Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
Shoe,
Why do you think that Uber should move away from SDC? Kalanick has expressed his interest in the subject for years. They've spent a large sum acquiring some of the brightest minds in the field and it is critical to their business plan. (They will have profitable unit economics with SDC and basically no path to it without.)
n00b has explained this over and over, raising costs on rides would have the exact opposite fact you think it would (as shown per the results of decreasing the cost per ride).
They pretty much have to stick with it now since they staked their future on it, I still think they should focus on becoming profitable now as they have the user base to be, they just need to stop subsidizing everything just like DFS over-subsidized everything as well. I do think it was incorrect for them to make that their focus from the start instead of just revolutionizing the industry with drivers like they have already done. They have zero excuse for not being extremely profitable already, other than the desire to burn as much venture capital as possible in the name of unlimited growth forever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ToothSayer
Yeah I think we have to defer to Uber's pricing decisions here. They may be wackos, but the people running the company are the opposite of idiots.
Their engineers are very smart, their management has yet to prove themselves to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
It is clearly a commodity service and not premium. I can't possibly think of how it is a premium to literally any other substitute.
Agreed, however, it is clearly a premium service now and has been for some time. They have/had a huge edge that no one else will catch them on soon, including Lyft who has trouble gaining traction. Having a huger user base (of both drivers and customers) is still a moat in itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
They have by far the most valuable userbase, so ya.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ToothSayer
The userbase is so "valuable" that they have to pay them (and lose vast sums of money) to keep them.
The user base is extremely valuable, that doesn't mean they are not also paying too much right now trying to continue to expand it indefinitely. Their user base of both drivers and customers is a moat as another service cannot just pop up and have the same success. Lyft has been trying, some cities have another service that gets a few users, but no one else has been able to gain nearly as much traction. Just like anyone could make another website as good as facebook, nothing is going to replace facebook anytime soon.
Uber is in a sweet spot where they have a premium service and huge market share at the same time, they should be capitalizing on that right now. If they are banking on self-driving cars to become profitable they are not being realistic. We still don't know when self-driving cars will be a reasonable option (many cities/states will ban them even if they prove themselves viable) or if consumers will even prefer them over having a driver.