There Is No Uber Model

There is no Uber model. There is the taxi industry, which is of course a multi-billion dollar business worldwide. Getting you from A to B without using public transportation, if available at all, and without owning or renting a car (or having a friend drive you) is a real service in the real world. If you can do it better thanks to technology, you can beat an industry, the taxi industry, which often seems like it’s stuck in the Seventies.

On the other hand, pizza delivery is not a multi-billion dollar business. At most, it’s an added service available for free (and a tip to the young and poor) from your local pizza joint. In a similar vein, bringing home your fruit and veggies for you is not a business — has everybody really forgotten about Kozmo.com? And if there’s no business to start with, there is very little to “disrupt”, no matter how well-designed your app may be.

And the real news is that the NY Times seems to agree, for once.