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>> My advice to Uber? Slow down. Figure out what the other side is about, and I mean all about, good and bad. I agree with most of what you said, except for th

by rpm4321 14y ago

>> My advice to Uber? Slow down. Figure out what the other side is about, and I mean all about, good and bad. I agree with most of what you said, except for this. They are in the land grab phase. If they don't continue to expand aggressively, someone will eat their lunch, ala Groupon. My advice is for them to take some serious funding, and start cutting checks to lobbyists, PR, and god forbid, politicians. Play the game. I feel horrible saying it, given that it helps feed the machine, but it's their only option to build a truly disruptive business in an area that needs disrupting mainly because of regulation and bureaucracy. Google and Microsoft both learned this lesson too late, and it's hurt them both dearly.

chernevik 14y ago
That strategy is doomed politically. Sound political strategy is a mix of rhetoric, pr, and institutional advocacy. The last would be especially true in something like this. Even if "corruption" were the whole story here -- and it is not -- it would be beyond simplistic to imagine it could be met by cash payments to the proper pockets. This board routinely laughs at idiot corporations attacking technology problems with mass expenditure. Well, this is a similar sort of problem. There is no "land grab" here. This is not a technology problem. There will some day be network dispatched cabs. For Uber the question is will they survive to be part of that architecture, or will it be built up around their mistakes.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that the political process is purely transactional and that they can just throw money at the problem, but from all of the mainstream coverage I've read on Uber - and all of the quotes attributed to various politicians and regulators contained therein - it's clear that they are currently losing the political war. As you yourself stated, they are clearly in the right, but that's no guarantee of victory. Extensive PR and lobbying, while not a cure all, could go a long way towards rectifying that imbalance. Regarding the land grab, I really disagree. They already have a handful of domestic competitors cropping up, and I wasn't even aware of that Hailo company that objclxt mentions above, which sounds pretty formidable. If they sit around doing a bunch of navel gazing on the nature of the political process and civil discourse, they are toast.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - rpm4321 14y ago
      Yeah, I think we fundamentally agree that they haven't paid nearly enough attention to the political end of things. I guess I just have trouble seeing how you can effectively grow a startup at half speed. PG recently wrote a very persuasive article on growth being pretty much the only metric that matters for a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, and the accepted model seems to be break-neck growth at all cost. Granted the minefield-like political/regulatory environment may make this a special circumstance, and I definitely understand and respect your reasoning, but I still have trouble seeing "slow and steady" as Uber's path to victory.
      - chernevik 14y ago
        Didn't mean to leave you hanging -- I deleted the comment you replied to b/c I felt I was going on too long on this. Yeah, deliberately slowing down does seem outside the expected startup model. If it is true that they must grow at breakneck speed, and that they must dramatically improve their political positioning, they may have found themselves in a coffin corner. But is pg looking at sustained growth as a necessary condition of startup success? Or as the best heuristic for assessing startup health amid lots of uncertainty? If the latter then particular cases merit inspection. Uber has proved its market. The political issues are obviously strategic. There is no one way to win and they should think hard about applying conventional startup thinking to their own position.
chimeracoder 14y ago
> If they don't continue to expand aggressively, someone will eat their lunch, ala Groupon. Groupon had no competitive advantage, barriers to entry, or economies of scale. If anything, they had a competitive disadvantage due to merchants' impressions of their brand (versus others), and diseconomies of scale, because of the Ponzi-like business model which has been discussed elsewhere on HN. Uber has a major competitive advantage in that they already have drivers on the road. That's not everything, but it's a lot.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Obviously Groupon's situation isn't a perfect parallel, but with lots of competitors smelling blood in the water and circling a nascent, rapidly growing, revenue positive, high profile market, it seemed apt. Also, regarding barriers to entry, Groupon and its competitors felt the need to hire all those sales reps and writers to put together deals. They may have been able to scale more efficiently, but all those hires were certainly a barrier to entry, to say nothing of their exorbitant land grab marketing budgets. Also, I think the Ponzi scheme rhetoric is way overblown. You could argue that its investors were sold an over-hyped bill of goods, but Groupon's core product was/is sound. If they can scale down their head count a bit, maintain market share with only a maintenance marketing budget, and hopefully expand into local ecommerce, they can still do well. It just might not be a 30 billion dollar business. Finally, Uber has gone from a near standstill to disrupting a major industry in record time, with almost no experience in the industry. As other commenters have pointed out, one of Uber's chief competitors is now Hailo, a rapidly growing service built by people with tons of industry experience and connections. I don't really see insurmountable barriers to entry here for their competitors, especially given that Uber's detractors would argue that its main competitive advantage has been to simply thumb its nose at what should have been its own barrier to entry: regulation.

by rpm4321 14y ago

chernevik 14y ago

That strategy is doomed politically. Sound political strategy is a mix of rhetoric, pr, and institutional advocacy. The last would be especially true in something like this. Even if "corruption" were the whole story here -- and it is not -- it would be beyond simplistic to imagine it could be met by cash payments to the proper pockets. This board routinely laughs at idiot corporations attacking technology problems with mass expenditure. Well, this is a similar sort of problem. There is no "land grab" here. This is not a technology problem. There will some day be network dispatched cabs. For Uber the question is will they survive to be part of that architecture, or will it be built up around their mistakes.

rpm4321 14y ago
I didn't mean to imply that the political process is purely transactional and that they can just throw money at the problem, but from all of the mainstream coverage I've read on Uber - and all of the quotes attributed to various politicians and regulators contained therein - it's clear that they are currently losing the political war. As you yourself stated, they are clearly in the right, but that's no guarantee of victory. Extensive PR and lobbying, while not a cure all, could go a long way towards rectifying that imbalance. Regarding the land grab, I really disagree. They already have a handful of domestic competitors cropping up, and I wasn't even aware of that Hailo company that objclxt mentions above, which sounds pretty formidable. If they sit around doing a bunch of navel gazing on the nature of the political process and civil discourse, they are toast.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    Yeah, I think we fundamentally agree that they haven't paid nearly enough attention to the political end of things. I guess I just have trouble seeing how you can effectively grow a startup at half speed. PG recently wrote a very persuasive article on growth being pretty much the only metric that matters for a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, and the accepted model seems to be break-neck growth at all cost. Granted the minefield-like political/regulatory environment may make this a special circumstance, and I definitely understand and respect your reasoning, but I still have trouble seeing "slow and steady" as Uber's path to victory.
    - chernevik 14y ago
      Didn't mean to leave you hanging -- I deleted the comment you replied to b/c I felt I was going on too long on this. Yeah, deliberately slowing down does seem outside the expected startup model. If it is true that they must grow at breakneck speed, and that they must dramatically improve their political positioning, they may have found themselves in a coffin corner. But is pg looking at sustained growth as a necessary condition of startup success? Or as the best heuristic for assessing startup health amid lots of uncertainty? If the latter then particular cases merit inspection. Uber has proved its market. The political issues are obviously strategic. There is no one way to win and they should think hard about applying conventional startup thinking to their own position.

chimeracoder 14y ago

> If they don't continue to expand aggressively, someone will eat their lunch, ala Groupon. Groupon had no competitive advantage, barriers to entry, or economies of scale. If anything, they had a competitive disadvantage due to merchants' impressions of their brand (versus others), and diseconomies of scale, because of the Ponzi-like business model which has been discussed elsewhere on HN. Uber has a major competitive advantage in that they already have drivers on the road. That's not everything, but it's a lot.

rpm4321 14y ago
Obviously Groupon's situation isn't a perfect parallel, but with lots of competitors smelling blood in the water and circling a nascent, rapidly growing, revenue positive, high profile market, it seemed apt. Also, regarding barriers to entry, Groupon and its competitors felt the need to hire all those sales reps and writers to put together deals. They may have been able to scale more efficiently, but all those hires were certainly a barrier to entry, to say nothing of their exorbitant land grab marketing budgets. Also, I think the Ponzi scheme rhetoric is way overblown. You could argue that its investors were sold an over-hyped bill of goods, but Groupon's core product was/is sound. If they can scale down their head count a bit, maintain market share with only a maintenance marketing budget, and hopefully expand into local ecommerce, they can still do well. It just might not be a 30 billion dollar business. Finally, Uber has gone from a near standstill to disrupting a major industry in record time, with almost no experience in the industry. As other commenters have pointed out, one of Uber's chief competitors is now Hailo, a rapidly growing service built by people with tons of industry experience and connections. I don't really see insurmountable barriers to entry here for their competitors, especially given that Uber's detractors would argue that its main competitive advantage has been to simply thumb its nose at what should have been its own barrier to entry: regulation.