Hacker News Reader

You'd be surprised. Since switching is so low, you can pay your way to acquiring all the supply and demand to kick something off, hence all the ridesharing companies in NYC: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubers-competitors-in-nyc-are-...

If you subsidize driving and subsidize riding significantly, people will sign up. A $40 bonus covers several rides for a customer so they'll hold onto the app at least until they've used their initial free offering.

View on HN

But Juno is only available in NYC (for now?). I think my points still hold outside of densely populated urban areas.

Sure. There are density thresholds for any local businesses. I can't even really get Uber around where I live. Maybe there are a few scattered cars but not many. You'd be pretty silly to set up a competing ride-hailing service here.

There's probably some critical mass for these services to work well and that's going to have at least some effect on whether it makes sense for a new entrant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com