[simonw]

The challenge is reaching critical mass, where you have enough customers to keep the drivers busy and enough drivers to guarantee a quick pickup.

The linked article says Lyft now have an average pickup time in SF of 2.5 minutes. Good luck bootstrapping to that kind of performance with a brand new ride share company starting from scratch.

[TTPrograms]

You're competing on price, and drivers can use all services at the same time. If a driver gets more of the cut from another service they'll use that too - then they'll of course preference requests from the service that pays them more. It just snowballs - there isn't enough friction associated with switching services as a customer or as a driver to prevent competition on price point until the margins are razor, and then you're McDonalds. Which is fine, but you can't assume current margins.