Is Uberization Doomed? (Uber might be) #digitaltransformation
Published by David Terrar,
Uberization. It's, sadly, become a word in regular use. Entrepreneurs and business executives all over the World want to become the Uber of their particular sector. The company name has become a synonym for disruption. Digital disruption is real, but is Uber? They have transformed the taxi and ride sharing business dramatically and achieved a huge valuation - top of the Unicorn list. They've deployed great technology, but is the underlying fabric of what they are doing really that special? Is their business model sustainable? Ryan Felton over on Jalopnik thinks Uber is doomed. The two key paragraphs are:
"After a discombobulated 2016, in which Uber burned through more than $2 billion, amid findings that rider fares only cover roughly 40 percent of a ride, with the remainder subsidized by venture capitalists, it’s hard to imagine Kalanick could take the company public at its stunning current valuation of nearly $70 billion.
And now, in the past few weeks alone, Uber has been accused of having a workplace that fosters a culture of misogyny, accused of stealing from Google the blueprint of a successful self-driving system, and has lost 200,000 customers over ties to President Donald Trump and how it responded to a taxi driver boycott."
On top of this, back in December, Jonathon Gitlin suggested they are "losing money hand over fist".
How long will they last? Will we be comparing them with dot-com failures soon? Will we still be using the U word in 5 years - I don't think so.