With Uber, they started with ride sharing and slowly nudged its way towards being a car-for-hire business. The reason it worked was because no one really liked taxis and didn’t want to defend that monopoly.
Today, cities are trying to regulate places like Airbnb to reduce their presence in major cities, but the only real hate towards Uber and Lyft has more to deal with employee pay.
The difference is that Uber’s model of using an app to show you the route, give driver feedback, be able to report problems and monitor and track the driver, etc. is actually a huge improvement to both rider safety and experience compared to calling a cab company and then waiting who knows how long for someone to show up and hopefully bring you where you want to go.
Not saying that their model of gig workers, or dodging up front training is good, but they legitimately offered up a fundamentally better taxi experience than anything that came before, which I think encouraged regulators to really drag their feet on looking into them.
With Uber, they started with ride sharing and slowly nudged its way towards being a car-for-hire business. The reason it worked was because no one really liked taxis and didn’t want to defend that monopoly.
Today, cities are trying to regulate places like Airbnb to reduce their presence in major cities, but the only real hate towards Uber and Lyft has more to deal with employee pay.
The difference is that Uber’s model of using an app to show you the route, give driver feedback, be able to report problems and monitor and track the driver, etc. is actually a huge improvement to both rider safety and experience compared to calling a cab company and then waiting who knows how long for someone to show up and hopefully bring you where you want to go.
Not saying that their model of gig workers, or dodging up front training is good, but they legitimately offered up a fundamentally better taxi experience than anything that came before, which I think encouraged regulators to really drag their feet on looking into them.