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Comment by JimboOmega | Hacker News Reader

The question (with Uber in particular) is that if this business model really covers up a huge ponzi scheme.

Before the last decade (or even 5 years?) the amount of money some of these companies have been raising would have been unheard of and required an IPO.

But if you can keep finding ever bigger investors to give you ever more money...

It's a really weird reality, because typically the worst kind of place to start a company is one with huge barriers to entry that requires a ton of money to get started. Yet that seems to have done quite well recently.

Squashing minimum wage service providers seems to be merely a side effect... these companies can't really make money EVEN WHEN they ignore regulations and exploit their not-technically-employees.

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> with huge barriers to entry that requires a ton of money to get started

Just a note that the proof of concept stage was very cheaply done. Travis hired someone to make an app and the "dispatch" system was just a single php page. He then tested it out with his friends.

That said, I agree that ultimately to get to the position they are today required a ton of cash - just the getting started was pretty cheap.

Actually we have the blow-by-blow of how it all played out on our podcast since Jason was employee #7 and built out the original node dispatch system.

http://techzinglive.com

I'm not sure exactly what show he started working on it, might need to go back to 95. Full show list here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/frnqzndys9j3vc1/P7jHgH0BQK

Hustle recognize hustle but which podcast episode is it dude? There are 300+ eps at that link.

Well it's A LOT of them.

Because we spoke about the Uber stuff as Jason lived it in real time ;)

A fun one was when Jason turned down the CTO position and of course we had no idea at the time what that really meant.

I guess in the latest episode 321 (Quick & Dirty) Jason does give an overview of the Uber story and how he got involved if you want a TL;DR version.

You guys ever going to do another episode Justin? I still have Techzing in my podcast app list, hoping it will light up again with a new episode sometime.

Yep tomorrow :) But we did one 2 weeks ago too. Sounds like your feed has stopped checking.

What motivated Travis's decision to hire someone else rather than develop the initial version himself?

I just spent 10 minutes looking for it and couldnt find it.

Well as I said above it's not one episode it's a lot of them. But actually I just searched and this is the first time that Uber was mentioned in the show notes:

http://techzinglive.com/page/581/95-tz-discussion-lost-in-la

So looks like 95+

thanks!

I think that's a really interesting concept. People think Uber will reach a scale where either it can use automation to reduce costs or jack up prices. It may well be the other way around - as it matures regulations catch up and the loopholes it was using to keep costs down disappear and their costs slowly increase instead.

Or that terrible customer experiences which are currently "exceptions to the rule" end up becoming the norm at whatever they pay drivers/charge customers... there are only so many good drivers and customers/contractors burned by bad experiences will not come back to Uber's platform.

Where I live (in Norway) we are quite well accustomed to bad experiences with overpriceed taxis and bad customer services with existing taxi companies (in large operated with immigrant drivers). Uber would give so much more transparency and security for customers that I'm baffled that it has not been allowed yet

See how well Gojek and Grab are eating Uber's lunch across Asia. Better experience and lower costs.

Wouldn’t say Grab is a good experience. I find drivers less trained, cars more beat up (less QC).

Also drivers can be weird. On two occasions they were trying to sneakily take pics of my wife when she was alone. My wife’s Caucasian.

This is in Thailand by the way.

The only thing is good (for me) about grab is price. It’s unsustainably cheap, like Uber.

Places like NYC already show this in practice.

Can you elaborate? I don't have any context on this other than taking a Lyft in NYC once.

NYC introduced fees for ride sharing with destinations or pickups in Manhattan to reduce congestion. They also added fees to guarantee a reasonable minimum wage for the drivers of the ride sharing app.

The difference in price between a cab and a uber/lyft is relatively small. Convenience seems to be the primary driver for which people use (cabs in Manhattan frequently because of ubiquity, apps in other boroughs).

NYC also imposed a cap on the number of ride sharing vehicles that could be operated. Uber is suing to try to overturn it:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/uber-suing-new-york-cit...

> It's a really weird reality, because typically the worst kind of place to start a company is one with huge barriers to entry that requires a ton of money to get started. Yet that seems to have done quite well recently.

That is the case if a normal person is starting a business. However, for venture capitalists, it is different.

The asset they have is a ton of money, so they are looking for businesses where that provides them an advantage. They WANT to fund a business that requires a ton of money and has lots of barriers to entry, because that is their strength.

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