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Imagine having a competitor receiving billions to take over the market, no oversight. They can afford to operate at a loss long after all competitors are bankru

Imagine having a competitor receiving billions to take over the market, no oversight. They can afford to operate at a loss long after all competitors are bankrupt. Competing against them would be foolish. To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation?, or imagine they 5-10 the price, not like you have alternatives. Sure, the taxis were crappy as alternative, but that was mostly due to limited number coming from regulation, they had no need to compete either.

ivan_gammel 4y ago
> Competing against them would be foolish. In default country maybe. Companies like InDriver, Didi, Yandex, Gett, Taxi Maxim clearly show that you can launch a competitor and grow for many years, eventually outcompeting American startups which then abandon the markets they don’t consider of high importance (see Uber-Yandex deal). Somehow SoftBank managed to invest in companies that work on highly competitive markets and do not have any innovative breakthroughs to defend their position. Creating an app is certainly not a breakthrough nowadays, you need to optimize the core of the business, which remains labor- or resource intensive. Uber tried to invest in self-driving vehicles, but that happened too early. In the end the winners in transportation will be the fleet management branches of automotive giants like VW, when they will start rolling out their solutions on the streets. Similar thing will happen to delivery. Companies like WeWork will grow organically (even if they begin like startups — last investor will loose the money).
panick21_ 4y ago
> To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation? Some other competitor that would gladly replace them. The still existing local car services? Public transportation? I worked for a European competitor before Uber and there were tons of taxi and car services that were already in operation. It was just not centralized in one app. And for most people that mostly stay in 1 city its totally fine. Uber really is mostly useful if you travel a whole lot. Sure the price might be higher because is no longer subsidized by Soft Bank but that's not bad, that's simply paying a fair price.
trombone5000 4y ago
But many countries have anti-trust regulations that take effect once competition is reduced to a certain level. If a company like Uber can be divided into multiple Ubers that have to compete with each other, then the over-investment by venture capitalists can still be turned into a societal win.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Competing against them would be foolish Lyft does fine, as does Didi. Revel, an upstart in New York, is expanding.

ivan_gammel 4y ago

> Competing against them would be foolish. In default country maybe. Companies like InDriver, Didi, Yandex, Gett, Taxi Maxim clearly show that you can launch a competitor and grow for many years, eventually outcompeting American startups which then abandon the markets they don’t consider of high importance (see Uber-Yandex deal). Somehow SoftBank managed to invest in companies that work on highly competitive markets and do not have any innovative breakthroughs to defend their position. Creating an app is certainly not a breakthrough nowadays, you need to optimize the core of the business, which remains labor- or resource intensive. Uber tried to invest in self-driving vehicles, but that happened too early. In the end the winners in transportation will be the fleet management branches of automotive giants like VW, when they will start rolling out their solutions on the streets. Similar thing will happen to delivery. Companies like WeWork will grow organically (even if they begin like startups — last investor will loose the money).

panick21_ 4y ago

> To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation? Some other competitor that would gladly replace them. The still existing local car services? Public transportation? I worked for a European competitor before Uber and there were tons of taxi and car services that were already in operation. It was just not centralized in one app. And for most people that mostly stay in 1 city its totally fine. Uber really is mostly useful if you travel a whole lot. Sure the price might be higher because is no longer subsidized by Soft Bank but that's not bad, that's simply paying a fair price.

trombone5000 4y ago

But many countries have anti-trust regulations that take effect once competition is reduced to a certain level. If a company like Uber can be divided into multiple Ubers that have to compete with each other, then the over-investment by venture capitalists can still be turned into a societal win.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> Competing against them would be foolish Lyft does fine, as does Didi. Revel, an upstart in New York, is expanding.