Andrew Milgram

They were taking drivers away from yellow.

And so yellows were stacking, parking themselves, not generating revenue as a driver went to Uber.

And the driver was going to Uber because Uber was subsidizing every ride.

So the driver's earnings power was accelerating.

People were making rational choices.

By the way, more people were switching into Uber from other modes of transportation, bus, private car service.

Subway, because Uber was subsidizing New York, New Yorkers are the most sophisticated, price-sensitive consumers in the world.

They were getting brand new cars because all the drivers were going out and buying new cars.

They were getting brand new black cars and subsidized service.

New Yorkers were like, this is a deal.

I'll do this every day.

So Uber was having a tremendous amount of success and they were pulling those drivers away.

The interesting thing is when we started doing our research, and by the way, we spent two years researching it before we ever did anything.

I mean, my favorite party trick actually is as part of that research, I became a New York City taxi driver.

And I still go out and drive.

That's funny.

Yeah.

Well, you have to stay connected to the market.

But we've spent two years researching the space, a lot of time in Queens, going garage to garage, learning about the market, learning about how it works, because it's a pretty complicated ecosystem, to be honest.

It's emerged over 100 years and employs literally thousands of people in New York City.