re: Austin, TX people: Is Uber/Lyft leaving your town?

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They're playing with fire as far as market-share goes.

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You are exactly right. Some of the first lessons taught in business school are about the product life cycle and the advantage of first to the market. Basically first to the market should always be the leader in the market throughout the life cycle.

Uber is in the early adopter segment of Ride sharing and were the first to market in Austin. They should always have an advantage over some other startup. However, in this case Uber did the opposite of what business professors teach and removed themselves from the Austin market on their own accord.

It will be interesting to see how the gamble pays offs if they take a six month or longer hiatus. Some other company will jump in to attack thier market share, and if or when Uber returns, it will interesting to see if the market uber built will come back to them or if those people moved on to a different service.

One thing is for sure, Austin is a very lucrative market for ride sharing. If I was Ceo of a ride share business, I would do whatever I needed to do to keep that revenue flowing. I sure as hell wouldn't be leaving the market when I was the unquestioned leader of it.