Uber and Lyft say they're ending services in Minneapolis over a city-mandated driver pay increase. The city council pushed through the measure to bring driver pay closer to the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour.
“Maintaining” means more than just leasing out a few server farms. It also means hiring software engineers, customer/driver support staffs, HR, legal teams, designers, etc, all of which are required to keep the day-to-day going. Uber and Lyft aren’t small operations, by any means. They are monstrously huge projects that require a lot of bandwidth - both technical and human - in order to keep the lights on.
For what it’s worth, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and pretty much every gig app out there have all operated at a net loss from the very beginning. It’s not just expensive to maintain the service, it’s impossibly expensive.
“Maintaining” means more than just leasing out a few server farms. It also means hiring software engineers, customer/driver support staffs, HR, legal teams, designers, etc, all of which are required to keep the day-to-day going. Uber and Lyft aren’t small operations, by any means. They are monstrously huge projects that require a lot of bandwidth - both technical and human - in order to keep the lights on.
For what it’s worth, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and pretty much every gig app out there have all operated at a net loss from the very beginning. It’s not just expensive to maintain the service, it’s impossibly expensive.
It’s not impossibly expensive. Uber is a public company and you can just read their annual reports. Their gross profit margin ranges from 38% to 45%.
They spend $4 to $5 billion every year on sales and marketing, more than any category besides cost of revenue (actually running the app).
https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/bbb206f1-a6ba-4521-82cf-ae2d4011057f.html#
No, they are not just trying to keep the lights on.