Lyft in Trouble | Hacker News Reader

Lyft in Trouble

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

30 pointscliquecover21 comments

As a reply further down points out, half of their loss is in the form of stock based comp and that doesn't affect free cash flow, so Lyft isn't quite going out business in the next year.

The situation is still pretty dire, however. It's crazy to me that Lyft still hasn't entered the food and grocery delivery market when it has been abundantly clear for years that that's where the money is. And in 10+ years of operation they still haven't been able to launch in a single location outside the US.

It will affect their cashflow if they can’t continue to pay staff in stock based comp.

Lyft operates in Canada.

> It will affect their cashflow if they can’t continue to pay staff in stock based comp.

That's not how cashflow or stock based comp works. Lyft doesn't buy stock off the market and use it to pay their employees - they just issue new stock.

Pretty sure they are commenting on the fact that employees won't continue to accept funny money. In which case they may have to pay a larger % of comp in cash to stay competitive and hence it will affect cashflow.

> has been abundantly clear for years that that's where the money is

Can you provide some data for this?

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392154

Lyft manages or is the owner of companies that manage bikes/ebikes/scooters in multiple cities around the world.

I wrote this tweet but didn’t realize it would get picked up. The numbers are not correct (or ant least misleading due to stock-based comp) and I can’t edit it.

I deleted the tweet and here are correct numbers: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/

Thanks for the clarification! Also your blog is great

Ok, we've changed the URL from https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1641089770796249088 to https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/lyft-in-trouble/. Thanks!

Funny that he left the incorrect numbers in his tweet and pointed to his blog for the fixed numbers, even though he’s paying for the ability to edit tweets. That’s one way to drive traffic, I guess.

He claims he can’t edit after they’re posted.

It's correct that Tweets can't be edited after a certain amount of time. But given how incorrect this information is, he should delete this tweet.

I wrote the tweet. Didn’t realize it’s would be posted here.

I cannot edit tweets after it has replies (apparently by design). I added follow-up tweets, but seeing those are not read: I deleted the tweet.

Here are numbers in context, not looking at stock-based comp: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/

Thank you!

> I cannot edit tweets after it has replies (apparently by design).

I think this is to counter a situation of people posting something adorable to get lots of likes/retweets leading to plenty of fan-out to millions of people's feeds, then replacing the content with something inflammatory.

Which part of stock comp is causing the issue? Is this what was granted this year but is vesting over multiple (e.g. 4 years)? Is this the stock granted in past years but vesting this year?

It's explained in the associated article: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/lyft-in-trouble/

I hope not. Boo on consolidation.

If Lyft were to die, then Uber would be left with a monopoly, it would jack up prices, and we'd be right back to where we were before "ride-sharing", except now higher-tech and more dystopian.

In fact, if for-profit ride-hailing consolidates too much, then we should make an easy open source version that local governments can use/administer at cost. It'd be a public good.

Very right, but I would say that we have much more access. Just using Pittsburgh as an example. Pre-Uber, you could try to call for a cab to the airport. Maybe they would come in 45 minutes, maybe an hour and a half, maybe never. Even scheduling ahead didn’t help. Now you can get a ride in 5-10 minutes any time.

https://twitter.com/paulwulff/status/1641093942702637057

How much stock does the author still have in Uber?

sigh I am the author. I have zero stock or any financial exposure in Uber, Lyft, or any other company I mention: and in the rare cases that I do have (because I am an investor) then I disclose it. Here's the list of all companies I've invested (and I no longer invest in any, exactly to avoid biases) [1]. I don't get paid to write about companies. All of what I write is my analysis and opinion.

Here is my ethics policy [2], and the article starts by mentioning the above, as well as linking to my ethics policy.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/investing/

[2] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/ethics-statement/

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