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uber(6)

Uber’s Greatest Trick Caught

In 2015 I wrote a blog post titled “Uber’s Greatest Trick Revealed” in which I argued that Uber’s success was the result of providing a transportation service. This was and is exactly what consumers wanted but is not a neutral platform or marketplace. It would appear that regulators have finally caught up with this with the European Union’s top court ruling yesterday that Uber is in fact a transportation service. Now we will hopefully enter a new phase in which regulators figure out how to ge...

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Congestion in New York (and Elsewhere)

Just last week I wrote that there are legitimate concerns about Uber. Using congestion as the reason to limit the company’s expansion while ordering a study seems wrong and exactly the kind of political move that smacks of corruption. Given that Bill de Blasio received significant support from taxi fleet owners during his campaign it is hard not to believe this. Certainly taking one year to do a study seems like an undue delay. Still congestion is a real issue and adding nearly 20,000 commerc...

Equating Uber With Transport Innovation Considered Harmful

There were two tweets about Uber recently that I found myself disagreeing with somewhat. Paul Graham tweetedUber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it.And on the same day Chris Sacca (who is an investor in Uber) tweetedBefore Uber came along, I never understood how deeply corrupt so many American cities and politicians are.What do I not like about them? Equating Uber with the much larger idea of using technology to efficie...

Uber’s Greatest Trick Revealed

The greatest trick Uber ever pulled was to convince regulators that it is an open technology platform. That trick may no longer work if the California verdict that some Uber drivers are employees is upheld (I am assuming that the company will appeal the decision). For disclosure, USV has two related investments with Hailo and Sidecar. Both companies have struggled and to no small degree because they did not pull the same trick. Hailo focuses primarily on the licensed market where rates are se...

Why Values Matter in On-Demand Transportation

I took last week off from blogging for family reasons which means I sat out a big wave of posts about Uber. Don’t worry, I am not going to rehash that particular discussion. Instead, I want to point out what I believe the big questions are that should be asked of all companies in this sector which includes two USV investments (Hailo and Sidecar). Here are two questions: 1. Are drivers genuinely independent contractors? A legitimate concern here should be that the level of control that comes f...

Some Thoughts on Surge Pricing

I am sympathetic to Uber’s basic argument that surge pricing is the market at work as (a) nobody is being forced to take an Uber and (b) raising prices puts more Ubers out on the street. On Saturday evening, close to the height of the storm I had to go to the Upper East Side to pick up one of our kids. I quickly decided to take the subway which was running on time and only cost $2.50 each way, even though that meant I had to walk about a dozen blocks in the storm. As an avid skier and lover o...

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