> "We have a fierce competitor that's unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share. I wish the world wasn't that way." (Uber's CEO)
I'm sorry but... isn't this exactly what Uber has been doing to their competitors for a long time in most markets?
This reminds me of the free market drive in India. First generation of companies after market reforms, like Airtel, would openly scream "free market" and destroy state held BSNL's monopoly.
But they now want more regulations on a free internet, they work against net neutrality because "a large amount of their invested money" would be derailed.
Basically when it happens to others, its free market. When it happens to you its unfair/harsh.
That is always how it works. The small startups wants to beat the established giants. The established giants want government protection from competition.
The free market policy is to side with the startups. A "pro business" policy is often to side with the established giants.
Capitalism is only troublesome for our dear CEO when it directly affects him. Let's forget the labor laws/licenses many startups avoid by classifying themselves outside of traditional industries. Let's not forget about the older non technology savvy immigrants that typically could make a living with taxis that have now been put out of a job since they may not know how some app works. "Innovation" works both ways.
> Let's not forget about the older non technology savvy immigrants that typically could make a living with taxis that have now been put out of a job since they may not know how some app works.
Seriously, LA cabs suck. I've had one good ride that was the Santa Monica Green Cab.
One time a cabbie tried to take me to Burbank from Koreatown by going south on the 101! Everyone knows that you take Wilshire to Vermont, letting you skip the traffic on...
But seriously, it's the people I would bet fall into that category that usually resulted in the worse cab rides. They even anecdotally generally result in the worse Uber rides, only the communication is less of an issue because I can just put in an address and everything after that is entertaining gestures and failed attempts at communication, but I still get where I'm going.
1. It assumes you don't need to be technically savvy to drive a taxi (where?))
2. It assumes you can make a living (where?) driving taxis
3. It assumes the reason some people might be out of a job is because they can't adapt to one particular kind of app (hint - Uber isn't the only "taxi" app).
don't race to the bottom as a foreign firm against locals in China. you won't win. they will go much lower and harder and longer than you will. they will turn the heat off in the -12C winter and have people coding in their parkas to save cash.
i hung out with some of the Uber e-staff and founders when they were in China. i think the most memorable quote was "there's what works for every other country in the world and then there's China".
i think they stood a chance if they had positioned themselves as an upscale service. foreign brands convey status. they could have had something there that the locals didn't. but that's not what they're doing everywhere else in the world, and i understand them not being willing to split their strategy for the market.
so i guess they went with firepower. and i would guess they knew it had a low chance of success. entry into China is hard. that trail is lined with bodies, every drop of blood sucked dry.
it's difficult understand until you see it for yourself. there are people arranging fake uber rides online to split the subsidies. but they had some idea. it's a big market and Uber has a lot of cash, but $1B is still a big bet with such bad odds.
Reminds me of a similar English saying: "How do you make a small fortune in the airline business? Start with a large fortune!" I imagine we can generalize that to transportation in general.
"MacArthur articulated his most famous dictum—“never get involved in a land war in Asia”—after the Japanese surrender, because he believed that Japan’s simultaneous war in China made his Philippines victory possible. Japan had annexed Manchuria in 1931, then invaded China in 1937"
[ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/rethinking-do...]
We acheived our goals of stopping the Communists from conquering a friendly nation; so it's a victory.
No, we intervened in a civil war between two groups, one that we decided was more in our interests to support. And we opened 2 markets for arms to be sold to, that would be healthy vibrant markets (for arms) for the next seventy years.
Given how South Korea has turned out compared to North Korea; given the US saved South Korea from an unbelievable amount of death and suffering that would have come with the North's domination; compared to the disaster that Mao's China was, and Stalin's Russia, due to Communist rule; considering South Korea became a tremendous ally; yeah, we very clearly won.
Fun fact: until 1960s, North Korea had a higher GDP per capita than South Korea. Somehow I can't find any definite source on the web, but here's one phrase I found:
> By the beginning of the 1960s, North Korea's economic development was much more impressive than was South Korea's and would remain so until at least the mid-1970s. (...) As these data make abundantly clear, without foreign aid, the DPRK could not have achieved its ambitious post-war reconstruction.
Another fun fact: even with all the help from the US (for which I'm grateful), South Korea went though an unbelievable amount of death and suffering all the same, and our first president was a first-class mass murderer who would have been quite at home in the company of his Northern counterparts. So, yeah, somehow we ended up all right (after decades of tyrants and struggles), but the history is a lot more complicated than good guys saving half of the population from bad guys.
Another fun fact is that a lot of the modernization and economic expansion experienced by Korea up to the end of WWii came about from the at times brutal colonization of the Korean peninsula by Japan which transformed an agrarian subsistence society into a more urban and the second most developed country in Asia after imperial Japan itself.
That's a very creative interpretation of winning a war: if we were to apply that to Germany and Russia, then Germany had won its last war against Russia
Given how South Korea has turned out compared to North Korea;
Shifting the goalposts. The fact is, both sides pledged to fight until the other was (politically) annihilated. Both sides failed to meet that goal, or even come close to it. Despite 2.5m+ killed or wounded, and a landscape in ruins.
After some digging, it looks like either McArthur or Montgomery expressed the general sentiment first. But the specific formulation in GP is a direct quote from Vizzini in Princess Bride.
There seems to be a lot of people parroting that the CCP freezes out foreign firms by onerous Chinese regulations favoring local firms.
That may be the case for a number of different situations. However, Didi Kauidi, China's ride-sharing service, may just be a better offering than Uber.
Last year, it arranged 1.4 billions rides, more than Uber has done worldwide in its entire history. Also, Didi doesn't just focus on private-car services. It lets users pick a taxi, private car, shared car, shuttle van, or bus to pick them up. It also is tailored to the local market. During Chinese New Year, lots of flights and trains were sold out. Didi helped users find inter-city rides at train fare prices.
It also has a few quirks that separate it from Uber. You can book a test drive of new cars (Audi and Mercedes included). And, Didi is also offering a Tinder-like matchmaking service for passengers. As a kid, I was getting it on in the back seat of my parent's Dodge. What a time to be alive.
Didi will soon allow drivers and passengers to select each other based on their shared interests. It already has a deal with LinkedIn, to let people join up their accounts on the two networks. The intention of such initiatives is that white-collar workers, who often endure daily commutes of an hour or two, will have more fruitful journeys during which business, friendship and maybe even romance will develop.
I'm afraid this is a fight Uber won't win. I just can't see the Chinese internet giants letting an American company dominate this space. Call me jaded, but the world isn't so black and white, and I'm sure in the end Uber will concede to defeat after realizing their biggest competitor aren't playing by the same rules.
It's not jaded, it's an accurate understanding of China's historically mercantile attitude.
I cannot for the life of me think of a single foreign product or company operating in China that China hasn't copied for their own version (or ripped off, like the fake Apple stores). The only exceptions are culture companies, where the brand matters more than the product (Pizza Hut; McDonalds; Starbucks).
Microsoft, Intel and Apple seems to do well, just on top of my head, many car companies are also doing well, although German and Japanese cars sell better than American ones.
After some googling, looks like Nike, Coca-cola, Gillette are all doing reasonably well.
Microsoft, Intel, and apple all have irreplaceable products (custom OS, etc).
What does Uber have besides boatloads of cash and existing market share? From s consumer perspective Uber's competition works just as well (for the most part), whereas alternatives to windows are Limited to MacOS, Linux.
>Nike
Great brand of shoes. "Just do it"! More than just the thing you run in.
>Coca-cola
The classic soda. Even Pepsi's cutesy challenge barely wobbled Coke's throne.
>Gillette
"The best a man can get!" Lovely brand. Before I moved to DSC I used them all the time. But razors are just strips of metal after all.
Basically my point is with enough capital and know-how, anyone can create anything. But without an effective and compelling brand, you're a nobody.
China makes quality hardware these days (Xiaomi for example), but "cheap Chinese crap" is such an entrenched phrase it practically rolls off the tongue.
Parent comment meant Microsoft's revenue in China. While exact figures are hard to come by, they most certainly do not make tens of billions of dollars from China.
Not necessarily true, just look at soccer in China in the past two weeks. Just buy all the Lebron's until you figure out the template and can mass produce it.
They can't buy all the Lebrons. They don't want to play in China. During the last NBA strike problems, the same held true: nobody of consequence abandoned ship, they chose to wait it out.
The ~450 NBA players are set to make more than all the Fortune 500 CEOs combined in salary terms, with the new TV rights. China currently can't replicate everything that goes into paying for that (we're talking about $35 billion in salary in just the next 10 years). Buying a few star players won't elevate the overall league, it'll make the league a joke.
China has an economy that is about to be half the size of the US as they are forced to significantly devalue the yuan in the next 12-18 months, and their economy is sinking under a massive and perpetually expanding load of debt. They can't afford to play the game the way they used to, where they'd foolishly pay N times what something is worth just to make it happen. Those days are over, economic normalization is inbound (if they're lucky).
The CSL isn't buying the Lebrons of soccer, though.
Edit to add: And there's more to a successful and interesting league than recognizable players; moreso in soccer than basketball (and even moreso in American football).
Uber already knows this. That's why they've partnered with Baidu and raised $2B from Chinese investors recently.
You really think Travis is going to lose in China? This isn't Google China in 2009. Travis partnered with the crazy guy who got Google kicked out of China.
I won't speculate that Uber will be dominate in China but there's no way they're going away anytime soon.
> You really think Travis is going to lose in China? This isn't Google China in 2009. Travis partnered with the crazy guy who got Google kicked out of China.
You really think the Chinese government is going to hand over the country's taxi market to a foreign led/managed/owned company? LOL
The fact that you are comparing Travis to the CCP in the same sentence is laughable, as if he has some magical power that will allow him to defy papa Xi in his own country!
China is merely allowing Uber to experiment and establish the concept of ride-sharing in China. Once that happens they will steamroll them over using every trick in the book, including ironically, lots of regulation!
Sure why not? Microsoft is the leading computer operating system in China. Android and iOS are the top mobile operating systems. All are U.S. led/managed/owned companies.
To address your second point about regulation, Didi Kuaidi doesn't escape regulation any more than Uber does.
Uber raised $2B from Chinese investors and is partnered with Baidu. I never said Uber will win the taxi market in China, because that's incredibly hard, but to "LOL" and call my statement "laughable" I believe is a little off considering their strategy.
It's laughable not because of "their strategy", but because your statement displays a lack of understanding (complete imo) about how business is done (and has always been done) in China. It is a very naive view, made especially so by your "do you really think Travis would _allow_ ..." as if Travis has ANY control in China.
MS, Android, etc. those are outliers and every story has one. The reality is, the vast majority of foreign companies looking to dominate Chinese market share have met their demise.
I would say _especially_ so for companies that are displacing local operators.
Just think how mad the US taxi industry is about Uber. Now imagine if Uber is owned/operated by Jose in Mexico City. You think our politicians wouldn't regulate the hell out of it? You expect less from the Chinese?
In regards to Didi Kuaidi. Sure they'll be regulated too, but when it comes down to the wire who do you think the government will side with?
I agree to disagree. It's impossible to predict the future but if I was forecasting Uber's future in China, I believe they have a good chance of succeeding. That's just my opinion.
I respect that you have a different opinion but you shouldn't assume so easily.
I recently worked for a Chinese software company for over three years. I helped them IPO in China last year before the Chinese stock market collapsed. I know how hard it is to breakthrough in China because my last company had more success in North America and EMEA than APAC. Chinese regulation is hard but I'll side with Uber any day because I believe in Travis and his team, even if you don't.
> I respect that you have a different opinion but you shouldn't assume so easily.
You are assuming my opinion is easily formed, when it is based off of lots of experience in China and discussions with a wide network of people with even more experience in China.
Uber may succeed in China, but it will be at the blessing of the CCP (another HN commentator raises one possibility: if Chinese investors own a majority of the company). To think "Travis and his team" have any real control in China is - no offense - totally naive.
I think your view is naive because you think Travis and his "strategy" have any bearing on Uber's long-term success in China.
The only strategy that matters is how to curry favor with, and kowtow to, the Chinese leadership and central to that strategy, unfortunately, is not being majority foreign owned/operated (especially by Americans).
> My statements aren't "laughable" or "totally naive." You just want to be right huh?
Now you're just projecting.
Your view is in the minority, even here on HN. If you were to take this view to more China-centric online communities, you'll find even fewer supporters.
"Laughable" is mean-spirited, but "naive" is a fitting description.
I'm not projecting. You just think you're right because you're Chinese.
You know honestly I didn't have an issue with your feedback except that you overreached when you said my comments were "LOL", "naive" and "laughable." That's offensive and arrogant. But you don't stop there, you keep attacking me!
"Your view is in the minority, even here on HN. If you were to take this view to more China-centric online communities, you'll find even fewer supporters."
You don't think I have Chinese friends? You're assuming once again.
And my view is the minority according to YOU! You don't have census data of the world, just your network, so stop attacking every response I have to prove your point!
Wait five years and we'll see who's right about Uber in China. You don't need to keep attacking me every time. It's rude.
Xiaomi employs Hugo barras, former head of android. China has the source code to Windows (not sure if current versions). And on top of all that no Chinese person uses googles ecosystem on android and they cannot use many of iOS features like Apple Pay. They jailbreak and side load apps.
For Chinese (and Indian) economies, the recent VC boom has been a significant conduit to siphon foreign dollars directly into consumer economies. The govt's have mostly kept a handsoff approach as long it's basically acting as a consumer economy stimulus funded by the VC. If any of these businesses become significant profit drivers, you can bet your last dime that local competition will find ways win those markets using whatever means necessary (more easily in China than India... but still).
> You really think Travis is going to lose in China? This isn't Google China in 2009. Travis partnered with the crazy guy who got Google kicked out of China.
Yea, probably. He's done pretty well in most markets, but China isn't most markets.
Yes they can partner with Baidu but at the end of the day, its all about whether the CCP have Uber on a leash. If the CCP can force Walmart to capitulate and accept unions then I'm sure Uber will capitulate as well and change their core values or possibly even control and influence to the CCP via a board member.
I agree that Uber isn't going to lose outright with how they intend to fight in China and I'm actually excited to see how much Uber will change to become CCP acceptable. If Uber wants to win, it will have to sacrifice a lot more than just money.
> Call me jaded, but the world isn't so black and white, and I'm sure in the end Uber will concede to defeat after realizing their biggest competitor aren't playing by the same rules.
Call me a jaded person, but Uber shall have learned a lesson.
When they break the law, its distrupty, when someone else does it, its "unfair".
That would seem to be the default outcome, based on experiences of other American companies in China. It still makes sense for Uber to fight for their place in China, though. The opportunity is too big to just concede defeat. Uber are also probably a bit more street smart than the other American internet companies that have previously failed to establish their place in China.
American tech companies didn't fail to dominate China because of naïveté, they failed because the Chinese Communist Party refuses to let any global tech company establish a sizable foothold when they can create their own Chinese version, especially when the Chinese version helps cement the Great Firewall and control the populace. This is not a contemporary trend, this is the consistent history of China.
Baidu over Google; Alibaba over Amazon; Renren over Facebook and Twitter (both blocked in China).
Only exception is Apple, but they mostly sell products instead of info (and is fashionable among the Chinese elite). But then, there's always Xiaomi...
US company views China a good to have, but not live or death market. Native Chinese company does not. it's the vital difference that matters.
Take Google for example. will it break the copyright law to provide MP3 download for its own survival in USA? I bet yes. But in China, it won't. It's not an issue of morality, or suppression of Chinese Community Party.
Amazon VS. Alibaba. Jack Ma personally visited clients to seal deals, would Jeff Bezos do the same to his Chinese clients? I don't think so.
MSN VS. QQ. In 2005/6, 10m+ Chinese MSN users were assaulted by a social engineering hack. It only took 6 months for MS to recognised the issue. Tencent normally reacts in 48 hours.
Twitter VS. Sina Weibo. When Sina decided to do Weibo, it was a full scale operation with so many functions Chinese users loved that even if Twitter was allowed in Chinese market, it would lose in weeks.
when you are playing a market game in China, facing competitors whose lives are in stake, the result is obvious. Your competitors would do anything to survive, including breaking laws, lobbying/bribing govt./officers.
You are dead right. Bribes that are simply a part of the game in China are a punishable offence in the West.
Another reason foreign social networks tend to be blocked in China: if someone makes a post on Weibo or Renren that the party doesn't like, they can simply have it removed without fanfare...along with the poster...
My point is less about bribe or lobbying. It's about the mentality. For native Chinese company, the stake is so high that when facing overwhelmingly foreign opportunists they are willing to do anything to survive, faster reaction to users/customers, product adjustment to local users, more marketing spending, wage PR war with naive nationalism, you name it. Bribing and politics are really tip of the iceberg.
Global(US) company cant survive in China, a major reason is that their services are not competitive enough(although a few exceptions, e.g. Google Search), comparing to local rivals.
Amazon, for example, their delivery is not working in China. Competitors are offering same-day delivery, or even 3-hour delivery one or two years ago in China, while Amazon is relying on some crappy 3rd party delivery with a high deductible you have to meet before your delivery can be free.
Wechat centers around chatting as a take on SNS, and it works. It is not Facebook, but works like Facebook. While the direct copy of Facbook, Renren is long dying.
So it is really a grey area when we talking about success in China. What you need to realize, Chinese companies are very competitive. Shit tons of money pours to Chinese internet companies over the past decade. Tencent/Alibaba are all 100 billions company, and there are sizable of others worth more than 10 billions. Also, China has good engineers too, might not live up to bay area standard, but they are also much cheaper. Last but not least, I want to point out, a lot of 'tech' companies here are not really tech driven, rather they are just tech users, so their model can be easily copied and recreated, not only in China, but also by other big US companies.
All in all, it is not realistic to expect what work here automatically print money in China. South korea is an interesting example, where GFW doesn't exist, but US companies also have a hard time there, it is just that China is bigger so it gets much more attention.
I'm guessing you're just a year too young to remember Google having to pull out of China (and various similar US website forced out of China disasters about the same time) that the CCP pulled to give their home growns the big edge.
Claiming the domestic market is better because the CCP basically forced all the competition out by quite publicly asking them all to spy on the chinese citizens, politically unfeasible at the time for the US companies, is not that they 'are not competitive enough'.
It's Chinese protectionism and desire for central control.
I honestly feel like you're trying to rewrite what is very well documented history and very recent history at that. It was widely discussed here at the time.
I do agree Google and FB is largely harmed by the great firewall from the every beginning, they don't even have a chance to compete. But Uber is not really blocked in China at all. They worked really actively with their government and even throw in a DC in China. Yes, Uber's competitor is fierce, but they made it work. Unlike the fact that China still cannot make a smart phone as good as iPhone, or cannot make their own OS like windows, that's they Apple and MS thrived.
> But Uber is not really blocked in China at all. They worked really actively with their government and even throw in a DC in China.
Uber is not blocked, for now. That can change in a whim. The Chinese government can simply create regulations that apply to them that do not apply to their local competitors. This has happened many times before in the past....
>Unlike the fact that China still cannot make a smart phone as good as iPhone, or cannot make their own OS like windows, that's they Apple and MS thrived.
While the Chinese did not design the iPhone to say that they "cannot make a smart phone as good" is completely false. For one, the iPhone is largely manufactured in China and has been for a few generations now. Second, some of the best iphone competitors / android devices are being made by Chinese companies.
>Second, some of the best iphone competitors / android devices are being made by Chinese companies.
Such as? Even if true they are running non-chinese OS software...
Making the iPhone in China means they could make iPhones, not necessarily that they can design and build their own full stack phone without "borrowing" heavily from foreign cpetitors.
> Such as? Even if true they are running non-chinese OS software...
Huawei M8 is nice and well made.
> Making the iPhone in China means they could make iPhones, not necessarily that they can design and build their own full stack phone without "borrowing" heavily from foreign cpetitors.
I generally agree with this, but you may be underestimating how quickly others can catch up in this globalized world.
Plus the blueprint has been well established by the other big Asian tech companies. Look at how quickly Samsung "caught up".
They were naive in thinking they could play in China without being buddies with the government. If any company has become expert about government relations recently, it's Uber.
There is nothing special or unique about Uber. Yes, their app is pretty. Yes, they are ubiquitous around the world. But there is nothing about it that cannot be copied by a Chinese state-owned enterprise. One could argue Uber's only major advantage is its waterfall of investors.
Uber's most significant long tail value is their heaps of traffic flow and passenger data. Sounds like the exact kind of thing a rich and historically totalitarian regime would want for themselves. And if you want to spot patterns in a potential dissident, it helps to know where they go.
More riders = more drivers. More drivers = more riders opening that app first. I have personally learned to check Uber first before Lyft because I know Uber drivers are closer and the fare estimate will be lower. Uber's advantage is their institutional experience pushing competitors out of markets they want and their cutthroat attitude.
In the cities (Denver, Austin, Portland, Las Vegas...) I've been spending time in recently I've felt like the opposite. Lyft seems to have more drivers and Lyft is almost always cheaper. I've been told by drivers that they try to drive for Lyft as much as possible as they get a bigger cut of the fare, but I have no idea if that's true.
The opportunity is only as big as the Chinese government will allow. If Uber didn't learn that lesson it soon will, and it will have cost them $1 Billion+
The Chinese market was also big for Google, but once the government makes a decision, that "market" will either infect you (ie obligate you to follow Chinese government rules when it comes to your operations outside of China as well) or make you re-evaluate why you want to be in China at all. Google pulled out. The market isn't as big as people think because it's not actually a market.
Indeed; it all hinges whether they can get the government to accept them. I have a feeling Uber won't be quite as idealistic or principled as Google were.
> I just can't see the Chinese internet giants letting an American company dominate this space
Letting an American company know who in your country is travelling where and meeting with whom for how long would be a risky national-security move even without the FBI and pals advertising their bulldog mentality.
Uber runs on cellphone GPS alone. The gov't has full access to cell phone location records for everyone who touches their cell network, with unique serial numbers. They don't need uber or anyone else for a subset of their location records.
The argument isn't that the government needs Uber to be able to track their citizens, but that Uber being a major player allows the American government to track Chinese citizens.
Economic colonialism, i.e. the old boys imposing their will on the new boys, that's it. Case in point, that UAE company which was not allowed to purchase the management contract for some ports in the USA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Ports_World_controversy), the US air business market that only allows American-owned companies, or any big acquisition involving Chinese money on American soil, which automatically creates a "strategic/national defense" discussion.
Why does Uber need to be in China again? Why can't they be happy growing their service and providing better services (like better driver auditing and education) for the North American market?
If they spent $1 Billion improving their service it's better than trying to outspend a natively innovating company in China backed by local people running under different rules.
Uber has to be in China because they raised $RIDICULOUS on a valuation of $MORERIDICULOUS. That valuation is premised on the idea that they will somehow be part of the fundamental physical infrastructure of the world, in a more-than-just-taxicab kind of way. Disclosure: I think that this is an absurd premise. But it's their ambition.
So they have to eventually show solid steps on being more than just a taxi company for rich dense North American cities, because they claimed they were worth $MORERIDICULOUS. They have to pursue some more ambitious schemes. One of those is getting a dominant position in the market of the 1/7th of the world that is most rapidly growing in wealth.
Better driver auditing and education? Ha ha ha. Dude their whole strategy is to bleed out poor schmucks that get in debt thinking they are going to hit the jackpot.
The company that's losing $1bn/year, Uber China, appears to be a separate company just focused on China (valued at $8bn against Uber proper's $60 odd bn and Didi Kuaidi's $16.5bn) and so pretty much has to be in China. If that wasn't the case I could see the argument for just not bothering there.
It's quite a handy thing with Uber having just been in Saigon, Taipei, Manila and similar it was a pleasant surprise to find Uber just worked, avoiding having to research local taxi scams, trying to figure you've got change in local currency when you've just landed and so on.
Presumably, the ROI on penetrating the world's largest market is significantly higher than the ROI on a marginal increase to their dominant market share in North America.
> "We have a fierce competitor that's unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share. I wish the world wasn't that way." - Kalanick
Haha, really? Isn't that how Uber started out, and the quote could well be verbatim from a taxi driver in 2011?
It's not just some markets and some people. They're a VC backed multinational that moves into markets and offers big discounts over local businesses. They are getting a taste of their own medicine with an improved flavour.
"I wish the world wasn't that way" looks like its being applied to "unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share" not "We have a fierce competitor" as opposed to if he had said [I wish we didn't] or [I wish they didn't]
making it about the "the world" pushes it into an ethical or moral opine.
Where on earth is the irony? He wishes he didn't have this competitor.
He doesn't say he thinks what they're doing is illegal or unethical. He doesn't say they should be stopped by anyone. He just wishes they weren't around.
Given the context, "I wish the world wasn't that way" means "I wish we didn't live in a world where people could unprofitably pour money into a market to grab market share to kill off competitors."
It's ironic because it's exactly what they have done in other markets, but they're not complaining about where they were successfully the aggressor, but instead where they are the victim of the tactic.
> "I wish the world wasn't that way" means "I wish we didn't live in a world where people could unprofitably pour money into a market to grab market share to kill off competitors."
I don't see how you've come to that conclusion without asking him to clarify what he means.
Everyone's down voting me like I'm an evil person. I'm just defending him because I think it's lazy to attack someone's point of view with the withering criticism of 'ironic', when the actual words on the page don't really support it.
I don't need to ask him to clarify because I can infer what he means from the context. I can't downvote things, but I don't think you're getting downvoted for your opinion or for anyone thinking you're evil, but my guess would be that it's perhaps for your unusually generous reading of the comment. It's pretty clearly ironic that Uber would complain about this.
I thought he was lamenting the fact that Uber has to compete with an unprofitable organization buying their market share. In an article about how his very own company is losing 1B a year to exist in that market. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.
It makes more sense when comparing two "mobile ride hailing" services. Uber actually started out as a black car service, significantly more expensive than taxis while providing a far superior experience.
<<Haha, really? Isn't that how Uber started out, and the quote could well be verbatim from a taxi driver in 2011?>>
Yes, This this is completely disingenuous... They did not only start out like this in the US, but this is the ONLY way they were able to buy their way into China. When Uber started in China, their competitors had most of the chinese local drivers, and it was Uber who started the subsidy war to gain market share.
HN commentators are missing the point. Uber's strategy is lifted straight from Groupons playbook: they're expanding aggressively internationally to drive home the message that "HEY LOOK WE'RE A GLOBAL PLAY. WE'RE IN 42 CITIES IN CHINA!"
This will drive up the IPO value. By the time they get steamrolled by the local competitors or by the local regulators (likely both) they'll have sold off their shares to the dumb retail investor.
The fact that the heads of Uber China and its main local competitor are literally family members is very telling....
Any firsthand accounts of Didi Kuaidi pricing from chinese HNers?
I took a few cabs around shanghai in 2008 and was floored at how cheap their prices were.
If Didi Kuaidi is undercutting taxi prices, and Uber is trying to undercut them... ridesharing must be almost free in major chinese cities at this point I'm assuming?
So didi offers a couple of services: a taxi service, it just helps you hail a normal metered cab. I use that service every day, and it is no more expensive than doing it the old fashioned way...but during peak, I can input a tip (up to 20 kuai, or about $3), which helps me get a cab when I would otherwise not be able to. Call that "surge pricing" I guess.
The black car service, my wife uses that more. I have trouble using it since I can't epay (no chinese ID number to link to my unionpay card). But the cars are nice, the prices are a bit higher than taxis but we often get coupons that bring the price down. Still nowhere near to the cost of a taxi in the west.
I actually haven't used Uber in China. It isn't that big in Beijing, but I hear in places like Guangzhou it has much more of a presence. As far as I can tell, they have about the same cars working for them (they can take hails from both); I'm guessing the only difference is in the subsidy.
Does anyone know the largest net loss a company has ever had for the year prior to an IPO? Uber must be 2 years max from going public and their losses seem to be accelerating[0].
I can't find the article where i read the numbers (it was on the Guardian news site) but Uber's reported loss for 2015 was in the billions, however, that included income also in the billions. The loss as others here have noted comes from growth and investment. If you segment their operations they appear to be profitable in some regions.
Last funding raise was something like $2.1B. I suspected uber's burn rate was high but this implies that they're going to be hitting some hard liquidity issues within the next 18 months if they can't perpetually raise capital.
The photograph in the article is of an office for Uber in Hong Kong. Is there any reliable data available about how the company is doing there? Uber is ideal for places with inefficient public transportation; Hong Kong has easily one of the most efficient public transportation systems in the world. Subway, tram, light-bus and easy walkability make Uber seem redundant.
Inefficient transport systems tend to affect the poor. For example, spending an hour commuting to work. Where this is a serious problem, for example India, some jobs even come with a chauffeur. Daily commutes are not Uber's market.
Doesn't that make the case for Uber even worse? Where Uber shines is being cheap and more available than the closed system of Taxis. With Taxis everywhere (and them being so cheap, I paid about HK$40 to get from the airport to Happy Valley) it seems like Uber wouldn't have a place in the market.
I'm surprised (not that surprised) to hear there's ride sharing apps in China at all. I lived in Beijing for a few months several years ago and the taxis are (for a foreigner) pretty reasonable and efficient. Besides better public transport, taxis were everywhere, some were just motorized three wheeled motorbikes with a little chair on the back. Besides those, one night while getting a taxi to a bar, a random person stopped by and offered us a ride. My Chinese friends negotiated a pretty reasonable price to get across the city.
The point is, I think ride sharing apps have much more competition in China/Asia. It's not just terrible bus systems and inefficient taxi services like in America.
Taxis are indeed cheap and plentiful, but the ride sharing services are somewhat cheaper and somewhat easier to hail. Plus, the customer base is so gigantic that there's room for many players. It's not like some US cities where Uber is displacing traditional taxi services that charge $400/mile to ride in a broken-down Chevy driven by an escaped axe murderer, but you don't necessarily need that much of an edge.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. 滴滴出行 is throwing a lot of money at buying people. I downloaded the app in case I can't get a cab in Beijing, and they keep bombarding me with "15RMB voucher", "50RMB voucher", "50RMB voucher", "25RMB voucher" just to get me to start using the app.
Regular cabs are cheap and plentiful over here. I can go from here to Sanlitun for about 150RMB, which is about 30km. Within 4th ring road, flagging one down (outside of rush hour) is trivial. Public transportation is cheap as well (1RMB for a bus ride, 3-10RMB for a subway ride all over the city). That means that neither Uber nor Didi are competing on convenience, they're competing on price till they've got the market cornered.
And every app over here does it. Wechat pay got themselves advertising spots during the New Years Festival Broadcast last year and has been offering discounts EVERYWHERE last November. McDonalds, Subway, Paris Baguette, literally everywhere. This year Alipay got to sponsor the New Years Festival Broadcast, so they're in catchup mode right now.
Uber may have used the strategy first, but they're late to the party in China. As a foreign company in China, they should have positioned themselves as a premium provider. Look at what Apple did. It's a thing of beauty how obsessed Chinese people are over their iPhones.
So how would Uber have gone about that? Offer premium rides first. Nice climate controlled cars with properly screened chauffeurs. Aim for the people that aren't quite able to afford a full-time driver. Didi can be nicer than cabs, but it's a little hit or miss sometimes. Remove that ambiguity.
Open up an Uber store in Sanlitun. Does an Uber store make sense? No, but then a lot of things do not make any sense here in china, and they still work somehow. Nice modern store, a fancy car somewhere on display, and what would it sell? Gift rides and vouchers. Exploit the Chinese habit of giving gifts and regifting(you can buy fruit in boxes for Chinese new year, why not Uber rides in boxes?), and go wild with it. Wooden box with a red sleeve, containing a scale model of a car with minimal uber branding, some assorted status object and then a red envelope that folds open to reveal an Uber voucher in the X000RMB range, or some fancier rides you can't book through the app (eg. armoured cars/vintage cars/sports cars/helicopters/etc.). In a sense, Didi is already doing some of these.
The point is, if you're trying to get into the Chinese market, don't get into mudfights with Chinese competitors. They'll fight dirty, and if you fight dirty, they'll fight dirtier. Apple didn't come out with a discount phone to beat Xiaomi (which btw, fights REALLY dirty. They sell to distributors ABOVE MRSP to cut their margins. the distributors have to put up with it).
No, go premium, and come early. There's an entire part of the Chinese tech industry that calls itself C2C - Copy 2 China. The moment your startup hits techcrunch, there'll be a Chinese copy of it. That is a law of nature. It will happen to you.
Uber should have known this before throwing down the gauntlet over here. It's not going to be a fun ride for 'em.
I don't understand. Why not just focus on the rest of the world? It is, after all a big effin world. China has always been a different market. What's with this need to monopolize every corner of the world and lose a shiz ton of $ in the process?
Their brand redesign was the beginning of the end. This will accelerate the process. Their team has no clue what it is doing. You can downvote, but this will be a fact sooner than you might think.
On HN every day brings some new event that completely changes everything forever and deserves all our attention and capacity for outrage. Don't you ever find this exhausting?
Yes. Countless people including those on HN, relating stories of people they know not finding the app on their phones and then using a different service.
I'm sorry but... isn't this exactly what Uber has been doing to their competitors for a long time in most markets?