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| A few years ago, while on a work trip in Los Angeles, I hailed an Uber for a crosstown ride during rush hour. I knew it would be a long trip, and I steeled myself to fork over $60 or $70. |
| 几年前，在洛杉矶出差时，我在交通高峰时间叫了一辆优步(Uber)横穿市区。我知道这这段路会很长，于是做好了交出60或70美元的准备。 |
| Instead, the app spit out a price that made my jaw drop: $16. |
| 结果，这款应用给出了一个让我瞠目结舌的价格：16美元。 |
| Experiences like these were common during the golden era of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy, which is what I like to call the period from roughly 2012 through early 2020, when many of the daily activities of big-city 20- and 30-somethings were being quietly underwritten by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. |
| 在“千禧一代生活方式补贴”(Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy)的黄金时代，这样的经历很常见。我喜欢这么称呼这个大约从2012年到2020年初的时期，当时，大城市二三十岁年轻人的许多日常活动都都被硅谷的风险资本家暗中包揽。 |
| For years, these subsidies allowed us to live Balenciaga lifestyles on Banana Republic budgets. Collectively, we took millions of cheap Uber and Lyft rides, shuttling ourselves around like bourgeois royalty while splitting the bill with those companies’ investors. We plunged MoviePass into bankruptcy by taking advantage of its $9.95-a-month, all-you-can-watch movie ticket deal, and took so many subsidized spin classes that ClassPass was forced to cancel its $99-a-month unlimited plan. We filled graveyards with the carcasses of food delivery start-ups — Maple, Sprig, SpoonRocket, Munchery — just by accepting their offers of underpriced gourmet meals. |
| 多年来，这些补贴让我们可以花着香蕉共和国(Banana Republic)的预算，过着巴黎世家(Balenciaga)的生活。我们集体乘坐了成百上千万次廉价的优步和Lyft，像小资贵族一样穿梭于各个地方，同时与这些公司的投资者们分摊账单。我们利用MoviePass的9.95美元包月的电影票优惠，让该公司陷入破产。我们参加了太多有补贴的动感单车课程，ClassPass被迫取消了99美元的无限包月计划。我们的墓地里满是送餐初创公司的尸体——Maple、Sprig、SpoonRocket、Munchery——只因为我们接受了他们提供的低价美食。 |
| These companies’ investors didn’t set out to bankroll our decadence. They were just trying to get traction for their start-ups, all of which needed to attract customers quickly to establish a dominant market position, elbow out competitors and justify their soaring valuations. So they flooded these companies with cash, which often got passed on to users in the form of artificially low prices and generous incentives. |
| 这些公司的投资者并不是打算为我们的颓废提供资金。他们只是想令自己的初创企业获得一些影响力，所有这些公司都需要迅速吸引客户，以确立市场优势地位，排挤竞争对手，并证明自己不断飙升的估值是合理的。因此，他们向这些公司注入大量现金，而这些现金往往以人为压低价格和慷慨的奖励形式传递给用户。 |
| Now, users are noticing that for the first time — whether because of disappearing subsidies or merely an end-of-pandemic demand surge — their luxury habits actually carry luxury price tags. |
| 如今，用户们终于注意到他们的奢侈习惯其实也带着奢侈品的价签——这可能是因为补贴在消失，也可能只是大流行尾声的一次需求大涨。 |
| “Today my Uber ride from Midtown to JFK cost me as much as my flight from JFK to SFO,” Sunny Madra, a vice president at Ford’s venture incubator, recently tweeted, along with a screenshot of a receipt that showed he had spent nearly $250 on a ride to the airport. |
| “今天我从中城打优步到肯尼迪机场，车费跟JFK飞SFO的机票一样贵，”福特风投孵化器副总裁桑尼·马德拉(Sunny Madra)近日发推说，并随附一张收据的截图，显示他打车去机场用了将近250美元。 |
| “Airbnb got too much dip on they chip,” another Twitter user complained. “No one is gonna continue to pay $500 to stay in an apartment for two days when they can pay $300 for a hotel stay that has a pool, room service, free breakfast & cleaning everyday. Like get real lol.” |
| “Airbnb太黑了，”另一位推特用户抱怨道。“谁要花500美元在一间公寓里住两晚，300美元能住酒店了，有泳池、客房服务、免费早餐和每天打扫清洁。太扯了吧。” |
| Some of these companies have been tightening their belts for years. But the pandemic seems to have emptied what was left of the bargain bin. The average Uber and Lyft ride costs 40 percent more than it did a year ago, according to Rakuten Intelligence, and food delivery apps like DoorDash and Grubhub have been steadily increasing their fees over the past year. The average daily rate of an Airbnb rental increased 35 percent in the first quarter of 2021, compared with the same quarter the year before, according to the company’s financial filings. |
| 有的公司几年前就已经开始勒紧裤腰带。但是大流行的到来似乎彻底结束了这些便宜事。据乐天情报(Rakuten Intelligence)的统计，打优步和Lyft的车费比一年前平均高出了40%以上，像DoorDash和Grubhub这样的送餐应用的费用过去一年在稳步上升。据Airbnb的财务报备文件，和去年同期相比，租住一间Airbnb的日均费用在2021年第一季度上涨了35%。 |
| Part of what’s happening is that as demand for these services soars, companies that once had to compete for customers are now dealing with an overabundance of them. Uber and Lyft have been struggling with a driver shortage, and Airbnb rates reflect surging demand for summer getaways and a shortage of available listings. |
| 部分原因是这些服务的需求猛增，各企业原本需要争夺顾客，现在却是客人多到应付不过来。优步和Lyft面临司机短缺的问题，Airbnb的房费标准反映了夏季短假需求的上升以及房源的短缺。 |
| In the past, companies might have offered promotions or incentives to keep customers from getting sticker shock and taking their business elsewhere. But now, they’re either shifting subsidies to the provider side — Uber, for example, recently set up a $250 million “driver stimulus” fund — or doing away with them altogether. |
| 在过去，公司可能需要拿出促销或补贴来避免顾客被价签吓到，转而去惠顾别的商家。但现在，他们把补贴转移到了提供服务的一方——比如优步近日设立了2.5亿美元的“驾驶员激励”基金——有的干脆取消了补贴。 |
| I’ll confess that I gleefully took part in this subsidized economy for years. (My colleague Kara Swisher memorably called it “assisted living for millennials.”) I got my laundry delivered by Washio, my house cleaned by Homejoy and my car valet-parked by Luxe — all start-ups that promised cheap, revolutionary on-demand services but shut down after failing to turn a profit. I even bought a used car through a venture-backed start-up called Beepi, which offered white-glove service and mysteriously low prices, and which delivered the car to me wrapped in a giant bow, like you see in TV commercials. (Unsurprisingly, Beepi shut down in 2017, after burning through $150 million in venture capital.) |
| 我得承认，这些年来我兴高采烈地参与了这种补贴经济。（我的同事卡拉·斯威舍对此有个难忘的表述，叫作“千禧一代辅助生活”。）Washio会把我的衣服洗干净送上门，Homejoy打扫我的房间，Luxe会帮我把车停好——这些初创公司都承诺提供廉价的、革命性的按需服务，然后在无法盈利后关张。我甚至通过一个拿到风投的初创公司Beepi买了一辆二手车，提供全程白手套服务和低得莫名其妙的价格，他们会把车送到你家门口，车上贴着一朵大礼花，跟电视广告里一样。（不出意外地，Beepi于2017年倒闭，烧了1.5亿美元风投。） |
| These subsidies don’t always end badly for investors. Some venture-backed companies, like Uber and DoorDash, have been able to grit it out until their I.P.O.s, making good on their promise that investors would eventually see a return on their money. Other companies have been acquired or been able to successfully raise their prices without scaring customers away. |
| 这些补贴对投资者来说并不总是以失败告终。一些风投支持的公司，如优步和DoorDash，已经能够坚持到首次公开募股，兑现他们的承诺，即投资者最终会看到他们的资金回报。其他公司则被收购或能够成功提高价格而没有吓跑用户。 |
| Uber, which raised nearly $20 billion in venture capital before going public, may be the best-known example of an investor-subsidized service. During a stretch of 2015, the company was burning $1 million a week in driver and rider incentives in San Francisco alone, according to reporting by BuzzFeed News. |
| 优步在上市前筹集了近200亿美元的风险投资，可能是投资者补贴服务的最著名例子。据BuzzFeed新闻报道，在2015年的一段时间里，仅在旧金山，该公司每周就要烧掉100万美元的司机和骑手奖励。 |
| But the clearest example of a jarring pivot to profitability might be the electric scooter business. |
| 但最明显的转向盈利能力的例子可能是电动滑板车业务。 |
| Remember scooters? Before the pandemic, you couldn’t walk down the sidewalk of a major American city without seeing one. Part of the reason they took off so quickly is that they were ludicrously cheap. Bird, the largest scooter start-up, charged $1 to start a ride, and then 15 cents a minute. For short trips, renting a scooter was often cheaper than taking the bus. |
| 还记得滑板车吗？在大流行之前，在美国主要城市的人行道上总有它的身影。它们起步如此迅速的部分原因是价格低得离谱。Bird是最大的滑板车初创公司，起始价为1美元，之后每分钟15美分。对于短途旅行，租用滑板车通常比乘坐公共汽车便宜。 |
| But those fees didn’t represent anything close to the true cost of a Bird ride. The scooters broke frequently and needed constant replacing, and the company was shoveling money out the door just to keep its service going. As of 2019, Bird was losing $9.66 for every $10 it made on rides, according to a recent investor presentation. That is a shocking number, and the kind of sustained losses that are possible only for a Silicon Valley start-up with extremely patient investors. (Imagine a deli that charged $10 for a sandwich whose ingredients cost $19.66, and then imagine how long that deli would stay in business.) |
| 但这些费用完全远离Bird滑板车的真实成本。滑板车经常坏，需要不断更换，该公司烧钱只是为了维持服务。根据最近的一份投资者报告，截至2019年，Bird每收10美元的使用费就会亏损9.66美元。这是一个令人震惊的数字，而且只有依靠极其有耐心的投资者的硅谷初创公司才有可能承受这种持续损失。（想象一家熟食店的原料成本为19.66美元的三明治售价为10美元，然后想象这家熟食店能持续多久。） |
| Pandemic-related losses, coupled with the pressure to turn a profit, forced Bird to trim its sails. It raised its prices — a Bird now costs as much as $1 plus 42 cents a minute in some cities — built more durable scooters and revamped its fleet management system. During the second half of 2020, the company made $1.43 in profit for every $10 ride. |
| 与大流行相关的损失，加上实现利润的压力，迫使Bird易辙改弦。它提高了价格——在一些城市，一辆Bird现在每分钟售价1美元42美分——制造了更耐用的滑板车并改进了滑板车管理系统。在2020年下半年，该公司每收10美元就能赚取1.43美元的利润。 |
| As an urban millennial who enjoys a good bargain, I could — and frequently do — lament the disappearance of these subsidies. And I enjoy hearing about people who discovered even better deals than I did. (Ranjan Roy’s essay “DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage,” about the time he realized that DoorDash was selling pizzas from his friend’s restaurant for $16 while paying the restaurant $24 per pizza, and proceeded to order dozens of pizzas from the restaurant while pocketing the $8 difference, stands as a classic of the genre.) |
| 作为一个喜欢便宜货的城市千禧一代，我可以——而且经常会——为这些补贴的消失感到可惜。我乐于听说有人发现比我找到的还要好的优惠。（兰詹·罗伊[Ranjan Roy]的文章《DoorDash与披萨店套利》[DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage]写道，DoorDash以16美元的价格出售他朋友的餐厅的披萨，同时付给该餐厅24美元，当他意识到这件事的时候，他开始在该餐厅下单数十个披萨，同时将8美元的差价收入囊中，是这类事情中的一个经典。） |
| But it’s hard to fault these investors for wanting their companies to turn a profit. And, at a broader level, it’s probably good to find more efficient uses for capital than giving discounts to affluent urbanites. |
| 但这些投资者也没什错，他们只是希望他们的公司盈利。而且，在更广泛的层面上，与向富裕的城市居民提供折扣相比，找到更有效的利用资本的方法可能更好。 |
| Back in 2018, I wrote that the entire economy was starting to resemble MoviePass, the subscription service whose irresistible, deeply unprofitable offer of daily movie tickets for a flat $9.95 subscription fee paved the way for its decline. Companies like MoviePass, I thought, were trying to defy the laws of gravity with business models that assumed that if they achieved enormous scale, they’d be able to flip a switch and start making money at some point down the line. (This philosophy, which was more or less invented by Amazon, is now known in tech circles as “blitzscaling.”) |
| 早在2018年我就写过，整个经济开始变得像MoviePass——这是一项订阅服务，它以9.95美元的固定订阅费提供每日电影票，这种优惠令人无法抗拒，也是几乎无利可图的，决定了它必然走向衰落。我认为，像MoviePass这样的公司正试图挑战自然法则，认为如果他们通过这些商业模式实现了巨大的规模，他们在未来的某个时候的盈利将能够一触即发。（这种哲学或多或少是由亚马逊发明的，现在在科技圈中被称为“闪电规模化”。） |
| There is still plenty of irrationality in the market, and some start-ups still burn huge piles of money in search of growth. But as these companies mature, they seem to be discovering the benefits of financial discipline. Uber lost only $108 million in the first quarter of 2021 — a change partly attributable to the sale of its autonomous driving unit, and a vast improvement, believe it or not, over the same quarter last year, when it lost $3 billion. Both Uber and Lyft have pledged to become profitable on an adjusted basis this year. Lime, Bird’s main electric scooter competitor, turned its first quarterly profit last year, and Bird — which recently filed to go public through a SPAC at a $2.3 billion valuation — has projected better economics in the years ahead. |
| 市场上仍然存在大量不合理的现象，一些初创企业仍在烧巨额资金以寻求增长。但随着这些公司的成熟，他们似乎发现了财务纪律的好处。优步在2021年第一季度仅亏损了1.08亿美元——这一变化部分归因于其自动驾驶部门的出售，这是一个巨大的改善，不管你信不信，优步在去年同期亏损30亿美元。优步和Lyft都承诺今年在调整后实现盈利。Bird的主要电动滑板车竞争对手Lime去年实现了首次季度盈利，而Bird——最近以23亿美元的估值通过特殊目的收购公司(SPAC)申请上市——预计未来几年的经济状况会更好。 |
| Profits are good for investors, of course. And while it’s painful to pay subsidy-free prices for our extravagances, there’s also a certain justice to it. Hiring a private driver to shuttle you across Los Angeles during rush hour should cost more than $16, if everyone in that transaction is being fairly compensated. Getting someone to clean your house, do your laundry or deliver your dinner should be a luxury, if there’s no exploitation involved. The fact that some high-end services are no longer easily affordable by the merely semi-affluent may seem like a worrying development, but maybe it’s a sign of progress. |
| 利润对投资者来说当然是好事。虽然为我们的奢侈行为支付无补贴的价格很痛苦，但也有一定的合理性。在高峰时间请专车司机接送你穿越洛杉矶，如果该交易中的每个人都得到了公平的补偿，那么费用就应该不止于16美元。请人打扫房子、洗衣服或送晚餐应是一种奢侈，假如这其中没有剥削。不算富有的人不再能够轻松享受一些高端服务，这样的变化似乎令人担忧，但这也许是进步的标志。 |
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