Uber, every mention
49 scenes, the whole family · ← back to Uber
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Benedict Evans 80Toni Cowan-Brown 9
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Uber comes up
Token pricing
- ▶ 8:48 Benedict Evans Everyone pays their money, but all the stuff you do with it is done by other people, and all the actual money is made by Meta, and Google, and Amazon, and, um, Tinder, and Uber, and everybody else. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:13 Benedict Evans Uber would win this city, and Lyft would win that city.
The spring updates on AI
- ▶ 6:53 Benedict Evans And they make money, but TSMC doesn't get a percentage of every Uber trip.
What jobs are AI jobs?
- ▶ 3:52 Benedict Evans You would have not, nobody, nobody realized that Uber was coming, and even when it happened, nobody understood that this made any kind of sense, and people still kind of sometimes argue about it. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:11 Benedict Evans It may be that there'll be, this is the Uber example, the Uber test. 2 times in the scene
AI and SaaS
- ▶ 26:28 Benedict Evans Or do I just want 10 hours of soft jazz while I drive, to drive Uber all day?
The AI presentation
- ▶ 10:06 Benedict Evans And you could have made some very, very high level comments that would have been true, and you could have made some assertions about some industries that would have been right, but, you know, you wouldn't have predicted Uber.
- ▶ 29:27 Benedict Evans Um, but the step threes are the Airbnbs and the Ubers and the Tinders.
Ai eats the world
- ▶ 36:36 Benedict Evans And the canonical examples here are always Airbnb and Uber. 2 times in the scene
Tiktok, Apple and Temu
- ▶ 6:59 Benedict Evans So you've got rules that apply on how you run a marketplace that apply both to Uber and Airbnb and Apple.
- ▶ 17:08 Benedict Evans And that's reflected in how Uber is regulated, or how, um, you think about content moderation requirements, and so the UK and the EU now have laws requiring, that basically require you to have what most people would consider like best…
What's your AI strategy?
- ▶ 32:19 Benedict Evans If you think about things like Uber or an Airbnb, which is like the canonical software, it's the world thing.
AI and Everything Else
- ▶ 30:59 Benedict Evans I don't, you know, there's, we're kind of at that very early stage where, you know, go back and think about what it was like holding an iPhone in 2008 with the App Store, and there was no Uber, there was no Instagram, there was no Tinder,…
The magic customer
- ▶ 29:14 Benedict Evans So yeah, like, and you know, there's sort of the delta is the thing, there's a thing there, and then there's a growing up with it, and then presuming that as part of, as part of your, your, your, as, as that just being a natural, normal…
Metaverse and crypto - beyond the BS
- ▶ 0:37 Benedict Evans Um, but there are other things happening and Uber has half a billion dollar ad business and there's other things besides that.
- ▶ 10:49 Benedict Evans You slowly get new things like Uber and Instagram and Tinder and so on.
Amazon's $40B advertising business
- ▶ 9:22 Benedict Evans Um, Uber is now at a five hundred million dollar run rate, and everyone, obviously eBay and Pinterest and Etsy want to do this, but also people like Target want to do it. 2 times in the scene
All the other things happening in tech part 1.
- ▶ 24:31 Benedict Evans Um, but then it's also Uber. 6 times in the scene
The FTX face-palm
- ▶ 11:08 Benedict Evans And I think kind of a good way of looking at that is kind of like saying, is Uber a taxi?
How many metaverses?
- ▶ 23:31 Benedict Evans Like there isn't one, you know, once you get up to the stuff that the consumer sees, Instagram isn't interoperable with Uber. 2 times in the scene
Figma, unbundling and $20bn of antitrust
- ▶ 31:40 Benedict Evans Yeah, I know there's many, that's a whole other conversation, particularly looking at the, um, the Uber breach this week, which I'm sure other people will do podcasts on, but I don't feel equipped to do a podcast on that, but that's a…
TV after software
- ▶ 30:09 Benedict Evans So sometimes, you know, Uber and Airbnb change what a car is or change what it, or what it means to say a hotel or change what your options are to get a room in a city.
A new wave of company creation
- ▶ 12:03 Benedict Evans You know, the week before Uber did an IPO, it was not meaningful to call it a startup.
- ▶ 27:54 Benedict Evans Like, it's, it's all about a very, very small narrow margin, and that's also the story for Amazon, and it's a story for grocery delivery, it's a story for all these one-hour grocery things, it's a story for restaurant delivery, it's a…
Lighting and tech diffusion
- ▶ 23:55 Benedict Evans And there's a sort of diffuse, more general diffusion point here, which is there was sort of, there were some things where the technology is actually central to the experience, like Uber or Airbnb.
What's next for advertising?
- ▶ 16:55 Benedict Evans And so then, obviously, all the other big U.S. retailers are doing, trying to do this, but also both Instacart, which is, of course, a retailer as well is doing, wants to do this, but Uber wants to do this. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:21 Benedict Evans You do promote the restaurants that are in Uber Eats. 2 times in the scene
Three ways to say no
- ▶ 7:23 Benedict Evans Um, and I think the big example of this in the last couple of years was in the California, where California decided that they would classify Uber drivers as employees using something called AB-V, which is a law called AB-V. 3 times in the scene
Metaverse - how to be wrong in the right way
- ▶ 10:44 Benedict Evans And Apple doesn't have to make Uber and Instagram
Netflix isn't a tech company
- ▶ 2:29 Benedict Evans Apple and Google did, or the way Airbnb, the way Airbnb never had to worry about hotel companies, or Uber never had to worry about taxi companies, will Netflix roll over and take this whole thing over, or is it a TV company?
- ▶ 3:28 Benedict Evans And then you have a two-sided network effect, or two-sided marketplace, which is something like Uber or Airbnb, which is, as a driver, you have to be on Uber because all the passengers are on Uber, and as a passenger, you have to be on… 2 times in the scene
Asking the dumb questions
- ▶ 15:35 Benedict Evans Um, and so that gets you Netflix and Shein and insurance and Uber and Airbnb.
The Meta reality
- ▶ 27:40 Benedict Evans You know, the same with Uber.
- ▶ 33:04 Benedict Evans It's about the New York Times app, and the Uber app, and the Pinterest app, and the web browser, and 3 times in the scene
Regulation - Who will notice?
- ▶ 4:42 Benedict Evans Obvious example would be, okay, if you're an Uber driver and you get kicked off, kicked off the platform, there will now need to be like a documented, um, systematic appeals process. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 10:13 Benedict Evans Uber needs to have an appeals process.
- ▶ 16:31 Benedict Evans Either you're not an Uber driver, or you're not an Uber driver who's been kicked off, so you won't encounter the appeals process.
Telcos and Tesla
- ▶ 32:30 Benedict Evans And so you see this in like, you know, taxi companies trying to compete with Uber or Hilton trying to compete with Airbnb and like they can try, but the software sucks. 2 times in the scene
'Digital transformation' - beyond the silly slogan
- ▶ 37:53 Benedict Evans Uber doesn't sell software to taxi cabs and Oscar doesn't sell software to insurance companies.
Tech in china, from inside and outside
- ▶ 13:51 Benedict Evans But you can kind of, like, supply a European, you know, unless it's something like Uber, you can supply a service.
- ▶ 23:09 Benedict Evans So no one would say like, you know, if you're doing a two-sided marketplace for oilfield workers, instead of doing it for taxi drivers, you're just copying Uber, but you're doing it for oilfield workers.
- ▶ 31:59 Benedict Evans And then you get the kind of the next step is, well, ok, can Uber integrate restaurant delivery into the Uber app? 2 times in the scene
Trying to understand Ad Tech
- ▶ 20:53 Toni Cowan-Brown It reminds me of the same arguments that we used to have when I used to consult for Uber, just trying to explain to people that 3 times in the scene
App stores: arguing like it's 2009
- ▶ 1:26 Benedict Evans And so this is not Uber. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:55 Benedict Evans It would also cover Uber and Airbnb. 2 times in the scene
Two Europeans talk about China
- ▶ 11:14 Toni Cowan-Brown I go back to my time when this has been to a, uh, I think when I was helping Uber on the policy side, do their European expansion. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 26:56 Benedict Evans And B, like generalizable in what form, which was sort of my super app as Facebook Messenger versus super app as Uber ads, restaurant delivery.
There's no such thing as data
- ▶ 30:46 Benedict Evans We have to create laws around this, because we will decide how this works, not Airbnb, or not Uber. 5 times in the scene
Is Europe a market?
- ▶ 44:08 Benedict Evans And so, um, you would probably not have created Uber if you lived in London or New York, because you wouldn't actually have seen the problem in the same way.