Imagine it’s December 2018 — one year after a spectacular corporate meltdown at Uber. The dust has settled, and we’re beginning to see the far-reaching consequences of the company’s collapse. Here’s how I see that possible future scenario:
1. The fire sale has turned into a wildfire
Much of Uber’s valuation related to future projections about self-driving vehicles, but in the short term, the board’s decision post-crash to licence the brand’s core ride hailing and driver management software has led to at least 50 companies in different countries building small-scale and moderately successful local equivalents.
All have been widely accepted by local city populations and regulators alike, proof that much has been learned from the regulatory challenges Uber faced prior to its collapse.The resulting licensing fees have helped turn Uberify.Inc, the scaled-back patent and licensing entity that arose from Uber’s demise, into a highly successful software and training licensing provider. The valuation may be nothing like the scale of Uber’s, but the social impact has been greatly appreciated. Ride-hailing services that play nicely with city authorities are becoming the norm.
2. Workers or small business owners?
The debate rages on, but landmark legislation in both the UK and Germany has now enshrined solopreneurship in law, with protections aligned to key aspects of employment law, such as health, unemployment benefit, and paid holidays/sick days. This development has given rise to at least two new startups in London specializing in so-called “solopreneur platform rights.” Their work involves consolidating workers’ ratings and performance data from 10 of the major gig operators so that workers’ reputations travel with them. It’s a promising start. Last month’s flash strike of Laundrapp workers in Spain illustrates the importance of gig economy workers’ rights.
Not only are startups now designing these rights into their platforms; they are building whole businesses around them.3. The rise of the personal data broker
Europe’s GDPR data protection legislation was too late to address the data breach controversy Uber faced back in 2017, but Uber’s behavior in covering up the breach, served to showcase the importance of that particularly European piece of legislation. With the US poised to address the possibility of individual rights over data, it’s clear that the Uber case massively advanced the cause of privacy advocates, if not individual…
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