7 ms·

By the measure of growth and market penetration, Uber has been successful. By the measure of establishing a globally operating business that employs thousands

By the measure of growth and market penetration, Uber has been successful. By the measure of establishing a globally operating business that employs thousands of people, Uber has been successful (mostly). By the measure of establishing a profitable business we might argue that they likely will never achieve that. If you look at their SEA competitors who already earlier on introduced financial debt as a tool to create merchant stickiness (to phrase it kindly), their fall from grace was much harsher.

oblio 5y ago
> By the measure of establishing a profitable business we might argue that they likely will never achieve that. A "profitable business" was what we'd call a business, back in the day. Companies weren't able to last 5-10 years of losses.
- jsemrau 5y ago
  I would argue that they only survived their post IPO valuation because stock markets have been artificially propped up. Interestingly only 25% of shareholders are retail vs 75% institutional.
criddell 5y ago
> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Uber is being disrupted by for example Bolt, which is their frugal Estonian competitor. An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market. They had a couple of years as the the top dog making everyone install an app but due to the huge overhead got undercut. This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit archaic but I could finance a car and start driving within a month. From what I've heard the only way to make a profit is to be a business owning about 50 cars which are staffed 24/7 and on top owning your own service workshops. It's extremely cutthroat.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Yeah if you do the math you end up realizing you need to run the cars like airlines run planes - damn near continuously. Idle time is non paid time, and you need to keep everything moving. The real advantage of self driving taxis isn’t going to be the self driving, it’s going to be the 24 hour/day shifts they can pull.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      That doesn't really work for taxis. No matter how much you want to distribute rides across the whole day, no discount is going to be able to get people to commute to work at midnight - most of your rides will happen around 9am and 5pm. So many taxis will have to spend a good chunk of the day idle. With self-driving taxis, at least you're not paying human drivers for some of this idle time (which Uber doesn't either AFAIK, but traditional taxis do). This is in contrast to air travel, where with the right discounts you can get people to fly at inconvenient times of day.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        I think most of rides by volume will be around weekend and special holidays. But even then limited 2h-4h slots, around bar opening and closing times. Having enough supply for these peaks will be impossible to make work.
  - criddell 5y ago
    When Uber and Lyft left Austin briefly to protest the driver background check requirement, it took no time at all for a bunch of alternatives to pop up.
    - harambae 5y ago
      What are some? (Not doubting, just curious) In Russia and some other countries there are cheaper competitors. In Phuket (circa 5 years ago) there were way worse replacements. Thailand had managed to keep Uber out of the tourist areas for many years with their local taxi cartel.
- Firmwarrior 5y ago
  I've been trying to figure this out for the last few months.. Uber isn't THAT complicated on the technical side. The driver/rider matchmaking is simpler than algorithmic trading code I've worked on, and I'm happy to take 1% on a trade in that space, yet Uber and Lyft are helping themselves to 30% or more. I was personally thinking it'd be great to offer an Uber competitor that aims for complete transparency with no frills, like the Craigslist to Uber's Amazon/Ebay. Maybe charge $5 + 5% for matchmaking the rider with the driver if they use the app for payment, or free if the passenger pays with cash. I've heard a lot of horror stories about Lyft charging riders surge prices while paying normal prices to drivers, various apps stealing tips, etc. I haven't tossed my MacBook into my carpet bag and run back to my hometown just yet, though, since I assumed there must be some good reason this hasn't already been done. Maybe it costs Uber $500 to background check and onboard a driver, or they eat 10% in credit card chargebacks, or something else I don't understand since I'm just a code monkey
  - xeromal 5y ago
    The one thing that might make it harder to figure out the scale is that literally every market (city, state, country) has different regulations and that is not simple to manage.
    - jsemrau 5y ago
      Regulations that they, at least initially, mostly ignored until they started to become banned in many jurisdictions.
  - skobovm 5y ago
    The complexity is not the depth of the problem, but rather the scope. Matchmaking — while complicated — is a very small subset of the domain. Pricing, demand forecasting, routing, payments, etc. are all equally important on the pax side. Similarly, there are many teams needed to support the overall ecosystem for things like driver onboarding, compliance, and support. Also comparing a 1% return to a 30% charge isn’t exactly fair. Fixed costs like background checks aside, chargebacks, fraud, insurance, support claims, incentives among others warrant the markup
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  Uber has always struck me as something of an engineer's sandbox. They hire too many engineers who build (and re-build) over-engineered solutions, and who are paid a lot. They have thousands of microservices for example.

oblio 5y ago

> By the measure of establishing a profitable business we might argue that they likely will never achieve that. A "profitable business" was what we'd call a business, back in the day. Companies weren't able to last 5-10 years of losses.

jsemrau 5y ago
I would argue that they only survived their post IPO valuation because stock markets have been artificially propped up. Interestingly only 25% of shareholders are retail vs 75% institutional.

criddell 5y ago

> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.

Gwypaas 5y ago
Uber is being disrupted by for example Bolt, which is their frugal Estonian competitor. An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market. They had a couple of years as the the top dog making everyone install an app but due to the huge overhead got undercut. This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit archaic but I could finance a car and start driving within a month. From what I've heard the only way to make a profit is to be a business owning about 50 cars which are staffed 24/7 and on top owning your own service workshops. It's extremely cutthroat.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Yeah if you do the math you end up realizing you need to run the cars like airlines run planes - damn near continuously. Idle time is non paid time, and you need to keep everything moving. The real advantage of self driving taxis isn’t going to be the self driving, it’s going to be the 24 hour/day shifts they can pull.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    That doesn't really work for taxis. No matter how much you want to distribute rides across the whole day, no discount is going to be able to get people to commute to work at midnight - most of your rides will happen around 9am and 5pm. So many taxis will have to spend a good chunk of the day idle. With self-driving taxis, at least you're not paying human drivers for some of this idle time (which Uber doesn't either AFAIK, but traditional taxis do). This is in contrast to air travel, where with the right discounts you can get people to fly at inconvenient times of day.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I think most of rides by volume will be around weekend and special holidays. But even then limited 2h-4h slots, around bar opening and closing times. Having enough supply for these peaks will be impossible to make work.
- criddell 5y ago
  When Uber and Lyft left Austin briefly to protest the driver background check requirement, it took no time at all for a bunch of alternatives to pop up.
  - harambae 5y ago
    What are some? (Not doubting, just curious) In Russia and some other countries there are cheaper competitors. In Phuket (circa 5 years ago) there were way worse replacements. Thailand had managed to keep Uber out of the tourist areas for many years with their local taxi cartel.
Firmwarrior 5y ago
I've been trying to figure this out for the last few months.. Uber isn't THAT complicated on the technical side. The driver/rider matchmaking is simpler than algorithmic trading code I've worked on, and I'm happy to take 1% on a trade in that space, yet Uber and Lyft are helping themselves to 30% or more. I was personally thinking it'd be great to offer an Uber competitor that aims for complete transparency with no frills, like the Craigslist to Uber's Amazon/Ebay. Maybe charge $5 + 5% for matchmaking the rider with the driver if they use the app for payment, or free if the passenger pays with cash. I've heard a lot of horror stories about Lyft charging riders surge prices while paying normal prices to drivers, various apps stealing tips, etc. I haven't tossed my MacBook into my carpet bag and run back to my hometown just yet, though, since I assumed there must be some good reason this hasn't already been done. Maybe it costs Uber $500 to background check and onboard a driver, or they eat 10% in credit card chargebacks, or something else I don't understand since I'm just a code monkey
- xeromal 5y ago
  The one thing that might make it harder to figure out the scale is that literally every market (city, state, country) has different regulations and that is not simple to manage.
  - jsemrau 5y ago
    Regulations that they, at least initially, mostly ignored until they started to become banned in many jurisdictions.
- skobovm 5y ago
  The complexity is not the depth of the problem, but rather the scope. Matchmaking — while complicated — is a very small subset of the domain. Pricing, demand forecasting, routing, payments, etc. are all equally important on the pax side. Similarly, there are many teams needed to support the overall ecosystem for things like driver onboarding, compliance, and support. Also comparing a 1% return to a 30% charge isn’t exactly fair. Fixed costs like background checks aside, chargebacks, fraud, insurance, support claims, incentives among others warrant the markup
jackcosgrove 5y ago
Uber has always struck me as something of an engineer's sandbox. They hire too many engineers who build (and re-build) over-engineered solutions, and who are paid a lot. They have thousands of microservices for example.