Is Uber Vulnerable?

Platforms are more than just complex apps or two-sided marketplaces.

This was originally published as part of a series on the emerging influence of service design principles within the financial service industries.

Uber is the poster child of digitally-enabled, network-oriented disruptors, yet it has a bit of a reputation for its single-mindedness. Uber has prioritized aggressive growth and has achieved impressive results. However, despite the mobile-first product and platform-oriented experiments, their bull-headed, solitary approach to growth feels out of sync with principles of the networked world. This week however, there are a couple of signals that this is being corrected through the adoption of a more collaborative approach and a deeper consideration for key stakeholders. The first such signal is Uber’s partnership with MetroMile, described here by Neal Ungerleider in Fast Company:

Metromile’s ride-sharing insurance product, which is offered in conjunction with Uber, works on a variable pricing plan on top of a monthly fee. It toggles between personal insurance and Uber’s own insurance package from the time they accept a ride request from a customer to the time a customer exits the car.

I’ve written previously on questions around usage-based insurance (UBI), so I won’t get into those points here. Instead, we can look at what Uber gets from this partnership, in exchange for exposing the insurance startup to the market. Neal Ungerleider:

The decision to offer drivers specialized policies tailored towards part-time ride sharing takes care of one of the most vexing complaints that has followed Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar: That drivers are underinsured, and that the personal insurance many part-time drivers rely on doesn’t offer coverage when they are on the clock. In anti-ridesharing promotional material aimed at the public, taxi industry trade associations have been attacking Uber on the insurance front with frequency.

The notion of Uber as a platform must go beyond its most familiar manifestation as an app. To embrace a platform mentality is to recognize their role as the hub for otherwise unrelated partners (and problems), which they leverage to form the basis of their service. Uber has offered insurance before now, but development in their insurance offerings must keep pace with the development of their product offering.

The second signal of Uber’s partnership push is the announcement of another driver-oriented tool, in collaboration with Intuit (Ben Kepes for Forbes):

…offering drivers a free version of the QuickBooks Online Self-Employed version alongside the ability to send data directly to Intuit TurboTax Online, the company’s tax filing solution.

Up to this point, Uber’s collaborators have been limited to those who participate in rider-oriented promotions. These new partnerships address core aspects of their business, through a different set of stakeholders — Uber drivers. This is tacit acknowledgment of the complexity of their system, which Uber has previously reduced to a simplistic proposition of flexibility and convenience for riders and drivers. At least that is their outward pose. Even if this isn’t what they believe internally, keeping your cards close to your chest is an outdated approach in a networked world. This is especially true in Uber’s domain, where change is happening so quickly. Perhaps these partnerships signal that Uber is correcting their approach now that the cracks in their solitary, closed model are beginning to show.