There have been lots of threads around pros/cons of Uber. After this post I am signing out for good. To win the future of ride sharing requires: 1) consumer brand and trust 2) L5 autonomy 3) operations expertise with physical assets Google has 1 and (soon) 2. They will have to develop/acquire/partner for 3. My guess is that they either partner or acquire. They have already made investment to get an inside track. I am not convinced Lyft is the right acquisition as Lyft doesn’t have physical operations expertise. Amazon has 1 and 3 and are world class in both. If you are following Amazon, they have been working on 2 for years, but not shared much publicly. Autonomy will be important as they are also one of the largest players in logistics. Uber has 1. And would need to develop/acquire/partner for 2 or 3. The failed acquisition of Otto set the company back about 2 years. AL was a total mess. Also, don’t underestimate the complexity of owning and managing a fleet of cars. I talked through with TK. He agreed and I decided to leave because I didn’t want to invest any more of my time in Uber given the odds. The senior team knows this which is why so many top people are choosing not to re-up. This is unnatural for a company that is supposedly heading to a world class IPO. It is also why they are having a hard time filling top positions (notably CFO). <eom>
Time to join doordash
Sarcasm?
What do you mean by L5 autonomy? L5 employees having autonomy to make decisions?
This is why Uber and Lyft RSUs should be counted as a grain of salt when calculating TC. You never know when these companies will IPO if they even IPO or get bought out. You could end up holding a bag of paper shares worth nothing after 4 years of hard work. In that 4 years of time you could have made a million dollars working at a FANGT company.
Uber has 1 and 3 and a very good chance of being 2nd or 3rd player in 2.
Bits are very different than atoms. Xchange Leasing was a first attempt to get involved more deeply on the asset side. It did not go well as you may remember ... Amazon is light years ahead of both Google and Uber. Google may be even more clueless than Uber in this regard.
Exchange leasing was done naively to support ridesharing instead of managed as a business unto itself. As companies with expertise in fleets like Enterprise and Hertz continue to lose share value, you’ll see their best hired by Uber to build and manage fleets. It wouldn’t take but 2-3 years to learn and scale. Just look at Eats, which is now the largest food delivery service after three years.
I made a similar thread and all the Uber guys roasted me
Fantastic post. Do you think Amazons operation expertise accounts for anything in the automotive industry? Also, everyone agrees that Waymo is ahead. But, isn't Uber next? They have the academic expertise from CMU. The other companies in L5 like Cruise, Lyft are probably behind Uber? Should Uber be dejected at this point?
Cruise is definitely ahead of Uber. In “some” aspects they are even ahead of waymo.
Operations expertise at massive scale is going to be a real complexity. Amazon is ahead of everyone there. Amazon will also build this as a platform (like AWS) and run not only their own products: last mile, Whole Foods, ride share on it. They will also open it up to everyone else. Being able to combine deep operations expertise with superior utilization will make Amazon a very formidable competitor. They can also enter late since they can start with their existing products before getting into ride sharing.
I don’t think ridesharing/shared mobility is a winner take all market and it has taken uber and lyft the greater part of the decade to garner customer trust (1) and operations expertise/presence (3). Case in point: Even now Android is a distant second in terms of profits though the google phone came out less than a year or so after the first iphone did. Lets not get carried away here. Yes waymo is still miles ahead in self driving.. but whoever thinks they are at L5 is not knowledgable of what autonomous driving will take. Even waymo’s own top dog, Chris Urmson, left his role to start his own self driving startup. Cruise automation is also already pretty close to where Waymo is and considered to be a close #2. To reach where waymo is doesn’t take much time now since the algorithms are known (google it.. even sacha arnoud, their head of sw agrees) and data is all you need for those algorithms to work right which in that case uber/lyft/tesla have lots of, maybe even more than waymo. Achieving scale is what’s needed.. and yes scale in atoms not bits.. then maybe tesla/gm might be closer than waymo. Uber/lyft have scale of their own as far as real rideshared cars on their network..
I think the purpose of Android was never to make money.
I’d be more concerned about their existing business being disrupted by competition than whether or not they can become an autonomous car player. They have barely any technical moat and their drivers/users would gladly jump ship if a competitor can provide better value.
It just seems like an industry where the middleman (Uber/Lyft) could become unnecessary long before human drivers do.
He’s actually implying lyft/uber can loose their drivers and market (customers) the moment someone gives a better deal to both.. not sure if that can happen overnight or within a year or two..
He’s also suggesting that uber won’t compete in other ways in those markets to maintain its category position.
Tech Industry
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Whom do you prefer as your Manager?
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A lot of people here serve money and not God
AMA
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Cheated on husband - AMA - closed
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Its truly heartbreaking, I can’t work. I can’t focus, isn’t there anyone who can convince Israel to stop Raffah invasion
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Please accept Indians. I can’t go back. 🇺🇸🙏
Disagree that Uber has consumer trust.
You might be right. My experience is that people in tech overestimate the negative sentiment toward Uber. Most people have never heard of Susan Fowler. Dara is doing the right thing to rebuild the brand. I love that he removed forced arbitration. Keep it up. However, I don’t think he can fix the core strategic issues in time.