At this point it is hard to tell because most of the large US tech companies have decayed into this being the only way they can pursue the growth in profits Venture Capital, Private Equity and the US finance system in general demand existentially.
I think there are plenty of ways to make a profit here and these US tech companies will likely kill as many as possible to defend an inefficient, dead end business strategy.
Though I do wonder about profitability. My cousin wanted to start a similarish app (though for connecting yard work providers with seekers) and asked me to join him. I ended up declining because a) there’s already a bunch of players in the area, both online and locally, b) the legal liabilities involved in providing a service where people go to someone’s house and either party could be a sociopath, pervert, or thief. I figured lawyers would end up getting most of the money.
Those also apply to rideshare and delivery services. They thought they could drive taxi services and local delivery services out of business, but didn’t think that others could come along and do the same thing, plus for delivery services, at least, operational costs are already pretty low and adding the infrastructure at the scale required to serve all the areas they want to serve is in addition to all the normal costs. Local delivery services I knew about from before uber and doordash just used cell phones to call the one or two drivers directly and since it was all so informal, they could add less legal options like selling drugs to make even more money, as long as they made sure to build a relationship of trust with clients before opening that up. The online services need to avoid a relationship between driver and client or they risk getting cut out entirely.
And personally, when I need a ride, I’ll still call a cab because I don’t want the services to win because I know they just want to build a monopoly and charge even more than the taxis were.
At this point it is hard to tell because most of the large US tech companies have decayed into this being the only way they can pursue the growth in profits Venture Capital, Private Equity and the US finance system in general demand existentially.
I think there are plenty of ways to make a profit here and these US tech companies will likely kill as many as possible to defend an inefficient, dead end business strategy.
Though I do wonder about profitability. My cousin wanted to start a similarish app (though for connecting yard work providers with seekers) and asked me to join him. I ended up declining because a) there’s already a bunch of players in the area, both online and locally, b) the legal liabilities involved in providing a service where people go to someone’s house and either party could be a sociopath, pervert, or thief. I figured lawyers would end up getting most of the money.
Those also apply to rideshare and delivery services. They thought they could drive taxi services and local delivery services out of business, but didn’t think that others could come along and do the same thing, plus for delivery services, at least, operational costs are already pretty low and adding the infrastructure at the scale required to serve all the areas they want to serve is in addition to all the normal costs. Local delivery services I knew about from before uber and doordash just used cell phones to call the one or two drivers directly and since it was all so informal, they could add less legal options like selling drugs to make even more money, as long as they made sure to build a relationship of trust with clients before opening that up. The online services need to avoid a relationship between driver and client or they risk getting cut out entirely.
And personally, when I need a ride, I’ll still call a cab because I don’t want the services to win because I know they just want to build a monopoly and charge even more than the taxis were.