Anyone following the tech and startup scene will see Uber in the headlines nearly every day. For good and ill, the ride-hailing service gets a lot of attention, frequently even when a story is ostensibly unconnected to the company.
Uber can be thought of in some ways as a weather vane for the sharing economy in general
Uber can be thought of in some ways as a weather vane for the sharing economy in general. Watching how it does in certain geographical and policy areas can be a preview of how other sharing economy or tech startups built around platforms for services will do. There's a reason that Uber has become shorthand for much of the new economy and why describing a tech startup as the "Uber of" some industry has so quickly become a cliche.
Uber's relative merits and actual impact on that scene can be debated, but the very fact that it can be a debate explains why Uber can be treated like a canary in a coal mine. In that context it's worth looking at some of Uber's biggest successes and failures, not only for their impact on Uber, but what they might mean for the larger sharing and tech economy.
Successes
Regulation in D.C.
One of Uber's biggest regulatory successes came when Washington, D.C. created and passed a regulatory framework with which the company felt comfortable. It wasn't the first major area to do so, but it's notable that Uber likes the rules approved by the D.C. Council so much that it is using them as a model for what it would like to see created all over the country. The system certainly helped inform the regulation passed in Virginia not long afterward. While the rules are facing legal challenges from the taxi driver union in D.C., the new regulations look like an almost unqualified win for Uber and, by extension, Lyft, Sidecar and other ride-hailing apps in the sharing economy.
Making Cars Cheaper to Buy for Drivers
One of Uber's perennial concerns is just finding enough drivers to meet the demand for rides. The company has tried many ways of boosting its numbers, and one of the best ideas came early in its history when it arranged a deal with car manufacturers to lower prices for Uber partners in some cities, making it easier for potential drivers to buy cars and current drivers to get an upgrade.
That deal planted the seed for future projects like a deal with the manufacturer of wheelchair-accessible vehicles, changing the app to make it easier for deaf drivers to use and even more indirect appeals like trying to sign up more veterans. As competitors like Lyft and Sidecar carve out their own space in the ride-hailing app market, getting creative with luring new drivers will be even more important.
Getting Millions of Business Accounts Through Concur
Diversifying its customer base with partnerships has played an integral role in Uber's rapid growth, and nothing characterized that better than Uber's arrangement with business management services juggernaut Concur. The Uber for Business service lets users expense their companies directly for taking trips with Uber and offers a platform for companies to easily track Uber expenses. That put Uber into over 25 million possible accounts, and that's just with Concur, not even counting other companies using Uber for Business.
The acceptance of Uber by the business community could have a long-lasting effect for how regulators approach Uber and other sharing economy startups, giving them a reason to overcome any reluctance to sanction companies like Uber.
Opening China to the Sharing Economy
Uber's goals are global, but there's a definite bias toward focusing growing its business in China. Uber's top three cities for number of rides are in China, and the company has the backing of Chinese search engine giant Baidu, which is likely why the company is looking to raise another billion dollars as it looks to expand next into a total of 50 Chinese cities.
It's not an ambition without difficulty
It's not an ambition without difficulty, as Uber faces a major rival in Didi Kuaidi, a similar company that vastly outstrips Uber's presence in the country, but which might never have formed without Uber's growth inspiring two of the largets Chinese taxi services to merge. Even the raid on an Uber office and resistance from some Chinese regulators doesn't take away from the fact that Uber has made impressive inroads in a country that is usually very difficult for U.S. startups to get a toehold in.
Headhunting PR Talent
Uber couldn't have gotten as far as it has without an impressive talent pool. As the company has grown and faced plenty of public relations headaches (more on that below) it's managed to bring on an impressive array of talent to help improve its image. Easily its biggest score was hiring former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to improve its reputation.
Plouffe's efforts to soften Uber's reputation as ruthless or unprincipled have been expansive. With his recent promotion and Uber hiring one of Google's top spokespeople to help out, the mission of making Uber lovable will likely see more success soon, with a diluted side-effect of helping other sharing economy companies if it can improve the overall image of the sharing economy.
Failures
Executive Errors
One of the reasons Uber needed the best it could get in public relations was because its image problems with the public and with governments have been exacerbated by executives making injudicious comments. CEO Travis Kalanick telling a group of U.S. mayors that Uber wouldn't wait on their cities making regulations before operating and another executive suggesting spending a million dollars to investigate journalists who write negatively about the company doesn't help.
Lawsuit Losses
On the opposite end of Uber's success in D.C., lawsuits by taxi unions in parts of Texas could potentially set up a negative precedent for ride-hailing apps. Even though Uber could eventually win in court there, opponents of Uber are taking notes on what is and isn't working agains the company, which could could mean bigger problems down the road. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the Supreme Court might have to weigh in eventually.
As more areas of the country decide to approve or ban Uber and its fellow sharing economy companies, conflicting rulings would get appealed, working their way up the court system the high court has to make a decision about whether patchwork regulation is allowable. Enough noise in the space could even lead to legislation by Congress, although getting anything to the president's desk would be a very complicated process.
Cybersecurity Holes
One of Uber's biggest scandals surrounds its digital security. Drivers and customers have had their personal information stolen, some ending up for sale in the darker corners of the Internet. Uber is trying to compensate for its cybersecurity issues, but the tens of thousands of drivers and customers whose data may have been stolen are not the kind of example of digital security Uber would want to present to the world. The company hired Facebook's Chief Security Officer to fill the same role at Uber, but it's not clear yet whether he will be able to prevent future cybersecurity issues.
A Blemished Physical Safety Record
Uber's prominence means that it faces even more scrutiny than its rivals when one of its partner drivers is connected to a horror story like the woman who was kidnapped and assaulted in D.C., allegedly by an Uber driver, or the actual arrests of Uber drivers for assaulting passengers in Boston and Chicago.
The company's efforts to combat this problem with biometric background checks, safety checklists and a broader plan to improve customer safety may help some, but critics can still legitimately cite those incidents when attempting to block the growth or regulation of Uber, and by extension other ride-hailing and sharing economy startups.
