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Ask HN: How come some group of hacker Uber drivers hasn’t disintermediated Uber?

1 points by abrax3141 7y ago

The Uber (etc) drivers could be paying themselves instead of the owners investors if someone were just to write an open source gig manager and apply everywhere.

BoorishBears 7y ago
Because there's way more to Uber than an app. There's so many facets I don't know where to start - Background Checks - Payment Infrastructure - Insurance, and not some off-the-shelf insurance, complicated messy layers insurance - UX - Expensive marketing and subsidies (which is what creates trust in brand so we all feel comfortable hopping into cars with strangers) - Local laws (even if they break a lot of them, they do still follow some) There's an open source Uber-like platform: https://libretaxi.org/ https://libretaxi.org/ But making an Uber app is easy, making an Uber platform is expensive.
- abrax3141 7y ago
  A union of drivers could easily do all that.
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    By definition they couldn't easily do that. They'd have to form a company, get expensive lawyers, get domain experts, where are they going to get the capital? What bank is going to fund this moonshot? Maybe a VC... congratulations, you just started Lyft.
  - greenyoda 7y ago
    1. If it's so easy, why hasn't anyone done it yet? I've seen this idea mentioned on HN dozens of times already. 2. Even if you could set this up, you'd still be competing against Uber, which is a name everyone knows already and which can afford to burn billions of dollars a year to grow their business. They could temporarily lower their rates or driver's fees in the area that you operate in and quickly put you out of business, since they can afford to lose money much longer than you can. The same drivers who'd use this app will still be driving for Uber and Lyft (they'll go wherever the money and customers are).
troydavis 7y ago
> could be paying themselves instead of the owners investors Uber isn’t “paying the owners [sic] investors,” it’s (still) consuming huge amounts of their capital. From https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2019/Uber-Announces-Results-for-Third-Quarter-2019/default.aspx https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det... : “As such, we are improving our full year Adjusted EBITDA guidance by $250 million to a loss of $2.8-2.9 billion”

1 points by abrax3141 7y ago

The Uber (etc) drivers could be paying themselves instead of the owners investors if someone were just to write an open source gig manager and apply everywhere.

BoorishBears 7y ago

Because there's way more to Uber than an app. There's so many facets I don't know where to start - Background Checks - Payment Infrastructure - Insurance, and not some off-the-shelf insurance, complicated messy layers insurance - UX - Expensive marketing and subsidies (which is what creates trust in brand so we all feel comfortable hopping into cars with strangers) - Local laws (even if they break a lot of them, they do still follow some) There's an open source Uber-like platform: https://libretaxi.org/ https://libretaxi.org/ But making an Uber app is easy, making an Uber platform is expensive.

abrax3141 7y ago
A union of drivers could easily do all that.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  By definition they couldn't easily do that. They'd have to form a company, get expensive lawyers, get domain experts, where are they going to get the capital? What bank is going to fund this moonshot? Maybe a VC... congratulations, you just started Lyft.
- greenyoda 7y ago
  1. If it's so easy, why hasn't anyone done it yet? I've seen this idea mentioned on HN dozens of times already. 2. Even if you could set this up, you'd still be competing against Uber, which is a name everyone knows already and which can afford to burn billions of dollars a year to grow their business. They could temporarily lower their rates or driver's fees in the area that you operate in and quickly put you out of business, since they can afford to lose money much longer than you can. The same drivers who'd use this app will still be driving for Uber and Lyft (they'll go wherever the money and customers are).

troydavis 7y ago

> could be paying themselves instead of the owners investors Uber isn’t “paying the owners [sic] investors,” it’s (still) consuming huge amounts of their capital. From https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2019/Uber-Announces-Results-for-Third-Quarter-2019/default.aspx https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det... : “As such, we are improving our full year Adjusted EBITDA guidance by $250 million to a loss of $2.8-2.9 billion”