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What would it take for somebody to just build a free, open-source matchmaking service for drivers and riders? It doesn't seem like what Lyft or Uber offer is very technically demanding (perhaps doing it at scale is), and presumably you could attract a lot more drivers by offering them the chance to keep ~99% of the fare.

The existence of Lyft demonstrates that Uber's first-mover advantage isn't insurmountable, so who's to say the third-mover shouldn't be a free utility that provides matchmaking at cost?

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The value is in the network of riders and drivers not in the software. The big value for the drivers comes when you can minimize the time gaps between rides, and for riders to be able to get pickups down.

Lyft was actually the first mover on the the UberX product category, Uber was only doing premium service when Lyft started growing.

Ultimately this market is a race to the smallest commissions possible. There are costs involved like credit card processing, insurance, operations, etc. I could see commissions going down to 5%.

Who would provide customer service, sales, marketing, user research and the other non-technical elements of the business? It's true of many companies that what they do is not very technically demanding (Amazon, Facebook, eBay, etc) but that very often means that you _can't_ replicate them by just replicating the technology - these successful companies are much more than just their software.

And anyway, I bet there is a surprising level of sophistication to eg: Uber's software

> Who would provide customer service, sales, marketing, user research and the other non-technical elements of the business?

Do you need any of those things? How much does Craigslist spend on marketing and sales?

Operate as a non-profit, compete only on price, and let drivers spread the word themselves. Imagine if at the end of the ride, your Uber driver told you, "Hey, next time call me with the CheapRides app and it'll cost you 20% less, and I'll make more."

There's no incentive to build and run a free Uber/Lyft competitor the traditional way.

If someone were to build a Stellar-like decentralized market that matched drivers with riders who pay with the market's internal currency, the incentive to build and improve upon the service would be the appreciation of the currency. People who thought it could succeed would buy some of the currency cheaply, build applications that make the market easy to use, and profit from the gains their improvements cause.

It could happen.

Interesting consequence of the lower cost of technical resources. I'm guessing the higher cost would be in marketing the service to get initial critical mass.

I think Sidecar lets each driver set their own rate. It would take a whole lot more than 1% of the fare to keep the system running though.

Why would you say that?

Credit card processing itself cost 2.7%, on average.

So charge 1% over fees

Just managing disputes between rider and driver would cost more than that. Since you're the one running the credit cards, you're going to be on the hook for all chargebacks and fraud.

And are you going to vet drivers at all? Check that they have a license and insurance?

> Since you're the one running the credit cards, you're going to be on the hook for all chargebacks and fraud.

Who says you have to run credit cards? Users could pay the drivers cash, or the drivers could have their own Stripe readers or similar.

Taxi rides are basically futures contracts. Not exactly fungible due to location but you might be able to price that in, somehow. Bring on a generic taxi ride commodities exchange.

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