This strikes me as a close analog to the old Dropbox "analysis": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Calling a cab with a mobile phone is miles apart from the ridesharing experience.

With Uber or Lyft, I get an idea of when the car will show up, what the ride will cost me, I know they'll take my credit card, they won't tell me the machine is broken after trying my card-make me pay cash-only to find out the charge did actually go through, I won't get taken on a grand tour of the city to run the meter up, I won't be subsidizing the ridiculous protectionist racket that is the medallion system, I'll get a nice easy-to-use receipt for expense purposes, and the ride will probably be cheaper. I can also order a car for someone else and send them home on my bill with no hassles on either side (sending a babysitter home, for example).

Since most of my rides are reimbursed anyway, I don't even care that much about the cost spread though it is nice to be prudent with the company's money as well as my own. Even if Uber were the same price, I'd prefer it over cabs. Because it's so much cheaper, I use it more often.

So what you're saying is it's not the idea it's great, it's the execution?

To be entirely honest, I'm not the best person to make these "analysis". I never took a cab before Uber because they were outrageously expensive. I took Uber's cabs because they're dirt cheap. All the things you mentioned are really irrelevant to me. (I'm sure you could call a black cab on the phone and ask them for an estimate....?)

And when Uber eventually runs out of VC money, I'll go back to never taking cabs.

> I'm sure you could call a black cab on the phone and ask them for an estimate....?

You could but sometimes the driver is end up 30 minutes late and you have no way of knowing where they are.

Sometimes the driver shows up, sees your ethnicity and drives off.

Sometimes the driver takes inefficient routes to make more money off you.

Sometimes the driver checks your destination, says its too far and goes away.

There were many problems with the "call a cab and cross your fingers" service in many counties that Uber helped solve

That's basically saying that anything that's not a 100% original idea can not be considered a great idea. There are plenty of things that are built on existing ideas but the execution is part of it.

An idea is useless without good execution and there's no real reason to credit people on ideas, lots of people have good ideas but almost none execute well on it. For example there were plenty of online mapping companies available, but when Google Maps came out they completely dominated because their execution was so good. It's crazy to just reduce that down and say it wasn't a good idea just good execution.

The core of the idea is "make it frictionless for people to hire cars without having to talk on the phone to Danny Devito." I think the idea is actually meaningfully different and if I'm going to take a black car, it's going to be via an app, not a phone call.

They also executed well.

OTOH, when I take a limo to and from the airport (well, normally), I call their office and do the scheduling. I know there are people here with an aversion to telephones but this works well for me. Much better than rideshare for this purpose as pickups are often zero-dark-thirty in an area without a lot of drivers. (And, yes, it's relatively pricey but this is usually business.)

I would never take a cab in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, but I take an Uber frequently.

The really big difference for me here in Brazil, is that I can communicate to someone in case the route is bad, something is stolen, etc. Taking a cab is so ephemeral that I don't even have time to complain or ask for help.

In principle you could also do that with a cab company, right? So the difference is really that you trust Uber. If anything, it's not the idea that's great, it's either the brand or the quality of the service.

In NYC, you can't call cabs. You can call black cars, and schedule them to pick you up for say an early morning ride to the airport where you might not be able to street hail a cab.

The system went like this:

You call some number like 777-7777.

A man with a heavy accent answers gruffly. You tell him where you live and when you want to be picked up. He says "OK", and then you just hope and pray that someone shows up.

It was not a great system at all.

The great idea is you don't have to worry about paying the driver, it's all online safely with your credit card. You get a receipt that is easy to expense. There's a record of the trip. The bad things are drivers don't have benefits, there's little or no safety training for those drivers. Contrast with taxis have lots of rules on them, yet still its very common in my experience that they are not clean, the drivers are surly, argue about things like routes, and often don't have working credit card payment systems (and you worry more about a personal transaction stealing something). But many taxis are great, just like many uber drivers are great. There's no perfect system.

Leave it to HN to not understand how a simple idea w/ good UX can be a great idea and worth billions...