
Lyft looking to raise $500M in new funding at valuation of about $4B - Jerry2
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/business/dealbook/lyft-said-to-seek-dollar500-million-in-funding.html
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jcdavis
"At the Robin Hood Investors Conference in New York on Tuesday, Lyft said it
expected to generate about $1 billion in annualized gross revenue next year, a
figure that does not account for the cut of money the drivers take from each
transaction."

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the driver's "cut" like 80%+? This
seems pretty misleading

~~~
dietrichepp
It doesn't sound particularly misleading to me. That's just what "gross"
means. Gross is always way, way higher than net. You wouldn't subtract the
wholesale cost from the gross income of a retail chain, you wouldn't subtract
employee wages from the gross income of a software firm, and you wouldn't
subtract contractor payments from Lyft.

~~~
gamblor956
Under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and their European
equivalent, IFRS, a company generally cannot include in income payments it
receives on behalf of others.

Lyft, and Uber, rely on the fiction that they are merely booking apps for
drivers, so the fares belong to the driver, and Lyft and Uber are merely
entitled to a portion of the fare for providing the booking service. At no
time are they/were they entitled to the entire fare, so booking the entire
fare as income flies in the face of good accounting--and, for publicly traded
companies, the law.

The only reason startups do this is to artificially inflate their valuations.
It's really not much different from cooking the books.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Do Lyft/Uber get to float the money before paying it to drivers? If they get a
week of float then it's maybe(?) gross income that they can make quite a lot
of money off of before paying out drivers.

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
From what I remember from an Uber driver, they get paid every Thursday. So I
guess the money could float around for a bit before finally reaching the
driver.

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alaskamiller
You're a supermarket, you sell stuff from vendors you buy from. You have gross
income minus cost of goods sold.

You're a mall, you lease space to vendors. You have gross income minus
expenses.

You're not a logistics provider but merely a platform that connects third
party service providers to the customer. You tell everyone how much money you
hold on to for the third party service providers as... gross income?

Lyft and Uber et all are more like PayPal, also playing the game of claiming
to not be a bank and for awhile not wanting to be a licensed money
transmitter.

Last PayPal quarterly earning report they reported $69.74B in payment volume,
$2.26B net revenue, $377MM net profit.

That makes sense.

Here Lyft is saying their gross revenue is $2B. Kind of like how Groupon count
all the eggs in their basket before paying out their merchant partners.

Maybe a better way to put it is total booking volume $2B, net revenue $400MM,
then whatever net profit after expenses.

Valuing the business at 10x on $400MM can make sense. The bet is that Lyft can
make more money within ten years by sustaining and increasing the dispatch
volume or by increasing efficiency and decreasing costs.

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techaddict009
And here in India Ola has raised $500 M!

[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-
biz/startups/ola-r...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-
biz/startups/ola-raises-500-million-from-tiger-global-softbank-group-and-
others/articleshow/49826137.cms)

Seems like this are days for taxi startups.

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jibjabjib
$1 billion next year. Assume 60% YoY growth -> doing about $600mm this year?
Say average $12 a ride...that's 50m rides this year -> 137k rides a day/65
cities served -> 2100 rides/city/day.

That's definitely lower than I expected.

~~~
dnautics
In san francisco, there are about 200-400 or so drivers and each takes about
20 rides a day, and this is of course the sity with the biggest volume.

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redwood
Maybe they'll finally come to New Haven where they blanket MTA trains with ads
but leave Yale students with only Uber!

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flashman
Ah, Uber took money from Google Ventures, that's why Uber is listed as an
option in my Google Maps app.

~~~
cperciva
Uber started showing up in Google Maps on my phone when I installed the Uber
app on my phone. I just assumed there was an interface whereby apps could tell
Google Maps "I can get people places".

~~~
flashman
I don't have any ride-sharing apps installed. Uber just showed up as an option
in the directions section below car, walking and public transport, along with
an estimated fare cost and 'first ride is free' offer.

