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by joering2 2559 days ago
I recently read that Uber/Lyft keeps even 75% of money for themselves. I wonder if there is an opportunity for third large ride-sharing app where business model would be based on bidding and company would keep much lower fee, just to cover overhead. So you want to go from point A to B, all local drivers are contacted and they have 45 seconds to bid who would charge less. Requester would see how much sorted by less $ and also ratings so he/she can chose someone more expensive but with better ratings.

Such model would kill Uber/Lyft overnight - they would not be able to adjust to that model because then their stocks would be cut down 95%. However, it is a win-to-win situation to both drivers and ride-takers - drivers get paid more and more stays in their pocket, while takers can chose if the ride is affordable, and at over 50% cheaper than what Lyft/Uber charge, it sure would be!

1 comments

You're getting downvoted because this is both a bad business idea, and a bad product idea.

Uber and Lyft have proven that drivers and riders don't want to think particularly hard. They want a magic button that either a) makes a car show up or b) feeds them customers.

As for the business side, there's no good reason to think that this would even cut costs on Uber's side -- they still need to maintain all of their lobbying costs, their server and engineer costs to maintain the bidding app, their marketing costs, etc.