I have the exact opposite feeling about Uber. I think that their main business model is: a taxi dispatch service that actually comes when you call it. There is no technology in that at all. The problem is that it is very difficult to enter a business where everyone else is frauds. You can’t just advertise that you aren’t a fraud, because who would believe you? Uber differentiated itself by being techy, to get people to try it. Maybe the technology was necessary to allow people to monitor cabs and allow people to trust it, but if the industry hadn’t dug itself into a hole, a similar business could have been built 50 years ago.
I have the exact opposite feeling about Uber. I think that their main business model is: a taxi dispatch service that actually comes when you call it. There is no technology in that at all. The problem is that it is very difficult to enter a business where everyone else is frauds. You can’t just advertise that you aren’t a fraud, because who would believe you? Uber differentiated itself by being techy, to get people to try it. Maybe the technology was necessary to allow people to monitor cabs and allow people to trust it, but if the industry hadn’t dug itself into a hole, a similar business could have been built 50 years ago.