dlitwak

Congrats to Ali. Been very impressed with Chariot's mastery of nitty gritty business & logistics fundamentals. That sounds like it should be obvious, but Leap and other competitors couldn't so much as file the right permits, let alone start what amounted to their own public transit network and get regular ridership. This is a hard, low margin, business to get right in a crowded space, and Ali managed to scale it to 40k+ riders per month and that's awesome. Well deserved!

Obviously the analogy breaks down at some point . . . but yes, I will check out that book, thanks!

Candy Crush, we're holding that up as a development that Apple is responsible that we want to be proud of, seriously? Regardless, an app store wasn't groundbreaking. They executed much better on what Blackberry was already doing with smartphones.

The point isn't necessarily what has come to pass yet, it's the focus on things that don't necessarily have a path to revenue yet. Everything Apple does is product and revenue focused. That is not the case with Google.

You are right that 95% of their revenue comes from Adwords . . . but 95% of their efforts aren't on optimizing Adwords, and that right there is my point: Apple is focused on executing where their revenue is, Google is definitely MORE focused on finding new revenue opportunities, and is more willing to look into unorthodox industries and ideas.

I judge what I see . . . can't speculate about other companies. The robotics acquisitions were kept secret for a long time as well. As were autonomous cars. Eventually they came out. I don't think there is some super secret lab at apple that is working on groundbreaking inventions, and not one thing has come out of it yet, bit of a tall tale in my eyes. . .

Don't be silly, all research done by companies has an ROI counter tied to it . . . the point is that some do much more forward thinking research into technologies that might not yet have a specific application quite yet, and others are focused 2-3 years in advance and that's it.

I think credit is given . . . that's the past though, only so long you can rest on your laurels, and creating a snazzier phone and an app store doesn't really measure up to autonomous cars and robots in my opinion . . . its very nice don't get me wrong, but not in the same category of hard research into technologies where there isn't an obvious usecase yet, and thinking ahead 15 years.

True. I'll admit that there is probably a fair amount of bias because Google has a better PR department. But I doubt it's that much better than these other guys . . . I think much of the research being done is around incremental improvements, and the point is that Google seems to be dreaming much bigger and thinking much more long term.

Ok they have a computer and an operating system as well as a nice way to transfer files . . . big whoop. I think we can all agree that this isn't groundbreaking.

Totally agree. I've been at demo days and I just tune out the foreigners who I can't understand. It's hard enough having to listen to 40+ startups in a day, and try to understand what someone is doing, why they are doing it, and how it can make money, throw in a thick accent and you are likely to give your brain a rest and just tune out. I notice that these founders are the ones with no one visiting their demo table, etc.

At the same time everyone of those google employees who lives in SF pays SF taxes, quite high taxes as a matter of fact, and that contributes to the community, 2-3x more than any of these hippy touchy-feely types who claim that SF is theirs and theirs alone.

I agree though that they should pay for the use of public land for their bus stops, as they are solving a problem they largely created by making it possible for their employees to live there in the first place.

SF already has pretty high taxes, so the creation of a lot of wealth is not google or anyone elses fault. If SF can't do anything to alleviate poverty with the vast amount of funds it collects then that is the problem.

And if it't not possible anymore because SF is just overall too expensive, then that's life, some cities are wealthier than others, you don't see people moving into Montecito, Bel Air or other rich neighborhoods and demanding affordable housing? Perhaps if the city has become that desirable it just isn't possible anymore.

it's evened out because people now live where they work instead of have EVERYONE live one place and work numerous other places.

I'm a capitalist whose fine with everything going on in SF to be honest, but I agree that Google is essentially solving a problem it is also helping to create with the buses, so while I don't think they should be criticized I'm also not sitting here cheering them for being environmentally friendly when it was evidently in their best interests to do what they did.

Not necessarily. I hate these articles just as much as the next techie, but there is no denying that Google is solving a problem they are creating: if they didn't offer these buses then people wouldn't live in SF anywhere NEAR as frequently and there wouldn't be as much traffic: so they offer the buses.

I do think they should be paying some sort of fees to use public bus stops etc., but everything else I disagree with in the article and think it's bullshit.

definitely agree. What's stopping some upstart kids with a mobile app and a ton of VC funding from undercutting everyone. What if they didn't take any cut at all and made money on upselling on other services or ads on the app?

Perhaps, I'll admit my Rockefeller history isn't super extensive, but still: once he bought up all those competitors he was in an industry that required MASSIVE investment of oil wells, pipes etc. to compete with him. He had massive barriers to entry.

Considering that Uber owns none of the cars and they are a software company, I don't see how they are different from any other software company that just has a really good product. There are plenty of software companies that are awesome, that companies use, but don't have a monopoly.

I'm in the transportation space, specifically airport transfers and ground transportation, and there are tons of backend systems, and yes, it's difficult once people start using one to get them to switch, so Uber does have some barriers to entry. But there are like 20 of these systems that I work with: Zaui, Hudson, Fastrack, Distinctive Systems, they go on. Different companies used different solutions at different times.

It will be the same for taxis/on demand services. Hailo was the app in London when I was there. Most of my friends in SF use Sidecar or Lyft, not Uber, because we are more interested in the budget option, and even if Uber now offers it they didn't when we needed it first, so our habits have been formed already.

I agree on the automated cars, that will be the supply, but even then smaller companies, instead of just acquiring cars for their driver to drive, will get in the business of acquiring cars to lease. And then what about my own car? What if I want to put my car to work while I'm at work, instead of paying for parking? When we all have autonomous cars, then I can go make a choice which framework I want to use, and I'm willing to bet that Uber is not the only one standing. Who says I won't use multiple services, and have my car accept the first request that comes in from any of them?

Also, Uber doesn't have such domination that they can make a Rockefeller like threat right now. They are doing great, but so are other companies. They are in 40 markets, what about the other thousands they aren't in? What are they going to tell those competitors? Sell to us, or, sometime 3-5 years to now we may or may not move into your market and try to compete with you? Hell no, if I was them I'd stay independent and duke it out.

In the end, this is too early the game. If there are 10's of thousands of markets in the world, and Uber is in 40, and you are already declaring them the winner.

They are on the first mile of a Marathon, don't get ahead of yourself.

I think this is a very naive and somewhat wishful thinking writeup. You neglect a major reason why Rockefeller was able to obtain a monopoly: he controlled literally every part of the process of extracting oil, from the wells to the pipeline to the tank cars, in an industry that had high startup costs/barriers to entry.

You basically look at every way in which Uber is doing a great job and then declare they will have a monopoly. It's not like they are the first successful business that is killing it and you don't have any truly remarkable arguments for why no one else can go do EXACTLY what they are doing. They have a head start: big whoop, so has any great company.

For Uber to obtain Standard Oil style monopoly they'd have to do something very different that you don't mention: buy a good portion of the cabs and cars and black car services in the world. In the end those cars are the actual supply, and Uber DOES NOT OWN ONE CAR. Do you know how many of those companies exist? Do you think that 1) Uber is even interested in acquiring them and 2) that'd even be possible if they did? Do you think that every single one of them would come onto one platform and that Uber could convince them to be that one platform? You don't think that in certain regions or countries other companies, the Lyfts and Sidecars and Hailos of the world, won't make a move and lock down certain markets first and become the defacto option in those cities?

You also neglect the fact that in many cities (downtown new york?) getting a cab is super easy. In some cities there aren't enough uber cabs going around at any one time to have an on demand app work necessarily, and for other trips private transportation in the way Uber offers might be exorbitantly expensive (getting to certain airports, etc.). You neglect the fact that they are targeting one behavior, a massive one, but still one behavior: the on demand ride. Lots of people like to plan their rides in advance.

Overall this reads like it was written by a fanboy, little real analysis of why, despite the fact that Uber is an awesome company that is doing extremely well, they have any real chance of having a monopoly.

It is a transportation planning and booking app. Orbitz, Expedia, Kayak, Hipmunk, you name it are all in the transportation planning space (but for flying) and everyone has their preferences etc. There is room for more than just Uber and the idea that they will just take over everyone is ridiculous.

You can use SkyScanner's Everywhere search, so look from London to "Everywhere" and you will get a list of destinations.

However, this was often the premise of these inspiration sites that didn't work out. Wanderfly has the ability to search by number of days and how much money you had to spend, but it didn't really work.

These things are good in concept, but it gets back to my point, that they need TONS of data to make any meaningful recommendations, and that data doesn't exist yet on travel. In many cases music is easier, as a former classical musician I can attest to this, in music theory there are diminished chords, augmented triads, all different types of existing classifications of different types of sound.

In travel it's a big mess. You need big data solutions to sort through the problems, and just building a pretty interface won't solve it, which is what most of these companies have been doing.

Oh I agree. I guess I thought you were referring to a lot of these "comprehensive social trip planning" tools that help you collaborate on a trip. I think they are useless. I agree it's the problems like "ok, how do we get from Prague to Vienna" now that me and my buddy decided we want to go that are truly the hard part.

public transit is actually a fairly small percentage of the way people get to and from airports. SF is one of the highest in the country though, I think around 22% of people use transit to get to and from the airport. However, on the opposite side is Cleveland with 5%.

Regardless, there are a lot of people who may be going to a suburb and not a hotel by the BART stop that don't want to do 3 transfers and would rather take a shuttle. Until a multimodal search engine can show me those options, I'm not really interested.

Perhaps, but I'd counter that with the trip I just planned I didn't need a tool to do it. I shared a google doc with a friend for one and had a couple skype calls. For another I just went over to her house and we figured out the dates, where we wanted to go etc. Her roommate might come now, as a friend whose in London. That is "social trip planning" but I'm not sure what framework, and there are a bunch out there, could help make that easier. A lot of it is serendipity based, and the logistics weren't that difficult in the first place.

This is great. I bike to work and I had kind of intuitively figured this out after a month, but pretty cool nonetheless!

We have had unpaid interns before, as have a lot of companies I know. The difference is you can't find CODERS to be unpaid interns. Every person whose trying to break in to marketing, social media and PR etc., we have no real use for them right now.

I wouldn't be hiring a PR or Marketing person otherwise, it isn't necessary. Numerous times friends of friends have asked for an internship, I've said we aren't ready to hire in that position yet, and they have offered to work for free, for experience, or for college credit.

The better way of alleviating this is to have a skillset that not everyone else has, that any college graduate can't duplicate.

ITB was for the first week, the second two weeks I was working in the same environment most other berlin startups work in.

But yes, it's anecdotal evidence, observed continuously over 3 weeks. And it's an impression, that's all, never claimed to have done exhaustive research :) Like I mentioned in other comments, I obviously realize there are plenty of people who probably jaywalk, in a city of millions that much is certain. But I thought that particular observation reflected a lot of what I had heard from Germans themselves.

Thank you, it's a brand new Tumblr template, wasn't aware that it had a problem, will get on it.

I spent three weeks there, it wasn't an exhaustive study on the psyche of the German people I'll give you that. But it was drawn on substance, I had numerous meetings with berlin tech people, and just thought the jaywalking observation seemed in line from the impressions I got from those meetings.

But there are differences in culture, so I guess if referring to the "Germans" as a whole offends you there is nothing I can do.

just trying to illustrate my impression through an example :) obviously I realize that in a country of millions you will have plenty jaywalkers, so rebuttals like "I jaywalk and I'm German" are kind of missing the point . . .

there is the letter and the spirit of the law. I think the spirit of the law is what is usually important, and in the case when there is no car in sight and no one is walking across the street, that's what i was referring to.

regardless, it's an example that I saw and thought represented the general mindset, and reflected what I saw and heard from Germans themselves about the state of the startup ecosystem.

figuratively in startups, maybe, yeah. Not that I condone breaking the law, but startups like SideCar, Uber, Lyft and AirBnb wouldn't be around if there wasn't a bit of an appetite for breaking the rules and risking getting in trouble. More of a mentality thing.

I'm sorry, actually curious, you can't read it? It's just a tumblr template, so I'm curious if I should change some settings to make it more readable, etc.

I technically got laid off from the previous job before I started Mozio, my startup. I qualified for unemployment, but declined it. I graduated debt free from UC berkeley and was born into a well off family and my unemployment was on purpose in the search to make myself much more wealthy, and it didn't seem right to take public money to do that. I understand that te prevailing sentiment on this thread is that entrepreneurs would add more value than an employee and so therefore are entitled to the benefits just as much, but for me it was personal: I looked at myself and my family situation and thought that it would be greedy and bad karma, and not how I wanted to launch my career. I had already been given so many advantages in life that I didn't think it was necessary to be unscrupulous and repurpose a government program like that.

Had an implicit cushion of parents who supported me and eventually lent me 10k. However, also minimized rent by moving into our closet/study for 500 bucks a month (which in sf is unheard of) and now I've moved into the living room and pay 150 a month, have a free parking space in my house and free office space provided by Wilson sonsini. So essentially I can get by on very little and sill lead a fairly comfortable life. I also found odd ways to make money, from 400 dollar an hour usability testing to airbnbing my room during the outside lands festival and sleeping on my roommates floor.