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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 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.
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    Winner take all can be regional, though, with different winners in every city. Look at the phone companies, for example. For taxis, drivers already use multiple apps. What could happen here is that drivers keep driving for uber, but advertise for the better paying app with everyone who gets into their car. Then all the local riders switch over to the coop app, and the drivers still driver uber a bit for the it of towners
- treis 6y ago
  I still can't quite grasp why local governments haven't taken the hint and reworked their local bus systems. Uber&Lyft have shown how much better app and on demand service is. But we're still circulating buses and spending billions on heavy rail.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    I don't think buses and rail systems should be phased out in cities. In every city I've seen, buses and rail carry a lot of people in a much more cleaner and efficient manner. Most, if not all rail is electric. Buses are transitioning to electric in Europe. Geneva has a very nice battery-less (supercap based) bus fleet which carry a lot of people continuously. No car based transportation can reach the same density. Taxi has its uses (speed, precise location, etc.), but is no replacement for mass transportation.
    - treis 6y ago
      Few places need the theoretical density that buses provide and even less need the level that rail provides. Most of the time they're running at 10-20% capacity. Or at least that's what happens in my city. I'm not talking about taxis. Something shuttle bus or van sized. We don't need to put 200 cars worth of people in trains to solve traffic issues. Putting 200 cars of people into 30 shuttle buses is good enough.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        > Most of the time they're running at 10-20% capacity. That's not what I've seen in Amsterdam, Geneva, Stockholm, Barcelona, Istanbul and my hometown. They work at least 30% capacity all day long, and when the demand is low, the bus numbers drop in all lines, but you never wait more than ~15 minutes for a new one, in most lines. They also reduce the number of trains on rail systems when the demand is low. > Something shuttle bus or van sized. We don't need to put 200 cars worth of people in trains to solve traffic issues. It's not a traffic issue. In modern Europe, it's not about solving the traffic. The governments focus on providing ways people to reach where they want. When you enable it, people doesn't crave for their cars, they use the cheapest and most practical way. In Barcelona, you're almost always walking distance from a underground station so, you don't need a car most of the time. In my city, due to its geography, it's not possible to have an underground network that dense (at least where I live) and my office is not on a easy to reach place via public transport. If it was the opposite, I'd happily leave my car at home, but I can't. OTOH, all the public transit lines are working at least 50% capacity all day long, carrying people around the city, and in some places you can literally go from door-to-door using public transit only.
frereubu 6y ago
Uber is not used exclusively by international jetsetters.
clarkevans 6y ago
Cooperatives can expand by cooperating with other cooperatives -- a bunch of local cooperatives might nest to form a regional one, etc. Those regional ones could form a federation with a single identity for global operations. So, this problem can be addressed by cooperatives, it's just a different kind of structure that distributes power locally -- with centralized power deriving from the bottom up, by the membership of localized cooperatives. The organizational challenge for expansion is how to avoid administrative capture: how to keep centralized infrastructure controlled by localized entities. I don't think this "franchise" challenge has been worked out with platform cooperatives. However, if this NY based cooperative becomes profitable, it could expand to other cities not by getting bigger, but by forking off the operational aspects into a cooperative-of-cooperatives, then, a Chicago driver's cooperative could be a member of this shared operational entity.
- dwater 6y ago
  I've noticed credit unions in the US are like this. They are generally locally operated, but they have formed networks so that you can e.g. go into a branch in Maryland and perform transactions on your account held in Georgia. They have also banded together to develop credit union apps, since banking apps are essentially universal in function. Reaching critical mass for these ride hailing apps would be a challenge, but it is possible.
  - novok 6y ago
    We don't really see coop payment networks in wide use although, and Uber is more like a Visa or Ebay than they are a bank.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Fraud from either side of the transaction is the primary issue payment networks deal with and that makes them a poor fit for coops. Ride sharing apps are very different beasts.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Which suggests non-coop payment networks are more successful in the market. It does not tell us anything about whether they are actually better for anyone.
beckingz 6y ago
An aggregator model would be great here if the major and local platforms provided fair access. SmallTownUberCoOp would provide their offerings via standardized API, which aggregator apps could use and display to anyone. Getting the balance between aggregator and local drivers coop would be hard, because aggregators love to squeeze.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value. I wonder what percentage of people driving on roads are actually the old "jet set", people who travel internationally more than once a year. I'd bet that is actually less than 1% of western populations. I think the real market is locals, people who need rides home when drunk, rather than 1%ers going to and from airports. (I love the irony of people who use uber because "owning a car is evil" and then hop on 1st class airline seats to fly to remote islands. I wonder how often people take ubers to get them to their private jets;)
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  The vast majority of people travelling aren’t jet-set or 1% flying in first - they’re just normal hard-working people flying in economy who happen to have a job that requires them to travel and don't have any choice in that matter if they want to put food on their tables and feed buying their children new shoes.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    The vast majority of people travelling for work aren’t doing so by plane. From the perspective of overland transport, people going to/from airports are the 1%. The 99% are all the people who's jobs don't involve them flying anywhere.
  - samcheng 6y ago
    Maybe COVID will render many of these "must travel for work" use cases obsolete! One can hope...
m_ke 6y ago
There's no reason why we can't have a coop based version of a WeChat like super app with all of these services on a single shared platform. Most people don't get on planes that often so the value of global scale is not something that would prevent them from getting disrupted in a place like NYC. I'd be willing to pay a large premium for gig work if I knew that 95% of it went to the worker and they weren't being exploited by a bunch of clowns in SV.
- basch 6y ago
  I'd argue that standardization at the protocol level benefits almost everyone more than the current paradigms. Any app works with any taxi network. I want to use Lyft as my client, great. I land in a city, and I can ping drivers working for any pool, co-op, or team. WeChat just replaced the AppStore/OS. If each service is its own entity inside WeChat, youve just nested the problem one level down. The client browser should be completely divorced from the rest of the network. There should be an IMAP/HTTP level hailing protocol. You want gmail but I want outlook, great we can still talk to each other.
tootie 6y ago
That's a plus for sure, but I'm betting 99% of rides are local.
sanj 6y ago
Why not both? When I shop for groceries at home I can use the hippy dippy organic bodega. When I’m in an unfamiliar city, I can go to Kroger’s or Aldi. Space on my phone is free!
- icebraining 6y ago
  Exactly! I already keep Uber as a backup, while I use a competitor (Bolt) for most rides. It's not like it's complex software that one has to master.
yt-sdb 6y ago
I live in NYC. I'd be happy to use an app like this the vast majority of the time and then switch to Uber/Lyft when traveling.
mromanuk 6y ago
that's one use case. I'm sure lot of people, translate 90% of the time locally, in their city. Having and trusting a local App has huge value too.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
A huge value for a relatively small amount of people and uber customers. It's also not really very true. Its been a year since I traveled outside of the USA but on my last two international trips Uber was not available in those countries.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
They'll focus on the local customers. I don't know what percentage that is in a touristy city like NY, but surely it's more than half. In my (non-touristy) city, this isn't important. The overwhelming majority of Uber users are locals. Ignoring out of towners will work just fine.
gvb 6y ago
> The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. That and a willingness to subsidize rides to the tune of billions of dollars per year. A coop is going to struggle to provide rides at a "competitive" rate when the competition is paying people to use their services. "For all of 2020, Uber's net losses amounted to $6.77 billion..." Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/uber-earnings-q4-2020-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/uber-earnings-q4-2020-.html
- jfengel 6y ago
  What is causing Uber's losses? The customers are paying money, the drivers are getting only a fraction of it. Are the drivers actually getting more money than the customers are paying? Are Uber's data center and transaction costs really high? Or is it the armies of lawyers and business development people? The basic value proposition of ride share seems viable. If Uber's losses are overhead, maybe somebody can compete.
  - kingnothing 6y ago
    Uber's core rideshare business is net positive. They invest significant money in to other lines of business.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    Yes, the the customers pay more money than the drivers get, but from that difference Uber must pay the salaries of all their software developers, they must pay for infrastructure, they must pay for app development, product managers, hr, etc.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  If you look at Uber financial reports, you’ll see that they earn profit on rides, and their losses are due to their attempts at expansion in other segments. Uber used to subsidize rides a lot, and it still does in some foreign markets where it is trying to get a foothold, but this is not really happening in US anymore.
playpause 6y ago
A single global brand can be an advantage, but I wouldn't be so sure that's the case with a rideshare app, in a city with a strong identity like NYC. In terms of brand positivity, I can see New Yorkers proudly switching to this. (And if Uber retains the "just got off the plane at JFK for the first time" market, so what.) The real question is whether they can compete on price and UX.
subpixel 6y ago
The vast, vast majority of Uber riders never leave their own country.
staticautomatic 6y ago
Does it? What proportion of rideshare users regularly travel internationally?
toast0 6y ago
> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere and get a taxi at the taxi stand, but that never enabled a global company. Airports with local unlicensed taxi services generally have advertising in the airport for arrivals. Installing a new app in each city, and putting in payment information is more hassle (especially if payment options aren't geared towards international visitors), but you do it once per trip, just like the in flight entertainment app.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  >You can get off an airplane just about anywhere and get a taxi at the taxi stand, but that never enabled a global company. Because it didn't streamline the process as much as Uber/Lyft (and the use of internet). It's a big difference when you don't even need to talk to anyone. >but you do it once per trip, just like the in flight entertainment app. And that is enough friction to make Uber/Lyft worth it. The in flight entertainment app has a monopoly. If there was sufficient broadband access on the plane, no one would get the in flight entertainment app either. However, I might download a new local app if I found out the local app's fare were sufficiently cheaper, since the friction of downloading a new app is relatively low.
- killerstorm 6y ago
  With a local taxi stand, you don't know if that would be over-priced, if they accept your card, etc. I've been in a situation where card should accepted in theory, but driver insists on cash, and I'm a kind of a person who doesn't like arguing. Using a global brand which handles shit smoothly is valuable to consumers.
  - satyrnein 6y ago
    Yes, I've encountered so many "broken" credit card readers...
killerstorm 6y ago
It's possible to make an app which works globally and connects you to local coops. For example, it can be done using ... blockchain.
yumraj 6y ago
Sure, but I’ll bet that that is only a small part of the business. Most of riders, I’ll say 90-95% in large cities are residents, (just a guess not based in real data) which fits very well with coop model.
jellicle 6y ago
The thing you describe as valuable... isn't. The idea of someone who spends Monday in Madrid, Tuesday in NYC, Wednesday in Moscow and can't be bothered with too many apps is just an idea. That person doesn't actually exist. There is zero value to you for Uber serving other random cities around the world that you will never visit. Serving NYC is easily a large enough market to be successful. Serving a borough would be.
dv_dt 6y ago
But then Uber also has to setup the meta-structure operationally to actually legally and financially operate in all those jurisdictions and that incurs a higher cost overhead than a local coop.
gnopgnip 6y ago
But can the drivers move to another country?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

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.
- sdenton4 6y ago
  Winner take all can be regional, though, with different winners in every city. Look at the phone companies, for example. For taxis, drivers already use multiple apps. What could happen here is that drivers keep driving for uber, but advertise for the better paying app with everyone who gets into their car. Then all the local riders switch over to the coop app, and the drivers still driver uber a bit for the it of towners
treis 6y ago
I still can't quite grasp why local governments haven't taken the hint and reworked their local bus systems. Uber&Lyft have shown how much better app and on demand service is. But we're still circulating buses and spending billions on heavy rail.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  I don't think buses and rail systems should be phased out in cities. In every city I've seen, buses and rail carry a lot of people in a much more cleaner and efficient manner. Most, if not all rail is electric. Buses are transitioning to electric in Europe. Geneva has a very nice battery-less (supercap based) bus fleet which carry a lot of people continuously. No car based transportation can reach the same density. Taxi has its uses (speed, precise location, etc.), but is no replacement for mass transportation.
  - treis 6y ago
    Few places need the theoretical density that buses provide and even less need the level that rail provides. Most of the time they're running at 10-20% capacity. Or at least that's what happens in my city. I'm not talking about taxis. Something shuttle bus or van sized. We don't need to put 200 cars worth of people in trains to solve traffic issues. Putting 200 cars of people into 30 shuttle buses is good enough.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      > Most of the time they're running at 10-20% capacity. That's not what I've seen in Amsterdam, Geneva, Stockholm, Barcelona, Istanbul and my hometown. They work at least 30% capacity all day long, and when the demand is low, the bus numbers drop in all lines, but you never wait more than ~15 minutes for a new one, in most lines. They also reduce the number of trains on rail systems when the demand is low. > Something shuttle bus or van sized. We don't need to put 200 cars worth of people in trains to solve traffic issues. It's not a traffic issue. In modern Europe, it's not about solving the traffic. The governments focus on providing ways people to reach where they want. When you enable it, people doesn't crave for their cars, they use the cheapest and most practical way. In Barcelona, you're almost always walking distance from a underground station so, you don't need a car most of the time. In my city, due to its geography, it's not possible to have an underground network that dense (at least where I live) and my office is not on a easy to reach place via public transport. If it was the opposite, I'd happily leave my car at home, but I can't. OTOH, all the public transit lines are working at least 50% capacity all day long, carrying people around the city, and in some places you can literally go from door-to-door using public transit only.

frereubu 6y ago

Uber is not used exclusively by international jetsetters.

clarkevans 6y ago

Cooperatives can expand by cooperating with other cooperatives -- a bunch of local cooperatives might nest to form a regional one, etc. Those regional ones could form a federation with a single identity for global operations. So, this problem can be addressed by cooperatives, it's just a different kind of structure that distributes power locally -- with centralized power deriving from the bottom up, by the membership of localized cooperatives. The organizational challenge for expansion is how to avoid administrative capture: how to keep centralized infrastructure controlled by localized entities. I don't think this "franchise" challenge has been worked out with platform cooperatives. However, if this NY based cooperative becomes profitable, it could expand to other cities not by getting bigger, but by forking off the operational aspects into a cooperative-of-cooperatives, then, a Chicago driver's cooperative could be a member of this shared operational entity.

dwater 6y ago
I've noticed credit unions in the US are like this. They are generally locally operated, but they have formed networks so that you can e.g. go into a branch in Maryland and perform transactions on your account held in Georgia. They have also banded together to develop credit union apps, since banking apps are essentially universal in function. Reaching critical mass for these ride hailing apps would be a challenge, but it is possible.
- novok 6y ago
  We don't really see coop payment networks in wide use although, and Uber is more like a Visa or Ebay than they are a bank.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Fraud from either side of the transaction is the primary issue payment networks deal with and that makes them a poor fit for coops. Ride sharing apps are very different beasts.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    Which suggests non-coop payment networks are more successful in the market. It does not tell us anything about whether they are actually better for anyone.

beckingz 6y ago

An aggregator model would be great here if the major and local platforms provided fair access. SmallTownUberCoOp would provide their offerings via standardized API, which aggregator apps could use and display to anyone. Getting the balance between aggregator and local drivers coop would be hard, because aggregators love to squeeze.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value. I wonder what percentage of people driving on roads are actually the old "jet set", people who travel internationally more than once a year. I'd bet that is actually less than 1% of western populations. I think the real market is locals, people who need rides home when drunk, rather than 1%ers going to and from airports. (I love the irony of people who use uber because "owning a car is evil" and then hop on 1st class airline seats to fly to remote islands. I wonder how often people take ubers to get them to their private jets;)

chrisseaton 6y ago
The vast majority of people travelling aren’t jet-set or 1% flying in first - they’re just normal hard-working people flying in economy who happen to have a job that requires them to travel and don't have any choice in that matter if they want to put food on their tables and feed buying their children new shoes.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  The vast majority of people travelling for work aren’t doing so by plane. From the perspective of overland transport, people going to/from airports are the 1%. The 99% are all the people who's jobs don't involve them flying anywhere.
- samcheng 6y ago
  Maybe COVID will render many of these "must travel for work" use cases obsolete! One can hope...

m_ke 6y ago

There's no reason why we can't have a coop based version of a WeChat like super app with all of these services on a single shared platform. Most people don't get on planes that often so the value of global scale is not something that would prevent them from getting disrupted in a place like NYC. I'd be willing to pay a large premium for gig work if I knew that 95% of it went to the worker and they weren't being exploited by a bunch of clowns in SV.

basch 6y ago
I'd argue that standardization at the protocol level benefits almost everyone more than the current paradigms. Any app works with any taxi network. I want to use Lyft as my client, great. I land in a city, and I can ping drivers working for any pool, co-op, or team. WeChat just replaced the AppStore/OS. If each service is its own entity inside WeChat, youve just nested the problem one level down. The client browser should be completely divorced from the rest of the network. There should be an IMAP/HTTP level hailing protocol. You want gmail but I want outlook, great we can still talk to each other.

tootie 6y ago

That's a plus for sure, but I'm betting 99% of rides are local.

sanj 6y ago

Why not both? When I shop for groceries at home I can use the hippy dippy organic bodega. When I’m in an unfamiliar city, I can go to Kroger’s or Aldi. Space on my phone is free!

icebraining 6y ago
Exactly! I already keep Uber as a backup, while I use a competitor (Bolt) for most rides. It's not like it's complex software that one has to master.

yt-sdb 6y ago

I live in NYC. I'd be happy to use an app like this the vast majority of the time and then switch to Uber/Lyft when traveling.

mromanuk 6y ago

that's one use case. I'm sure lot of people, translate 90% of the time locally, in their city. Having and trusting a local App has huge value too.

Taylor_OD 6y ago

A huge value for a relatively small amount of people and uber customers. It's also not really very true. Its been a year since I traveled outside of the USA but on my last two international trips Uber was not available in those countries.

kspacewalk2 6y ago

They'll focus on the local customers. I don't know what percentage that is in a touristy city like NY, but surely it's more than half. In my (non-touristy) city, this isn't important. The overwhelming majority of Uber users are locals. Ignoring out of towners will work just fine.

gvb 6y ago

> The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops. That and a willingness to subsidize rides to the tune of billions of dollars per year. A coop is going to struggle to provide rides at a "competitive" rate when the competition is paying people to use their services. "For all of 2020, Uber's net losses amounted to $6.77 billion..." Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/uber-earnings-q4-2020-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/uber-earnings-q4-2020-.html

jfengel 6y ago
What is causing Uber's losses? The customers are paying money, the drivers are getting only a fraction of it. Are the drivers actually getting more money than the customers are paying? Are Uber's data center and transaction costs really high? Or is it the armies of lawyers and business development people? The basic value proposition of ride share seems viable. If Uber's losses are overhead, maybe somebody can compete.
- kingnothing 6y ago
  Uber's core rideshare business is net positive. They invest significant money in to other lines of business.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  Yes, the the customers pay more money than the drivers get, but from that difference Uber must pay the salaries of all their software developers, they must pay for infrastructure, they must pay for app development, product managers, hr, etc.
xyzzyz 6y ago
If you look at Uber financial reports, you’ll see that they earn profit on rides, and their losses are due to their attempts at expansion in other segments. Uber used to subsidize rides a lot, and it still does in some foreign markets where it is trying to get a foothold, but this is not really happening in US anymore.

playpause 6y ago

A single global brand can be an advantage, but I wouldn't be so sure that's the case with a rideshare app, in a city with a strong identity like NYC. In terms of brand positivity, I can see New Yorkers proudly switching to this. (And if Uber retains the "just got off the plane at JFK for the first time" market, so what.) The real question is whether they can compete on price and UX.

subpixel 6y ago

The vast, vast majority of Uber riders never leave their own country.

staticautomatic 6y ago

Does it? What proportion of rideshare users regularly travel internationally?

toast0 6y ago

> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value. You can get off an airplane just about anywhere and get a taxi at the taxi stand, but that never enabled a global company. Airports with local unlicensed taxi services generally have advertising in the airport for arrivals. Installing a new app in each city, and putting in payment information is more hassle (especially if payment options aren't geared towards international visitors), but you do it once per trip, just like the in flight entertainment app.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
>You can get off an airplane just about anywhere and get a taxi at the taxi stand, but that never enabled a global company. Because it didn't streamline the process as much as Uber/Lyft (and the use of internet). It's a big difference when you don't even need to talk to anyone. >but you do it once per trip, just like the in flight entertainment app. And that is enough friction to make Uber/Lyft worth it. The in flight entertainment app has a monopoly. If there was sufficient broadband access on the plane, no one would get the in flight entertainment app either. However, I might download a new local app if I found out the local app's fare were sufficiently cheaper, since the friction of downloading a new app is relatively low.
killerstorm 6y ago
With a local taxi stand, you don't know if that would be over-priced, if they accept your card, etc. I've been in a situation where card should accepted in theory, but driver insists on cash, and I'm a kind of a person who doesn't like arguing. Using a global brand which handles shit smoothly is valuable to consumers.
- satyrnein 6y ago
  Yes, I've encountered so many "broken" credit card readers...

killerstorm 6y ago

It's possible to make an app which works globally and connects you to local coops. For example, it can be done using ... blockchain.

yumraj 6y ago

Sure, but I’ll bet that that is only a small part of the business. Most of riders, I’ll say 90-95% in large cities are residents, (just a guess not based in real data) which fits very well with coop model.

jellicle 6y ago

The thing you describe as valuable... isn't. The idea of someone who spends Monday in Madrid, Tuesday in NYC, Wednesday in Moscow and can't be bothered with too many apps is just an idea. That person doesn't actually exist. There is zero value to you for Uber serving other random cities around the world that you will never visit. Serving NYC is easily a large enough market to be successful. Serving a borough would be.

dv_dt 6y ago

But then Uber also has to setup the meta-structure operationally to actually legally and financially operate in all those jurisdictions and that incurs a higher cost overhead than a local coop.

gnopgnip 6y ago

But can the drivers move to another country?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]