"Fuck You" Companies
aimode.substack.com
aimode.substack.com
[0] here's a launch announcement with Lyft being listed as already being operational https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/01/uber-opens-up-platform-to-...
Wow. I really doubt this person took many ubers. if this was written by a person of course
Anyone can get rejected by drivers. Just canceling or the worst is if the driver is hiding somewhere next block and not moving, waiting for you to cancel. It's better when a taxi driver just tells you no
The price is not transparent. You know it in advance if it's uber X but it's not transparent. And of course Uber X with its "transparent price" cost the same or more as a regular taxi
I know of people who got scammed by an uber driver in india and were taken instead of their hotel in delhi all the way to kashmir. Or a friend just got dropped off on wrong street at night in a foreign country without internet. Etc
Uber might have turned to the bad practices used by taxis now that they are focused on extracting more and more value. However, the point of the writing was to be focused on earlier days. In the earlier days, they did try and embodied price transparency and customer experience focused on customers.
If you are arguing that they never did, I don't see how it grew to a $200 Bn company.
The smart places knew it and regulated uber or killed it and keep local taxis working
Kind of like a country can subsidize car industry export tons of cars and kill domestic production in another country. Then they can jack up prices and profit on their terms.
They don't win because their cars are better. They win because they are lying by price
Same with closedai and friends now.
It works well when you have lots of capital to expand and fight lawsuits.
- Uber is an end-run around existing taxi monopolies (imo a good thing), plus I believe taking advantage of people’s inability to think longer term about depreciation on their vehicle when calculating earnings.
- crypto is an end-run around securities regulations. It’s not a payment system it’s an investment scam that would be illegal if used with other financial instruments
- a vast swath of big tech is profitable on the back of not providing customer service or recourse of any kind and just automating business without regard for edge cases (not necessarily regulation but formerly a requirement for a business to participate in society)
Identifying industries where people begrudgingly accept the status quo because they need the service but hate everything about how it's provided is your opportunity.
"A principle for taking advantage of thresholds has to include a test to ensure the game is worth playing. Here's one that does: if you come across something that's mediocre yet still popular, it could be a good idea to replace it. For example, if a company makes a product that people dislike yet still buy, then presumably they'd buy a better alternative if you made one."
Was this the case though?
Airbnb and hotels.com and the likes have been pushing the hotels towards a race to the bottom but actual hotels are not bad in my experience. Small quasi-hotels with ordinary flats that run like a estate get rich quick scheme are though.
Hotels/Booking.com are more of a fuck you to travel agents and/or opaque or fragmented hotel pricing, since they don't provide an alternative to the hotel itself.
If an airbnb and a hotel choose to race to the bottom, perhaps they deserve each other and the rest of us deserve a way to avoid them? (Or use them if it came to that...)
I think Airbnb and hotels.com do not push people to the bottom - they offer a minimal bar or set of features to look for quality / price ratio. Are they perfect? No. But they make discovery much easier.
Other than mandatory fees not displayed in the advertised daily rate, I have never heard of people hating hotels.
Airbnb listings also have mandatory fees not displayed in their advertised daily rate.
My understanding is that Airbnb took off because it was cheaper than hotels (however in general, that may not be the case anymore).
I think *people hate costs more than they hate services* (which is how airlines like Spirit and Ryanair have managed to do business).
It was always possible for individuals to offer rooms. And they did. And it was hard to find them.
I like the use of vulgar language, it hits way harder than all the blah-blah bullshit
I've been convinced by the power of "Fuck you" :)
Unfortunately, HR execs said "fuck you" back in no uncertain terms.