Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle with Uber

What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what&#x27;s the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don&#x27;t have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have to compete on price, where&#x27;s their advantage? Installed user-base? Incumbents forced out of business?<p>Many times I call for an Uber and a cab comes first and then they lose my business to the cab, which kind of highlights the commodity nature of rides--especially in the unregulated environment they themselves advocate. Maybe the long-term plan is de-regulate and re-regulate in favor of Uber?<p>Just thinking out loud because I&#x27;m genuinely curious what the strategy is.

The second line of the article states that growth is beginning to slow. It felt ominous, but buried in the 5th paragraph it says they are still expecting 512% YoY growth in 2015.<p>&gt; Lyft projects $796 million for 2015, a slowdown in growth but still an impressive 512 percent jump from 2014

&gt; The $130 million in revenue for 2014 is based on the combined net revenue from Lyft Classic and gross revenue from Lyft Line during the month of December, which implies $10.8 million in revenue during that month.<p>What is this sentence supposed to mean?

So taking into account these two facts:<p>&gt; <i>in 2014, it was 51,000 drivers and 2.2 million monthly rides, according to the document</i><p>&gt; <i>A ride booked in San Francisco through the Classic service generates a 92-cent profit for Lyft, including marketing costs but excluding corporate expenses, such as software developers and office space.</i><p>and assuming that all these 26.4 rides where Lyft Classic(which is of course foolish, but good for now), they would have around $24.28M for corporate expenses. Well and office in SF with ~500 people and all these perks in the heart of Mission district, makes me wonder if they are even profitable...

I keep hearing about this huge war between Lyft and Uber, but I don&#x27;t see anything evidenced in the price to the user. Now, maybe I&#x27;m just naive, but shouldn&#x27;t this kind of competition drive the prices down?

Does anyone have a link to the actual pitch document? I couldn&#x27;t find it in the article or on google. Interesting excerpts but I&#x27;m greedy and want all the context in the doc :)