Fearlessly Innovative Uber and Airbnb's startup story

The Upstarts gives you a glimpse of what it feels like being a startup like Uber and Airbnb. Best seller author, Brad Stone, artfully juxtaposed the two upstarts, narrating phases of the company growth: from a burgeoning start-up to a company, facing regulation as well as fierce competition in both domestic and international. Both are fearless and resilient. As a person who started living in the Silicon Valley in the year 2008, this book made me look back my own life journey with adopting new technology as a consumer. Hope this does the same to you.

Regulation - I think the greatest achievement of both Uber and Airbnb is that they executed despite a mountain of obstacles. Many people came up with the similar idea, but not all of them fought head-to-head the regulation and existing industry's objection like these two. It is well worth to note that both founders shared the similar philosophy in how to navigate this.

Uber had this 'Travis's Law.' Basically, if there are enough customers who support your products or services, you will eventually be able to win against regulation. Actual quote is below.

Brian Chesky shared the same message. His first comment on one of the questions by Kenyan about regulatory issues was to stay below radar or big enough that the company is in an institution. In order to do that, the company needs to grow really really fast.

Services - Brad also pinpoints that both Uber and Airbnb were lucky to got in the technology wave: Smart phone and online credit card service. Smart Phone's location service provided the accuracy of the taxi, and interactivity with AirBnb.

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