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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

> Uber is doing fine.

Yes and no, they are in a space which is extremely price competitive. I literally am watching Uber take a dramatic hit in my area right now. Lyft came to town and probably 80% of the drivers solely use them now, driving up the Uber prices.

Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people. Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here and the people think Ubers a snaky company.

I realize this is ancidotal, but everywhere I go (I travel a lot, switching between Uber and lyft), Lyft seems to be more popular among drivers and riders. They simply don't use it because of price/market share. However, adjust the price or driver's and the equation changes.

I honestly still don't see them making it out of their situation.

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I'm not buying that most people use Lyft in your area - passengers or drivers. I believe you think that and your circle of people may also be doing the same, but beyond that, I'm guessing there's a lot of bias. Especially if you're saying everywhere you go Lyft seems to be more popular among riders. It's just not true at all.

For my own anecdote, I'd bet 75% of my FB friends with smartphones within my age range, 21-40, have Uber on their phone or have only ridden Uber. And a fraction of them will have Lyft. Among people I actually know, this is roughly the case, with Lyft being a bit more popular, but that's because of who I am/surround myself with.

As long as we're sharing anecdotes, most of the people I know, parents and young kids included, have made the switch to Lyft starting about 8 months ago. They seem to be the less evil company, so people enjoy working for and using them.

Most of my family and friends exclusively use Uber because of Travis and his values.

What values?

Libertarian

So money, gotcha.

Anecdotally, my aged father (72) uses Uber. Uber has spread pretty well to 3rd world countries and is popular in all the vacation spots.

Some people I know tried to switch to Lyft when all the bad PR on Uber hit, but the prices were higher so either they switched back to Uber or the more passionate ones are now riding the metro again.

I don't know about other cities but in teh Bay Area prices are pretty evenly matched.

Come to think of it, the question of "evil" seems almost irrelevant in the big picture. Even if say Lyft is marginally more ethical than Uber, the end long-term result will still be a fleet of drivers competing against each other in Taylorism mode to be paid a pittance, only to be eventually replaced by automated vehicles.

I wouldn't doubt it, Uber comes preinstalled on most android phones.

Both Uber and Lyft are integrated into Google Maps on Android.

And most likely more ride-sharing companies should be supported (included whatever Waze ends up becoming).

Came pre-installed on my Lumia phone too.

And was the second app, which I deleted. Right after Facebook.

While anecdotes are clearly anecdotal - the entirety of my company has started switching. The constant bad press, and quite frankly the CEO being such a jerk has been enough to get my colleagues to almost universally switch. The cost difference is about 3rd on the list of priorities for most business users.

Just thought I'd point out that, in addition to name calling not being very nice in general, it's particularly in poor taste right now given that the person in question is grieving a family death that happened just this weekend[1]

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/27/technology/uber-travis-kalan...

I didn't know about this, and while it's sad, it doesn't excuse his past actions and in the context of this post it doesn't matter. If the post was about his mother passing, and someone mentioned how much of a jerk he is, that's in much worse taste. Saying it in a comment thread on a post about Uber's loss is not in bad taste.

> Saying it in a comment thread on a post about Uber's loss is not in bad taste.

I dunno. The comment doesn't seem very relevant, being basically one random guy's opinion of what he read on the 'tubes about another guy he probably never met, and extrapolating that to be some sort of argument about the profitability of a company. To me, it just kinda feels like thinly disguised bandwagoning to get internet points.

I recall people making similarly tone deaf comments about Steve Jobs around the time he took time off due to cancer, or Bill Gates in his early philanthropic days. Perhaps this particular case bothers me more than the average person because I've been through the same loss, but I guess as long as one get internet points, poor taste is forgiven?

I wouldn't assume that everyone knows about the death of his mother. I didn't until you posted the article. In this case, the comment was relevant to its parent because the parent was adding an anecdote about the number of people they know who had ridden Uber versus Lyft, and the comment was adding its own anecdote about their workplace/coworkers switching to Lyft.

Like I said, I think it depends on context. In this case, I wouldn't say it's tone deaf to mention the CEO of Uber being one of the main reasons you don't use Uber anymore, unless the article is directly talking about something bad happening to him. For example, if the article about his mom's death got to the front page, and people made comments about how bad of a CEO he is or he's the main reason they don't use Uber, that's not ok.

Fair point. I agree

I'm completely ignorant of all of this but if the CEOs behaviour is part of his reason for changing loyalties as a customer then it seems highly relevant to me. Even if the CEO is a perfect saint, stating their reasoning is valid IMO. If people stop using a company because of the behaviour of a CEO, be the real or merely perceived, that must impact profit and is likely to increasingly do so, no?

Well, the parent commenter is entitled to monetarily support or not support whatever company he wants for whatever reason he wants.

At least from my own perception, the character of the CEO usually doesn't come up as relevant for the people using the platform. On the rider side, it's usually been a matter of how convenient/frustrating their experience with any given platform is, and on the driver side, there's generally no concept of loyalty whatsoever; they just try to be on as many platforms as possible to maximize income.

It's really hard to look at ride sharing apps without being clouded by your own experience. There are likely other people in your town/city who would say most people use uber and 80% of the drivers only drive for uber. It's a weirdly personal experience so its hard to see other peoples point of view which is why we have to rely on statistics like this one that show what's going on without personal experience getting in the way.

> Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people.

Define most people. As far as I could tell Uber has a far bigger user base and market share. So I'm not sure how Lyft could suddenly be used the most.

During the whole #DeleteUber protest it took longer to get an Uber at my house in the bay area. Lyft was quicker for about two weeks. Then it shifted back. Now I can't get a Lyft in under 20 minutes whereas Uber is usually 5-8 minutes away.

My experience is anecdotal but I see no evidence to suggest yours was not as well. If there is something showing Lyft taking over a larger slice of the pie then please post it.

> Lyft came to town

Sounds like the parent is referring to his/her town. It's still anecdotal because surely the parent doesn't have that statistic but it very well may be the case in his/her town.

Hmm. Fair enough, assumed new context from paragraph. Regardless some data would be interesting here as I experienced seemingly the exact opposite. Lyft is essentially useless in my part of the bay area.

> Lyft came to town and probably 80% of the drivers solely use them now, driving up the Uber prices.

Where is this and what facts is this number based on ?

In Australia for example Lyft is simply non existent. And sure it's a smaller market but it demonstrates that Uber's aggressive international expansion strategy is the right one.

> Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady

Pretty libellous, ridiculous and unfair thing to say.

it demonstrates that Uber's aggressive international expansion strategy is the right one.

Does it?

"We lose money on every customer, but we'll make it up in volume" is one of the classic ways to run a business into bankruptcy. Sometimes, taking one's time is the far sounder strategy, even if a hyper-growth competitor is "everywhere" and "dominating" in the eyes of the uninformed public.

They clearly have different objectives. Uber wants to be a huge multinational company, whereas Lyft can only hope to win the US market.

In other words, even Lyft's best case scenario would be a huge step down for Uber.

No amount of "we were briefly a huge multinational" will compensate for a fundamentally unsound business.

Sooner or later the free money is going to run out and Uber is going to have to stop hemorrhaging nearly a billion dollars every quarter. When that day comes they're not going to have a lot of options to stop the bleeding: raising prices and cutting back the markets they operate in are likely to be the first things they do, or are forced to do by investors.

Meanwhile, the way you build a huge multinational is by first figuring out a way to make money and then scaling it to everywhere, not by figuring out how to be everywhere and then realizing "crap, we have to actually turn a profit now".

They are growing revenue faster than their losses and they are profitable in mature markets. That sounds like a fundamentally sound business to me. The cognitive dissonance you're suffering from is the inability to believe that investors will take on losses on the order of a billions of dollars to build a profitable business. Millions of dollars are okay, but changing millions to billions and people are like "that money has to run out eventually". That's not how investors operate. If the opportunity is on the order of billions of dollars as well (maybe trillions), investments of billions of dollars isn't that big in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that the size of the opportunity is large and that revenue grows faster than losses. So long as those two things are true, there will be no lack of investors willing to pony up the money to be on that gravy train.

I do not believe Uber's future value to investors is equal to the amount of money already put into it, let alone orders of magnitude higher (and "trillions" of dollars -- as you suggest -- is laughable).

In a world where Lyft wins the US market, they then have a battle chest for future expansion.

Apparently Uber is already profitable in the US and thus can use that to finance further growth, but nothing is stopping Lyft from going back in that game at a later date. If anything Uber's best strat would probably be to refocus on the US and crush Lyft everywhere, rather than give it the room to breath it needs.

Lyft can't expand outside the US because there are already local competitors. If I'm happy using Grab, why would I bother installing Lyft?

Uber is apparently already profitable in the US. Does anyone know if Lyft is? If it is not, then that would suggest that Lyft is more guilty than Uber of subsidizing rides in order to win market share.

    2016 numbers:

    Lyft Revenue: $700 million
    Lyft Losses: $600 million
    Uber Revenue: $6 billion
    Uber Losses: $2.8 billion

The ratio of revenue to losses suggest that Uber is almost twice as efficient as Lyft, and Uber's losses are probably further compounded as it includes many more future investments such as international markets that aren't yet as mature as the US market, and products/services that for which Lyft has no comparable offering like UberRush and UberEats. Lyft also doesn't have any investment in self-driving cars that I'm aware of.

Uber has a solid worldwide presence. Lyft does not.

You can go into nearly any state and most countries (I think all of the first world countries and a bunch of second world ones too) and book an Uber.

As long as that stays true and Uber continues to grow outside of the US, Lyft doesn't stand a chance.

If Lyft could light up worldwide scale right now, they absolutely would have. Something is holding them back. It's likely new rideshare laws that Uber spawned due to it having first mover advantage.

Disclosure: I am a Lyft user and deleted my Uber account.

> As long as that stays true and Uber continues to grow outside of the US, Lyft doesn't stand a chance.

Well, except they do because the local market is simply huge. There is room for multiple competitors.

Just like we have ATT, Verizon, Etc.

Regional monopolies or there is some kind of differentiation between the plans. Additionally, they bribe customers into signing multi-year contracts.

It is a totally different space from taxis, where the experience is mostly fungible.

Everyone keeps forgetting that Lyft has first-mover advantage. Lyft basically created ride-sharing, Uber was a black-car company and had to play catch-up to Lyft.

lyft somewhat had first mover advantage in SF. Uber had first mover advantage in every other city. Uber already existed in SF and was doing black car rides and a lot of people in NY/SF knew of it - which Uber used to leapfrog Lyft's first move advantage.

Uber is really bad in SouthEast Asia, Grab is by far the most used here, especially in Singapore, Thailand and co. Uber is also useless in China... Grab just offers so much more from motorcycle rides, delivery service, payment etc...

In germany and other european countries Uber is also completly useless, they have to use local law abiding apps like MyTaxi.

So no, Uber does not have a solid worldwide presence i would say, Singapore, Germany and other are clearly what u call first world...

> Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people. Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here and the people think Ubers a snaky company.

Why's that?

Uber is doing fine where I live. No one is using Lyft here. Also this https://xkcd.com/605/

> Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people.

Nope.

> Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here and the people think Ubers a snaky company.

I bet you'll think that you're not a racist or a bigot, and yet you're making the exact same connection a racist or bigot would. Just because someone drives for Uber, they are shady? That's a terrible stereotype to be propagating, just like our esteemed president saying "Most illegal immigrants are rapists."

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