I don’t think you are wrong about the power of becoming a verb with Uber. Lyft has stuck around is because the value of network effects don’t apply after a certain point in (the Uber/lyft model of) transportation networks.
“More drivers means more competition for available jobs, which means less utilization per driver. There is a trade-off between capacity and utilization in a transportation system, which you do not see in digital networks.”
While I don’t agree with everything in the article, some good points on physical networks. The choke point is the driver, and with Travis gone, full self driving cars could be their only path to economies of scale. But how far away is that?
You bring up good points about founder vision. One of my investment philosophies is to always look for founder CEOs.
Maybe we're both wrong. Uber is going to be the wrong verb, it'll be whatever verb Elon comes up with.
"We believe Tesla is going to launch a ride-hailing network to compete against Uber and Lyft. If it does that successfully, it will be able to provide drivers with cars. The total cost of ownership and operating will be about one-third less than a Toyota Camry. It’s going to be a win-win situation — drivers can pay $5,000 down and work the rest of the car off by driving it, while Tesla gets the data that the driver delivers every day for its artificial intelligence engine.
When the world goes autonomous — unlike drivers who were working for Uber and Lyft who will be left out of the party — Tesla’s ride-hailing network of drivers will likely own an autonomous car that will work for them. They will be entrepreneurs.
If Tesla pulls this off, it will be so much more profitable than just building cars. Electric-vehicle margins are in the 20% range, ride-hailing is probably in the 40s and software-as-a-service and autonomous vehicles will be in the 80s, a margin structure that most auto analysts have never seen." -Cathie Wood
What are your thoughts on “source” with respect to Satoshi and Bitcoin? On one hand, Satoshi made a clean break and handed over future development to the community. With hindsight it seems this was a nearly mandatory decision to keep BTC organizationally decentralized. The community had its first rift with BitcoinCash for payments or maintain the store of value narrative. Everything has worked out so far, and the community has coalesced around BTC and that ideology. Having no source to weigh in on these massive ideological/technical/product decisions, is there a long-term threat?
I don't believe Bitcoin adopters want Bitcoin to do newly transformational things which lessens the impact of losing the source. Quite rightly, they see it as having already done the transformational thing---solving the Byzantine Generals problem---and now it's about maintaining, increasing adoption, and other execution-based tasks. Similar to a religion, it's more about spreading the gospel at this point versus continuing to make radical changes to the technology. Christianity could still survive, thrive, and spread after Jesus. This is a bit of a complex analogy because there can still be forks (Protestant Reformation, Mormonism, etc). People will go back to the "gospels of Satoshi" to push the direction of Bitcoin, but that means it's in the 1 to n stage and unlikely to ever do something 0 to 1 again. However, that's probably perfect for a store of value so that doesn't impact my view on it.
On the other hand, Ethereum is very much 'technology'-focused and wanting to make improvements and radical changes. If Vitalik stepped away from Ethereum without a transfer of source, it's likely that the vision would ossify around the current mission. Advocates may even begin to position it similarly to Bitcoin and reject any transformative changes whereas now there's still the wherewithal to push through for things like a shift to PoS.
I don’t think you are wrong about the power of becoming a verb with Uber. Lyft has stuck around is because the value of network effects don’t apply after a certain point in (the Uber/lyft model of) transportation networks.
“More drivers means more competition for available jobs, which means less utilization per driver. There is a trade-off between capacity and utilization in a transportation system, which you do not see in digital networks.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/will-uber-survive-the-next-decade.html
While I don’t agree with everything in the article, some good points on physical networks. The choke point is the driver, and with Travis gone, full self driving cars could be their only path to economies of scale. But how far away is that?
You bring up good points about founder vision. One of my investment philosophies is to always look for founder CEOs.
Maybe we're both wrong. Uber is going to be the wrong verb, it'll be whatever verb Elon comes up with.
"We believe Tesla is going to launch a ride-hailing network to compete against Uber and Lyft. If it does that successfully, it will be able to provide drivers with cars. The total cost of ownership and operating will be about one-third less than a Toyota Camry. It’s going to be a win-win situation — drivers can pay $5,000 down and work the rest of the car off by driving it, while Tesla gets the data that the driver delivers every day for its artificial intelligence engine.
When the world goes autonomous — unlike drivers who were working for Uber and Lyft who will be left out of the party — Tesla’s ride-hailing network of drivers will likely own an autonomous car that will work for them. They will be entrepreneurs.
If Tesla pulls this off, it will be so much more profitable than just building cars. Electric-vehicle margins are in the 20% range, ride-hailing is probably in the 40s and software-as-a-service and autonomous vehicles will be in the 80s, a margin structure that most auto analysts have never seen." -Cathie Wood
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-05/bitcoin-genomics-electric-vehicles-picking-stocks-for-2021
What are your thoughts on “source” with respect to Satoshi and Bitcoin? On one hand, Satoshi made a clean break and handed over future development to the community. With hindsight it seems this was a nearly mandatory decision to keep BTC organizationally decentralized. The community had its first rift with BitcoinCash for payments or maintain the store of value narrative. Everything has worked out so far, and the community has coalesced around BTC and that ideology. Having no source to weigh in on these massive ideological/technical/product decisions, is there a long-term threat?
I don't believe Bitcoin adopters want Bitcoin to do newly transformational things which lessens the impact of losing the source. Quite rightly, they see it as having already done the transformational thing---solving the Byzantine Generals problem---and now it's about maintaining, increasing adoption, and other execution-based tasks. Similar to a religion, it's more about spreading the gospel at this point versus continuing to make radical changes to the technology. Christianity could still survive, thrive, and spread after Jesus. This is a bit of a complex analogy because there can still be forks (Protestant Reformation, Mormonism, etc). People will go back to the "gospels of Satoshi" to push the direction of Bitcoin, but that means it's in the 1 to n stage and unlikely to ever do something 0 to 1 again. However, that's probably perfect for a store of value so that doesn't impact my view on it.
On the other hand, Ethereum is very much 'technology'-focused and wanting to make improvements and radical changes. If Vitalik stepped away from Ethereum without a transfer of source, it's likely that the vision would ossify around the current mission. Advocates may even begin to position it similarly to Bitcoin and reject any transformative changes whereas now there's still the wherewithal to push through for things like a shift to PoS.