| HN Mirror

From a (very occasional) rider perspective: I only have an Uber account. From my understanding - which may be completely incorrect, but it's what my decision to only have Uber was based on - Uber is available in more cities (which are likely nearly a superset of Lyft's cities), has more drivers, and is cheaper.

In other words, based on my understanding of the brands, the only reason for me to install Lyft would be if I wanted to boycott Uber. And I already have Uber, but not Lyft, and I would likely have to keep Uber because I go to cities where Uber exists and Lyft doesn't.

So some network effect is there, but I don't see how it justifies the insane valuation of the company. AFAIK they're still operating at a loss.

Their strategy seems to be having the network when self-driving cars come around, but any competitor offering (safe) self-driving rides would get my sign-up just due to novelty. Even if not, $100B buys you a lot of new-user incentives.

Uber has to solve completely different issues than a self-driving cab: A self-driving cab company can just flood a market with cars to ensure a smooth experience for new users, offer a bunch of free rides in a limited time to get people to sign up, then move the excess cars to the next city (can't simply do that with human drivers).

No need to recruit and manage drivers, deal with driver fraud, settle disputes when a driver claims a passenger puked in the car and the passenger claims they didn't (if they take a picture after the passenger leaves). All the tracking and fraud detection systems of Uber are worthless.

Writing an app that can show a map and let people press a "I want a car" button may not be trivial, but it isn't going to cost a billion dollars.