Juno Takes on Uber

Some readers may remember previous comments I've made, which boil down to this...

Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, and all other "sharing economy" apps are retailers and they do no control the products they sell.

To put it more succinctly than this article, first-of-a-kind sharing economy apps have overcome the psychological, legal, and technological hurdles, effectively paving the way for their competition. Once the road has been paved, expect bespoke copycats to come along (like Juno).

Retailers are historically a bad investment folks.

>The drivers learned that Juno’s commission was ten per cent, “guaranteed for our first twenty-four months.” (Uber typically charges twenty-five per cent or more.) >Juno was also offering twenty-four-hour support for its drivers, with a promise that you could always reach a real person on the phone, “not a robot.” Finally, Juno drivers could earn an ownership stake in the company, in the form of restricted stock units. “I think this is a huge deal,” Smith said. “And it’s totally unique.”

This is brilliant. It'd also be interesting to see someone come and swipe YC's business now that it's going full-on corporate -- maybe Product Hunt could add an investment arm, stay small in size (at least for the first few batches), and become the next flavor of the month when YC has gone stale?

We all know the future of ride sharing is autonomous vehicles. If Juno's owner/drivers end up being able to purchase their own autonomous vehicle micro-fleets, it seems they could outpace a company that seeks to own its own fleet, like Uber. It's the same model Amazon uses to increase available inventory and externalize the risk of owning that inventory.

this will be perfect for when uber starts rolling out their autonomous vehicles in more cities

Big pivot from free dialup.