Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: Uber

  • Riding the startup roller coaster with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

    Riding the startup roller coaster with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

    A great interview with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick by Kara Switzer in Vanity Fair touches on the mental difficulties facing startup founders.

     

    He was depressed after his first start-up failed badly and his second went largely sideways. He was, as he recalls, deeply afraid of failure. “I had gone through eight years of real hard entrepreneuring. I was burned. So, I just wasn’t ready yet,” says Kalanick. In fact, he had been living at home with his parents in his childhood bedroom not long before his trip to Paris, after those two start-ups had failed to flourish.

    xys

    Similar posts:

  • Uber looks to sending taxis and lyft ride sharing service to the deadpool

    Uber looks to sending taxis and lyft ride sharing service to the deadpool

    In its latest move to reinvent the taxi industry, Uber has launched a new service caused Uberpool reports Techcrunch.

    Uberpool allows customers to split fares with other passengers, making the service cheaper. This threatens both taxis and and ride sharing services like Lyft.

    It also shows what deep pockets can buy, with plenty of venture capital funding Uber can afford to experiment with these services. Those resources makes it hard to compete against Uber.

    For Lyft and many of the other hire car startups, Uber is doing everything it can to drive their businesses into the deadpool.

    Similar posts:

  • Fighting a loss making business

    Fighting a loss making business

    Having deep pockets is a great help in business as the online cab war in San Francisco shows.

    As competition heats up on the streets of San Francisco, Uber is trying to put Lyft out of business by offering fares below what they pay drivers.

    This has been the long term tactic of Amazon; raise a lot of money and then run your main line of business at a loss.

    Amazon have shown you can do this for a long time if investors stay patient. Fighting it is difficult if you don’t have deep pockets yourself.

    In the long term though you can’t see this being good for customers, although in the meantime San Franciscans can enjoy cheap taxis.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Uber’s Travis Kalanick on the highly valued business of disruption

    Uber’s Travis Kalanick on the highly valued business of disruption

    For a four year old business, hire car service Uber is certainly causing a lot of trouble.

    Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone has an interview with the company’s founder and CEO Travis Kalanick on his plans after announcing a 1.2 billion dollar fundraising that values the venture at $17 billion.

    Seventeen billion dollars is a hefty valuation for the business and many believe it marks the peak of the current tech bubble, although many of us though Facebook’s billion dollar purchase of Instagram two years ago was that marker.

    Kalanick’s views are interesting in his take on that valuation – as he points out the San Francisco taxi market alone turns over $22 billion each year, so Uber’s valuation isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility.

    Uber and Logistics

    Also notable is Kalanick’s view on the logistics market, something that this blog has maintained is the real business of Uber. In that field, Fedex’s stock market value is $44 billion although Kalanick is discounting the company’s potential in that field.

    Right now Uber is on a high, and regardless of any set backs they may get with their ride sharing services, it’s hard to see how the company isn’t going to grab a healthy slice of the global taxi industry and possibly disrupt the logistics industry as well.

    Even should Uber end up being the poster child for today’s tech sector irrational exuberance, the company is a stunning example of how businesses we once thought were immune from global disruption are now being shaken up.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Leading the disruptive wave

    Leading the disruptive wave

    I’ve a story up on Technology Spectator that pulls together Uber’s fight with taxi regulators around the world with the Australian government’s Commission of Audit.

    While the story is written in an Australian context, the key message about business disruption is universal; as barriers to entry fall, no incumbent can assume they are immune from having their business upended.

    For Australia, this is a particularly important message as the affluent economy is kept afloat by consumer spending underpinned by a favoured and protected housing market.

    The economy though is nowhere near as untouchable as it looks; along with being way over invested in property, Australia’s industries are hopeless uncompetitive and have a cost base similar to Germany’s.

    It’s an entire country ripe for disruption, it will be interesting to see if the Lucky Country’s luck holds in the 21st Century.

    Similar posts: