How Being First Or Second In A Market Impacted Uber

And as far as marketplaces where some markets might have like a winner takes all, you know, how did, you know, being first or second in the market impact Uber?

Now I have some time to reflect on what that era of free money was like, right? In the— from 2013 to 2021, we all lived in a zero interest rate environment. And so we would raise money, we would spend it to subsidize riders and drivers to build a marketplace until it was liquid. And then Lyft would come in or some other competitor abroad would come in. They'd do the same thing and they'd steal 30% market share the next day. And then we're like, oh, you know, we now have to spend more money to keep our market share. So long as money was free, the market share in the market moved. But our thesis was this. Once the chair, the musical chair stopped, meaning the money was not easy to get, The company with the largest market share was going to be the winner, and that winner was going to take mostly all. And you see that happening today. It's finally happened after a decade where Lyft has sort of been relegated to a 15-20% market share player. It's very hard to make profit at 15-20% market share, but very easy to make profits at 80, 85% market share. And that's why you see Uber is now worth $120 billion market cap. They're worth $5 billion. So the stark difference in the profitability in these marketplaces, if you could become the dominant player, it was just hard to prove dominance back in the day because everyone got money pretty freely. But those times have changed.