3 ms·

Assuming you're correct, it's painful to consider the amount of effort and money that was wasted simply because investors missed this basic insight.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
Its going to be fun when people dissect this era of tech. Like Uber - $33B in investor cash. $0 in operational profit. The promise was always scale. Yet, now that it’s time to show profits, Uber has had to pull back from markets and reduce its scale.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The thing with Uber that I don't really get is this. Once it became obvious to pretty much everyone that it wasn't already obvious to that door-to-door autonomous driving wasn't going to happen in an economically interesting time horizon, why didn't Uber's board do something about it. Sure, they cut back on those investments. But they didn't otherwise make the changes needed to get Uber to profitability given that nothing else was going to fundamentally change. Wasn't the logical thing to ramp prices up and let the chips fall where they would in terms of ridership and viability in various markets? I get that Uber brought a better taxi service to quite a few markets. But as an Uber board member, I wouldn't really care.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Uber has quit a few markets like China and SE Asia that it was losing money hand over first in. And prices have been increasing. My impression is that they sort of staked things on a pivot to UberEats, though that looks like a bust too.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Its an open secret in the Indian startup space that they’ve been looking to exit India as well. Indian ridesharing is in a weird place where both parties in the duopoly are unwilling to dominate the market. Uber is trying to exit, Ola is focusing its efforts on a (failing) e-scooter startup.
    - ricudis 4y ago
      Uber in SE Asia mostly lost their game to Grab and Gojek, the premier local competitors. They fare quite well, even now. Especially in Singapore, where ridershare services allow many car owners to recoup a part of the extremely high costs of owning a car there.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    My impression (from very far away, I don't have any kind of contact with them) is that Uber is based on a fundamentally bad informatics structure that has a very high operational costs. Those now can only be reduced by the same kinds of competent decision-making that would have lead to an structure with low operational costs at the first time.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    Uber had a really good innovation with their app but other taxi companies started to roll out their own and at that point Uber had to compete on cost.
londons_explore 4y ago
Investors didn't miss it. They were betting that: * There was a core of customers willing to pay super high delivery costs to pay for the lack of efficiencies in the network. In some markets, there are quite a large number of people prepared to pay substantial premiums for convenience. * Or... When they had a decent core of business, they could do a merger with companies doing slower delivery and therefore have a network with a mix of goods priorities. For example, a merger/deal with USPS could have them deliver your '10 minutes' groceries, and at the same time have the same worker bring the mail for your house and for the rest of the street. That way the worker effectively isn't doing any more work than the USPS worker would have been doing anyway, although it is scheduled to happen at a time determined by the highest priority items (the groceries), and costs are dramatically lowered.
- robbiep 4y ago
  Using USPS is a terrible example for a otherwise good hypothetical VC M&A/Partnership roll up
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Amazon did ramp down Prime Now and Fresh in a lot of German cities. I don't kniw, but if Amazon tried two different approaches for eCommerce fulfillmebt and wasn't utterly convinced with either one it is telling you something. On an other note, depsite my start-up having failed Amazon is now rolling out a similar product: opening up FBA for third party marketplaces. They are not moving as fast as they used to, but still faster than anyone else. And they are moving a juggernaught. No idea how thatbstill works after all those years...

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Its going to be fun when people dissect this era of tech. Like Uber - $33B in investor cash. $0 in operational profit. The promise was always scale. Yet, now that it’s time to show profits, Uber has had to pull back from markets and reduce its scale.

ghaff 4y ago
The thing with Uber that I don't really get is this. Once it became obvious to pretty much everyone that it wasn't already obvious to that door-to-door autonomous driving wasn't going to happen in an economically interesting time horizon, why didn't Uber's board do something about it. Sure, they cut back on those investments. But they didn't otherwise make the changes needed to get Uber to profitability given that nothing else was going to fundamentally change. Wasn't the logical thing to ramp prices up and let the chips fall where they would in terms of ridership and viability in various markets? I get that Uber brought a better taxi service to quite a few markets. But as an Uber board member, I wouldn't really care.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Uber has quit a few markets like China and SE Asia that it was losing money hand over first in. And prices have been increasing. My impression is that they sort of staked things on a pivot to UberEats, though that looks like a bust too.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Its an open secret in the Indian startup space that they’ve been looking to exit India as well. Indian ridesharing is in a weird place where both parties in the duopoly are unwilling to dominate the market. Uber is trying to exit, Ola is focusing its efforts on a (failing) e-scooter startup.
  - ricudis 4y ago
    Uber in SE Asia mostly lost their game to Grab and Gojek, the premier local competitors. They fare quite well, even now. Especially in Singapore, where ridershare services allow many car owners to recoup a part of the extremely high costs of owning a car there.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  My impression (from very far away, I don't have any kind of contact with them) is that Uber is based on a fundamentally bad informatics structure that has a very high operational costs. Those now can only be reduced by the same kinds of competent decision-making that would have lead to an structure with low operational costs at the first time.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Uber had a really good innovation with their app but other taxi companies started to roll out their own and at that point Uber had to compete on cost.

londons_explore 4y ago

Investors didn't miss it. They were betting that: * There was a core of customers willing to pay super high delivery costs to pay for the lack of efficiencies in the network. In some markets, there are quite a large number of people prepared to pay substantial premiums for convenience. * Or... When they had a decent core of business, they could do a merger with companies doing slower delivery and therefore have a network with a mix of goods priorities. For example, a merger/deal with USPS could have them deliver your '10 minutes' groceries, and at the same time have the same worker bring the mail for your house and for the rest of the street. That way the worker effectively isn't doing any more work than the USPS worker would have been doing anyway, although it is scheduled to happen at a time determined by the highest priority items (the groceries), and costs are dramatically lowered.

robbiep 4y ago
Using USPS is a terrible example for a otherwise good hypothetical VC M&A/Partnership roll up
- hef19898 4y ago
  Amazon did ramp down Prime Now and Fresh in a lot of German cities. I don't kniw, but if Amazon tried two different approaches for eCommerce fulfillmebt and wasn't utterly convinced with either one it is telling you something. On an other note, depsite my start-up having failed Amazon is now rolling out a similar product: opening up FBA for third party marketplaces. They are not moving as fast as they used to, but still faster than anyone else. And they are moving a juggernaught. No idea how thatbstill works after all those years...