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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

It's a relished fantasy that Uber is dying or is going to die, because so many people in tech circles hate Uber and Kalanick.

It's not actually dying and it's not going to die.

Routinely skeptics here will point out that Uber is selling a $1 service for $0.75 (or a similar invented sum). Said skeptics then intentionally, comically ignore that Lyft is and has been doing the exact same thing and has radically less capital & valuation to play that game with. The name of the game is: last company standing; that's going to be Uber because they can afford to be and Lyft can't. It's that simple.

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Lyft seems to be a fundamentally different company in two ways that gives them an advantage over Uber. First of all they are much happier to partner with local players and don't feel a need to 'own' the entire world in the way Uber does. Secondly Lyft seems happy being a ride dispatching service and don't see it as a temporary stepping stone towards much grander transportation ambitions.

The downside of this approach is that Lyft doesn't have anywhere near the upside potential that Uber has. If Uber pulls off all of its ambitions it will be larger than Lyft could ever dream of being. The upside for Lyft's more humble goals is that it's chance of reaching them are much larger.

Unless Uber is willing to change its DNA and scale back its ambition, give up on its long term goals, and stay just a basic ride dispatching service then your analysis is incomplete. However perhaps this scaling back is what the CEO change is fundamentally about.

Regardless of what you're saying, Lyft lost $600M on $700M in revenue in 2016. Those numbers are awful. And worse than Uber. Lyft isn't in any better shape than Uber in terms of needing more funding almost every year to sustain the company.

True. However I personally don't think either company can do too much about revenues at this point and it's all about controlling costs. From an outsider point of view it seems that Lyft is in a better position, culturally if nothing else, to do this. At least when compared to a Kalanick run Uber. It will be very interesting to see what priorities the next CEO will have.

Internal culture or external? The vast majority of people have little idea of Uber's issues and if they do have some idea, they don't care. I'm not saying that's how everyone is. Just most people. Especially outside of circles like HN.

If internal, I gusss that's true. But we don't hear much about Lyft's internal workings. We don't know the morale of workers or how productive the company is.

About controlling costs - that's why I mentioned losses. Lyft is only in the US yet its losses are worse than Uber. It makes Lyft looks worse to me. Has Lyft said it is profitable anywhere or even break even?

But then Uber's insane valuation is not helping itself. I guess both companies are in bad positions, hard to say which is worse. And I agree it will be interesting to see how Uber does over the next year with new top executives.

By culture I meant how they think internally about growth vs profitability. Uber under Kalanick feels like they wanted to dominate every market or die trying and Kalanick didn't strike me as the sort of person who would be happy running fairly successful company making modest profits. Lyft however seems like they'd be content with being number 2 as long as they're profitable. This is of course pure conjecture on my part.

Has Lyft said it is profitable anywhere or even break even?

The CEO said in a recent Forbes interview that their losses are currently coming in "under budget" and that they have a definite path to profitability. Make of that what you will.

I've seen Lyft saying those sorts of things for some time now when I skimmed around while replying to you. It seems like Lyft has been saying this sort of thing since around 2015/2016. For now I don't believe them. But I'll take that back if they do show what the CEO said when financial info is revealed for this year.

And yeah agree with Kalanick and Uber by extension seem to be only content with winning everything. They only gave up on China after spending a ton of money and clearly not being able to win. Luckily they were able to get a decent stake in Didi from the merger and leaving China.

> The vast majority of people have little idea of Uber's issues and if they do have some idea, they don't care. I'm not saying that's how everyone is. Just most people. Especially outside of circles like HN.

The drivers certainly care.

Agreed, but they'll get more funding. the big thing is, keep the support of your constituents and you'll keep getting funding.

Travis offended and insulted the drivers, while Lyft is chugging along quietly. As long as people have brand loyalty to them (which they sure do), they'll win the ridesharing battle as it's looking like Uber is teetering

> Secondly Lyft seems happy being a ride dispatching service and don't see it as a temporary stepping stone towards much grander transportation ambitions.

Yeah... that's why they have so much investment from car companies... ;-)

> Said skeptics then intentionally, comically ignore that Lyft is and has been doing the exact same thing and has radically less capital & valuation to play that game with.

I'm blown away that you have to read more than half way down all the comments to get to this observation. It should be an automatic reply every time someone echoes the fantasy that Uber runs out of money and Lyft is magically left to take over. I don't understand the mental gymnastics and contortions one needs to make to arrive at this absurd idea.

Correct, if Lyft and Uber IPO tomorrow. Most of these people are going to put money on Uber. Lyft is a lifestyle business its. Uber is a public utility.

Public utility? That's funny.

> Lyft is a lifestyle business its.

Not sure what "its" is, but characterizing Lyft as a lifestyle business seems absurd. It's not as highly leveraged s Uber is, but that's one of the few companies I can think of that one might consider more aggressive.

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