A better version of Uber I think it is fair to say that that Uber has made some fundamental errors in its early years, even though the numerous controversies that I have pointed out might not all be as negative as portrayed, or true for that matter. On the other hand, I also believe that if Uber did not commit to some of these aggressive strategies, the company would not have grown as fast and make such a significant impact on the market as it did. Despite this, I think that there are some aspects of its strategy that could and should change to make the business better for everyone, including the company. To begin with, I want to point out the aspects of the Uber strategy that might seem controversial, but I would not change. For most of these things, the reason they are on this list is that I believe that these elements form the beginning of change. Often, the problem with saturated markets is that the key players on these markets fear change. Therefore, if a new player enters the market bringing radical change (or as I like to call it, innovation), the big key players automatically portray the change as negative out of fear for their own business. The aspects I would not change are: • Driver contracts (including driver responsibility) • The Uber product • Investments in lobbyists The core of what I think Uber should have done differently lies in the marketing strategy, which was funded by billions of dollars in investments. In reality, Uber used these funds to create one main advantage over its competitors: pricing. Uber already started off strong on this aspect, with trip pricing being intelligently calculated by looking at the number of available cars in an area. This concept was initially derived from the idea of a free market. The more cars are available, the less a trip would cost. If there were barely any, the price would go up. The real investment in bringing down the prices was made by decreasing pricing to a point where the company was not actually making any profit out of their service, which goes against the principle of running a business. It should be logical that a new business struggles to make a profit in its early years, but the concept of deliberately losing money with one’s product just to get a higher market share should not work as it did with Uber. 52
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