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Lyft Says Its Revenue Is Growing Nearly 3x Faster Than Uber's (techcrunch.com)
U.S. ride-sharing company Lyft says it passed $1 billion in revenue last year and that its revenue grew 168 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017, almost three times faster than Uber's reported 61 percent growth. "Uber, of course, is still much larger than Lyft -- it generated a reported $7.5 billion in revenue last year and operates in many more cities and countries," notes Recode. "While its fourth-quarter growth may have been smaller than Lyft's percentage-wise, it was still almost certainly many times larger dollar-wise. Both companies are still unprofitable." From the report: But the big-picture reality is that despite Uber's head start, its early dominance, ability to raise massive amounts of financing, aggressive (often allegedly illegal) growth tactics, faster move into self-driving cars and everything else in its favor, it has not been able to destroy Lyft. Instead, Lyft capitalized somewhat on Uber's missteps and unsavory reputation, raised another $2 billion last year, gained market share, launched its first international market last year (Toronto) and seems poised to exist for the foreseeable future.
Isn't it easy to have more growth when you have much more room for growth?
I wonder if Lyft uses illegal tactics like Uber. The latest I heard about UBER, in Greece they provide fake private contracts to their drivers, since they operate there under the guise of renting vehicles (which has a 6-hour minimum), so the driver has to give a contract to the customer which says they hire the car for 6 hours and have to pay a substantially larger amount than the fare, and if they are stopped by police show that and say the driver & customer are friends/family who rented a car. Quite smart, basically it makes the driver and the customer accomplices to fraud and UBER is whistling at the sidelines, reaping the rewards...
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They have the exact same basic model at the core. Lyft just virtue signals about feminism and social justice more often to keep millennials and hipster reporters from buzzfeed off their case.
I think it's sad how little commentary focuses on how both Uber and Lyft are so unprofitable. I mean they are wildly popular, but until they can make serious money off their business model I don't see why they aren't seen a mild failure by non-investors. They will likely only do so after completely eliminating all competition, after most licensed taxi drivers have lost their jobs (that aren't subsidized by investor capital) and many transit systems are gutted. Similar case to Amazon. Which investors effectively subsidized over the past decade, and will continue to do so until they have run all competition into the ground and start turning significant profits.
I get it...get through insane amounts of cash running after revenue and market share...VCs keep it coming in anticipation of cashing-out when you list. But...are people really that dumb, after being burned by a bunch of other dud Unicorns?
Who the hell would buy Uber today? They're destroying billions of dollars a year, with no signs of how to make a profit...neither have Lyft
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2...
I don't mean to sound critical, but have you ever ran a business? Income is more important than profit because it's harder to generate income than profit. When a new business is starting up ppl tend to operate at a loss and invest all profit into development (think buying a better bagel making machine if you make bagels). I would guess these guys do the same thing only at a bigger scale both temporally and financially. Dunno what you mean about taxis but where I live in Europe there are still plenty of taxis going arround. I was talking to a ridesharing driver (not Uber's, but some local competitor here) and he was saying that the market is pretty much stable for both ridesharing and taxis, yes anecdotal but still...
I don't mean to sound critical, but have you ever ran a business? Income is more important than profit because it's harder to generate income than profit.
No it isn't and I can prove it. Start a business selling $2 bills for $1. I guarantee you that you will have a HUGE amount of revenue but you'll also be losing money faster than you can say "chapter 7 bankruptcy". It's easy to generate revenue when you are giving selling something that people want for less than it actually costs to provide. What is hard is generating profitable revenue. Growing the top line is difficult only when you have to generate sales that ALSO make a profit.
Growth Rates are relevant when comparing similar sized companies. Also this metric is useful to see if competitors are catching up.
But like all metrics, you can't rely on one golden metric to tell you what is going on. You need to look at as many as possible and understand their reasoning.
Metrics are tools to help manage what you choose to investigate,not the final outcome.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Context, my pedantic friend, context. In this case, the phrasing is not at all ambiguous because they give us exact growth rates of both companies (168% and 61% growth, respectively). There is no confusion at all.
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It's horrible when the government leaves people alone. Horrible. They really should control every aspect of your life, including how you use your personal property and how you choose to make some extra money.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're right, it's not ambiguous. In this case it's clearly wrong.
The text clearly conveys what the author intended, so as language it has succeeded.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
ok. But presumably you do concede that the proper way to compare in these case is with "as fast", not faster. Why support doing it incorrectly when the correct way is so simple and clear?
Because I hate pendency more than I hate meaningless grammar errors.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Because they subsidize each ride in their quest for higher market share. And further, many drivers are also subsidizing the rides due to their poor understanding of the actual costs of operating a motor vehicle.