# Not happy with Uber? Let's do something about it!



## Let's Change the Game (Oct 6, 2014)

So if you are reading this you are probably not happy about the pay and treatment you are getting from our big "partner" Uber. So I thought to myself. There are so many of Uber drivers in SF alone, people that come from all backgrounds. There must be someone on the platform that is a programmer or has tech knowledge. What if we get a team, a rep and each drive puts down $1000 towards developing our own platform? Of course it would not be as sharp at first, but it would have the demand to grow bigger. We can actually really be our own bosses for once. After that is set up and is all up and running we would put in a maintenance fee per month for the tech guys providing support for the app. If we do this and I believe this makes sense, and on top of that we are the driving power of Uber, meaning there would not be enough Uber drivers available. People would switch to our platform. We could also team up with Lyft and Sidecar drivers and stop these abusive companies from the horrible pay that we have got to come. For example, if we would do some "crowd funding" for this, where each driver would put in $1000 for 1500 drivers we would have $1.5 million dollars to start off with. We all know that we got a lot more drivers than that, but that's just an example of what we could do if we would team up. Think about it guys. By the way, I'm new on the forum, and this is the sole reason why I joined, to share this idea. Not I don't have any tech knowhow, but I would love to hear ideas and discuss the options. Anyone interested feel free to get involved! I look forward to see what a much better working condition can be like for us.


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## NWAüber (Sep 11, 2014)

There's nothing at all wrong with kicking around ideas, but I personally don't see this one taking off. I suppose it's not impossible though.


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## Let's Change the Game (Oct 6, 2014)

Like I said, we have to get a group of people with knowledge in developing and some legal advice.


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## NWAüber (Sep 11, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> Like I said, we have to get a group of people with knowledge in developing and some legal advice.


How would our little operation be able to compete with Dove Car?


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## Let's Change the Game (Oct 6, 2014)

If a big majority of the drivers are up for it, Uber would not have enough drivers on the street, getting passengers to use an alternative. That's where a collaboration with the other platforms comes in.


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## elelegido (Sep 24, 2014)

I like this. It's proactive. The Cooperative Society was formed in England ~ 150 years ago as an employee owned enterprise and it's still going strong. A cooperative ride sharing company would be great.

But let's look at the numbers. You are proposing $1.5 million in startup capital. All drivers would drive in the cooperative. So you'd have 1500 drivers working and needing to earn a living. Assuming no expenditure of this working capital on anything except the wage guarantees you'd need to give drivers in the new market (city) you select for launch, and that drivers would be happy with $500 per week and that revenue is negligible immediately on startup, the capital burn rate would be $750,000 per week. The working capital would last two weeks. You then run out of money and the show's over.

Alternative 1 - seek massive outside funding, as Uber did at its startup. This would come at the cost of a high equity stake for the investors. Then the drivers would then not own the majority of the company - the investors would. So they'd be working for The Man again. Just not Canallick.

Alternative 2 - 1450? of the 1500 driver investors agree to not work for the company, just put up the $1000 as an investment. 50 remaining drivers both invest and drive. Much slower capital burn rate with 50 drivers. Growth would be much slower. But the crucial result of this is that the majority who do not drive would become The Man and the 50 left work for them.

I don't see how this could work in practice as you propose. But I wish it would!


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## Let's Change the Game (Oct 6, 2014)

elelegido said:


> I like this. It's proactive. The Cooperative Society was formed in England ~ 150 years ago as an employee owned enterprise and it's still going strong. A cooperative ride sharing company would be great.
> 
> But let's look at the numbers. You are proposing $1.5 million in startup capital. All drivers would drive in the cooperative. So you'd have 1500 drivers working and needing to earn a living. Assuming no expenditure of this working capital on anything except the wage guarantees you'd need to give drivers in the new market (city) you select for launch, and that drivers would be happy with $500 per week and that revenue is negligible immediately on startup, the capital burn rate would be $750,000 per week. The working capital would last two weeks. You then run out of money and the show's over.
> 
> ...


Elelegido, not to sound rude but do you have prior experience on this? What are those numbers based on?


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## SupaJ (Aug 12, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> Elelegido, not to sound rude but do you have prior experience on this? What are those numbers based on?


On logic! On common business sense! No, scratch business, just common sense!


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## Worcester Sauce (Aug 20, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> So if you are reading this you are probably not happy about the pay and treatment you are getting from our big "partner" Uber. So I thought to myself. There are so many of Uber drivers in SF alone, people that come from all backgrounds. There must be someone on the platform that is a programmer or has tech knowledge. What if we get a team, a rep and each drive puts down $1000 towards developing our own platform? Of course it would not be as sharp at first, but it would have the demand to grow bigger. We can actually really be our own bosses for once. After that is set up and is all up and running we would put in a maintenance fee per month for the tech guys providing support for the app. If we do this and I believe this makes sense, and on top of that we are the driving power of Uber, meaning there would not be enough Uber drivers available. People would switch to our platform. We could also team up with Lyft and Sidecar drivers and stop these abusive companies from the horrible pay that we have got to come. For example, if we would do some "crowd funding" for this, where each driver would put in $1000 for 1500 drivers we would have $1.5 million dollars to start off with. We all know that we got a lot more drivers than that, but that's just an example of what we could do if we would team up. Think about it guys. By the way, I'm new on the forum, and this is the sole reason why I joined, to share this idea. Not I don't have any tech knowhow, but I would love to hear ideas and discuss the options. Anyone interested feel free to get involved! I look forward to see what a much better working condition can be like for us.


dove car?


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## Worcester Sauce (Aug 20, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> So if you are reading this you are probably not happy about the pay and treatment you are getting from our big "partner" Uber. So I thought to myself. There are so many of Uber drivers in SF alone, people that come from all backgrounds. There must be someone on the platform that is a programmer or has tech knowledge. What if we get a team, a rep and each drive puts down $1000 towards developing our own platform? Of course it would not be as sharp at first, but it would have the demand to grow bigger. We can actually really be our own bosses for once. After that is set up and is all up and running we would put in a maintenance fee per month for the tech guys providing support for the app. If we do this and I believe this makes sense, and on top of that we are the driving power of Uber, meaning there would not be enough Uber drivers available. People would switch to our platform. We could also team up with Lyft and Sidecar drivers and stop these abusive companies from the horrible pay that we have got to come. For example, if we would do some "crowd funding" for this, where each driver would put in $1000 for 1500 drivers we would have $1.5 million dollars to start off with. We all know that we got a lot more drivers than that, but that's just an example of what we could do if we would team up. Think about it guys. By the way, I'm new on the forum, and this is the sole reason why I joined, to share this idea. Not I don't have any tech knowhow, but I would love to hear ideas and discuss the options. Anyone interested feel free to get involved! I look forward to see what a much better working condition can be like for us.


1.5 million vs 18 BILLION (most uber drivers have something else to do with 1k)


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## Worcester Sauce (Aug 20, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> So if you are reading this you are probably not happy about the pay and treatment you are getting from our big "partner" Uber. So I thought to myself. There are so many of Uber drivers in SF alone, people that come from all backgrounds. There must be someone on the platform that is a programmer or has tech knowledge. What if we get a team, a rep and each drive puts down $1000 towards developing our own platform? Of course it would not be as sharp at first, but it would have the demand to grow bigger. We can actually really be our own bosses for once. After that is set up and is all up and running we would put in a maintenance fee per month for the tech guys providing support for the app. If we do this and I believe this makes sense, and on top of that we are the driving power of Uber, meaning there would not be enough Uber drivers available. People would switch to our platform. We could also team up with Lyft and Sidecar drivers and stop these abusive companies from the horrible pay that we have got to come. For example, if we would do some "crowd funding" for this, where each driver would put in $1000 for 1500 drivers we would have $1.5 million dollars to start off with. We all know that we got a lot more drivers than that, but that's just an example of what we could do if we would team up. Think about it guys. By the way, I'm new on the forum, and this is the sole reason why I joined, to share this idea. Not I don't have any tech knowhow, but I would love to hear ideas and discuss the options. Anyone interested feel free to get involved! I look forward to see what a much better working condition can be like for us.


better off buying 1000 $1 lottery tix.


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## chi1cabby (May 28, 2014)

Worcester Sauce said:


> dove car?


Yeah search the threads or just click @Dove Car


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## CatnipHigh (Sep 23, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> So if you are reading this you are probably not happy about the pay and treatment you are getting from our big "partner" Uber. So I thought to myself. There are so many of Uber drivers in SF alone, people that come from all backgrounds. There must be someone on the platform that is a programmer or has tech knowledge. What if we get a team, a rep and each drive puts down $1000 towards developing our own platform? Of course it would not be as sharp at first, but it would have the demand to grow bigger. We can actually really be our own bosses for once. After that is set up and is all up and running we would put in a maintenance fee per month for the tech guys providing support for the app. If we do this and I believe this makes sense, and on top of that we are the driving power of Uber, meaning there would not be enough Uber drivers available. People would switch to our platform. We could also team up with Lyft and Sidecar drivers and stop these abusive companies from the horrible pay that we have got to come. For example, if we would do some "crowd funding" for this, where each driver would put in $1000 for 1500 drivers we would have $1.5 million dollars to start off with. We all know that we got a lot more drivers than that, but that's just an example of what we could do if we would team up. Think about it guys. By the way, I'm new on the forum, and this is the sole reason why I joined, to share this idea. Not I don't have any tech knowhow, but I would love to hear ideas and discuss the options. Anyone interested feel free to get involved! I look forward to see what a much better working condition can be like for us.


First off, I work in finance and it is clear you have a fundamental misunderstand about the way startups, angel investors, and venture capitalism work. Its fine, not everyone is in the industry. Let me break it down for you.

You have to first and above all develop your application. A good software developer will require AT LEAST $6,000 a month or more to develop an application. This could take anywhere from 1- 2 years. Lets assume, one year so $72,000 Gross salary you have to pay. Either that or you offer them equity, which would then take away from the equity invested by the drivers themselves diluting the valuation of the company and the valuation per share unless you have an anti-dilution clause in your incorporation papers. This will require at least 72 drivers to put in $1000 into the initial development of the app. Thats even before you incorporate, hire a lawyer, CPA, and investment banker and draft up an OA for the corporation.

In addition, you're asking every driver to pitch in $1000. How much stock would $1000 buy? Who recruits those drivers? Would you take on debt to finance startup costs? And if so how much? Are you ok with debt offestting your leaverage and further eating into stockholders equity? What happens if more drivers want to join? Do they also pay $1000, and do you issue more shares? And if you issue more shares, that dilutes the percentage ownership of every other driver already in the corporation, so do you issue more shares to them to keep their ownership percentage the same? (again, equity dilution).

Say for the sake of argument you manage to incorporate with 72 drivers, pay a software developer, and have all your ducks in an order. You then present the application to angel investors or VCs to get further funding because you need to 1.perfect the app, 2. get it on the market to be distributed to other drivers, 3. test the app and make sure it works properly, 4. hire a support team for IT support in case the app doesnt work, and 5. hire lawyers to patent, protect, and get ready to defend the app in case Uber or anyone else decides to sue your for patent infringement 6. Hire a payment processing company to process all the credit card purchases, and 7. pay for marketing so that people have awareness of the app. The biggest would be the marketing budget, for now that the new "rideshare economy" has been broken the barrier to entry is now higher and harder to get into which means you're going to need A LOT more than $1.5 million to even get it off the ground. We already have problems with the Uber app in location triangulation, would your app be able to solve that? Do you know how to program with Python, Java, C++ or any object or command based languages that would help you develop such an app?

If you're able to answer all the questions I listed above, you have a fighting chance. If not, I suggest you go back to college and get a degree as a software engineer, work for Google for 10 years, and then come back and revisit the idea, or a better one....


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## Worcester Sauce (Aug 20, 2014)

CatnipHigh said:


> First off, I work in finance and it is clear you have a fundamental misunderstand about the way startups, angel investors, and venture capitalism work. Its fine, not everyone is in the industry. Let me break it down for you.
> 
> You have to first and above all develop your application. A good software developer will require AT LEAST $6,000 a month or more to develop an application. This could take anywhere from 1- 2 years. Lets assume, one year so $72,000 Gross salary you have to pay. Either that or you offer them equity, which would then take away from the equity invested by the drivers themselves diluting the valuation of the company and the valuation per share unless you have an anti-dilution clause in your incorporation papers. This will require at least 72 drivers to put in $1000 into the initial development of the app. Thats even before you incorporate, hire a lawyer, CPA, and investment banker and draft up an OA for the corporation.
> 
> ...


how do ya like those apples ????


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## ReviTULize (Sep 29, 2014)

NWAüber said:


> There's nothing at all wrong with kicking around ideas, but I personally don't see this one taking off. I suppose it's not impossible though.


They just got over $1Billion in funding...good luck


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## ReviTULize (Sep 29, 2014)

Everyone going offline at once will make a bigger statement. Create your own surge


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## elelegido (Sep 24, 2014)

Let's Change the Game said:


> Elelegido, not to sound rude but do you have prior experience on this? What are those numbers based on?


I have a degree in business. The numbers above were given by the OP. All I did was illustrate how long his working capital, and therefore the business, would last given a few simple assumptions.

Next question.


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## Dove Car (Oct 1, 2014)

I'd recommend people interested in this check out the forum posts and threads about Dove Car. We haven't launched yet, but we aim to be the world's first ridesharing company majority-owned by its drivers. 

Best,
Ryan Brumberg


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## RippGutt (Sep 6, 2014)

ReviTULize said:


> Everyone going offline at once will make a bigger statement. Create your own surge


I wish every driver would go off-line when there is no surge.. Then go back on when the surge starts... I wish it was an unwritten understanding. We would definitely control it.


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## Jeeves (Apr 10, 2014)

Don't the employees and contractors of every company dream of creating their own enterprise that better serves the employees and betters the service as a result? Isn't there more reality in what the market wants though?

Perhaps there is a general movement to isolate labor from business, but isn't it just to get around regulations and requirements of having regular employees? How are the Apple and Google doing it? Isn't Uber privy to their neighbors labor techniques?


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