She says they can act like such, because well the powers that be are unicorns and no one in Silicon Valley is going against a unicorn.
Further, Uber continues to allow dozens of it's user's accounts to be hacked. It's been happening for months and their weak response is sorry you should've have chosen a better username and password. Also, once you been hacked there is no way to delete your own account or de-activate payment method. You need to beg support to do this for you.
Sarah Lacy is a poor journalist - she has a pattern of inserting herself into stories and being unnecessarily incendiary to try to bait a more interesting response. She has the 'food critic' writing style - crapping on everything to make herself look good. Except for the companies she's friends with, and then she only craps on their competitors. All the worst aspects of modern tech journalism rolled into one person.
Uber defnitely crossed the line here, but Lacey's milking this time in the limelight for all it's worth, so please take her with a large grain of salt.
I have to laugh at your attempts to call Uber's position entirely luck-based. But there's not "LOL" button like on buzzfeed, so I replied to let you know.
If that is warranted - on HN - for Uber's behavior, then every single thread about what the NSA / US Govt has done the last decade, should be filled with nothing but profanity and insults directed at those in power.
There's an obvious reason why comments like that are not preferred here: it adds absolutely nothing of value to the discussion, to call the Uber execs smug douchebags.
It does not bother you how they have no care for anyone including their customers?
It would bother the hell out of you after Uber allowed your bank account to be robbed 1,000 dollars! Again, it's been going on for months and they have not offered any change to their service to show they give a rats ass about their customers. All the while blaming it on their users and all the while not allowing their users to easily delete their own accounts and or payment method ..that can only be done by emailing and begging support.
My tone is just and prompted by their lack of care for anyone but themselves and the actions Sarah Lacy speaks of feel very similar to how Uber took me for a ride I didn't ask for (never used the service .. signed up once)!
I'm sure you have a point to your tone, insults and negativity. That does not mean it's appropriate for Hacker News. That's the critical point you're missing.
If your approach to discussion were widely followed here, this site would become a wasteland of anger and venting.
Even if I dislike Uber, what I'm not going to do is fill up Hacker News threads with statements about how their execs are scumbags, con-artists, or douchebags. Why not? Because it's inappropriate here.
Though where do you go to school to make the next Google, Facebook, Uber, etc ....
How much of that is hard work and luck? 50/50? How many of us are here want to do something similar ...the odds are not feasible neither is winning the lottery.
Would love some insight and helpful advice on sales.
We have a product that is ready for paying customers and we have a landing page (only) that is to collect sign ups. We get 100 sign ups a week & up to 15% of those express interest in being customers, but once we get to talking ... after a few emails these talks taper off and even a follow up email leads nowhere.
We have had talks with small parties no one has heard to huge Fortune 50 to 500 companies (this week a VP from Lowes started talks, previous Black & Decker, Motorola, Samsung, Beats, etc).
It seems most people want to use our unique WEB technology for free, though once we put it on the web these potential customers may just show their true motives of wanting to know how we accomplished X and copy it.
Thus, I've been thinking of doing a freemium model myself where users can use part of the product that is not our secret sauce yet have to pay X amount of money to add our secret sauce into the product for their specified use.
What do you think is a better sales channel then we have it now and or does my next sales channel idea sound solid?
