What a great example! I'm realizing that perhaps the "second mover advantage" may be more pronounced in markets with low switching costs. Flyers can easily compare airline prices against one another, and drivers are incentivized to boot up 2nd, 3rd and 4th driving apps. Low-margin businesses can't afford to spend as much on R&D, make mistakes, etc. They have to win with small executional advantages.

IIRC, Lyft was the first mover, Uber shamelessly ripped off Lyft's model that anyone can be a driver and come out with Uber X. So, imo Lyft was the first mover, but was smart to let Uber face all the heat sacrificing short term growth for long term success. Uber has been in too many things for me to believe that they can sustain the business (I may be wrong)

Sidecar was the first mover :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidecar_(company)

Sidecar launched in 2011. Lyft nominally launched in 2012, but was really a continuation of the same product and company that the founders had been running since 2007, just under a different name.

Yeah it was an interesting pivot. They started as the electronic version of the "ride board" [like http://resources.mit.edu/resource/apo-ride-board ] and took a while to change.

Here is a press release from Zimride sent circa Thanksgiving 2008 (after they had been underway for about a year):

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STUDENTS TO FIND RIDES HOME FOR THANKSGIVING ON FACEBOOK Useful Facebook application, Carpool, helps match students for rides home

Finding a ride home for Thanksgiving with friends and classmates has never been easier. Students can conveniently use a Facebook application to share rides home for some home-made turkey. The application built by Zimride is called "Carpool", and having launched in 2007, it has become the most popular online ridesharing service in North America.

Carpool on Facebook is especially popular among students on college campuses, where it has replaced traditional ride boards at student centers with a more convenient online interface. Over 25,000 rides have been posted on Carpool in the last four months. "The growth is unprecedented," comments Logan Green, a co-founder of Carpool. "It shows that not all popular Facebook applications have to involve ninjas and vampires. An application like Carpool helps students find safe rides in addition to cutting their gas expenses and reducing CO2 and it's clear students value that."

The Carpool application uses Google Maps technology to match students traveling in the same direction. After the trip, users are encouraged to leave feedback, to help inform future Carpool users. The application makes ridesharing a more social experience. "It really feels like I'm part of a community," says Corey Earle a student of Cornell University. "I could never trust an anonymous service like Craigslist because I wouldn't know anything about the other users. Using Carpool on Facebook, I can choose to ride with people in my school who I know I can trust.' Carpool on Facebook was built by a team of recent graduates who saw an opportunity to make carpooling more popular at universities across the country. John Zimmer, a co-founder of Carpool, says, 'We're thrilled that university students and administrators are reaching out to us to help make ridesharing become a part of mainstream culture on college campuses." Zimride has worked with over 20 universities since creating the service to build custom systems for their campuses.

If you have a car, offer your carpool today. If you don't have a car, find a ride and get home to the home cooked turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce…don't forget to share!

To try out the Carpool on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/carpool

For more information on Zimride visit: www.zimride.com

===

Here was a sample use of a version of the product in a 2011 email:

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Subject: [Reuse-sell] Ride from MIT to NYC or [city] NJ, Depart Oct. 21 1pm, Return Oct. 22 10am

I have rented a car for a trip to [city] NJ.

I am leaving from MIT at 1pm on Fri. Oct. 21.

I am returning from [city] NJ at 10am on Sat. Oct. 22

If you want to share the ride on either of the two directions let me know. I expect the total rental plus gas to cost me $120. I am looking for someone to pitch in $20 for each one-way journey.

I have posted on zimride too: http://zimride.mit.edu/ride/share?ride=[id]

Thanks, [name]

===

I think the deal is that the company pivoted mid-2012 to an Uber clone and sold the Zimride subsidiary to Enterprise in 2013.

I wonder how much of the Zimride engineering team went to Lyft during the pivot.

I wonder who has the longest tenure at Enterprise's Zimride subsidiary and how they feel about working there vs. working at Lyft.

I don't think you are wrong. I have both apps, and my last 10 rides have been in Lyft, because it's consistently cheaper. If uber wants me back all they need to do is compete on price, but I think their operating costs are too high to do that, so they will eventually lose out from being too big and have to either scale back or implode.

Same here.

Any rides I have taken where Lyft is available, I ride with Lyft. Else, Uber. (mostly NYC/NJ/Toronto areas Lyft has been consistently cheaper for me).

Cheapest rideshare wins. race to bottom. Only way Uber / Lyft can avoid death, is with business rides and lockin. There no one is price sensitive, and they can make money off of business rides (Lyft is doing this really well, in nudging users to have more business rides).

My employer has a business account with Lyft and I use it on all business trips. It's convenient because everything goes to our expense reporting system automatically. But businesses have no loyalty and would quickly shift to Uber for lower prices.

Lyft is consistently 30% or more more expensive for my apt-to-work route in SF. A few of my friends observe similar. Perhaps you have to look at things on a route-by-route basis.

Most of the points made in this are untrue.

Lyft was the one to fight the battle of having 'ridesharing' become a thing. Uber didn't mind if the decision went one way or another as they already had a lockdown on the "professional driver market".

>> Instead of buying 19-month-old scooter company for $2B, it is spending money on its core value proposition.

Lyft aquired a scooter company Motivate, and announced the plans in June about their bike and scooter strat.

>>At some point, investors might not hand over Uber any more cash.

Lyft has raised 4.9B. It's the unicorns of Unicorns with a burn rate to match.

I agree with the OP, am pessemistic of an IPO, and would say it has the possibility of failure. I don't think that will happen, but an IPO flop of this scale would have major repercussion on the funding market in general. Again with the Hauwei arrest today, and the stock market in a major flux as tensions rise with China it has added risk.

A small point, but Lyft acquired Motivate for $250m, which is a lot less than $2bn. Plus, Motivate has profitable bikeshare programs in various cities across North America, and have done for many years. They're not a flashmob, fly by night scooter rental company.

> Instead of settling a lawsuit over allegedly stealing self-driving car technology, it is focusing on its core product. Instead of buying 19-month-old scooter company for $2B, it is spending money on its core value proposition.

But Lyft has a self-driving car group in Palo Alto, and it bought the bikesharing company, Motivate.

>Instead of buying 19-month-old scooter company for $2B

Actually, Lyft has a scooter program that is the result of an acquisition.

"It wasn’t until July, when Lyft acquired Motivate, the nation’s largest bike-share operator, that the company began to send signals that it was considering joining the frenzy."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17824040/lyft-electric-sco...

Interesting. 2.5x revenue though and has exclusive city contracts. I still view this differently than paying $680M pre-revenue for Otto. On the scooter side, at $300/scooter, Uber could buy 100k scooters and stick an UberScoot button on their app and probably can more ridership than any of the year old startups.

This assumes those scooters aren't impounded, damaged or left with dead batteries. There are no human drivers constantly maintaining these scooters, at best a random person may come by and charge them (for a fee OFC), but no quality assurance or maintenance is happening in a timely manner. This is why scooter companies are seeing their average scooter break after 4 months, there is no maintenance plan and they aren't built to be on the street, unsheltered 24/7.

If Uber wanted to operate a scooter division, I still think it makes way more sense to do it themselves at this point given Uber has no barriers to enter this market. Millions of people already have Uber on their phone and a number of drivers are probably willing to pick up scooters to charge them or transport them for maintenance if needed. I'm just saying it seems way cheaper to roll out a pilot program with 10,000 scooters than investing hundreds of millions to a couple billion dollars in another company that effectively is letting you white label its scooters (that are manufactured by another company). Is a scooter maintenance company worth $2B?

Completely agreed. There's always a second-mover advantage for burgeoning industries in that second-movers can avoid the mistakes that the first movers have become entrenched in.

Lyft has gone through quite a few iterations of its own. Predecessors started before Uber but, even more recently, it moved beyond the pink mustache and fist bumping into being essentially an Uber clone. I (and apparently others) found the whole "be buddies with your driver" thing to actually be a real turn-off.

I agree, for me too. On the other side, the "we want to get rid of drivers" and "squeeze driver" type of stories I hear from Uber made me go to Lyft by default. Most drivers I ask which drive for both prefer driving for Lyft.

I use Lyft by default these days because of Uber sleaze factor. I'm not sure how big a difference there is and I don't use either much but small steps for whatever they're worth.