I don't know if this is still true, but a few years ago Uber was losing money on every trip [1]. They also, five years ago, had 6000 employees, of which 2000 were engineers [2]. Apologies for the outdated links, there's probably more precise data out there.

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/ubers-plan-to-lose-m... [2] http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/10/12/lessons-learned-f....

I read the top article, it’s good. The pertinent bit to my question seems to be, they do subsidise drivers. Apart from fixed costs, they have “driver incentives” to shape supply and demand. Ie give out cash to subsidise trips when needed.

I just had a job interview with Deliveroo. There is over 100 programmers in central office, they pay better than some banks. I dont think problem they solve is that difficult.

Most of it is marketing, fighting legal issues and attrition of goods delivered / compensation. And also the insane discounts they have to provide to stay ahead of the competition. Airbnb is somewhat immune, since their only major competitors are old school hotels.

Right, so “discount” implies they subsidise drivers for the journeys? Eg Uber charges $1 per mile but driver receives $1.1 or sth?

The org bloat is quite staggering for what is effectively a taxi app.

No no. I meant that the effective cost of a ride (paying contractor + tech costs + employee costs + marketing per ride) is $1 a mile, but they give a discount that makes it effectively $0.9 a mile, and doing this on scale is effectively making them run operations at a loss unless they have market monopoly. Even a duopoly situation is unfavorable for them.

As they got cheap money from investors they typically go big in expanding. This means paying lots of marketing, competing with low prices, having localized phone hotlines, be generous to customers (not suppliers!) when handling disputes, ...