If you have mastered the art of user acquisition where you can get enough people to install an extra hypothetical Waymo app that is only useful in a few cities, not available during peak times with the value proposition that it may be 20% cheaper, you should really be starting your own business.
Well funded startups haven’t been able to beat the incumbents profitably. How many people that can afford to fly from the US to Isreal or anywhere else that requires crossing an ocean are going to be price sensitive enough to research the local ride sharing spp they never heard of to save a few dollars?
Even working for a startup, once you take into account all of the other costs if business travel, is saving 15% on Uber rides really meaningful? Before working for AWS (no longer there), I worked for a 70 person startup and even there they didn’t quibble about spending money for minor quality of life improvements. This wasn’t unicorn by any means. Just a run of the mill enterprise SaaS company in the medical industry.
I'll simply leave this on the table: Gett is completely dominant in Israel versus Uber, and Uber is stuck playing second fiddle to Gett where they simply resell Gett's service and have to do so at a markup. Because they can't drivers even interested using the Uber app, because the Gett app is better. (Note: Uber completely gave up in 2023, and you can't book at all in Israel using Uber anymore.)
It would appear that competitors to Uber can indeed exist. And yes, after flying to Israel I still care about cost (or my employer does). Two weeks on the ground can cost as much for taxis as the flight would.
If Gett has nationwide coverage for a whole country yes. If my Spanish was better (working on it, we are planning to snowbird in San Jose in a couple of years), I would use the DiDi app while there.
But that’s completely different than using Waymo in the few cities where it is available and still using Uber everywhere else in the country and constantly not having rides available during peak times.
Waymo would never have enough cars to handle peak capacity that are just sitting idle most of the time.
Well funded startups haven’t been able to beat the incumbents profitably. How many people that can afford to fly from the US to Isreal or anywhere else that requires crossing an ocean are going to be price sensitive enough to research the local ride sharing spp they never heard of to save a few dollars?
Even working for a startup, once you take into account all of the other costs if business travel, is saving 15% on Uber rides really meaningful? Before working for AWS (no longer there), I worked for a 70 person startup and even there they didn’t quibble about spending money for minor quality of life improvements. This wasn’t unicorn by any means. Just a run of the mill enterprise SaaS company in the medical industry.