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Lyft Embraces Consumer Subscriptions

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Lyft is reportedly testing consumer subscriptions for rides in several price ranges designed to get people to skip using a personal car. Trips included in the subscription must be for distances that cost less than $15 for non-subscribers, according to Mashable. You can check how far you can get for $15 using the Lyft Fare Estimator.

Subscribers whose rides cost more than $15 would receive discounts of $15 off longer rides. Lyft’s target audience is the urban and suburban consumer who would instead leave their car at home.  Some of the offers made to users featured a monthly $199 plan that includes 30 rides (Las Vegas) while others received up-front payment offers for seven rides for $50 and $400 for 60 trips.

Lyft is taking this model seriously. It may provide the kind of simple calculation that consumers can adopt when they compare the cost of using a car to get around town in a Lyft. The subscription model, which expires monthly, may look like the better deal.

But “breakage,” the write-off of unused service each month, could result in substantial revenue for Lyft that consumers see as lost value because they spend the money without getting the benefit of rides. There is no way for consumers to squeeze every cent of value out of the system without assiduously scheduling rides up to, but not over, the Lyft limits.

Breakage is a familiar pricing model in online services. For example, Dropbox For Business Standard costs $12.50/mo./user for two TB storage. However, most users won’t store anywhere near two TB of data in Dropbox, creating breakage that can be worth up to $10 a month to the company. That difference between the storage capacity paid for and what is used — the breakage – subsidizes the free Dropbox offer of two GB for that draws in paid users. Lyft is taking a page from an old playbook, and it is likely to work.

Up-front pricing, such as $400 for 60 rides, preserves the rider’s spending for actual use. But these steeper prices can be designed to push consumers to the more profitable breakage model.

While Uber has started to build its car service into consumer product and personal services programs, such as its partnership with bgx, a salon company that will send a stylist via Uber to the customer or ferry the customer to a salon, Lyft is focused on a more tangible feature, the consumer’s budget. Uber’s approach will drive costs toward service providers who bundle mobility while Lyft’s will insulate ride

This marks a significant moment in the mobility wars. It shifts the convenience value proposition toward a price-based value proposition.  Lyft’s subscription model makes choosing to forgo owning a car for people who need some rides in an urban area a simple matter of budgeting. Choosing to spend $199 a month to have a car available or trips of four or five miles, which approximates most urban travel needs, is more straightforward than buying, parking, servicing, and fueling a car.

MIT Paper Suggests the Gig Economy Is An Illusion

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research has released a paper that purportedly blows a hole in the ship of the gig economy. The findings are already much contested, and I’ll lay out in this posting where more research is needed, the flaws in the paper’s methodology, and the policy implications of the MIT CEEPR report.

Here is the damning summary of the paper’s findings:

Results show that per hour worked, median profit from driving is $3.37/hour before taxes, and 74% of drivers earn less than the minimum wage in their state. 30% of drivers are actually losing money once vehicle expenses are included. On a per-mile basis, median gross driver revenue is $0.59/mile but vehicle operating expenses reduce real driver profit to a median of $0.29/mile. For tax purposes the $0.54/mile standard mileage deduction in 2016 means that nearly half of drivers can declare a loss on their taxes. If drivers are fully able to capitalize on these losses for tax purposes, 73.5% of an estimated U.S. market $4.8B in annual ride-hailing driver profit is untaxed.

There are several underlying problems with these findings, ranging from the way that the researchers characterized the share of earnings from driving to the research team’s conclusion that because drivers can take the standard mileage deduction when calculating their taxes the on-demand mobility business goes mostly untaxed. Uber’s chief economist, Johnathan Hall, examined the report’s findings in a Medium posting on Sunday, suggesting the estimated earnings are deeply flawed.

The authors fail to note that every transportation provider, from a Lyft driver and local taxi to a long-haul trucker or local salesperson, may take a $0.54 cents-per-mile deduction on every mile they drive. By extension, the MIT research is arguing that all mileage deductions are a form of subsidy rather than a recognized cost of doing business. There is a substantial debate to be had about the mileage deduction’s sustainability, but these research judges that policy debate with an emphatic assessment of its own that is not supported by the data or current law.

The full research report will not be available for six months, as it has been distributed to CEEPR’s sponsors and remains inaccessible to the public. We think that’s counter-productive, as it prevents a full assessment of the data gathering and findings.

What stands out for us is CEEPR’s comparison of Driving Costs and Driving Revenue without regard for the number of hours driven in the available data. Uber’s critique of the research revolves around how drivers characterized the share of revenue they earn from driving. CEEPR’s methodology uses qualitative expressions, e.g., “very little” or “around half” of the respondent’s income attributed to the share of income earned from driving both with and without distinctions between all income from on-demand work or any questions about the specific number of hours driving.

We need to see the full data set and the research paper. However, it appears that based on these qualitative assessments by drivers, the MIT team used hard statistical categories to discount reported earnings, apparently by 50 percent or more from what drivers said. Uber argues that the methodology builds in a 58.5 percent discount on actual earnings. We understand this is a conservative statistical approach to take. However, it seems to have reduced the real income reported because the number of hours driven to earn any income isn’t factored in. MIT CEEPR should release the full report so that others can review the methodology.

Drivers in Las Vegas responded to the report in this ABC15 news report. In more than 100 conversations with Lyft and Uber drivers, I’ve found that the drivers typically earn more than $18 an hour, and those who drive full-time or near that level do report having an economically satisfying experience in most cases. More drivers report that ride-sharing is their primary job, as well. That said, a significant minority of these drivers reported that they commuted 100 miles or more to major cities to work for three-to-five days straight, while sleeping in their cars, to earn a viable living for their family back home.

Gigging isn’t perfect, there is plenty of room for improvement. This paper adds to the controversy and requires full disclosure of the data to support the discussion about how the economy can evolve for fairness and prosperity among workers.

Every driver should be treating their ride-sharing work as a business, taking the maximum appropriate tax benefits for mileage, writing off car payments and repair to the extent that they are attributable to ride-sharing revenue.

On-Demand Economy Notes, February 12, 2018

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Although Uber and Waymo settled there intellectual property case last week, the status of workers as independent contractors took a new twist in a California court. Worker payment, training, retention, and earnings drove much of this week’s on-demand news. During 2018, worker retention will be a major issue for on-demand companies.

Wirecard, a German payment card vendor, is bringing pre-paid cards for on-demand work to the United States, Payment Source reports. As we noted recently, payment cards are a lever for bringing the unbanked out of the gray economy.  The technology avoids engaging with the payee’s bank account. Direct-deposits add costs to payments while prepaid cards are easily distributed, Wirecard argues. Kate Fitzgerald writes: “Wirecard’s ability to function as both an issuer and acquirer enables customized disbursement programs ranging from reimbursements to rebates and rewards, is a positive, but not entirely unique.”

Waymo-Uber Settlement: After months of tense preparation, an appearance by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and a couple days of courtroom testimony, the Battle of Autonomous Cars Case came to a close. Uber has agreed to transfer slightly more than one-third-of-one-percent of its shares to Alphabet, Waymo’s parent company, and to submit to ongoing reviews by Waymo of its autonomous car developments. That stock, valued at $244 million, based on Uber’s largely fictitous $72 billion valuation, which was deeply diluted by SoftBank’s recent investment, Uber settled for about a quarter of the damages Waymo had been seeking.

We believe the significant move in the case came from new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who has made apologizing for, and improvement of, Uber’s behavior the hallmark of his leadership.“While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it, and it will inform our actions going forward,” Khosrowshahi wrote in a statement. Again, this is Uber growing up.

Women see Uber pay gaps, despite algorithmic work assignments. The wage gap persists in the on-demand economy, partly due to the duration of their Uber driving career. Forbes’ Erik Sherman reports that researchers at Stanford University and the University of Chicago found in separate reports that women consistently earn seven percent less than men. Part of the difference is accounted for in shorter driving engagements by women generally — female drivers churn out of the fleet faster than men, reducing their compensation over their Uber earnings lifetime. However, the culprit appears to be in the cost and time involved in training to become a driver, use the Uber apps, and build a consistent practice of driving.

Grubhub gets Yum-y. The holding company that operates Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell, Yum Brands, is investing $200 million in Grubhub, by buying the stock on the open market. The company will also sign an agreement with Grubhub to deliver KFC and Taco Bell food from 5,000 locations in the United States. Yum will take a board seat. Grubhub shares shot up 27 percent on the news., and have given back much of the gain in the market correction.

Quartzy says hairstyling is all about relationships. In a piece that details the rise and fall of several on-demand beauty companies, Noël Duan details the travails of hair care in the jet set, suggesting it does not translate to the consumer needs of the average person needing a “blow out” at work or home.  She concludes that customers want to go to salons because it is a special occasion and that the relationsjip with the stylist is central to the perceived value of a beauty experience. That last element, the personal relationship is the deciding factor in most home and on-demand services: People want to know their preferences are understood.

Duan conflates in-salon experience, like the free glass of champagne proferred to guests, with the intimacy of the experience. The edge of the network is made of human relationships, not just the details of the engagements that justify an on-demand hairstyling that is twice the price of a salon. On-demand is poised to deliver the same experience as the salon for the same or a lower price, because there is no overhead for the A-list location of a high-end salong. But Duan is right that if the human connection is missing, the industry will fail.

Grubhub case points to worker classification as independent contractors. The U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled in Lawson v. Grubhub that the company satisfied the state’s Borello common law test when it treated Raef Lawson, a Deliveroo rider in Southern California, an independent contractor. Lawson’s behavior, such as setting his phone to airplane mode during work time, drove the decision. It is not clear this case will build a solid foundation for gig companies to treat all workers as contractors.

Deliveroo faces union showdown. The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain has requested a review of a November ruling that denied its riders holiday pay, the national living wage, and the right to bargain as a collective.  The case now revolves around a clause in the Deliveroo contract relating to the rider’s obligation to provide a substitute if they cannot make a delivery, which the union says was misinterpreted by the court last year. The disputed clause makes the rider responsible to vet the replacement’s right to work and conformity with health and safety laws, a role traditionally relegated to the employer. The outcome, along with the results of other British, European, and U.S. cases, continues the debate about the nature of work and employment.

Amazon’s attack on grocery stores ramps up. Building on its Whole Foods acquisition last year, Amazon has tapped the Dallas and Austin, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Cincinnati markets for free two-hour delivery of groceries. Bloomberg Technology reports the twist is that the Whole Foods locations will provide the inventory instead of relying on a regional warehouse. Known as Prime Now (apps are available on Apple and Google devices), the service is the first to combine Amazon’s Prime program with grocery delivery. Philadelphia grocers are preparing for the Amazon Prime onslaught with Instacart partnerships, The Inquirer reports.

Shipping By Amazon, for Amazon. The news that Amazon will build its own in-sourced shipping capability shocked the shares of United Parcel Service and FedEx last week. This makes sense from a local perspective, as much of the last-mile delivery traffic is outsourced to the United States Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS today. However, Amazon’s inventory systems will be the ultimate driver of shipping strategy, and most inventory needs to be near big cities. Amazon’s extensive regional warehousing system is in place to support Prime two-day and other shipping. Getting inventory to the warehouses, however, if an inter-modal shipping problem that requires multiple carriers and alternative routes if one mode of shipping is unavailable. This is not the death knell for traditional shipping, but it does place the focus in traditional shipping on the longest hops in the supply chain.

Instacart ramps up its funding, again. On the heels of 150 percent year-over-year revenue growth, Instacart closed a new $200 million round last week. Now valued at $4.2 billion, the company has raised $874.8 million, according to Crunchbase.

Instacart is slashing delivery fees. The Buffalo News reports that Instacart drivers and shoppers in the region are seeing their compensation cut by more than 50 percent. Just six months after launching with a $10 payment for each order delivered, shopper/drivers now average $4.75 a delivery plus $0.40 per item. It would require an order of 13 items to reach the previous $10/delivery level. Instacart offered a rich bonus for early delivery staff, but has failed to explain why its fees to drivers appear to be falling. The company is hoping repeat orders will include more items, and that may be an erroneous assumption.

Facebook doles out $5 million to community leaders. The story of local markets, which Facebook would like to support through improved storytelling and local advertising, will get a big boost from its selection of as many as five people to receive $1-million grants to “bring people closer together.” We recomnmend starting with local news and that Facebook refrain from seven-figure contributions to kick-start community engagement; Instead, find 200 journalists in local markets who will cover those markets closely and with real engagement with the citizens, business, and government issues. Pay them $50,000 a year to launch local Facebook-hosted communities and the results will be better.

Agency workers account for more of the British workforce, the Independent reports. The number of “agency workers,” or temps, has risen by 40 percent over the last decade to 800,000 people now serving permanently as temporary staff, according to a survey by the Resolution Foundation, a non-partisan think tank.

Marketplace Fees Under Pressure: Uber Settles With Drivers, Again

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Uber headed off a class action lawsuit by 2,000 New York-area drivers this week, with a promise to pay $3 million to end a dispute over the fees it imposes on those drivers. It is evidence that marketplaces will see more pressure to lower fees in order to retain workers.

The ridesharing company has settled many similar suits and appears headed for many more settlements. We think the underlying signals point to a decline in the advantage marketplaces had over workers which allowed fees of up to 30 percent to be deducted from fares.

On-demand companies should be prepared to thrive on margins similar to retailers, such as Amazon and WalMart. Where a 25 percent or greater fee is deducted from a driver’s or a housekeeper’s earnings today, the on-demand market his headed for a sub-10 percent fee structure over the next decade.

Two factors will accelerate this trend:

1.) As purpose-specific marketplaces mature, such as ridesharing, workers will diversify their listings, making themselves available on many systems. This is true of Uber and Lyft drivers, who typically use both apps simultaneously to get work. This means workers will be arbitraging work opportunities across many marketplaces. Purpose-specific markets will respond by consolidating related markets, which presents significant brand challenges. “Uber” has become a verb denoting ridesharing, but not housecleaning; It would have a very difficult time extending its brand into home-services. Price is the manageable factor in consolidating markets.

2.) Information efficiency favors the consumer, not the marketplace. As more data is applied to the problem of anticipating demand, consumers and workers alike will move to low-cost marketplaces in pursuit of better prices and pay rates. These twin demands put the marketplace in a lurch. In order to lower consumer costs while retaining an attractive workforce, the marketplace must lower its fees charged to those workers.

As workers diversify, marketplace providers will compete for labor supply, lowering their fees charged to workers who focus on their service categories. Likewise, consumers will embrace marketplace brands that solve many in-home and on-demand needs, leading to greater optimization within those marketplaces and lower fees charged to workers.

Didi diversifies with Bluegogo

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Here’s the problem with building a purpose-specific marketplace, such as a consumer mobility platform like Uber, Lyft, or Didi Chuxing: Once the platform is saturated, it’s necessary to diversify. In the case of China’s Didi Chuxing, the ridesharing company is adding management of a bike-sharing service, moving into an adjacent, though painful, market with its platform.

Didi customers will get access to Bluegogo bikes in Chinese markets. Didi is taking a chance with Bluegogo since the company has already failed. In fact, all Didi is doing is acquiring Bluegogo’s abandoned bike inventory, hoping to earn back the cost by increasing revenues from existing customers.

As on-demand evolves, the apparently explicit delineation (rides on demand versus, for example, housecleaning) between one consumer market and another will become a barrier to expansion. Markets are more efficient when they include many products and services than in any dedicated marketplace. Early leaders in transportation may find that adding any non-mobility service proves difficult.

Didi customers may consider taking a bike instead of a ride. But not all those customers will be interested in bike options, so expansion into bike-sharing could produce little incremental additional spending by Didi customers.