
Lyft's Business Is Growing Faster Than Uber's - danso
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/lyft-gross-bookings-are-said-to-exceed-1-billion-last-quarter
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ssharp
Lyft grew 25%; Uber grew in mid-teens.

Growth percentages are useless. I could start a ride sharing service, have my
mom as my only customer, add in my dad, and I've grown 100%!

The more important numbers are market share and share of market growth.
Considering how much larger I suspect Uber is, it's likely Uber's market share
didn't take a hit and are likely still capturing far more market growth than
Lyft.

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iblaine
Sure, it's easier to go from 100 to 110 rides than it is to go from 200 to 220
rides. As they say, there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

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eregorn
From what I can tell, this is more like 100 to 120 vs 200 to 215. The article
starts off saying lyft increased bookings by 200 million while Uber is
claiming a "mid-teens" number.

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tinkerrr
For some comparison, here's how the costs stack up:

Lyft: $1 billion gross bookings, $130 million loss. Loss of $0.13 per dollar
of gross bookings.

Uber: $8.25 billion gross bookings, $708 million loss. Loss of $0.086 per
dollar of gross bookings.

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ssharp
Any previous period data to compare to?

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pat_space
Lyft 2nd Quarter Gross Bookings: ~$1 billion

Uber 2nd Quarter Gross Bookings: ~$8.25 billion

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tristanj
Uber told investors it had a growth rate in the "mid-teens". Assuming a 13-17%
growth rate, Uber increased its gross bookings by $1.2 billion or $900
million.

Lyft claims it increased gross bookings from $800 million to >$1 billion, a
rate of over 25% or an increase of $200 million.

So Uber grew 4-5x more than Lyft, but Lyft is growing faster than Uber.

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misterbowfinger
People have been crying foul on the analysis here, but I wonder - is there a
sort of expected growth curve here that Lyft is beating?

By that I mean, is it impressive that Lyft grew 20% at $1mil bookings? Is it
better than how Uber did when they were at $1mil? Just curious.

Either way, Lyft gets a nice puff piece ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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exogeny
Too bad they won't escape the same fate as Uber, which is likely bankruptcy
due to it being impossible to subsidize losses forever.

Uber has a non-zero chance at figuring out self-driving cars first and not
only surviving, but being one of the world's most valuable companies. Lyft's
chances at that are zero, which implies either bankruptcy or a merger of
equals with an equally doomed, non-differentiated competitor.

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rtx
As somebody who gets immense value out of Uber I disagree. They can at least
double the price in my location and still be in business. It's easier for me
to do business through an App.

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exogeny
They can't do that in just about every major city in the world, which is where
they'd have to not only compete, but win in order to justify their valuation.

Right now in NYC they're roughly equal with taxis during non-surge hours, and
they can only do that by subsidizing about half of the cost.

That is not a recipe for success.

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xbmcuser
Uber and Lyft like services will need to survive for the next 10 years then
buy or lease Ai cars and bank in larger portion of the revenue. But for that
they will need huge investment rounds and no competition from car
manufacturers or large pocket companies like Google or Apple. That could buy
and put in a few million ai cars on the road with the amount of cash they are
holding.

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rtx
Two great businesses, having positive impact on people.

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pscsbs
I disagree. Uber does not having a positive impact on its own employees,
although they're proactively trying to change. Lyft seems to have a much
stronger reputation of treating people the right way.

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throwaway232232
You're being told exaggerated lies by the media. We're not perfect, but the
experience for employees is comparable to the other tech giants.

I've been at Uber for about 3 years now and it's been the best place I've ever
worked by far. Based on what other current and former colleagues that have
worked at other tech giants, it's actually better than most in terms of
quality of life.

All those that are formerly Amazon, Apple, LinkedIn engineers far prefer it
here at Uber, hands down. It's especially better than LinkedIn and Amazon.

For Google, it's a mixed bag. Some liked Google better and some liked Uber
better. Which you prefer depends on your personality and what team(s) you
worked on at each of these two companies.

For Facebook, it's actually pretty comparable. If you like Facebook, you'll
like Uber and vice-versa.

The only big company that I think truly treats its engineers better than Uber
across the board is AirBnB. That said, I personally would never trade the
engineering problems I get to solve here for the engineering problems I would
be solving at AirBnB. The engineering challenges are more than an order of
magnitude more interesting and fun at Uber and the room to grow professionally
as an engineer is far greater. Between Uber and AirBnB, both are good choices
and you should optimize for the one that best meets the needs you want to
satisfy.

