[0zymandias]

It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook [1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or exit"

You can debate whether it was successful at GE. The criticism of Jack Welch was that his approach improved short-term financials, but he left a hollowed-out company to his successor that became irrelevant and lost value relative to the S&P.

The way I see this playing out at Uber is rapidly exiting categories like Scooters, Freight, Works, and AV. And doubling down on Ride Share and Eats with acquisitions in geographies where they have a leading position. I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch

[mattwad]

> I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility

Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10 times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.

[ping_pong]

I disagree wholeheartedly. Electric scooters are fun and useful, especially for commuting in the morning from a drop off location like a train station. The real question is whether or not it can be profitable, which I highly doubt. I would rather just get my own if I needed it.

[neaden]

I think scooters are very area dependent. Both because of weather, and the supporting infrastructure.

[mcculley]

I live in downtown Orlando. Lime, Lynx, and Bird have littered downtown with scooters. I run almost every day and they are often left directly in the middle of the sidewalk, either upright or fallen over. A couple months ago I began relocating any rental equipment I find in my way on the sidewalk. I am not at all gentle about this and I'm sure I have damaged some of the equipment. I like the idea that people might use these more than cars, but investors need to figure out a better way to store them than in the sidewalk.

[ac29]

I get the anger about sidewalks getting littered with scooters, but damaging or destroying them is just creating more hazardous e-waste to be disposed of.

[heavyset_go]

There needs to be a more sustainable model for scooter rentals than "when the scooter breaks, we just throw it out and replace it with another $20 white label scooter from China"

The reason they're treated like trash, by both the company that put them there and by pedestrians, is because that is what they are.

[jmchuster]

Tell that to the homeless guy in SF who made it his life mission to push scooters into the bay. They even had to make a line item just for him.

[mcculley]

I'm not really angry. I consider it a public service for the people who come along after me. These things are a hazard for runners.

[mcculley]

Where do you live? Maybe I can put them in front of your house.

[three_seagrass]

True, but that still makes them a market fad. Even if you got cities on board, the costs are fairly fixed, so while the scooters are fun, it was never a feasible business at scale.

[gerash]

The problem with electric scooters is even though they're nice in urban areas, they're a best-effort service. You can't rely on them to be somewhere by a specific time as they could either be unavailable around you, too far or the one you end up walking to could happen to be broken.

I think the rental bikes which have a fixed docking station are a better design.

[adrianmonk]

> you can pretty much walk the same distance

I think I'm the intended use case because I live about 2 miles (3.2km) from an entertainment district. I can walk it, and I have done so, but it takes quite a while, around 45 minutes. On a scooter it takes like 10.

Because of parking costs, scooter is cheaper than driving. It might even be faster. I own a bike, so I could ride that, but I don't like parking it in a busy downtown area.

There's also a bus I can take, and sometimes I take bus one direction and scooter the other if the bus schedule doesn't work for me.

I admit many people park scooters in a very inconsiderate way, but I always park carefully out of the way, so I don't feel bad about that personally.

[swiley]

Not only that but 2 miles is a long walk to do often if you’re not very careful about it, especially if you’re carrying much.

I’m 100% for walking places but it’s important to have options once you start getting out that far.

[jeremy_k]

I would argue this isn't true. I lived in Santa Monica when the scooters came about and once they removed the helmet law I loved the utility they provided. I lived about 2 miles away from downtown Santa Monica, which is totally walkable and I love walking, but sometimes I wanted to meet up with someone in a more reasonable amount of time. Instead of having to order an Uber for such a short trip, I would check Bird or the Lyft scooters to find one close to me, jump on it, and be downtown in roughly 10 minutes. And they're fun to ride!

Now Santa Monica does have a great bike share infrastructure that I also used quite a bit, but nothing is more frustrating that getting on a well used bike and having the brakes hardly work or the crank constantly slipping as you push the pedal downward. Don't get me wrong, you can totally get a bad scooter that isn't running well, but I think I ran into more worn down bikes, likely due to the bike program having been around longer.

My 2 cents, the more options the better.

EDIT: Also wanted to note, Santa Monica has a lot of bike lanes, which made riding the scooters around much easier and safer from my perspective.

[JPKab]

Not wearing a helmet on a device whose front wheel is a fulcrum of a lever that can smash your head on the pavement at a moment's notice is monumentally reckless.

The helmetless riders are a real issue. And the injuries caused by the morons using them are a business model externality that isn't dealt with.

[iamricks]

I use scooters to commute daily, Revel is more dangerous IMO, i have seen a few of them totaled since they came to Miami. Scooters are the least hassle for me.

[novok]

The scooter division was bikes & scooters

[MivLives]

I always wondered how the scooter fad was going to work out once people realized they could just buy them for a few hundred bucks. Bicycles are hard to store for apartment dwellers, and more at risk of being stolen when locked up.

I live in a city that banned the companies but see a few people still commuting on them in the bike lane.

[Pxtl]

The bikeshare system in my city is provided by Uber.

They're mostly focused on the scooters now (or, well, yesterday) but many cities have bikeshare systems backed by Uber.

[georgeecollins]

Scooters seem very viable in parts of Los Angeles. Before covid people were using them a lot. It is true that mopeds/ bikes are more functional. But there is something about a scooter where you just stand on it and it is very pleasant, vs something you sit on and feel like maybe you should have a helmet. Anecdotally, I saw scooters used a lot more than bikes in Century City, when both were available.

[OctopusSandwich]

Scooters are heaven sent.

[bhouston]

This strategy is the opposite of a portfolio play. It is great if your winners stay winners. I think if you are aligned well with the overall market direction that is great.

Basically by only keeping the strongest you should get the highest rate of return until these is a failure. A portfolio play gives you more modest returns but more consistent over time -- you should still trim the losers who do not have potential.

[breischl]

I had never thought of it in those terms before, but this is similar to portfolio diversification in investing. There's the quip that when you're properly diversified there's always something to hate in your portfolio. Of course the flipside is that there's always something to love too.

All that compared to making concentrated bets where you can win big, or lose big.

[ping_pong]

"Short-term"? He was CEO for 20 years, and made it one of the most successful companies during that time. One would be very hardpressed to call GE of 2001 a hollowed-out company.

[0zymandias]

Jack Welch retired in 2001 after twenty years as CEO. "Upon his retirement from GE, Welch had stated that his effectiveness as its CEO for two decades would be measured by the company's performance for a comparable period under his successors"

If we use the long-term yardstick that Jack Welch suggested we use, he does not come out looking good. We are now at roughly the two-decade mark and GE is trading at the same price that it did in 1992 and 80% below where it was when he retired.

[erichurkman]

To read that quote differently:

1981 • Jack Welch becomes CEO • $1.29 2001 • Jack Welch retires • $37.20 (down from its peak of near $60.00 in mid 2000) 2020 • Nearly 20 years post Jack Welch • $6.28.

20 years of Jack Welch - +2,800% increase 20 years after Jack Welch - -83% decrease

[0zymandias]

2800% is a much bigger number than 83%. But if you do the math using your numbers, you see that GE substantially underperformed the S&P since 1981:

GE = (1+2800%)*(1-83%) = 4.93 = 393% appreciation since 1981.

S&P = S&P has appreciated 2000% since 1981.

GE << S&P

[ivalm]

To be fair, most companies underperform s&p 500. S&p is driven by giant winners, and every generation has different winners. In the 90s GE was the winner and other companies in s&p trailed them. This is what makes survivors like Microsoft so amazing, they managed to remain on top by reinventing themselves many times under different leaderships.

[erichurkman]

Maybe that's why Welch said to measure against GE's future leaders if they are destined to forever underperform the S&P. :)

[ping_pong]

Meh, that's a completely arbitrary measure and flippant at best. He has no control over what his successors do, or their strategy. I, and many many others, prefer to judge him by how he handled the company when he actually had control over it.

[Ididntdothis]

When you read his book he portrays himself as a teacher and mentor to the next generation of managers. GE was supposed to crank out high quality managers. He maybe did a good job himself (or was lucky with this timing) but he totally failed at preparing the company for a time after him.

[0zymandias]

I didn't come up with it. It is the yardstick that he suggested we use to measure his performance :)

And it's a well-known issue with executive compensation that CEOs will juice numbers in the short-term to get their payouts which is likely why he proposed this as a measure of his performance.

[ping_pong]

Yes, I know. But it's a nonsensical way to measure it. Is sounds like something he said flippantly without thinking about what that meant, because it's meaningless.

[javajosh]

An interesting comment because it's a good example of what you see more and more of from people with a positive emotional disposition toward someone who won't let them fail or look bad even if its quite obvious that they failed, and it looks bad (and even if they themselves would admit it).

As a factual matter, the measurement isn't meaningless at all. Give Jack some credit.

[bibinou]

> Scooters

They just sold Jump, while investing in Lime. I think scooters could still be used as a "last-mile" strategy for Ride Share, and maybe acquire teen mindshare and a sort of platform play. But it's a spinoff with a long leash.

[Ididntdothis]

Sounds more like the playbook of being a real business, meaning to take in more money than they spend....

[sucrose]

In other news, GE Appliances just cut my web development contract short by 8 months. Congratulations, India.