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NOW Podcast: Shuddle Shuts Down

Abid Chaudhry and I discuss the fall of Shuddle, the Bay Area-based "Uber for kids" startup that closed its doors today after raising $12.2 million. What does this suggest for high-value vertical on-demand services? Can they differentiate enough to separate…

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Uber’s Brand Challenge: Safety and Service First

The horrible, unfortunate shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan, this weekend present a genuine brand crisis for Uber, the increasingly ubiquitous mobility services company. The company's success has brought hundreds of thousands of people into its contractor circle, including wanna-be Travis Bickle,…

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NOW|Seattle: Localizing Global Logistics

The “new normal” in local competition blends intimate customer experience with supply-chain and logistical insights. Customers now expect to get a product or service tuned to their specific needs in near real-time, or “on-demand.” When we talk about the local, on-demand economy, we’re talking about marketplaces in which product marketing is blended with data to create surprising experiences, such as an Uber car that materializes in minutes at the curb or a great meal delivered to the home, among just a few emerging services.

We’re pleased to announce the panel, Localizing Global Logistics, at BIA/Kelsey NOW | Seattle, on Feb. 18th. It features Brooke Steger, General Manager of Uber in the Pacific Northwest, David Galvan, VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances for MasterCard, and Adam Burrows, SVP of Business and Corporate Development at HomeAdvisor.

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Class Action Ruling: Is Uber Over?

Edward M. Chen, U.S. District Court Judge for Northern California, may be remembered as a unicorn-killer after granting Uber drivers class-action standing to contest their compensation paid by the company for on-demand transportation services provided over the past six years.…

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Will Tesla’s Elon Musk Kill Uber? Thinking Demand-side Economics This Week

Leading up to the BIA/Kelsey NOW Conference, which will debut in San Francisco this June, we’re kicking off a regular series of blog postings on the Local On-Demand Economy (see our white paper). Twice per week, we’ll wrap notable news, fundings and executive moves in the LODE world.

(Click below for full stories)

Does Elon Musk’s Future Include a Place for Uber?
Uber may be the “greatest job creator” in the world right now, adding 50,000 drivers a month since the beginning of the year. But consider Tesla Founder & CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a world without drivers. In an interview at an NVIDIA conference this week, Musk said: “”In the distant future, I think people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” He predicts driving will eventually be illegal.

Bus rides, by contrast, may not be good LODE targets
Leap Transit launched its high-end bus service in San Francisco this week. A roughly 15-minute ride costs $6 and includes coffee, wi-fi and techie luxuries including an onboard concierge of sorts, according to this entertaining article from The Atlantic’s CityLab. This very unLODE model requires a steep capital investment in buses that appear to include reclaimed wood walls and Starbucks-like seating.

FundBox tackles the accounts receivable space
Accounts receivables delays cost small business significant lost opportunity the longer they drag on. If they can get paid faster, the revenue can be redeployed for growth, marketing and other purposes. FundBox, a San Francisco startup announced a $17.5 million round of financing from Khosla Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and other individual investors, to address this painful business problem.

Meanwhile, is syndication working magic for BuzzFeed?
At South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas, this week BuzzFeed founder Johan Peretti explained that he has effectively outsourced his site hosting to social networks where his company’s content is shared by users. While BuzzFeed.com attracts approximately 200 million users each month, its syndication network, which includes Facebook and Twitter, generates 18.5 billion impressions a month.

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Uber Tests 10 Minute Delivery Service

The big online retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Groupon and WalMart have been focusing on developing same day delivery channels. Same day delivery is an effort that that may not only boost their edge over other retailers, but also add…

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