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Ultimately these aren't tech businesses, it (should be) a pretty low margin commodity business of basically taxi dispatch and if we had functional cities most of that wouldn't be needed because of public transportation.
I can't think of a city with functional public transportation that doesn't have a taxi service. (I'm sure someone will come along and post one, which will be an interesting bit of trivia, but every city I can think of with good public transport also has some kind of taxi/close-equivalent service.)
Sure, but it’s a question of relative size and importance. There’s probably always a use for some taxis, but you’re going to need more the worse the public transport system is.
I think that publicly saying you're open to acquisition offers means that you really badly would like an acquisition offer.
I hope a merger between Uber and Lyft is blocked by regulators. It would doubtless lead to higher fees and lower regard for ride share drivers.
Would you rather them go out of business? Or downsize to only be available in high density, high income areas? I honestly don't see an end game, do you? The hope was that self driving was close and they just needed to capture market until then and then remove their largest line up and print money. Obviously, self-driving is very far away, especially in poor weather.
Also, I don't think "regard for drivers" can go much lower. I do agree that their pay would suffer post merger as they lost the need to be even remotely competitive but I think there is a lower limit where drivers won't drive for net $3/hour.
Yes, these companies should go out of business. They have been losing billions of dollars every year. They have actively subverted the laws. They should not exist in any sane world.
I have already filed a preemptive complaint with the FTC and DOJ requesting they block any merger attempt between Uber and Lyft. I encourage you to do the same.
A merger would bolster the remaining enterprise's market power, and they're going to shed redundant jobs anyway in a merger ("efficiencies"). Better to let both continue to exist with razor thin margins, like supermarkets. The only stakeholder that benefits from consolidation is shareholders.
The point is, if Lyft goes out of business, it has the same effect on the market for rideshare prices as an acquisition does, so why not allow the merger so it's less disruptive and more employees get to keep their jobs?
Wow talk about an extreme position.
Hey, then there's people like me who have relied on Lyft and Uber for years because we don't drive. Even in a city like SF, there are places that are hard to reach without a car.
If it's a choice between an Uber acquisition and Lyft going out of business, then yes, I definitely would rather Lyft goes out of business. Monopolies are bad for society, so if we're going to end up with one for a while, it should be as small as possible.
I think the end game for this industry is, as you say, self-driving cars, but I agree that's far away. In the meantime, I think the stage after this one, which is where companies burnt cheap money in hopes of market domination, is one where the tooling becomes available in a white-label fashion and we see plenty of people starting taxi-ish businesses.
Whether lyft goes out of business or is acquired by Uber, Uber will still end up a monopoly won't it?
If lyft died today I'd bet uber would capture most of its market.
>The hope was that self driving was close and they just needed to capture market until then
Or they knew self-driving was probably a long shot but who cares as long as you can get investor dollars and pay yourself handsomely.
The era of free money ending is going to be interesting I think.
Uber‘a model basically revolves around people not being able to do the calculus of driving for ride share. And Lyft is just a smaller player.
I don’t see how they survive if they need to make dollars and not just valuation numbers.
They survive by being a 10-20% fee for taxi dispatch.
I would pay a 30% premium to never have to use a regular taxi service again. Surely they can find a way to make this profitable with a reasonable premium.
Might be better if they cannot make it work and pay back all the investments then bankrupt. Another company can replace them with the correct expectations. I would also pay 30% + fair wage. Albeit less frequently. There was no functional taxi service in my metro before Uber and Lyft.
I've said this elsewhere, but Cruise! Fully autonomous isn't ready in all situations, Cruise could get an overnight install base.
I've no idea if Cruise could afford it, I think it's in the realm of possibility with a quick Google, but that's my pitch.
I don't think self-driving car companies need users so badly they'd want to acquire Lyft at a premium, because I don't think they could scale their fleet to Lyft's customer base that quickly. However, if the price is right, I could see one doing it.
Why would they buy a product with very little loyalty on part of the users?
Isn't that the idea? The ride-share co distinguishes itself by offering (some) driverless rides, and the self-driving company can say it has real passengers. Synergy!
Cruise is owned by General Motors which was rumored to be considereding acquiring Lyft late last year. I think given the history between Lyft and GM, it's very possible at this point.
I do not care what happens to the rideshare business, but I am worried about Motivate and all of the systems that they operate. Capital Bikeshare is one of the reasons why my monthly transportation costs are less than $50.
They basically should have built the tech then gone down to a skeleton crew of engineers to maintain it.
I am going to place a bet now if anyone wants to take me up on it.
$100 says Amazon will snap them up. With the cloud expenses minimized, and Amazon's own expertise with logistics, it would be a good market for them.
This is a chronically unprofitable company and anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity. The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure.
After years of Lyft predicting profits quarter after quarter, we have given Lyft enough time and it seems they are on course to be either acquired by private equity or at worse case, filing for bankruptcy.
I mean, it wasn't really a surprise to see this go all the way down...[0]
> This is a chronically unprofitable company and anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity. The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure.
So... They are a success story?
You basically described the whole startup grift.
> So... They are a success story?
I've already explained who's success story it is:
> The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure.
For the rest of retail and new investors:
> ...anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity.
A business that has constantly raised VC cash before IPO and now still remains chronically unprofitable even after IPO and has being loaned more post-IPO debt doesn't seem to be a great business success story for the new investors holding the stock since it IPO'd.
> You basically described the whole startup grift.
Indeed. Let's see if any of these new startups will get access to VC cash whilst as easily as the old ones did, especially as most of them are still unprofitable.
$4.9 billion VC investment into Lyft.
Current market cap: $3 billion
And yet the VCs profited. So … who paid?
Anyone who bought into their $25 billion IPO while VC was offloading, unfortunately including our total market indices.
Ultimately the sad truth is that Lyft was one of the companies that rode the zero interest rate phenomena (no pun intended).
I would say the offer won’t be higher than the current stock price given how hard it is to make money
Why would shareholders be willing to give up something for less than they think it is worth
Just looking at the stock price graph over the last few years, where it has fallen nearly 90%, they might be glad to have their misery put to an end. Remember that market price is what you can get for selling a small number of shares. But the companies that own large blocks may not be able to exit their positions in the normal market without taking a further loss.
I have taken hundreds of Ubers and Lyfts. They’re both pretty essential to my mobility because I live in a city and don’t own a car. I’m so furious that neither of them really had a plan all along. They were just selling $1.00 for $0.50 and hoping something would change (self driving? monopoly?)
I’ve started trying to avoid ride share whenever possible but it’s too late. They put the cabs out of business. They snarled our cities in traffic. They made public transit a non-option for the affluent. And maybe worst of all they changed how we plan our days. People expect you can always just “hop in an Uber” to get across the city at a moments notice, there’s no patience anymore.
And now they’re both charging more and more for rides and still failing to make enough money to cover their corporate overhead. Which is pathetic, since they don’t own the cars or employ the drivers. Meanwhile the drivers name make less and less and the smarter/luckier ones find something better to do.
When we look back and write the history of this time, I hope we see them as city destroyers.
> They put the cabs out of business.
That was inevitable. The taxi companies had a horrible experience for arranging a ride, ride quality, agreeing on price, and paying.
The last time I decided to take a taxi instead of Uber I was reminded that not only was this option much more expensive, but all of the same issues I listed still exist.
Yup. In DC can companies would refuse to take you home if the destination want in a profitable area and would out right lie about things such as their credit card machine (which they were legally required to have) not working. Uber and to a lesser degree Lyft are slimy companies with no apparent business plan, but what came before was often terrible. +
which, when I said “oh sorry I don’t have cash. Since you are required to take cards you come see me later when it’s working” miraculously fixed themselves
+ Not every where. Taxis in some cities offered and offer a fine experience, but I’d say 70+% were pretty annoying to deal with.
Same. You’d think competition would have mattered.
Sometimes it really is a cartel.
> They made public transit a non-option for the affluent.
Well, first off, I’m in the US occasionally (SF and Seattle) and no-one has ever demanded proof of non-affluence to get on a bus :)
But also, most of Europe has Uber (it’s effectively banned in a couple of countries, including here) and yet the upper-middle-class use public transport. Any reluctance in the US is probably based on other factors (my limited experience with US public transport is that it is rarely great, and doesn’t seem to believe in schedules at all, so I can see why people who can might avoid it).
Not in Las Vegas, cabs still reign. Sure you can call an uber/lift and wait ten to 15 minutes or hop in a cab that's already there and be on your way.
> Not in Las Vegas, cabs still reign. Sure you can call an uber/lift and wait ten to 15 minutes or hop in a cab that's already there and be on your way.
Only at strip casinos and the airport. If you're the slightest bit off-strip, Uber/Lyft is dominant. (Source: I live in Henderson, and use Uber constantly.)
So were you willing to pay $1 or $2 for your ride? And, more importantly, were all your friends? Thtat's the thing with all these services. People need to be willing to pay what they cost to deliver.
> They snarled our cities in traffic
Would like to see the data backing this claim up.
There have been a bunch of studies. A quick Google finds this relatively recent one: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congest...
But intuitively it's not surprising. Imagine a world without rideshare, but where the taxi companies just got way better, dropping prices and improving service. Use would go up. People who were driving before were either going to keep driving or user rideshare. Some transit trips would switch. A bunch of new trips would happen because the bar is lower. More trips means more traffic, and the areas where rideshare is most popular were not exactly known for low traffic before.