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A comment on The startup economy is fundamentally broken and the virus will make it worse. Parent comment

Re:The startup economy is fundamentally broken and the virus... by kasey_junk on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @08:24AM (#23246039)
They’ve never been profitable. You can’t stay profitable when your entire unit economics is messed up.
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Re:The startup economy is fundamentally broken and the virus... by zhdc1 on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @08:44AM (#23246203)
Their unit economics are fine. They have a gross margin of 6-7% after taking out attributable operating costs (so, IT + customer support + insurance + w/e).

Unless if I'm looking at the wrong numbers, they're literally killing themselves on sales, marketing, and driver incentives.

It's "stupid" that's killing them, not the dynamics of the ride share market.

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Re:The startup economy is fundamentally broken and the virus... by kasey_junk on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @10:29AM (#23247210)
Without driver incentives they lose the drivers. Upping prices to compensate the drivers correctly and they lose the customers.

They are locked into a classic problem for 2 sided markets with low barriers to entry.

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