the app.
mattrp 7y ago
There’s a helpful framework for this conversation created by Salim Ismail called exponential organizations. Instead of trying to bucket companies as tech or non tech, he recommends you look at their attributes to determine whether or not they are capable of exponential growth. For example, I think their case study of github indicated it was one of the few companies that had all of the possible attributes for exponential growth nailed. Anyway I don’t want to spend a bunch of time regurgitating the idea here but it might be helpful to take a look at it.
chx 7y ago
A fantastic vehicle for the rich to dismantle all protections organized labor made in the last century. Super cheap at a billion bucks a month if you consider the colossal amount of savings can be made on paying people if they are deemed contractors vs payroll. Various businesspeople tried propaganda , buying politicians and so forth, this "gig economy" is the newest effort, it is going well. For them. Recommended reading: https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393337662-invisible-hands-f4184038-84b9-40b1-a06f-54a7867e2157 https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393337662-invisible-han...

What’s Uber?

A taxi company with an app that decided to just sub-contract its workforce. Which was obviously brilliant and they don't need me to say that. But, I don't think it's a tech company. Adding drivers is not necessarily that easy. I know there's a metric-fuck-ton of them right now. But bandwidth to send a copy of software and hiring a new driver are two different things. Same with allocating cloud server space and doing a background check on someone. I think the definition needs somewhere in there, humans cannot be the bottleneck. Uber's bottleneck is in drivers (and municipal policies), not getting people to download and sign up for their app/service. I mean seriously. What scales easier? Getting people to download an app or hiring drivers across the country that don't shank their passengers? Yes they did a good job at hiring a fuck ton of drivers quickly. But Carnegie did a great job at mass producing steel when others said it couldn't be done. Didn't make that a tech company either.

Bagel 7y ago
Acquiring drivers can be seen equal to customer acquisition within a software company. Yes the bottleneck of Uber is recruitment, but is it also not customer acquisition at any software/“tech” company?

Bagel 7y ago

By the definition above, clearly a “tech company”, no? Uber produces highly scalable tech, and can deploy it rapidly amongst a sea of contractors and riders- who are essentially consumers of the app.

mattrp 7y ago

There’s a helpful framework for this conversation created by Salim Ismail called exponential organizations. Instead of trying to bucket companies as tech or non tech, he recommends you look at their attributes to determine whether or not they are capable of exponential growth. For example, I think their case study of github indicated it was one of the few companies that had all of the possible attributes for exponential growth nailed. Anyway I don’t want to spend a bunch of time regurgitating the idea here but it might be helpful to take a look at it.

chx 7y ago

A fantastic vehicle for the rich to dismantle all protections organized labor made in the last century. Super cheap at a billion bucks a month if you consider the colossal amount of savings can be made on paying people if they are deemed contractors vs payroll. Various businesspeople tried propaganda , buying politicians and so forth, this "gig economy" is the newest effort, it is going well. For them. Recommended reading: https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393337662-invisible-hands-f4184038-84b9-40b1-a06f-54a7867e2157 https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393337662-invisible-han...