Internal Uber Deck Reveals Revenue, Rides, Drivers and Fares | Hacker News Reader

Internal Uber Deck Reveals Revenue, Rides, Drivers and Fares

businessinsider.com

93 pointsssclafani75 comments

Lyft: get rid of the mustaches, fist bumps and front seats. Add town cars.

People who don't like Ubers behavior: use Lyft.

Most Lyfts in SF don't have mustaches anymore (or at least not displayed prominently) and about 10% do the fist bump now. I always sit in the front seat because it seems friendlier (and the drivers definitely do seem more friendly than on Uber), but I doubt they'd have any problem with you sitting in the back.

I use Lyft frequently and love it.

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I don't understand. Either way you're typically entering in the same side, which is usually the curb side.

Please elaborate on scenarios where the passenger side of the car is not also the curb side.

Ah crap, I don't know what I was thinking.

The passenger side of the car is generally curbside unless you are on a one-way street.

I use Lyft all the time and almost always just hop in the back, say hello, and... do whatever I'd be doing in an Uber or a taxi, just with a nicer driver and supporting a company I actually like.

Drivers don't seem to mind at all. If anything I get the sense they're kind of relieved not to have to put on a show.

The magic of the silly pink mustache and the fist bump is to disarm people – disarm them from something that is otherwise weird (getting in a car with a total stranger).

SF and NYC are very mature markets - both in ride sharing and just these types of tech in general - so I can see how it's less useful and/or run it's course. However, I think this is something that might serve them well as they expand internationally.

Could not agree more. I'd love to use an alternative to Uber that is less scummy, but I'm turned off by Lyft's style.

Meh. Lyft is not even in my city.

Note that all revenue numbers are gross not net.

In other words, they represent total fare $, not the 15% of fares that Uber actually gets.

The data includes (and the article analyzes) both gross and net numbers, and also the profit remaining after marketing burn and other costs.

Counting gross fares as revenue is about as honest as Groupon counting customer receipts as revenue. We all know how that worked out.

How is this deceptive? They never intended it for external release.

People use confidential figures for fundraising all the time. Just because its not public doesn't mean its not being used to trade off.

That being said, the accounting issues are technical and sort of a side point. Private investors at this stage ($10BN+ valuation) can do their own math.

Its more frame of mind of hyperbole that is relevant, IMHO.

Uber is full of leaks right now. In part this can server to change the topic discussion when it comes to Uber.

See Groupon for how the market treats these kind of tricks:

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/09/23/groupon-ipo-revenue-co...

It's also why Google separates "Traffic Acquisition Costs" in their reporting.

Do you know that?

It is actually viable for Uber to recognize the entire fare as Uber's revenue, even though they get 20% cut. There are a bunch of rules for revenue recognition, and one of them is that if the customer perceives the driver as being an agent of Uber, then the recognized revenue is likely the entire fare.

If a customer has a problem with a particular driver, they contact Uber, they don't contact the driver directly. This is a key fact that makes a strong case for recognizing the entire fare as revenue.

The difference with Groupon is that the customers were still interacting with the end merchant, ie. whoever supplied the coupon, as opposed to Groupon as a whole.

One problem with recognizing the entire fare is that their margins will look a lot worse.

Nope, it's contrary to GAAP for Uber to recognize the full fare as revenue so long as Uber stands by its claims that drivers are independent contractors and not employees and Uber is just facilitating payment. (By definition, an independent contractor is not an agent.)

If Uber is only entitled to X% of the fare, then under GAAP it can only recognize that X% as revenue. This is the exact same funky accounting that Groupon used. (Note that customers of Groupon would also take their problems to Groupon, not the merchant.)

No, your analysis is too superficial and rev rec is more complex than that under GAAP. It who the customer believes they are dealing with. The drivers, regardless of their employment status, are looked upon as "uber drivers" and customers contact uber for refunds or disputes, not the driver. So in this example, a strong case could be made that the entire fare is revenue.

The difference with Groupon is that the end merchant is never hidden from the customer, and the customer knows that the end merchant doesn't work for groupon. Groupon in this case is a facilitator for the transaction just like Expedia is a facilitator for airlines.

Rev rec is complex and many layers to it. An auditor goes through a series of tests to determine whether revenue is recognizable and no single test determines it so in some senses it's more an art than a science. And I don't have a full grasp of uber's arguments to their auditors but I doubt they have a strong case for recognizing the entire fare as revenue.

By this thinking, does Airbnb then also measure the entire cost of the listing as revenue? I don't know much about accounting or finance, but this seems a little misleading to me.

Airbnb is likely more like Groupon, because when you deal pretty directly with the owner of the property, whereas when you get a Uber ride, they are known as an "Uber driver". The owners of the properties do not purport to be agents of AirBNB.

But the case could be made either way, and it's up to the auditors to determine which is more appropriate, since they have direct access to the financials, etc.

In my mind, Airbnb is a marketplace and Uber is a service provider. The distinction is mostly arbitrary and driven by marketing/perception, though.

I agree, but I think the distinction is not arbitrary. The kicker is that you pick the Airbnb provider individually, based on individual house/room profiles. You don't say "give me a room in Seattle on this date, any room". Whereas with Uber you say "bring me a car now to this location, any car". You don't browse through car providers and say "ok, I'll specifically take the blue Lexus, and only the blue Lexus".

It's also not a fixed 20%, they seem to be willing to forego a portion of that when driver supply is low.

Isn't what's being called revenue in this article comparable to what ebay recognizes as "gross merchandise volume"?

First post.

Just got a ping from an Uber recruiter who was linking to this article. If they didn't leak it themselves they're certainly embracing it.

Well 'making tons of money' is certainly better for their PR than 'driver hit-and-ran down a kid', 'exec suggests doxxing and discrediting journalist', or the usual 'is surge pricing ripping people off' stuff.

At this point they're probably desperate for anything with a positive angle on it.

> driver hit-and-ran down a kid

For those curious:

"Family sues Uber after New Year’s Eve crash in San Francisco kills 6-year-old girl"

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/family-sues-uber-dr...

All the more comic, given that they have so many employees now it's not like you're going to cash out in any IPO.

"Why'd you go work for Uber?"

"Oh, they make a ton of money."

"Do you?"

"Well, I mean, it's, uh..."

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Except that he probably wasn't meeting anyone except for the next lyft target.

Lyft has sorta of secured the high road at this point.

I think it's important for people who disagree with ubers behavior to vote with their dollars. Assuming a reasonable alternative exists which Lyft may be.

Assuming these numbers are fact, has there been any extensive research on how taxi / private car / shuttle services' revenues have been affected by Uber and the like?

Pre-Uber, I probably spent $100/year on taxis / shuttles (Los Angeles). Post-Uber... I'm hesitant to look at my bank statements.

Yes, that's what I bring up every time someone starts with the whole "Uber is killing the poor taxi industry" rhetoric. Before Uber, I only took taxis to/from airports, so maybe half a dozen times a year.

Now, I take Uber at least once a week. Going out with friends? I'm going to spend money on dinner/drinks anyway, what's an added $10 in Uber fares to save me 40 minutes of public transportation? Every time a new type of business replaces an older model, the market size necessarily increases because the new model is faster, cheaper, better, etc so new customers are attracted.

I don't get why taxi companies aren't putting all of their resources into creating an Uber like infrastructure for themselves right now. It's clearly the way of the future, and 10 years from now the traditional model of standing on the sidewalk with your arm raised until some taxi driver feels like picking you up will be long gone, whether they like it or not. They might dig their heels in the ground and try to pass legislation all they want, that's just the way it's going. Their only chance of survival is trying to beat Uber at their own game, and every day that they spend lobbying in Washington or putting crappy ads on buses [0] is a day lost for their cause.

[0]: http://i.imgur.com/GjJZQAM.jpg

Well there are are attempts to setup that kind of infrastructure e.g. http://www.flywheel.com You are correct that the industry as a whole needs to get behind it rather than fragmenting efforts across cities/fleets etc.

In Colombia, there are two competing companies that are doing that within all major cities. Uber like apps but with the normal existing taxis.

Interestingly, their massive popularity doesn't seem to be because of ease of use, but security concerns. Especially since a couple of taxi drivers robbed and killed an NDA agent. I met a few people here, that would never wave a taxi from the streets at night and some taxi drivers that wouldn't pick up one. By using the app every ride, driver and passenger is logged.

The apps are very well done and for me a perfect example on how you take an idea from somebody else and apply and sell it to your local market. My country, Switzerland, is unfortunately always far behind on nice things like this.

I don't think it's enough for taxis to just build a comparable app/infrastructure at this point. Uber goes beyond now, offering perks when you take Uber to specific destinations (eg a free burger at one place, free drink at a specific bar, etc). My UberX driver last night gave me a free bottle of water and let me drink it in the cab. Taxis could do all this, but they don't seem interested in providing that level of service.

It's usually a kickback from the place that's happy to sell you food and drinks. Taxi drivers in touristy areas do it all the time, but usually with shadier places, like strip clubs and dive bars.

Maybe not all their resources, but there is a Hail a Cab app for taxis in some cities. It works fine for our purposes.

$100/year seems like a very low figure; but I guess you definitely don't take a cab everyday.

That was before, with Uber he uses more taxis because the price is lower.

Wow, this reads nothing like a PR fluff piece misdirecting people away from the worst week ever for Uber...

isn't it illegal to swindle the market with fake financial data like this, without source? or since it's not public yet that's OK?

It's not particularly great in terms of journalism ethics, either, especially with the level of detail they're providing. They basically reprinted a leaked slide deck in it's entirety, without there being much of a compelling public interest in anything it contains.

If it's true, who's harmed? What's the ethical principle involved?

That's a good question. I think it comes down to compromising credibility. Reporters have to be perceived as trustworthy to be effective, and for that they basically need to be viewed as having generally good character, or — probably more importantly — good intentions. Just taking any old information you come across and throwing it out because it brings in clicks undermines that. The answer to who's harmed, then, is reporters in general, because it's behavior that generates an aura of unsavoriness and makes people less likely to trust the whole industry.

TLDR: If reporting seems like corporate espionage, people think reporters are just corporate spies.

I'm not sure where you're coming from with this because there's a long history of journalism based on leaks and confidential sources. It's not a matter of throwing out "any old information," since vetting sources is also a part of journalism and a reporter's reputation is indeed affected by bad stories. The repercussions you speak of simply don't exist because things like this are part of the very definition of journalism, but if you have anything that speaks to the validity of the sources in this story I'm sure we'd all like to hear them.

I agree, absolutely, that leaks and confidential sources are critical to journalism. It's necessary to take into account the context and the content, though. The less public value the leak has, and the more confidential the information is, the more damage it can cause, the more carefully it needs to be handled.

If a leak is very confidential but has a lot of value, using it is ok; the Pentagon Papers, for example. If a leak is not particularly confidential, has some public value, using it is ok; the name of the new store that's coming to a neighborhood, for instance. The first two items I was able to find for other expressions of the line of thought are the "Clandestine methods: Principles" section at [1] and this article [2].

The Business Insider article doesn't present any reason for choosing to publish the Uber information. It doesn't even offer any interesting analysis of it. It just seems to be revealing it for the sake of revealing it. There are ways to use the data that might be justified — for instance, discussing the risks of the company's legal status being uncertain in some of it's largest markets; looking at the number of drivers it has and the net effects of that on the total number of cars on the streets; looking at general trends in growth without revealing details, if they're interesting. Simply presenting the information raw and without context isn't reporting, though; it's just sharing, and, in this case, it's sharing information that wasn't meant to be shared, so it seems sleazy.

[1]http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/reporting-to-canadians/act...

[2] http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/l...

It may have been an intentional leak, so "meant to be shared" even if the "confidential & proprietary" labels say otherwise.

But also, why would Uber's desire-for-secrecy be given much weight? They're not a private individual that can be embarrassed. I haven't seen anyone intimate that this info is either false or damaging to them in any way. (And if, hypothetically, it were a leak that was true and changes outsiders' behavior enough to harm Uber, that might itself make the case for its release. Uber is a big force affecting a lot of employees and markets – a prominent 'public figure'. Its many counterparties amongst the public want and arguably deserve the best obtainable info about it.)

The sense that "it seems sleazy" thus looks to me like a case of over-anthropomorphizing Uber itself, and thus granting it empathy which it is not due. Even if we think it a useful legal fiction to grant companies all the legal rights of persons, that doesn't mean they deserve all human courtesies, too. (Of course, if the leak were primarily about actual people, and especially if it was using dubious gossip to damage them, then a stricter standard would apply.)

There's a fairness argument to be made; Uber is a business and has to make deals in order to carry out its business, be they investments, procurement (they buy a lot of smartphones), commercial real estate, etc. If Uber's internal finances are leaked but the internal finances of their current or potential future business partners aren't, that harms their negotiating position. Journalists shouldn't be stepping in and giving Apple or some local landlord a better negotiation position with Uber by showing them Uber's cards, so to speak. It violates the principle of impartiality.

In that case/context, why would a journalist be obligated to consider Uber's business needs at all?

Because journalists shouldn't give some businesses advantages in negotiating position over other businesses. If Uber is negotiating with Apple to buy thousands of iPhones, and the press leaks Uber's internal financial data but not Apple's, the press has given Apple an unfair advantage.

>The less public value the leak has, and the more confidential the information is, the more damage it can cause,

I'm not sure what you're saying here. If the leak doesn't have public value, it won't cause damage. "Emil likes yellow socks." If it does damage the company, then it has public value. It may just be that "the public" devalues, or is starting to devalue, companies composed of dicks.

Illegal for whom? Which market? (Uber isn't a public company.) And BI has now made this "public" info. Do you have evidence that it's 'fake'?

Uber isn't a publicly traded company, so certainly not illegal from the perspective of insider-trading.

Plus the article makes it very clear that it is a leaked document, and that its authenticity should be suspect as a result. Even if it were intentionally faked, not sure how it would be illegal from Business Insider's perspective to report on it.

The data isn't fake, it's inline with data that has been previously leaked. As for where it came from, Uber is in the middle of raising another round from investors. A lot of people have access to these numbers. Any one of them could have leaked this deck. BI isn't obliged to reveal its source.

Investors in the private market are presumably more sophisticated, which often boils down to ability to CC a CPA and a financial advisor on an investment proposal, and ask them to chime in.

I was thinking the same. Data could have been planted and business insider was fooled?

Actually...

http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/20/about-those-uber-revenue-nu...

Is anyone actually fooled by high revenue low margin vs low revenue high margin?

All I want to know is what my rider rating is...

Can you just ask your driver?

Go to m.uber.com and fiddle around in the console. There used to be a way to get at your user object (it might have been closed off now, but I believe data is still there, hard to share data across a big app like that without exposing a little bit).

There was a way to view it but they closed it off. I'm not enough of a dev to dig it up myself.

Side note: UBER is valued at several billions higher than the entire taxi + Limo industry in the US ($11B). Uber is probably creating more demand then there was before. If correct, entrepreneurs should take the untapped part of industries into consideration when sizing their markets.

How did you arrive at the valuation of the entire taxi+limo industry?

Feast, my friend

https://www.ibisworld.com/industry/home.aspx.

This https://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1951 implies 1-year revenue is $11 billion. It's different from valuation unless 1x happens to be the valuation multiple.

You are correct.

Whenever I see someone say a certain market or industry's valuation, I've always wondered what would be a good place to source that kind of information.

IBIS seems to be focused on the US market. Do you know someplace focused on the global market?

IBIS have both global & local. Some industries are just hard to quantify.

HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT ALL THIS MONEY INSTEAD

Looks pretty good. Go on and do more of whatever you are doing

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