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deatonyesterday at 6:10 PM3 repliesview on HN

Tale as old as the word "startup" even. Uber/Lyft did it with taxis. DoorDash did it with food delivery. You run at a loss for years while destroying your legacy competition by just outlasting them, then once you have cornered the market you squeeze.


Replies

dgellowyesterday at 6:43 PM

I understand the cynism but it’s not the case here. Stainless isn't a case of blitzscaling or running a loss for years to destroy the competition. The motto of the company is polished and robust and we invested a lot into generating what we think are the highest quality SDKs available. We could have shipped things way, way faster if the focus on design and quality wasn’t such an essential part of the development process

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abigail95yesterday at 7:33 PM

Now Uber is profitable what stops a taxi from just competing again, forcing Uber to have to be unprofitable again?

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avgDevyesterday at 6:52 PM

I'm reading "enshitification", and it describes this cycle of first losing money but acquiring customers, then switching focus to catering to businesses, then to themselves and at that point the tool is not what it was supposedly intended to be.

This is the same startup culture. The only innovation here is finding new way to swindle customers and businesses out of money.