Charitably I think it exists because VCs assume that economies of scale are more profitable and there is a difficult scaling problem here (connecting N customer

Charitably I think it exists because VCs assume that economies of scale are more profitable and there is a difficult scaling problem here (connecting N customers to M service providers where N vacillates wildly based on time of week, weather, etc). Money is still pretty close to free as real rates are close to zero. As soon as inflation subsides I expect rates to come down again. But anyway I think the connection between interest rates and app economies is tenuous at best. We've never had a period with high real rates as well as high smartphone penetration so we don't know for sure, but I think technology will continue marching on and people with money will keep trying to develop new ways to tackle old problems.