Is that actually the story of Uber? They didn't start with "let a random person drive you around"; they did licensed-limousine-by-app (which is the incremental "boring" improvement this post hates) until Lyft came around. They quickly copied the model (Lyft launched in May; "Uber X" in July 2012 [0]) but that's something to be said for agility and not necessarily getting the right idea at first.
> it removed the driver’s power to reject you. It made price transparent. It weaponized accountability through ratings.
Wow. I really doubt this person took many ubers. if this was written by a person of course
Anyone can get rejected by drivers. Just canceling or the worst is if the driver is hiding somewhere next block and not moving, waiting for you to cancel. It's better when a taxi driver just tells you no
The price is not transparent. You know it in advance if it's uber X but it's not transparent. And of course Uber X with its "transparent price" cost the same or more as a regular taxi
I know of people who got scammed by an uber driver in india and were taken instead of their hotel in delhi all the way to kashmir. Or a friend just got dropped off on wrong street at night in a foreign country without internet. Etc
I definitely wrote it by hand, no LLM used if that is what you are insinuating.
Uber might have turned to the bad practices used by taxis now that they are focused on extracting more and more value. However, the point of the writing was to be focused on earlier days. In the earlier days, they did try and embodied price transparency and customer experience focused on customers.
If you are arguing that they never did, I don't see how it grew to a $200 Bn company.
They did it because they were losing money to capture market.
The smart places knew it and regulated uber or killed it and keep local taxis working
Kind of like a country can subsidize car industry export tons of cars and kill domestic production in another country. Then they can jack up prices and profit on their terms.
They don't win because their cars are better. They win because they are lying by price
sorry to hear that. curious if the product's approach was a fuck you to Workday though as in you can't even put them side by side and compare (they are so different) or if it was simply that Workday sucks, we will do better
A 'Fuck You' in this instance is ignoring regulations that have been in place for years preventing outside competition. This is the 'disrupt' startup model.
It works well when you have lots of capital to expand and fight lawsuits.
Yeah too many of the examples seem to be just that. It’s no true for all “disruptive” startups, it’s not always even bad, but it’s a different play than just solving a problem in a new way.
- Uber is an end-run around existing taxi monopolies (imo a good thing), plus I believe taking advantage of people’s inability to think longer term about depreciation on their vehicle when calculating earnings.
- crypto is an end-run around securities regulations. It’s not a payment system it’s an investment scam that would be illegal if used with other financial instruments
- a vast swath of big tech is profitable on the back of not providing customer service or recourse of any kind and just automating business without regard for edge cases (not necessarily regulation but formerly a requirement for a business to participate in society)
Disagree, the author is using Fuck You as a proxy for customer pain. Fuck You taxi industry works because people hate taxis. Fuck You hotels worked because people hate hotels. Fuck You Google works (in terms of llms) works because Google results became shit.
Identifying industries where people begrudgingly accept the status quo because they need the service but hate everything about how it's provided is your opportunity.
Paul Graham also has a good way to frame this which perhaps I should have touched upon.
"A principle for taking advantage of thresholds has to include a test to ensure the game is worth playing. Here's one that does: if you come across something that's mediocre yet still popular, it could be a good idea to replace it. For example, if a company makes a product that people dislike yet still buy, then presumably they'd buy a better alternative if you made one."
Airbnb and hotels.com and the likes have been pushing the hotels towards a race to the bottom but actual hotels are not bad in my experience. Small quasi-hotels with ordinary flats that run like a estate get rich quick scheme are though.
I feel like Airbnb started more on the provider side as "fuck you landlord/local government I'll sublet if I want and you won't catch me" more than a fuck you to hotels specifically. Any "fuck you hotels" on the customer side was mostly on the price side - Airbnb was indeed cheaper when it was a bed, a towel and a plate in someone's flat rather than a specially-bought and renovated property where you never see the host except to pick up a key. Maybe the "meet real new people" thing had some legs at first for some gregarious types, but it clearly wasn't that important since it's mostly gone now. It bootstrapped into a whole property market thing when it turned out to be outrageously profitable in tourist areas and created a whole new supply of holiday let properties at the expense of local residential supply.
Hotels/Booking.com are more of a fuck you to travel agents and/or opaque or fragmented hotel pricing, since they don't provide an alternative to the hotel itself.
That's confusing things. There are bad, good and great hotels. There are bad, good and great airbnbs. The problem is what will the management of that place do or try to get away with; what can the client do; what can the intermediary / rating. That was already the case before Airbnb.
If an airbnb and a hotel choose to race to the bottom, perhaps they deserve each other and the rest of us deserve a way to avoid them? (Or use them if it came to that...)
I think Airbnb and hotels.com do not push people to the bottom - they offer a minimal bar or set of features to look for quality / price ratio. Are they perfect? No. But they make discovery much easier.
Is that actually the story of Uber? They didn't start with "let a random person drive you around"; they did licensed-limousine-by-app (which is the incremental "boring" improvement this post hates) until Lyft came around. They quickly copied the model (Lyft launched in May; "Uber X" in July 2012 [0]) but that's something to be said for agility and not necessarily getting the right idea at first.
[0] here's a launch announcement with Lyft being listed as already being operational https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/01/uber-opens-up-platform-to-...
Basically: do not farm, pillage instead.
> it removed the driver’s power to reject you. It made price transparent. It weaponized accountability through ratings.
Wow. I really doubt this person took many ubers. if this was written by a person of course
Anyone can get rejected by drivers. Just canceling or the worst is if the driver is hiding somewhere next block and not moving, waiting for you to cancel. It's better when a taxi driver just tells you no
The price is not transparent. You know it in advance if it's uber X but it's not transparent. And of course Uber X with its "transparent price" cost the same or more as a regular taxi
I know of people who got scammed by an uber driver in india and were taken instead of their hotel in delhi all the way to kashmir. Or a friend just got dropped off on wrong street at night in a foreign country without internet. Etc
I definitely wrote it by hand, no LLM used if that is what you are insinuating.
Uber might have turned to the bad practices used by taxis now that they are focused on extracting more and more value. However, the point of the writing was to be focused on earlier days. In the earlier days, they did try and embodied price transparency and customer experience focused on customers.
If you are arguing that they never did, I don't see how it grew to a $200 Bn company.
They did it because they were losing money to capture market.
The smart places knew it and regulated uber or killed it and keep local taxis working
Kind of like a country can subsidize car industry export tons of cars and kill domestic production in another country. Then they can jack up prices and profit on their terms.
They don't win because their cars are better. They win because they are lying by price
Same with closedai and friends now.
A very refreshing read after a long time.
I like the use of vulgar language, it hits way harder than all the blah-blah bullshit
I've been convinced by the power of "Fuck you" :)
I tried my best to make a startup that was a "fuck you" to Workday (orgspace.io, RIP).
Unfortunately, HR execs said "fuck you" back in no uncertain terms.
sorry to hear that. curious if the product's approach was a fuck you to Workday though as in you can't even put them side by side and compare (they are so different) or if it was simply that Workday sucks, we will do better
A 'Fuck You' in this instance is ignoring regulations that have been in place for years preventing outside competition. This is the 'disrupt' startup model.
It works well when you have lots of capital to expand and fight lawsuits.
Yeah too many of the examples seem to be just that. It’s no true for all “disruptive” startups, it’s not always even bad, but it’s a different play than just solving a problem in a new way.
- Uber is an end-run around existing taxi monopolies (imo a good thing), plus I believe taking advantage of people’s inability to think longer term about depreciation on their vehicle when calculating earnings.
- crypto is an end-run around securities regulations. It’s not a payment system it’s an investment scam that would be illegal if used with other financial instruments
- a vast swath of big tech is profitable on the back of not providing customer service or recourse of any kind and just automating business without regard for edge cases (not necessarily regulation but formerly a requirement for a business to participate in society)
- closedai and friends around copyright
what do you mean by regulations? Those that benefitted Uber or?
Taxis. This is obvious, having read the blog and post together.
Disagree, the author is using Fuck You as a proxy for customer pain. Fuck You taxi industry works because people hate taxis. Fuck You hotels worked because people hate hotels. Fuck You Google works (in terms of llms) works because Google results became shit.
Identifying industries where people begrudgingly accept the status quo because they need the service but hate everything about how it's provided is your opportunity.
Paul Graham also has a good way to frame this which perhaps I should have touched upon.
"A principle for taking advantage of thresholds has to include a test to ensure the game is worth playing. Here's one that does: if you come across something that's mediocre yet still popular, it could be a good idea to replace it. For example, if a company makes a product that people dislike yet still buy, then presumably they'd buy a better alternative if you made one."
> people hate hotels.
Was this the case though?
Airbnb and hotels.com and the likes have been pushing the hotels towards a race to the bottom but actual hotels are not bad in my experience. Small quasi-hotels with ordinary flats that run like a estate get rich quick scheme are though.
I feel like Airbnb started more on the provider side as "fuck you landlord/local government I'll sublet if I want and you won't catch me" more than a fuck you to hotels specifically. Any "fuck you hotels" on the customer side was mostly on the price side - Airbnb was indeed cheaper when it was a bed, a towel and a plate in someone's flat rather than a specially-bought and renovated property where you never see the host except to pick up a key. Maybe the "meet real new people" thing had some legs at first for some gregarious types, but it clearly wasn't that important since it's mostly gone now. It bootstrapped into a whole property market thing when it turned out to be outrageously profitable in tourist areas and created a whole new supply of holiday let properties at the expense of local residential supply.
Hotels/Booking.com are more of a fuck you to travel agents and/or opaque or fragmented hotel pricing, since they don't provide an alternative to the hotel itself.
That's confusing things. There are bad, good and great hotels. There are bad, good and great airbnbs. The problem is what will the management of that place do or try to get away with; what can the client do; what can the intermediary / rating. That was already the case before Airbnb.
If an airbnb and a hotel choose to race to the bottom, perhaps they deserve each other and the rest of us deserve a way to avoid them? (Or use them if it came to that...)
I think Airbnb and hotels.com do not push people to the bottom - they offer a minimal bar or set of features to look for quality / price ratio. Are they perfect? No. But they make discovery much easier.
> people hate hotels
Other than mandatory fees not displayed in the advertised daily rate, I have never heard of people hating hotels.
Airbnb listings also have mandatory fees not displayed in their advertised daily rate.
My understanding is that Airbnb took off because it was cheaper than hotels (however in general, that may not be the case anymore).
I think *people hate costs more than they hate services* (which is how airlines like Spirit and Ryanair have managed to do business).
I feel both Airbnb and hotels.com and such took off because they offer discovery.
It was always possible for individuals to offer rooms. And they did. And it was hard to find them.
in recent 5+ years I've not been at a hotel that had extra fees not mentioned on booking.com... I don't book very expensive ones though