|
aware of dog posted:Hey, I was gonna use that name for my app for guys to find JO buddies < This is already patented by my firm ruber.
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2017 21:02
|
|
>
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 11:47 |
|
|
aware of dog posted:Hey, I was gonna use that name for my app for guys to find JO buddies < see if you can get jobro.co
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2017 21:50
|
|
|
Waymo is suing Uber because they stole all their designs. Waymo is a Google company and Google has invested at least $250 million in Uber.quote:In 2016, Uber bought a six-month old startup called Otto and appointed its founder (a former employee on our self-driving car project) as its head of self-driving technology. At the time, it was reported that Otto’s LiDAR sensor was one of the key reasons Uber acquired the company. https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and-uber-86f4f98902a1#.po5kx8lp4
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:43
|
|
|
Uber has to be over right? A massive boycott, an impending sex discrimination lawsuit, and now corporate espionage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:46
|
|
|
Who's suing them for discrimination?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:49
|
|
|
Uber will be fine, nobody cares about this stuff enough to pay a slight premium for a taxi
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:49
|
|
|
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/23/14716680/uber-harassment-scandal-kapor-investor-vc-response Investors are getting pissed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:52
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:Who's suing them for discrimination? That story about their culture of ignoring sexual harassment and retaliating against complaints. I'm not saying its a sure thing but once one story gets out other victims come out of the woodwork. call to action posted:Uber will be fine, nobody cares about this stuff enough to pay a slight premium for a taxi But people don't pay a premium they actually get a discount because of the way Uber treats its employees and the access to VC money. If the investors turn off the fire hydrant of cash Uber might need to raise prices and people do care about that. Dmitri-9 fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Feb 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:52
|
|
|
Oh. Those suits are unfortunately really hard and really painful to bring, and damaging to women's careers. I'm sure people are poking around, but I'd be surprised if anyone brought a credible suit. Maybe an exec who can point to millions in lost comp when she was driven out or something. Would be good to see, though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 00:56
|
|
|
call to action posted:Uber will be fine, nobody cares about this stuff enough to pay a slight premium for a taxi That's not who matters, who matters are the people who would be providing this year's $3 billion to light on fire. Since nearly every ride incurs massive losses for Uber and all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 01:00
|
|
|
Is there a history of VCs caring about this, when most people agreed that the profitable thing to do would be to stay invested?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 01:07
|
|
|
fishmech posted:That's not who matters, who matters are the people who would be providing this year's $3 billion to light on fire. Since nearly every ride incurs massive losses for Uber and all. Does uber actually lose money on rides, or is their take insufficient to cover their bloated overhead?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 01:09
|
|
|
Spazzle posted:Does uber actually lose money on rides, or is their take insufficient to cover their bloated overhead? They place a massive subsidy on ride costs in the vast majority of markets where they operate, directly losing money on each ride. You don't lose billions a year from the "overhead" that exists in what Uber does.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 01:15
|
|
|
call to action posted:Is there a history of VCs caring about this, when most people agreed that the profitable thing to do would be to stay invested? It's hard for most VCs to do things that don't maximize fund returns, unless they have provisions in the LP agreement giving them latitude. It's hard, and not impossible, but the less industry-powerful the VC is or the weaker the returns of the rest of their fund, the less wiggle room they'll have with the LPs. But more than that, they may legally have no choice but to stay invested. Many subscription agreements have no-resale clauses. (Uber is reputed to have very dirty paper, so who really knows.) And of course a VC selling it to another VC or PE firm or sovereign wealth fund doesn't really hurt Uber in any way. VCs might decide they don't want to be part of subsequent rounds, but I think the next round is likely to be on the public markets. They're holding $10B in cash, they don't need to go back for more.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 01:23
|
|
|
fishmech posted:They place a massive subsidy on ride costs in the vast majority of markets where they operate, directly losing money on each ride. So why do people still value Uber so highly? Mass delusion? Or because they're hoping they'll gain market share?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 02:14
|
|
|
Spazzle posted:Does uber actually lose money on rides, or is their take insufficient to cover their bloated overhead? uber only collects something like 45% of what they pay to the driver from fares, the rest is from VC Ccs posted:So why do people still value Uber so highly? Mass delusion? Or because they're hoping they'll gain market share? capital has a big problem now where there are few high growth industries to meet the demand for investors who want to grow their money rapidly, leading to many stupid gambles (as well as socially horrible things like privatizing public infrastructure)
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 02:17
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:capital has a big problem now where there are few high growth industries to meet the demand for investors who want to grow their money rapidly, leading to many stupid gambles (as well as socially horrible things like privatizing public infrastructure) Ah ha. Well, that definitely explains the speculative bubbles in real estate and tech that have been cropping up all over the world.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:05
|
|
|
I've got a simple way to get rid of all this excess capital: raise taxes. Call it "investing in the government" to avoid the T-word.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:10
|
|
|
but private citizens are obviously much better at using money than the government
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:12
|
|
|
Ccs posted:So why do people still value Uber so highly? Mass delusion? Or because they're hoping they'll gain market share? boner confessor posted:capital has a big problem now where there are few high growth industries to meet the demand for investors who want to grow their money rapidly, leading to many stupid gambles (as well as socially horrible things like privatizing public infrastructure) that and the idea of uber is a good one, they just went full-bore Ayn Rand with it instead of working with the existing taxi infrastructure and finding ways to bring in occasional drivers as well. They might survive if autonomous cares weren't so far away, but until we figure out how to get them to stop running over bicycles and dogs that ain't happening.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:14
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:uber only collects something like 45% of what they pay to the driver from fares, the rest is from VC
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:16
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:But more than that, they may legally have no choice but to stay invested. Many subscription agreements have no-resale clauses. (Uber is reputed to have very dirty paper, so who really knows.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:26
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:that and the idea of uber is a good one, they just went full-bore Ayn Rand with it instead of working with the existing taxi infrastructure and finding ways to bring in occasional drivers as well. Autonomous cars are worse than useless for Uber's business model. They'd need to actually pay to maintain such a fleet, and they wouldn't be cheap either. Alternately, they'd need to somehow find a ton of people able to afford or even finance significantly more expensive cars yet willing to work for Uber's low pay. There are of course a bunch of random weirdos with fancy expensive cars who do uber drives as a hobby to show off said fancy cars, but you can't actually run the business off them as there just aren't that many.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 03:33
|
|
|
yeah uber would be making money now if they just sold their app as a service which replaced extant taxi companies dispatchers and did the hailing / map tracking etc. stuff autonomous cars though directly conflict with uber's current business model and it's just a sort of distant horizon goal to keep up with investor storytime
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:04
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:yeah uber would be making money now if they just sold their app as a service which replaced extant taxi companies dispatchers and did the hailing / map tracking etc. stuff Uber probably wouldn't even exist if it was built as a service for existing taxi infrastructure. It wouldn't have been a sexy enough idea to ever get off the ground.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:13
|
|
|
nachos posted:Uber probably wouldn't even exist if it was built as a service for existing taxi infrastructure. It wouldn't have been a sexy enough idea to ever get off the ground. it wouldn't be a huge household name but you can definitely turn a buck selling software as a service to existing companies
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:27
|
|
|
fishmech posted:Autonomous cars are worse than useless for Uber's business model. Then how the gently caress are they going to survive? They can't loss-leader their way to success, people won't work for the wages they'd need to pay to survive and the users won't put up with the prices going up much farther.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:28
|
|
|
You forget that Uber was actually a booking front end for existing black car chaffeir services when it first started out. Ride sharing came much later and actually was a pivot to deal with Lyft, if I recall. There's no reason it couldn't have started by working with real taxi services other than that having a sedan show up during the pitch impresses a VC a hell of a lot more than a taxi.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:30
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Then how the gently caress are they going to survive? They can't loss-leader their way to success, people won't work for the wages they'd need to pay to survive and the users won't put up with the prices going up much farther. You're beginning to get it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:32
|
|
|
Baby Babbeh posted:You forget that Uber was actually a booking front end for existing black car chaffeir services when it first started out. Ride sharing came much later and actually was a pivot to deal with Lyft, if I recall. Ride sharing didn't come until last year. Just because they called their taxi service ride sharing didn't make it so.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:35
|
|
|
I think he means UberX not Uber Pool
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:37
|
|
|
Hell, they could've kept the rides for fancy people part and expanded to booking work for the existing taxi infrastructure as a separate thing. Tech companies are so loving annoying. Bring back the 90% tax rate on the top income bracket and all these problems would solve themselves.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:37
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Then how the gently caress are they going to survive? They can't loss-leader their way to success, people won't work for the wages they'd need to pay to survive and the users won't put up with the prices going up much farther. they aren't going to survive, uber is doomed they tried to force enough of a market share to be able to jack their rates i guess but really their whole business model is hosed this is kind of what amazon did, sucessfully, except amazon invested in physical infrastructure and uber tried to play the employee/contractor shell game boner confessor fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Feb 24, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:47
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Then how the gently caress are they going to survive? They can't loss-leader their way to success, people won't work for the wages they'd need to pay to survive and the users won't put up with the prices going up much farther. If they are going to survive its by not doing 90% of the stuff they do now and somehow managing to revert to the old business model, charging normal prices, and consequently losing a lot of customers (but since the vast majority of their current customers lose them money, that's not such a bad thing). It's very unclear how they could do that at this point. I don't think the current investor ownership can allow that to happen, so it'll probably collapse on itself.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 04:53
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:they aren't going to survive, uber is doomed Amazon never jacked their rates exactly, they just ate up enough market to play the Walmart game and gently caress over distributors instead. I don't even understand where there could be an endgame like this for Uber.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:00
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:Notably, Lyft is not present in my Chicago-sized city, part of a 6M-person metropolitan area. I bet you have plenty of legal transportation options though, such as busses and cabs.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:02
|
|
|
Dr. Fishopolis posted:Amazon never jacked their rates exactly, they just ate up enough market to play the Walmart game and gently caress over distributors instead. I don't even understand where there could be an endgame like this for Uber. driving taxi companies out of business which wasn't going to happen so long as there were a hojillion different jurisdictions granting taxi monopolies which is why uber tried framing themselves as dismantling obsolete local bureaucracies
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:02
|
|
|
fishmech posted:If they are going to survive its by not doing 90% of the stuff they do now and somehow managing to revert to the old business model, charging normal prices, and consequently losing a lot of customers (but since the vast majority of their current customers lose them money, that's not such a bad thing). It's very unclear how they could do that at this point. That's the thing, Best Buy was able to loss-leader all the local record stores out of business in the 90's, but that was before the internet and amazon. They also created the artificially low price for CDs that ended with a massive class-action suit over it. uber wasn't able to do the same thing and without that they couldn't possibly survive. People that never used taxis before are happy to use uber and it's done great things like help keep drunks off the road, but those same people aren't going to accept prices doubling or tripling since this is all they know about the taxi experience. Hopefully this whole thing ends up with significant spending on public transit, but I'm not holding my breath.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:24
|
|
|
it also would've been nice if the employee status issue got in the courts and we ended up with significant new protections for workers and restrictions on what can and can't be a contract job. Probably wouldn't have happened with the new administration anyway.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 11:47 |
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:That's the thing, Best Buy was able to loss-leader all the local record stores out of business in the 90's, but that was before the internet and amazon. They also created the artificially low price for CDs that ended with a massive class-action suit over it. honestly it demonstrates the market for taxi demand to taxi companies who previously were less sensitive to demand. i got pretty frustrated with taxis after i'd call them and they'd show up half the time because some convention was in town and all the regular drivers would be going from the airport to downtown and back. it would be like if there were only so many pizza places in town and you'd call on a saturday night to get a pizza sunday morning but then uber invents 30 minutes or less. that's big, but also nothing unique. one of the ride sharing companies is going to figure out how to do it the right way without screwing people more than is socially acceptable
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2017 05:32
|
|