| You've missed the following: Take rate ~40% = $6 - payments -0.7 (correct) - servers -0.2 (correct) - refunds -1 (driver is indemnified, not in cabs) - shared rides -1 (on avg, not in cabs) - insurance -1 (drivers and riders get generous insurance, not in cabs) now we have $2.5 per ride to pay fixed costs, not including marketing. in reality, they also give out generous marketing coupons to riders which cabs did not do. $1 per ride on avg discount drops us to $1.5 per ride. it's probably true that 100 engineers could sustain uber in the US without any new features. 100 * 500k payroll cost = $50M/yr = 33M rides per year. Lyft alone did >300M rides per year. Uber and lyft combined would be a solid company able to sustain and be profitable. This company would provide a way higher quality service (and safer, and more insured) than it replaced, without monopoly profits being captured by rich medallion holding families. However, uber and lyft are still pouring money into product development. Shared rides as an example, still hold the potential to improve everything in cities massively. Lower cost than taxi, faster than bus, less congesting than private car. Both also seem to be expanding outside of ride share, which should be viewed like amazon expanding to aws 15 years ago. if it works, there could be hugely positive impact. if it doesn't, then it's a massive waste of shareholder capital. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
Then we'd have a(n) (inter)national tech monopoly. Soooo much better.