22 ms·

The Drivers Cooperative

866 points by pasquinelli 6y ago

tomdell 6y ago
It’s encouraging that initiatives like this seem to be popping up more often - co-operatives of workers looking to cut out corporate middlemen. It will be an uphill climb, but I hope this is the future. The technical moats of a lot of recently minted tech companies don’t seem to be so great that they can’t be overcome with time and open source work. The inertia and efficiency that comes with scale will be harder to compete with.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Is Uber still operating at a loss? Hard to compete with that, even accounting for the 20% tax.
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    Uber invested a lot of money into self-driving cars. Presumably a coop isn't spending money on automating away their workers.
    - discodave 6y ago
      They spent a lot of money subsidizing rides. It would be nice if they were making losses to plough money into R&D, but that is/was not the case.
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      That is actually an interesting point. Why would I, as a driver, fund research and development aimed at making my skills worthless?
      - hobofan 6y ago
        Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds? I think co-ops can actually be a good way of handling technology replacing manual labor. The profits made from the technological advancements can be put in a dedicated trust of the co-op that is focused on retraining the workers for new positions. With that you could handle inevitable technological progress.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        > Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds? That ownership is contingent on you working for the co-op, which doesn't seem very likely if a robot took your job. That said, there are a couple ways to work around this: 1. Flip the ownership model to a customer cooperative (or a customer/worker hybrid cooperative), thus moving the decisionmaking - and the incentives as a result - from workers to customers (which can and often do overlap). Customer cooperatives are a proven model here in the US (credit unions are probably the most widely known example). 2. Use automation to multiply labor rather than replace it. Replacing a drivers with cars at a 1:1 ratio obviously doesn't leave much room for drivers, but replacing them at a 1:10 ratio (or somesuch) can mean converting drivers into owner-operators of "squads" of cars. This depends on there being enough of a customer base to warrant this multiplication; for this to work, it's best paired with a massive expansion of that customer base (adding a bunch more cities, for example, or extending service areas, or slashing fares).
      - oh_sigh 6y ago
        Skills is a stretch. Having a driver's license in the US is a pretty low bar for entry for being a rideshare driver.
      - Barrin92 6y ago
        competition and because if you own a share of a future technology you're still standing to gain financially. It's not like tech companies not routinely also innovate away their own tech. Software developers also work on tools that make software development easier.
      - hkt 6y ago
        Drivers don't have an incentive, but car manufacturers do. The dream for Uber was a robofleet of driverless cars, which can still happen; it'll be General Motors getting into the taxi trade if such a thing ever became feasible.
      - throwinreturn 6y ago
        That would probably be competition. A monopolist corporation has no incentive to improve its capital if it gets its profit anyway (c.f. the dismal state of DSL and cable). But if it's not a monopolist, it might be forced to anyway. It's the same thing at a worker cooperative, or for that matter at a heavily unionized workplace: the workers have no incentive to automate themselves out of a job, but may collectively understand that if they don't, the business will go under and they'll all be left without jobs.
  - dbuder 6y ago
    Only from spending big on marketing and lobbying.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Do others have better experiences with co-ops than I do? I know people love REI, but whenever I go in there to buy anything that requires someone (ski boots, skis, work on skis) - it sucks. There's never anyone available, it often takes up to an hour or more to get helped or waiting in line. Sometimes I have to leave and come back later. Last time I gave up and ordered everything online. It's not like it's crazy packed in there either, it's pretty empty - there's just nobody working there. Co-ops are supposed to be better about aligning incentives, but at least for me I've often had worse experiences as a customer. Uber and Lyft work pretty well (for the most part, except for when drivers cancel on you) - I'd be surprised if a co-op could pull off a similarly good experience for riders.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    I've not had any trouble finding help at REI, but it sounds like perhaps you go more often than I do. The point of the co-op is that it is much better for the worker. There's no inherent reason why a co-op would need to have any different level of customer service than a corporation. My personal worst customer service experience is at Home Depot for example. I had to wait 45 minutes to get a 4 foot length of hose cut, something that would have been under 5 minutes at my local hardware store (and so I go to the local shop now). Ideally many stores would be co-ops and they could compete on price, quality, customer service etc like any other business. Perhaps you're satisfied with the customer experience at Uber, but the situation for drivers seems pretty exploitative. If I can get similar service and the workers get a fair deal, I'd be much happier choosing that.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - afarrell 6y ago
    Was that true pre-pandemic?
  - vore 6y ago
    REI is a consumers' cooperative, not a workers' cooperative. The people who work at REI don't own the business, and they would basically have the same role in any other company (which is one of the criticisms of why they're not actually good for labor). In fact, in a consumers' cooperative would probably be better in this case since you would have more direct control over the business than with a regular corporation.
- nickik 6y ago
  > It’s encouraging that initiatives like this seem to be popping up more often Any evidence for that? Seems to me this has been 'pet idea' of the labor movement for 200+ years. Maybe that are more that are visible to the avg person because of the web and social media, but if there are actually more seems highly questionable.
sonicrocketman 6y ago
This is a very cool idea. I love to see more worker-owned takes on big-tech ideas.
christiansakai 6y ago
Wow, I wonder how do they manage to cover the expenses of running a tech startup? We know that software business is capital and intellectual property heavy. How do these people do it?
- bertjk 6y ago
  Some things should be cheaper, due to the work already done by existing competitors. They don't need to spend marketing dollars on educating people on ride-hailing in general, do not need to buy lobbyists to make amenable laws, their initial app can be merely a clone of the competitors'. Now that driver and rider expectations around the service have solidified somewhat the backend systems can be simpler too. There are many benefits to being a fast follower.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Taxi apps really aren't very complex and expensive pieces of work. The unicorn start-up scaling up model is just what makes them so. There are already plenty of examples of pretty okay taxi-apps. And the industry itself is much more capital-to-revenue intensive and tech...
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    I would argue that it's Uber's marketing costs that make their business much less profitable than it could be.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  This is such an odd comment. What industries/businesses are you comparing with? Software is one of the least capital intensive industry I can think of. Similar for intellectual property, I mean what important IP is in building a website or a mobile app? That's why the industry is so focused on growing as quick as possible IMO, because everyone could essentially build your service, it's all about building so much momentum/user base that it becomes difficult for anyone to compete.
pjs_ 6y ago
Good on em - I hope they get a ton of support from this community and elsewhere.
beefield 6y ago
One of the most amazing things to me is that a couple of large hotel chains can't come up with a hotel reservation coop that would compete/throw out with bookin.com et al. If you worry about competition, just found two or three competing coops and be member of them all. SEO? If most hotels are nowhere but in the coop platforms, how can google not display them at top?
- bberenberg 6y ago
  Antitrust?
  - ugh123 6y ago
    Yeah that sounds like price fixing.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Mariott Bonvoy chain has member rates for a reason, and they are great, although they could be more predictable so that I could search on booking.com and know the member pricing.
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Can you tell us a bit more about your experience with them? And costs?
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      My favourite hotel with them with value/price with member rate was this Ritz Carlton in Portugal (less than 200 USD/night for standard room): https://www.ritzcarlton.com/es/hotels/europe/penha-longa#HOTEL https://www.ritzcarlton.com/es/hotels/europe/penha-longa#HOT... If you use their site, they give you some money that you can use to eat at their pricey, but amazing restaurants (also 2 of the hotel's restaurants has Michelin star, but I haven't tried those yet). Their swimming pool / jacuzzi is bad, but the nature, the castle and the room is great.
  - 6y ago
fblp 6y ago
I would probably pay 20% more and wait twice as long to contribute to a worker owned coop with each ride. Come to sf asap!
- ryan29 6y ago
  The thing is that it shouldn’t have to cost more unless Uber is massively subsidizing rides. Once the platform is built the incremental cost of adding a driver or customer should be very low and, by cutting out an unnecessary rent seeking middle man, you have better margins.
- changoplatanero 6y ago
  Why not skip the wait, take an Uber, and donate 20% to the coop?
  - ajmadesc 6y ago
    I want to disagree but this actually makes perfect sense...
    - tuyiown 6y ago
      The economics of charity won't solve those drivers problems.
  - chobeat 6y ago
    because this would keep uber afloat a little longer and do a little more damage
fblp 6y ago
Some background on their crowd funding is here. Looks lkke they raised 20k last year. Scrappy! https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-cooperative https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-co...
zxexz 6y ago
I hope this takes off. Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. I would gladly (and will try to next time I'm in NYC) use this service over Uber or Lyft. Power to the drivers!
- jasode 6y ago
  >Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. It's only the surface-level of an ride-hailing app that seems easy for worker-owned cooperatives to create. In reality, the extra expensive programming dollars required to tame the hidden complexity so that the app can present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers is a huge factor that works against co-ops. E.g. see the famous Uber comment on the complexity of the app: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346 Real-life customers don't want to enter their credit-card details into City_X_driver_coop and then re-enter their financial details multiple times again into City_Y_driver_coop. Even if you imagine a hypothetical national co-op to consolidate multiple cities, customers would still then have inconvenience of Country_X_coop and Country-Y_coop. It takes a lot of capital to pay programmer salaries for desirable features that customers want and since co-ops are capital-constrained (by definition because they can't take millions in investors money), the app will always have less features compared to Uber/Lyft. That's the financial constraint that causes co-ops to more easily organize in lower complexity businesses such as local grocery co-op or a farming coop. But a high-tech complexity business that's expensive to build is inherently too costly for a pool of drivers' savings to fund. Whenever you see the phrase "worker-owned", mentally substitute "capital-constrained" -- and it starts to make sense why many businesses domains don't have any coops rising up to compete with VC-fueled startups. EDIT to reply: >Driver co-ops or smaller operators simply don’t need to worry about half the nonsense in the comment you linked Sure, the driver co-ops can choose to not spend capital on "useless" features but this leaves out the fact that customers can also choose not to use the co-ops because of the lower quality app experience. Keep in mind the behavior of customers who prioritize conveniences. E.g. the non-profit RideAustin app fails customers even after Uber/Lyft left Austin: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/12/austin-is-fine-without-uber-and-lyft-until-it-isnt/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/12/austin-is-fine-without-ube... It takes capital to build tech solutions that deal with peak load. And RideAustin later shuts down in 2020: https://www.google.com/search?q=rideaustin+shuts+down https://www.google.com/search?q=rideaustin+shuts+down Well, one might say RideAustin was hampered by coronavirus lockdowns. That's true, but it also takes capital to get past an economic downturn of low revenue. Uber/Lyft got hurt by COVID as well but they had more capital reserves to deal with it.
ryan29 6y ago
I hope this is successful. For a couple of years I’ve been telling people how bad demand aggregation platforms are because of the way they commoditize supply for important things like labor providers and small businesses. A supply side coop is the only way to defeat demand aggregation IMO. Hopefully we see more of this because I think the economy is a lot healthier with a lost of fair value, mutually beneficial relationships instead of the current trend of exploiting everyone and everything within sight.
crowf 6y ago
> So any profits will go back to the drivers. Thanks to Hollywood accounting, does this have any meaning?
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  They're also owned by the drivers, so one would hope that would help with transparency
- hobofan 6y ago
  I don't know about the US, but in Germany coops have pretty strict auditing guidelines. Since Hollywood accounting would divert money to the coop, which is also owned by the drivers, you would by diverting money from the drivers to the drivers, which obviously doesn't make any sense. Of course there are also concerns that the coop administration might be too fat and lining their own pockets, but through the auditing combined with the fact that the board is normally elected by the members, the members have quite some control measures to keep the administration honest.
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
I'm going to give this a real try. I live in Brooklyn Heights, NYC. My GF is having a birthday party/gala in Harlem at 140th and Broadway. I'm going to try this for traveling to Kerri's birthday party.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago
  Yo, why are you broadcasting these details, how many strangers do you want to show up at her party?
  - rPlayer6554 6y ago
    Should I bring drinks? Or should I bring my C manual signed by Dennis Richie for some fun party discussion?...never mind I'll bring both. I can't wait for an engaging discussion on the pros and cons of ANSI C!!!!
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      Well now I'm obligated to make a cross-country flight just to crash the party and point out how C is objectively inferior to PL/1 and how the world would be a utopia if Multics caught on.
om2 6y ago
Accomplishments on their page include: * Purchased ridehailing app code and completed customizations for NYC launch I wonder who sold them the code and who did the customizations. Do they have software engineers on staff? Do they own and operate their own servers? Or is there someone out there selling/renting a white-label rideshare app/service?
- nerdponx 6y ago
  > Or is there someone out there selling/renting a white-label rideshare app/service Via I believe was involved in something like this.
- hkt 6y ago
  There are a number of companies selling white labelled uber-ish apps. My local taxi company uses this one: https://riide.co/fleetsignup/ https://riide.co/fleetsignup/ It makes sense that there's a big market for this stuff and as much sense that a cooperative would form eventually. Uber didn't invent the taxi, after all.
throwaway2a02 6y ago
> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anymore). So it will inevitably turn into another Uber/Lyft this way.
- legulere 6y ago
  Cooperatives (at least here in Germany) often have a maximum amount of shares that you can own and are open for people to get new shares.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  You don't issue permanent shares, working for the company gives you shares. I don't think registering as a nonprofit is necessary to stop that problem, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up registering as a nonprofit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zouhair 6y ago
  Aren't COOP supposed to grow to accommodate newcomers? You have to pay to get in so you end up with same shares as others. At least that's how I thought it works. Am I wrong?
- throwinreturn 6y ago
  Some cooperatives mandate one worker one vote, rather than one share one vote. The most well-known example is Mondragon.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Each worker has the same share in a coop its one of the key definitions so OMOV.
yholio 6y ago
What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. They mediate this process where drivers compete against each other and extract a good rent in the process. The focus should be getting rid of the rent, not the competition. While I wish these guys all the best and think it's a good paradigm shift, I don't think they will be successful for the same reasons most cooperatives aren't successful: the owner-workers see the business as a means to insulate themselves from market pressures. They stop growing and innovating and simply redistribute the larger than market compensations among each other. If many another drivers are willing to accept a lower pay for the same work, they will simply not accept them in the co-op.
- sm4rk0 6y ago
  > What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. Cheap labor force means someone is underpaid. If the coop cuts the middlemen out and transfer the extra to drivers then it's a win-win: drivers get more and customers pay the same for a better service because well-paid driver => good service.
  - yholio 6y ago
    Underpaid compared to what? If people are willing to do the work to a high professional standard for a certain wage, than that is the right compensation for that job. When you setup arbitrary fair wages above market, you must also somehow protect them from intruders from other fields willing to change jobs and benefit from the higher wages in your field. This is exactly what a co-op ends up doing most of the time - if they don't succumb to a traditional model where the initial members become the owners and the later employees have regular employment contracts.
    - sm4rk0 6y ago
      > Underpaid compared to what? You said: "relatively cheap". Relative to what?
      - 6y ago
otar 6y ago
Good model. Hopefully this will take off and expand to moped drivers as well.
- carlio 6y ago
  There is a coop for delivery cyclists, started in France I believe - https://coopcycle.org/en/ https://coopcycle.org/en/
  - aenario 6y ago
    The interesting thing about coopcycle is that it's actually a coop of coops : Several local delivery coops (say one per city) collaborate to fund development and hosting of the software solution.
gerardnll 6y ago
I love seeing this in USA. Cooperatives are great, power to the workers.
DocTomoe 6y ago
We have a ride hailing app for traditional cabs in Germany. The reason why I still preferred Uber is that once you travel around (remember when we still did that?), you don't want an app per location and memorize which app is valid for which geographic region - Uber is virtually global.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Hopefully women can vote as well... And why all the downvotes now?
ThePhysicist 6y ago
In Germany we have some really large organizations that are organized as cooperatives (Genossenschaften), e.g. banks (Volksbanken/Raiffeisenbanken) but also tech companies like DATEV eG that build software for their members (tax accountants in that case) and make close to 1 BN€ in revenue. So it can work.
- luckylion 6y ago
  DATEV feels like a government apparatus straight from the 80ies though, I don't think that's a good example. It's slow and expensive, feels very bureaucratic. A good example are housing coops though. They work rather efficiently, have not turned into bureaucratic monsters, and provide housing to their members at sub-market rates (at least in the larger cities), while still being profitable and usually paying ~4% as a dividend.
  - ThePhysicist 6y ago
    Yeah but to be fair they're basically implementing German tax law as a software product, it's a miracle it even works in the first place :D
jwr 6y ago
This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Uber provides discoverbility, ratings and a feeling of safety.
  - bwilli123 6y ago
    A 'feeling' doesn't guarantee any more than that.
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    From my experience in many places drivers actually use multiple apps at the same time. This means that there's less and less of a distinction between the safety, ratings etc. of each individual app.
  - agloeregrets 6y ago
    Ratings is an easy to use and game feature (fun fact often harmful to drivers of color) that costs almost nothing to build. The feeling of safety was flatter Uber had a bunch of rapes that forced them to pretend that they cared, spend is very small on it.
- nabla9 6y ago
  App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.
  - aaxa 6y ago
    You could say the same with Just-Eat. In Denmark, I know they have a markup up to 15%, even though they have a lot of competition. So honestly, I am a bit sceptical if we will see a much lower markup. One might hope though.
domano 6y ago
I wonder how this would influence autonomous taxi services. Maybe there is a financial possibility to finance retraining of drivers while the industry shifts to autonomous rides in the future. This would ease adoption while not discarding drivers as disposable resources.
m_ke 6y ago
Here’s a recent interview with them https://youtu.be/VykTBPKwYnA https://youtu.be/VykTBPKwYnA I’ve been considering starting a software coop to build open source versions of these middleman gig work services for a while. Would anyone on here be interested in joining one? With so many well paid engineers I’m also surprised that there’s not more coop based tech startups in the states.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  Developers are well paid in the US because of VC and monopoly backed business models. To go coop is to abandon those options, one explicitly and one implicitly.
  - m_ke 6y ago
    What I meant by well paid was that most engineers who spent a few years at FAANGs have 6 figures in savings and can use some of that capital to kickstart a cooperative without needing venture funding. A coop could absolutely become a monopoly in a market. The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy English speaking country that’s the launching point for most ventures before global expansion.
    - beaconstudios 6y ago
      perhaps California developers talk a big game but don't put their money where their mouth is? I would expect the same bootstrapping of cooperatives but it doesn't really happen. I think cooperatives would struggle to gain a monopoly holding because they're not as ruthless as investor-driven companies. They tend to treat their workers fairly and focus on quality of life, over relentlessly pursuing high quarterly growth targets. That's a very good thing for the employees and probably the customers too, but makes the company less competitive. > The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy country that’s the launching point for most ventures before global expansion. If that were the case then developers all over the US would make bank. They don't; only in startup-focused areas like the Bay Area and NYC. It's the same here in the UK, you can make a ton of money if you work in London for hyper-capitalist companies, but outside of London most developers are making 40-60k max. Which is still good for the UK, but not the 6 figure incomes that even shit-tier developers can make in California.
justinzollars 6y ago
> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. I'm not sure this is true. Neither Uber or Lyft makes any money. They lose money for Wall Street.
alberth 6y ago
This makes a lot of sense and there’s past precedent to indicate they can be successful. Ocean Spray (juice company) is exactly this, a coop. Farmers about a 100 years ago came together to form their own juice company to share in the profits. Coops make a ton of sense if you’re providing a commodity good or service. Eg cranberries are essentially the same and are not differentiated by definition. You could argue being a driver is similar. https://www.oceanspray.com/Our-Story https://www.oceanspray.com/Our-Story
tacostakohashi 6y ago
This website is very scant on details like their bylaws and financial statements. What often happens with these kinds of things is that there's a co-operative or charity that is worker/member owned / tax exempt and stuff, and they have an agreement with a "management company" or license some white label product from a separate, privately owned, for-profit company. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but depending on the relative size and negotiating power of the co-op vs the vendor(s), at some point the co-op ends up being a front for some for-profit entity.
elcortez 6y ago
I really admire these kind of experiments, and hopefully it'll work out for them. However it seems that people vastly underestimate how hard it is to run a business like Uber. You have to take care of handling a complex demand/supply ratio, geolocation, fraud management, a seamless payment system, tax rates, etc. etc. Hopefully these initiatives will produce meaningful value locally all around the world, contributing to a more decentralized Internet.
- tootie 6y ago
  I had a handful of go-to car services in NYC prior to Uber/Lyft. Just put their numbers in speed dial, talk to a dispatcher and the car is there in 10 minutes or less. And they were doing this with a handful of people who barely speak English out of a garage in central Brooklyn. Running a global business is hard, but providing services to 1000 local businesses isn't.
pluc 6y ago
Great photo where nobody wears their mask properly
nhoughto 6y ago
It’s a nice idea, can’t imagine they can match the UX polish lyft and Uber deliver, which is what users expect now. What other examples are there of do-it-for-the-cause tech plays working out? Interestingly i imagine a not insignificant amount of effort from Uber etc goes into combating drivers “bad” behaviors, the co-op model might align incentives to reduce this cost.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dfgdghdf 6y ago
Good luck to them! How does it work in terms of ownership? Can anyone buy a stake? Do you need to drive to earn shares? Can someone drive for a bit, then generate passive income from the shares? Will drivers get bought out by financial interests over time?
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Is it just me or does this sound like purely a marketing strategy hiding the actions of a few opportunists who will receive outsized rewards? At least Uber and Lyft are honest about being greedy capitalists.
scotttrinh 6y ago
A lot of the comments here seem to think this has to become the next Uber, but it really doesn't. It just needs to sustain the cooperative workers and provide a service at whatever scale makes sense for them and our community (speaking as a NYC resident) and that will be success. Heck, it doesn't even need to be the only cooperative like this! They could federate this and it still is more ethical and equitable then the current system. Bravo. Let's do food delivery next!
foxhop 6y ago
In this video the drivers coop and Chompsky makes an appearance at about minute 53 https://www.facebook.com/aman.bardia/videos/10225290239547220 https://www.facebook.com/aman.bardia/videos/1022529023954722...
praveen9920 6y ago
While it is great to see drivers disrupting the space, one particular aspect is might be missing. Uber/Lyft or any ride hailing company kind of acts as an mediator between driver and rider. If there is any issue between driver and rider, ride hailing apps provide certain "guarantees" for both in terms of experience and financials which might be more biased towards drivers in this initiative.
yawnxyz 6y ago
i'm surprised Blablacar (in Europe) hasn't made it over to the US yet — the most "disruptive" part about it is that people can set their own prices. Also, it's for "long haul" drives, like from the airport into the city, or between cities
- runeks 6y ago
  I never understood why Uber doesn’t allow drivers to set their own price.
kbos87 6y ago
It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and friendly to the people actually delivering the services. Getting initial traction with riders, and adequately investing in trust & safety strike me as the two hardest parts up front. On the flip-side, they should benefit from less regulatory scrutiny, and less pressure from investors vs. the heavily funded players like Uber & Lyft. I'm rooting for them and hope to see this go somewhere.
- njoubert 6y ago
  The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    A local coop doesn't have to go worldwide to be meaningful. Not all businesses shall grow indefinitely. If they can get a core customer base and hold it steady, it'd be much more valuable and impressive over time. They try to make a living, not to dominate the world for money.
    - fractionalhare 6y ago
      If you're competing in a winner-take-all market, it is very difficult to compete without shooting for domination. I don't know if digital ride hailing is a winner-take-all market, but there's pretty compelling evidence it could be. But I also don't think that commenter is disagreeing with you - when they say huge value, they're probably gesturing towards the fact that consumers will generally use whatever the most convenient and recognizable brand is. It will be hard for the coop to achieve a core customer base which allows them to survive if everyone gets off the plane and uses Uber instead of looking for the local coop.
t7s 6y ago
It would be interesting if this service could be provided 100% browser based. No app install needed.
sukruh 6y ago
Cool. One trap worker-owned companies often fall into is to neglect investing into risky/long-term projects and as a result fall behind the industry. When the choice is 2x salary for 3 years or some R&D investment one does not fully grasp, many individual members choose the former.
TeeWEE 6y ago
People are paying for a service to go from A to B, whether that's a driver bringing them or a robocar, it doesn't really matter. As long as the service is good. Money being made on the service should go back in making the service better. These cooperatives often miss that point. They are not product centric.
mromanuk 6y ago
wow, this is wonderful, SaaS for the people and not exploiting or selling their information! I'm in awe. It feels like open source, what other industries can be disrupted, in this with help from devs?
aerosmile 6y ago
I would rather be dead in a ditch than set foot in one of their cars. Because I expect it would be basically the same thing. Their website has thousands of words about how horrible Uber and Lyft are, but not one word about how they are going to approach trust and safety. I really hope there's an experienced labor marketplace executive in the room who knows anything about this business, rather than a bunch of drivers who decided to run one of the riskiest operations for personal safety that one can imagine (there's a reason why parents don't allow their kids to get into cars with strangers).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mitchdoogle 6y ago
  The world is not so dangerous as you imagine it to be. A stranger approaching a child and offering a ride is a dangerous situation. Adults hailing a car through an advertised driving service is not. You might as well be scared to walk out your front door as well.
  - aerosmile 6y ago
    I wish you were right. But if you spend a minute talking to people who work in trust and safety at those companies, you'll want to give them a hug.
chrismorgan 6y ago
On the Google Play Store, they have app IDs com.driver.coop and com.rider.coop. I figure these should be coop.drivers.driver and coop.drivers.rider. This suggests to me that Google aren’t verifying domain ownership in app IDs, which I find a tad surprising. I had just assumed they would, and thus that you could trust that apps on the Google Play Store with IDs like com.example.foo or io.github.example.foo were actually from whoever ran example.com and example.github.io. That sounds like a mild phishing opportunity (only mild because I doubt most ever notice app IDs).
- yunohn 6y ago
  Play Store IDs use the "domain" style naming scheme, purely as a relic of Android apps being written in Java. Neither Java nor Play Store have ever mandated domain checking, and the IDs are up to the developer.
vijaypatil 6y ago
Hi all, I have been toying this very idea for consulting. Several people with niche experience can come together and from a global consulting co-op. I wonder what you think.
msoad 6y ago
I tried downloading and signing up for the driver app on iOS. The quality of the apps are very very low. There are some grammar mistakes in the labels that makes me think the app is made by non English speakers. The phone number placeholder was specially weird. It was using a phone number from Iran in the placeholder! I hope this works out but as all of us in the software industry know, making good software is time consuming and expensive. I'm not sure with low ride volume and not VC money they can afford building a good iPhone app.
specialist 6y ago
Neat. Responses, in no particular order. Yay for co-ops, WDSEs, not-for-profits. Is that what this is? I expect stuff like charter, bylaws, list of board members, budget, etc. (Vs post-capitalist agitprop.) Here's Richard Wolff's popular treatment of this trend: https://www.democracyatwork.info https://www.democracyatwork.info For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management Efforts like this validate the observations that ride hailing has no moat. Eventually, we'll have white labeled ride hailing hosting companies. So you're a specialty transport group in Cincinnati, eg for elderly and wheelchair bound customers. You get your own branded and slightly customized version for your niche. The hosting companies do all the tech.
chendii 6y ago
Coops FTW
itake 6y ago
I am curious how they tackle safety issues within the coop. Uber, Lyft, and other big players have teams of engineers improving the safety of the platform (e.g. banning duplicate accounts of bad actors, banning people from re-creating accounts, identifying and removing fraud). I'm skeptical that the team behind the drivers.coop could deliver a fair and scalable safe service for both the riders and drivers. For example: 1. Uber verifies drivers have face masks before starting shifts with ML. 2. Some/all companies have ML route deviation algorithms to warn the passenger if the driver is not following the correct route. 3. Toxic language detection. Rideshare companies want to flag drivers and passengers that are not communicating nicely. 4. Crash detection. If the phone detects a crash, the ride share company can automatically connect them with emergency operates to ensure everyone is ok.
- snicker7 6y ago
  A coop is just another corporation, just with a different ownership model. This means they will likely have to hire engineers, customer service, business analysts, lobbyists, an executive team, &c. None of your examples is unachievable with a coop. The main blocker is initial capital acquisition.
  - itake 6y ago
    All of these things are expensive to build, but achievable when you operate in many cities or countries. I am not seeing how a handful of drivers in NYC could fund the infrastructure and talent required to deliver these types of features that passengers have grown accustomed to.
shp0ngle 6y ago
Part of the problem is that developing and maintaining these applications is expensive. Not just the technical part, but also all the operations (all the customer care and lawyers and mapping and...) Uber and Lyft are still losing money, VCs are pumping capital there daily. How can driver coop survive? Where do they take the money for all that? Sure they don’t need to go all Uber and scale into 500 microservices, but still it’s not easy... I wish them good luck, but I also don’t think they will succeed against Masa Son deep pockets.
st_t 6y ago
I read recently an article that claims the Driver’s Co-op is “fighting Uber’s model” —but, having talked with most TDC’s key players, I believe what’s good for Uber is good for them too. Fighting Uber’s model means three things: 1) replacing its app and network of contractors, 2) abolishing its third parties selling services to drivers like selling shovels to gold miners, and 3) strengthening state and federal labor laws giving workers wage protections and right to a union. The Driver’s Coop may do 1, but they have resisted 2 and 3. At most, I believe they are friendly competition to Uber, not yet the fighter that the labor and cooperative movements need. But/and I think the Driver’s Co-op to do better.

866 points by pasquinelli 6y ago

It’s encouraging that initiatives like this seem to be popping up more often - co-operatives of workers looking to cut out corporate middlemen. It will be an uphill climb, but I hope this is the future. The technical moats of a lot of recently minted tech companies don’t seem to be so great that they can’t be overcome with time and open source work. The inertia and efficiency that comes with scale will be harder to compete with.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Is Uber still operating at a loss? Hard to compete with that, even accounting for the 20% tax.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  Uber invested a lot of money into self-driving cars. Presumably a coop isn't spending money on automating away their workers.
  - discodave 6y ago
    They spent a lot of money subsidizing rides. It would be nice if they were making losses to plough money into R&D, but that is/was not the case.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    That is actually an interesting point. Why would I, as a driver, fund research and development aimed at making my skills worthless?
    - hobofan 6y ago
      Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds? I think co-ops can actually be a good way of handling technology replacing manual labor. The profits made from the technological advancements can be put in a dedicated trust of the co-op that is focused on retraining the workers for new positions. With that you could handle inevitable technological progress.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        > Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds? That ownership is contingent on you working for the co-op, which doesn't seem very likely if a robot took your job. That said, there are a couple ways to work around this: 1. Flip the ownership model to a customer cooperative (or a customer/worker hybrid cooperative), thus moving the decisionmaking - and the incentives as a result - from workers to customers (which can and often do overlap). Customer cooperatives are a proven model here in the US (credit unions are probably the most widely known example). 2. Use automation to multiply labor rather than replace it. Replacing a drivers with cars at a 1:1 ratio obviously doesn't leave much room for drivers, but replacing them at a 1:10 ratio (or somesuch) can mean converting drivers into owner-operators of "squads" of cars. This depends on there being enough of a customer base to warrant this multiplication; for this to work, it's best paired with a massive expansion of that customer base (adding a bunch more cities, for example, or extending service areas, or slashing fares).
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      Skills is a stretch. Having a driver's license in the US is a pretty low bar for entry for being a rideshare driver.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      competition and because if you own a share of a future technology you're still standing to gain financially. It's not like tech companies not routinely also innovate away their own tech. Software developers also work on tools that make software development easier.
    - hkt 6y ago
      Drivers don't have an incentive, but car manufacturers do. The dream for Uber was a robofleet of driverless cars, which can still happen; it'll be General Motors getting into the taxi trade if such a thing ever became feasible.
    - throwinreturn 6y ago
      That would probably be competition. A monopolist corporation has no incentive to improve its capital if it gets its profit anyway (c.f. the dismal state of DSL and cable). But if it's not a monopolist, it might be forced to anyway. It's the same thing at a worker cooperative, or for that matter at a heavily unionized workplace: the workers have no incentive to automate themselves out of a job, but may collectively understand that if they don't, the business will go under and they'll all be left without jobs.
- dbuder 6y ago
  Only from spending big on marketing and lobbying.
fossuser 6y ago
Do others have better experiences with co-ops than I do? I know people love REI, but whenever I go in there to buy anything that requires someone (ski boots, skis, work on skis) - it sucks. There's never anyone available, it often takes up to an hour or more to get helped or waiting in line. Sometimes I have to leave and come back later. Last time I gave up and ordered everything online. It's not like it's crazy packed in there either, it's pretty empty - there's just nobody working there. Co-ops are supposed to be better about aligning incentives, but at least for me I've often had worse experiences as a customer. Uber and Lyft work pretty well (for the most part, except for when drivers cancel on you) - I'd be surprised if a co-op could pull off a similarly good experience for riders.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  I've not had any trouble finding help at REI, but it sounds like perhaps you go more often than I do. The point of the co-op is that it is much better for the worker. There's no inherent reason why a co-op would need to have any different level of customer service than a corporation. My personal worst customer service experience is at Home Depot for example. I had to wait 45 minutes to get a 4 foot length of hose cut, something that would have been under 5 minutes at my local hardware store (and so I go to the local shop now). Ideally many stores would be co-ops and they could compete on price, quality, customer service etc like any other business. Perhaps you're satisfied with the customer experience at Uber, but the situation for drivers seems pretty exploitative. If I can get similar service and the workers get a fair deal, I'd be much happier choosing that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- afarrell 6y ago
  Was that true pre-pandemic?
- vore 6y ago
  REI is a consumers' cooperative, not a workers' cooperative. The people who work at REI don't own the business, and they would basically have the same role in any other company (which is one of the criticisms of why they're not actually good for labor). In fact, in a consumers' cooperative would probably be better in this case since you would have more direct control over the business than with a regular corporation.
nickik 6y ago
> It’s encouraging that initiatives like this seem to be popping up more often Any evidence for that? Seems to me this has been 'pet idea' of the labor movement for 200+ years. Maybe that are more that are visible to the avg person because of the web and social media, but if there are actually more seems highly questionable.

sonicrocketman 6y ago

This is a very cool idea. I love to see more worker-owned takes on big-tech ideas.

christiansakai 6y ago

Wow, I wonder how do they manage to cover the expenses of running a tech startup? We know that software business is capital and intellectual property heavy. How do these people do it?

bertjk 6y ago
Some things should be cheaper, due to the work already done by existing competitors. They don't need to spend marketing dollars on educating people on ride-hailing in general, do not need to buy lobbyists to make amenable laws, their initial app can be merely a clone of the competitors'. Now that driver and rider expectations around the service have solidified somewhat the backend systems can be simpler too. There are many benefits to being a fast follower.
deleted 6y ago
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Ekaros 6y ago
Taxi apps really aren't very complex and expensive pieces of work. The unicorn start-up scaling up model is just what makes them so. There are already plenty of examples of pretty okay taxi-apps. And the industry itself is much more capital-to-revenue intensive and tech...
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I would argue that it's Uber's marketing costs that make their business much less profitable than it could be.
cycomanic 6y ago
This is such an odd comment. What industries/businesses are you comparing with? Software is one of the least capital intensive industry I can think of. Similar for intellectual property, I mean what important IP is in building a website or a mobile app? That's why the industry is so focused on growing as quick as possible IMO, because everyone could essentially build your service, it's all about building so much momentum/user base that it becomes difficult for anyone to compete.

pjs_ 6y ago

Good on em - I hope they get a ton of support from this community and elsewhere.

beefield 6y ago

One of the most amazing things to me is that a couple of large hotel chains can't come up with a hotel reservation coop that would compete/throw out with bookin.com et al. If you worry about competition, just found two or three competing coops and be member of them all. SEO? If most hotels are nowhere but in the coop platforms, how can google not display them at top?

bberenberg 6y ago
Antitrust?
- ugh123 6y ago
  Yeah that sounds like price fixing.
xiphias2 6y ago
Mariott Bonvoy chain has member rates for a reason, and they are great, although they could be more predictable so that I could search on booking.com and know the member pricing.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Can you tell us a bit more about your experience with them? And costs?
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    My favourite hotel with them with value/price with member rate was this Ritz Carlton in Portugal (less than 200 USD/night for standard room): https://www.ritzcarlton.com/es/hotels/europe/penha-longa#HOTEL https://www.ritzcarlton.com/es/hotels/europe/penha-longa#HOT... If you use their site, they give you some money that you can use to eat at their pricey, but amazing restaurants (also 2 of the hotel's restaurants has Michelin star, but I haven't tried those yet). Their swimming pool / jacuzzi is bad, but the nature, the castle and the room is great.
- 6y ago

fblp 6y ago

I would probably pay 20% more and wait twice as long to contribute to a worker owned coop with each ride. Come to sf asap!

ryan29 6y ago
The thing is that it shouldn’t have to cost more unless Uber is massively subsidizing rides. Once the platform is built the incremental cost of adding a driver or customer should be very low and, by cutting out an unnecessary rent seeking middle man, you have better margins.
changoplatanero 6y ago
Why not skip the wait, take an Uber, and donate 20% to the coop?
- ajmadesc 6y ago
  I want to disagree but this actually makes perfect sense...
  - tuyiown 6y ago
    The economics of charity won't solve those drivers problems.
- chobeat 6y ago
  because this would keep uber afloat a little longer and do a little more damage

fblp 6y ago

Some background on their crowd funding is here. Looks lkke they raised 20k last year. Scrappy! https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-cooperative https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-co...

zxexz 6y ago

I hope this takes off. Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. I would gladly (and will try to next time I'm in NYC) use this service over Uber or Lyft. Power to the drivers!

jasode 6y ago
>Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. It's only the surface-level of an ride-hailing app that seems easy for worker-owned cooperatives to create. In reality, the extra expensive programming dollars required to tame the hidden complexity so that the app can present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers is a huge factor that works against co-ops. E.g. see the famous Uber comment on the complexity of the app: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346 Real-life customers don't want to enter their credit-card details into City_X_driver_coop and then re-enter their financial details multiple times again into City_Y_driver_coop. Even if you imagine a hypothetical national co-op to consolidate multiple cities, customers would still then have inconvenience of Country_X_coop and Country-Y_coop. It takes a lot of capital to pay programmer salaries for desirable features that customers want and since co-ops are capital-constrained (by definition because they can't take millions in investors money), the app will always have less features compared to Uber/Lyft. That's the financial constraint that causes co-ops to more easily organize in lower complexity businesses such as local grocery co-op or a farming coop. But a high-tech complexity business that's expensive to build is inherently too costly for a pool of drivers' savings to fund. Whenever you see the phrase "worker-owned", mentally substitute "capital-constrained" -- and it starts to make sense why many businesses domains don't have any coops rising up to compete with VC-fueled startups. EDIT to reply: >Driver co-ops or smaller operators simply don’t need to worry about half the nonsense in the comment you linked Sure, the driver co-ops can choose to not spend capital on "useless" features but this leaves out the fact that customers can also choose not to use the co-ops because of the lower quality app experience. Keep in mind the behavior of customers who prioritize conveniences. E.g. the non-profit RideAustin app fails customers even after Uber/Lyft left Austin: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/12/austin-is-fine-without-uber-and-lyft-until-it-isnt/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/12/austin-is-fine-without-ube... It takes capital to build tech solutions that deal with peak load. And RideAustin later shuts down in 2020: https://www.google.com/search?q=rideaustin+shuts+down https://www.google.com/search?q=rideaustin+shuts+down Well, one might say RideAustin was hampered by coronavirus lockdowns. That's true, but it also takes capital to get past an economic downturn of low revenue. Uber/Lyft got hurt by COVID as well but they had more capital reserves to deal with it.

ryan29 6y ago

I hope this is successful. For a couple of years I’ve been telling people how bad demand aggregation platforms are because of the way they commoditize supply for important things like labor providers and small businesses. A supply side coop is the only way to defeat demand aggregation IMO. Hopefully we see more of this because I think the economy is a lot healthier with a lost of fair value, mutually beneficial relationships instead of the current trend of exploiting everyone and everything within sight.

crowf 6y ago

> So any profits will go back to the drivers. Thanks to Hollywood accounting, does this have any meaning?

AndrewDucker 6y ago
They're also owned by the drivers, so one would hope that would help with transparency
hobofan 6y ago
I don't know about the US, but in Germany coops have pretty strict auditing guidelines. Since Hollywood accounting would divert money to the coop, which is also owned by the drivers, you would by diverting money from the drivers to the drivers, which obviously doesn't make any sense. Of course there are also concerns that the coop administration might be too fat and lining their own pockets, but through the auditing combined with the fact that the board is normally elected by the members, the members have quite some control measures to keep the administration honest.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

I'm going to give this a real try. I live in Brooklyn Heights, NYC. My GF is having a birthday party/gala in Harlem at 140th and Broadway. I'm going to try this for traveling to Kerri's birthday party.

fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago
Yo, why are you broadcasting these details, how many strangers do you want to show up at her party?
- rPlayer6554 6y ago
  Should I bring drinks? Or should I bring my C manual signed by Dennis Richie for some fun party discussion?...never mind I'll bring both. I can't wait for an engaging discussion on the pros and cons of ANSI C!!!!
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Well now I'm obligated to make a cross-country flight just to crash the party and point out how C is objectively inferior to PL/1 and how the world would be a utopia if Multics caught on.

om2 6y ago

Accomplishments on their page include: * Purchased ridehailing app code and completed customizations for NYC launch I wonder who sold them the code and who did the customizations. Do they have software engineers on staff? Do they own and operate their own servers? Or is there someone out there selling/renting a white-label rideshare app/service?

nerdponx 6y ago
> Or is there someone out there selling/renting a white-label rideshare app/service Via I believe was involved in something like this.
hkt 6y ago
There are a number of companies selling white labelled uber-ish apps. My local taxi company uses this one: https://riide.co/fleetsignup/ https://riide.co/fleetsignup/ It makes sense that there's a big market for this stuff and as much sense that a cooperative would form eventually. Uber didn't invent the taxi, after all.

throwaway2a02 6y ago

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anymore). So it will inevitably turn into another Uber/Lyft this way.

legulere 6y ago
Cooperatives (at least here in Germany) often have a maximum amount of shares that you can own and are open for people to get new shares.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
You don't issue permanent shares, working for the company gives you shares. I don't think registering as a nonprofit is necessary to stop that problem, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up registering as a nonprofit.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zouhair 6y ago
Aren't COOP supposed to grow to accommodate newcomers? You have to pay to get in so you end up with same shares as others. At least that's how I thought it works. Am I wrong?
throwinreturn 6y ago
Some cooperatives mandate one worker one vote, rather than one share one vote. The most well-known example is Mondragon.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Each worker has the same share in a coop its one of the key definitions so OMOV.

yholio 6y ago

What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. They mediate this process where drivers compete against each other and extract a good rent in the process. The focus should be getting rid of the rent, not the competition. While I wish these guys all the best and think it's a good paradigm shift, I don't think they will be successful for the same reasons most cooperatives aren't successful: the owner-workers see the business as a means to insulate themselves from market pressures. They stop growing and innovating and simply redistribute the larger than market compensations among each other. If many another drivers are willing to accept a lower pay for the same work, they will simply not accept them in the co-op.

sm4rk0 6y ago
> What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. Cheap labor force means someone is underpaid. If the coop cuts the middlemen out and transfer the extra to drivers then it's a win-win: drivers get more and customers pay the same for a better service because well-paid driver => good service.
- yholio 6y ago
  Underpaid compared to what? If people are willing to do the work to a high professional standard for a certain wage, than that is the right compensation for that job. When you setup arbitrary fair wages above market, you must also somehow protect them from intruders from other fields willing to change jobs and benefit from the higher wages in your field. This is exactly what a co-op ends up doing most of the time - if they don't succumb to a traditional model where the initial members become the owners and the later employees have regular employment contracts.
  - sm4rk0 6y ago
    > Underpaid compared to what? You said: "relatively cheap". Relative to what?
    - 6y ago

otar 6y ago

Good model. Hopefully this will take off and expand to moped drivers as well.

carlio 6y ago
There is a coop for delivery cyclists, started in France I believe - https://coopcycle.org/en/ https://coopcycle.org/en/
- aenario 6y ago
  The interesting thing about coopcycle is that it's actually a coop of coops : Several local delivery coops (say one per city) collaborate to fund development and hosting of the software solution.

gerardnll 6y ago

I love seeing this in USA. Cooperatives are great, power to the workers.

DocTomoe 6y ago

We have a ride hailing app for traditional cabs in Germany. The reason why I still preferred Uber is that once you travel around (remember when we still did that?), you don't want an app per location and memorize which app is valid for which geographic region - Uber is virtually global.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

Hopefully women can vote as well... And why all the downvotes now?

ThePhysicist 6y ago

In Germany we have some really large organizations that are organized as cooperatives (Genossenschaften), e.g. banks (Volksbanken/Raiffeisenbanken) but also tech companies like DATEV eG that build software for their members (tax accountants in that case) and make close to 1 BN€ in revenue. So it can work.

luckylion 6y ago
DATEV feels like a government apparatus straight from the 80ies though, I don't think that's a good example. It's slow and expensive, feels very bureaucratic. A good example are housing coops though. They work rather efficiently, have not turned into bureaucratic monsters, and provide housing to their members at sub-market rates (at least in the larger cities), while still being profitable and usually paying ~4% as a dividend.
- ThePhysicist 6y ago
  Yeah but to be fair they're basically implementing German tax law as a software product, it's a miracle it even works in the first place :D

jwr 6y ago

This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.

tomjen3 6y ago
Uber provides discoverbility, ratings and a feeling of safety.
- bwilli123 6y ago
  A 'feeling' doesn't guarantee any more than that.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  From my experience in many places drivers actually use multiple apps at the same time. This means that there's less and less of a distinction between the safety, ratings etc. of each individual app.
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  Ratings is an easy to use and game feature (fun fact often harmful to drivers of color) that costs almost nothing to build. The feeling of safety was flatter Uber had a bunch of rapes that forced them to pretend that they cared, spend is very small on it.
nabla9 6y ago
App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.
- aaxa 6y ago
  You could say the same with Just-Eat. In Denmark, I know they have a markup up to 15%, even though they have a lot of competition. So honestly, I am a bit sceptical if we will see a much lower markup. One might hope though.

domano 6y ago

I wonder how this would influence autonomous taxi services. Maybe there is a financial possibility to finance retraining of drivers while the industry shifts to autonomous rides in the future. This would ease adoption while not discarding drivers as disposable resources.

m_ke 6y ago

Here’s a recent interview with them https://youtu.be/VykTBPKwYnA https://youtu.be/VykTBPKwYnA I’ve been considering starting a software coop to build open source versions of these middleman gig work services for a while. Would anyone on here be interested in joining one? With so many well paid engineers I’m also surprised that there’s not more coop based tech startups in the states.

beaconstudios 6y ago
Developers are well paid in the US because of VC and monopoly backed business models. To go coop is to abandon those options, one explicitly and one implicitly.
- m_ke 6y ago
  What I meant by well paid was that most engineers who spent a few years at FAANGs have 6 figures in savings and can use some of that capital to kickstart a cooperative without needing venture funding. A coop could absolutely become a monopoly in a market. The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy English speaking country that’s the launching point for most ventures before global expansion.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    perhaps California developers talk a big game but don't put their money where their mouth is? I would expect the same bootstrapping of cooperatives but it doesn't really happen. I think cooperatives would struggle to gain a monopoly holding because they're not as ruthless as investor-driven companies. They tend to treat their workers fairly and focus on quality of life, over relentlessly pursuing high quarterly growth targets. That's a very good thing for the employees and probably the customers too, but makes the company less competitive. > The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy country that’s the launching point for most ventures before global expansion. If that were the case then developers all over the US would make bank. They don't; only in startup-focused areas like the Bay Area and NYC. It's the same here in the UK, you can make a ton of money if you work in London for hyper-capitalist companies, but outside of London most developers are making 40-60k max. Which is still good for the UK, but not the 6 figure incomes that even shit-tier developers can make in California.

justinzollars 6y ago

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. I'm not sure this is true. Neither Uber or Lyft makes any money. They lose money for Wall Street.

alberth 6y ago

This makes a lot of sense and there’s past precedent to indicate they can be successful. Ocean Spray (juice company) is exactly this, a coop. Farmers about a 100 years ago came together to form their own juice company to share in the profits. Coops make a ton of sense if you’re providing a commodity good or service. Eg cranberries are essentially the same and are not differentiated by definition. You could argue being a driver is similar. https://www.oceanspray.com/Our-Story https://www.oceanspray.com/Our-Story

tacostakohashi 6y ago

This website is very scant on details like their bylaws and financial statements. What often happens with these kinds of things is that there's a co-operative or charity that is worker/member owned / tax exempt and stuff, and they have an agreement with a "management company" or license some white label product from a separate, privately owned, for-profit company. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but depending on the relative size and negotiating power of the co-op vs the vendor(s), at some point the co-op ends up being a front for some for-profit entity.

elcortez 6y ago

I really admire these kind of experiments, and hopefully it'll work out for them. However it seems that people vastly underestimate how hard it is to run a business like Uber. You have to take care of handling a complex demand/supply ratio, geolocation, fraud management, a seamless payment system, tax rates, etc. etc. Hopefully these initiatives will produce meaningful value locally all around the world, contributing to a more decentralized Internet.

tootie 6y ago
I had a handful of go-to car services in NYC prior to Uber/Lyft. Just put their numbers in speed dial, talk to a dispatcher and the car is there in 10 minutes or less. And they were doing this with a handful of people who barely speak English out of a garage in central Brooklyn. Running a global business is hard, but providing services to 1000 local businesses isn't.

pluc 6y ago

Great photo where nobody wears their mask properly

nhoughto 6y ago

It’s a nice idea, can’t imagine they can match the UX polish lyft and Uber deliver, which is what users expect now. What other examples are there of do-it-for-the-cause tech plays working out? Interestingly i imagine a not insignificant amount of effort from Uber etc goes into combating drivers “bad” behaviors, the co-op model might align incentives to reduce this cost.

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dfgdghdf 6y ago

Good luck to them! How does it work in terms of ownership? Can anyone buy a stake? Do you need to drive to earn shares? Can someone drive for a bit, then generate passive income from the shares? Will drivers get bought out by financial interests over time?

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Is it just me or does this sound like purely a marketing strategy hiding the actions of a few opportunists who will receive outsized rewards? At least Uber and Lyft are honest about being greedy capitalists.

scotttrinh 6y ago

A lot of the comments here seem to think this has to become the next Uber, but it really doesn't. It just needs to sustain the cooperative workers and provide a service at whatever scale makes sense for them and our community (speaking as a NYC resident) and that will be success. Heck, it doesn't even need to be the only cooperative like this! They could federate this and it still is more ethical and equitable then the current system. Bravo. Let's do food delivery next!

foxhop 6y ago

In this video the drivers coop and Chompsky makes an appearance at about minute 53 https://www.facebook.com/aman.bardia/videos/10225290239547220 https://www.facebook.com/aman.bardia/videos/1022529023954722...

praveen9920 6y ago

While it is great to see drivers disrupting the space, one particular aspect is might be missing. Uber/Lyft or any ride hailing company kind of acts as an mediator between driver and rider. If there is any issue between driver and rider, ride hailing apps provide certain "guarantees" for both in terms of experience and financials which might be more biased towards drivers in this initiative.

yawnxyz 6y ago

i'm surprised Blablacar (in Europe) hasn't made it over to the US yet — the most "disruptive" part about it is that people can set their own prices. Also, it's for "long haul" drives, like from the airport into the city, or between cities

runeks 6y ago
I never understood why Uber doesn’t allow drivers to set their own price.

kbos87 6y ago

It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and friendly to the people actually delivering the services. Getting initial traction with riders, and adequately investing in trust & safety strike me as the two hardest parts up front. On the flip-side, they should benefit from less regulatory scrutiny, and less pressure from investors vs. the heavily funded players like Uber & Lyft. I'm rooting for them and hope to see this go somewhere.

njoubert 6y ago
The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  A local coop doesn't have to go worldwide to be meaningful. Not all businesses shall grow indefinitely. If they can get a core customer base and hold it steady, it'd be much more valuable and impressive over time. They try to make a living, not to dominate the world for money.
  - fractionalhare 6y ago
    If you're competing in a winner-take-all market, it is very difficult to compete without shooting for domination. I don't know if digital ride hailing is a winner-take-all market, but there's pretty compelling evidence it could be. But I also don't think that commenter is disagreeing with you - when they say huge value, they're probably gesturing towards the fact that consumers will generally use whatever the most convenient and recognizable brand is. It will be hard for the coop to achieve a core customer base which allows them to survive if everyone gets off the plane and uses Uber instead of looking for the local coop.

t7s 6y ago

It would be interesting if this service could be provided 100% browser based. No app install needed.

sukruh 6y ago

Cool. One trap worker-owned companies often fall into is to neglect investing into risky/long-term projects and as a result fall behind the industry. When the choice is 2x salary for 3 years or some R&D investment one does not fully grasp, many individual members choose the former.

TeeWEE 6y ago

People are paying for a service to go from A to B, whether that's a driver bringing them or a robocar, it doesn't really matter. As long as the service is good. Money being made on the service should go back in making the service better. These cooperatives often miss that point. They are not product centric.

mromanuk 6y ago

wow, this is wonderful, SaaS for the people and not exploiting or selling their information! I'm in awe. It feels like open source, what other industries can be disrupted, in this with help from devs?

aerosmile 6y ago

I would rather be dead in a ditch than set foot in one of their cars. Because I expect it would be basically the same thing. Their website has thousands of words about how horrible Uber and Lyft are, but not one word about how they are going to approach trust and safety. I really hope there's an experienced labor marketplace executive in the room who knows anything about this business, rather than a bunch of drivers who decided to run one of the riskiest operations for personal safety that one can imagine (there's a reason why parents don't allow their kids to get into cars with strangers).

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mitchdoogle 6y ago
The world is not so dangerous as you imagine it to be. A stranger approaching a child and offering a ride is a dangerous situation. Adults hailing a car through an advertised driving service is not. You might as well be scared to walk out your front door as well.
- aerosmile 6y ago
  I wish you were right. But if you spend a minute talking to people who work in trust and safety at those companies, you'll want to give them a hug.

chrismorgan 6y ago

On the Google Play Store, they have app IDs com.driver.coop and com.rider.coop. I figure these should be coop.drivers.driver and coop.drivers.rider. This suggests to me that Google aren’t verifying domain ownership in app IDs, which I find a tad surprising. I had just assumed they would, and thus that you could trust that apps on the Google Play Store with IDs like com.example.foo or io.github.example.foo were actually from whoever ran example.com and example.github.io. That sounds like a mild phishing opportunity (only mild because I doubt most ever notice app IDs).

yunohn 6y ago
Play Store IDs use the "domain" style naming scheme, purely as a relic of Android apps being written in Java. Neither Java nor Play Store have ever mandated domain checking, and the IDs are up to the developer.

vijaypatil 6y ago

Hi all, I have been toying this very idea for consulting. Several people with niche experience can come together and from a global consulting co-op. I wonder what you think.

msoad 6y ago

I tried downloading and signing up for the driver app on iOS. The quality of the apps are very very low. There are some grammar mistakes in the labels that makes me think the app is made by non English speakers. The phone number placeholder was specially weird. It was using a phone number from Iran in the placeholder! I hope this works out but as all of us in the software industry know, making good software is time consuming and expensive. I'm not sure with low ride volume and not VC money they can afford building a good iPhone app.

specialist 6y ago

Neat. Responses, in no particular order. Yay for co-ops, WDSEs, not-for-profits. Is that what this is? I expect stuff like charter, bylaws, list of board members, budget, etc. (Vs post-capitalist agitprop.) Here's Richard Wolff's popular treatment of this trend: https://www.democracyatwork.info https://www.democracyatwork.info For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management Efforts like this validate the observations that ride hailing has no moat. Eventually, we'll have white labeled ride hailing hosting companies. So you're a specialty transport group in Cincinnati, eg for elderly and wheelchair bound customers. You get your own branded and slightly customized version for your niche. The hosting companies do all the tech.

chendii 6y ago

Coops FTW

itake 6y ago

I am curious how they tackle safety issues within the coop. Uber, Lyft, and other big players have teams of engineers improving the safety of the platform (e.g. banning duplicate accounts of bad actors, banning people from re-creating accounts, identifying and removing fraud). I'm skeptical that the team behind the drivers.coop could deliver a fair and scalable safe service for both the riders and drivers. For example: 1. Uber verifies drivers have face masks before starting shifts with ML. 2. Some/all companies have ML route deviation algorithms to warn the passenger if the driver is not following the correct route. 3. Toxic language detection. Rideshare companies want to flag drivers and passengers that are not communicating nicely. 4. Crash detection. If the phone detects a crash, the ride share company can automatically connect them with emergency operates to ensure everyone is ok.

snicker7 6y ago
A coop is just another corporation, just with a different ownership model. This means they will likely have to hire engineers, customer service, business analysts, lobbyists, an executive team, &c. None of your examples is unachievable with a coop. The main blocker is initial capital acquisition.
- itake 6y ago
  All of these things are expensive to build, but achievable when you operate in many cities or countries. I am not seeing how a handful of drivers in NYC could fund the infrastructure and talent required to deliver these types of features that passengers have grown accustomed to.

shp0ngle 6y ago

Part of the problem is that developing and maintaining these applications is expensive. Not just the technical part, but also all the operations (all the customer care and lawyers and mapping and...) Uber and Lyft are still losing money, VCs are pumping capital there daily. How can driver coop survive? Where do they take the money for all that? Sure they don’t need to go all Uber and scale into 500 microservices, but still it’s not easy... I wish them good luck, but I also don’t think they will succeed against Masa Son deep pockets.

st_t 6y ago

I read recently an article that claims the Driver’s Co-op is “fighting Uber’s model” —but, having talked with most TDC’s key players, I believe what’s good for Uber is good for them too. Fighting Uber’s model means three things: 1) replacing its app and network of contractors, 2) abolishing its third parties selling services to drivers like selling shovels to gold miners, and 3) strengthening state and federal labor laws giving workers wage protections and right to a union. The Driver’s Coop may do 1, but they have resisted 2 and 3. At most, I believe they are friendly competition to Uber, not yet the fighter that the labor and cooperative movements need. But/and I think the Driver’s Co-op to do better.