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The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger’s car, or walking into a stranger’s home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it’s as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business and changing the way we travel.
In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology. They are among the Upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Young, hungry and brilliant, they are rewriting the traditional rules of business, changing our day-to-day lives and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process.
The Upstarts is the definitive account of a dawning age of tenacity, creativity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone’s highly anticipated and riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we find out how it all started, and how the world is wildly different than it was ten years ago.
In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology. They are among the Upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Young, hungry and brilliant, they are rewriting the traditional rules of business, changing our day-to-day lives and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process.
The Upstarts is the definitive account of a dawning age of tenacity, creativity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone’s highly anticipated and riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we find out how it all started, and how the world is wildly different than it was ten years ago.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 2017
963 people are currently reading
12855 people want to read
About the author
Brad Stone
39 books941 followersI am the senior executive editor for global technology coverage at Bloomberg and the author of "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire," published in May 2021 by Simon and Schuster.
The book is a sequel to my earlier work, "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon," which won the Book of the Year Award in 2013 from The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs. I'm also the author of The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley.
Over the last few years, I have authored a few dozen cover or feature stories for Bloomberg Businessweek on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Costco and the Chinese tech companies Didi, Baidu and Xiaomi. I joined the magazine from the New York Times, where I covered Silicon Valley from the newspaper's San Francisco bureau. Before that, I was a reporter for the once proud magazine known as Newsweek. I am also the author of a previous work of non-fiction, Gearheads, which the San Francisco Chronicle selected as one of the best books of 2003.
I graduated from Columbia University in 1993 and am originally from Cleveland, Ohio. I've lived in San Francisco for over 20 years but I'm still a Clevelander at heart- or should I say, at heartbreak, since the sports teams always manage to lose big (except the Cavs!) I have twin daughters and am teaching them to root for Cleveland teams as well because I believe adversity builds character. I hope you enjoy my books. Feel free to write me at brad.stone at gmail to let me know what you think.
The book is a sequel to my earlier work, "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon," which won the Book of the Year Award in 2013 from The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs. I'm also the author of The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley.
Over the last few years, I have authored a few dozen cover or feature stories for Bloomberg Businessweek on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Costco and the Chinese tech companies Didi, Baidu and Xiaomi. I joined the magazine from the New York Times, where I covered Silicon Valley from the newspaper's San Francisco bureau. Before that, I was a reporter for the once proud magazine known as Newsweek. I am also the author of a previous work of non-fiction, Gearheads, which the San Francisco Chronicle selected as one of the best books of 2003.
I graduated from Columbia University in 1993 and am originally from Cleveland, Ohio. I've lived in San Francisco for over 20 years but I'm still a Clevelander at heart- or should I say, at heartbreak, since the sports teams always manage to lose big (except the Cavs!) I have twin daughters and am teaching them to root for Cleveland teams as well because I believe adversity builds character. I hope you enjoy my books. Feel free to write me at brad.stone at gmail to let me know what you think.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 530 reviews
February 17, 2017
I read this at warp speed. Like, I read it in the tube, I read it in a taxi (bad idea,) I read it while code was compiling. I had to know what happens next.
Did it address any of the big issues about the sharing economy?
Let’s put it this way: the author is very clearly aware of all the questions that come up. The narrative is always set in the context of the impact the sharing economy is having on all of us: those who work in it, those who share in it (and often would not have access to some rather basic services without it), those who invest in it, those who are fighting it, those who win from it and those who stand to lose.
But “The Upstarts” is not an economics book or a sociology text.
If you’re buying it to find out what’s about to happen to the hotel industry in North America (my take: 5% of the world’s population / 42% of the world’s hotel rooms before AirBnB came out of nowhere, you do the math), you’ve come to the wrong place. If you ordered the book to look for an analysis of how much unpaid tax is being transferred from heretofore protected cab drivers to the city hall and if the rest of us are left better off or worse off, again, you’ve come to the wrong place. Funky observations about how in London AirBnb is threatened with a ceiling on days while in New York it’s having to deal with a floor are conspicuous through their absence.
The book does not particularly dwell on the long-term either. The rather rude fact that all money ever made from taxis has historically come from exercising market power? Look elsewhere. Uber and AirBnb’s prospects of dominating markets with only limited network effects? Pass.
There’s good news here, though:
If you bought “The Upstarts” to get to know Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky, if you’d like to ride with them from their ramen noodle eating days to the David Guetta-DJ’d super parties, you have come to the right place. You could not possibly be in better hands than Brad Stone’s.
If this book (which, let’s admit it, is a business book) had been written as a novel, it would still be pretty awesome. You get fed new faces only when they help develop the story and they’re woven into the narrative at a pace that will not leave you guessing. There is significant character development here too, as you witness young idealists transform into steely capitalists and, if you’re paying attention, there’s a bonus waiting for you in the shape of an mini-course in entrepreneurship!
The author is not afraid to tell you why these guys are doing the winning, but he does not want to you take his word. He does the necessary work to get the view out of somebody else’s mouth. The director of Y Combinator, for example, leaves you in no doubt that the founders of AirBnb succeeded for one reason only: they were “cockroaches” who refused to die. So they kept it alive long enough on their own, until their “world is my oyster, I’m busy on a million better things” Harvard-grad, former teenage spamming industry millionaire friend deigned to turn his magic to their project. Significantly, the author is NOT making it up as he goes, he knows it all and he knows it first-hand. He’s on first-name basis with everybody in the industry that counts and he has not been shy about getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth, doing his own “cockroach” thing and stalking the young CEOs to the other side of the globe if that is what it will take to get an audience.
I’m sure a lot of the detail is how “the good guys” see it (for example, do we really believe it was Travis who broke up with his girlfriend?) but the point is Brad Stone is only ever quoting first-hand here. He really is the man to write this story and he tells it in a style that would leave Quentin Tarantino breathless, jumping from Uber to AirBnb, via Zimride and Didi and all the regulators and competitors too. “Jumping” as in jumping and “jumping” as in tracking them all down to talk to them and giving them their chance to tell their story. It’s tremendous stuff. It never sags, it never lets up and it brings it all the way up to a couple hours before publication.
Anything I didn’t like? Actually, yes: how about editing out every single instance of “this turned out to be the best investment he / she / it had ever made!” Not only does it get tiring, but most of these guys have not yet taken profit, have they? The story is compelling enough on its own, besides.
Did it address any of the big issues about the sharing economy?
Let’s put it this way: the author is very clearly aware of all the questions that come up. The narrative is always set in the context of the impact the sharing economy is having on all of us: those who work in it, those who share in it (and often would not have access to some rather basic services without it), those who invest in it, those who are fighting it, those who win from it and those who stand to lose.
But “The Upstarts” is not an economics book or a sociology text.
If you’re buying it to find out what’s about to happen to the hotel industry in North America (my take: 5% of the world’s population / 42% of the world’s hotel rooms before AirBnB came out of nowhere, you do the math), you’ve come to the wrong place. If you ordered the book to look for an analysis of how much unpaid tax is being transferred from heretofore protected cab drivers to the city hall and if the rest of us are left better off or worse off, again, you’ve come to the wrong place. Funky observations about how in London AirBnb is threatened with a ceiling on days while in New York it’s having to deal with a floor are conspicuous through their absence.
The book does not particularly dwell on the long-term either. The rather rude fact that all money ever made from taxis has historically come from exercising market power? Look elsewhere. Uber and AirBnb’s prospects of dominating markets with only limited network effects? Pass.
There’s good news here, though:
If you bought “The Upstarts” to get to know Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky, if you’d like to ride with them from their ramen noodle eating days to the David Guetta-DJ’d super parties, you have come to the right place. You could not possibly be in better hands than Brad Stone’s.
If this book (which, let’s admit it, is a business book) had been written as a novel, it would still be pretty awesome. You get fed new faces only when they help develop the story and they’re woven into the narrative at a pace that will not leave you guessing. There is significant character development here too, as you witness young idealists transform into steely capitalists and, if you’re paying attention, there’s a bonus waiting for you in the shape of an mini-course in entrepreneurship!
The author is not afraid to tell you why these guys are doing the winning, but he does not want to you take his word. He does the necessary work to get the view out of somebody else’s mouth. The director of Y Combinator, for example, leaves you in no doubt that the founders of AirBnb succeeded for one reason only: they were “cockroaches” who refused to die. So they kept it alive long enough on their own, until their “world is my oyster, I’m busy on a million better things” Harvard-grad, former teenage spamming industry millionaire friend deigned to turn his magic to their project. Significantly, the author is NOT making it up as he goes, he knows it all and he knows it first-hand. He’s on first-name basis with everybody in the industry that counts and he has not been shy about getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth, doing his own “cockroach” thing and stalking the young CEOs to the other side of the globe if that is what it will take to get an audience.
I’m sure a lot of the detail is how “the good guys” see it (for example, do we really believe it was Travis who broke up with his girlfriend?) but the point is Brad Stone is only ever quoting first-hand here. He really is the man to write this story and he tells it in a style that would leave Quentin Tarantino breathless, jumping from Uber to AirBnb, via Zimride and Didi and all the regulators and competitors too. “Jumping” as in jumping and “jumping” as in tracking them all down to talk to them and giving them their chance to tell their story. It’s tremendous stuff. It never sags, it never lets up and it brings it all the way up to a couple hours before publication.
Anything I didn’t like? Actually, yes: how about editing out every single instance of “this turned out to be the best investment he / she / it had ever made!” Not only does it get tiring, but most of these guys have not yet taken profit, have they? The story is compelling enough on its own, besides.
March 15, 2017
Good piece of journalism that includes reporting some lesser known facts about the Upstarts which are less companies more a phenomenon in their own might.
However, a great book for me is one that lends itself to imagination and thought and inspires more thinking and doing. Upstarts is a good narrative of things as they were/ are and the reading experience was more a "ah ok, now I know, ok, interesting". High on gossip value.
However, a great book for me is one that lends itself to imagination and thought and inspires more thinking and doing. Upstarts is a good narrative of things as they were/ are and the reading experience was more a "ah ok, now I know, ok, interesting". High on gossip value.
February 10, 2017
I love this type of book typically but the way Stone wove this story was amazing. One of, if not the, best "how did these companies emerge seemingly over night to become household names and change the world" books out there. If you want to know what it takes to build a company of great importance - from the type of human it takes to lead and the effort it takes to succeed- read it. Loved it.
May 14, 2017
This book was ok - I liked the Amazon one by Brad Stone ( The Everything Store) better, but that could be because I'm more familiar with Amazon (Seattleite, customer, ...employee) and also more curious. Brad Stone did a good job of detailing the tension between Uber and (particularly) Airbnb's sense of mission/doing good and the grittiness, often outright ugliness, required to expand aggressively and gain a foothold in untapped markets. Uber and Travis Kalanick specifically have been getting a lot of bad press in 2017 and I've wondered if that will really make a dent in the long haul. The book takes an optimistic stance though. It spends some time getting into the valuation numbers as well as the obstacles that each company has had to face as they've expanded. Really, both stories are pretty astounding.
March 25, 2017
The upstarts contains a solid telling of the history of AirBNB and Uber. I was pretty intimately involved with the Uber part of the story and I can say that the history there is very much accurate. I was also so focused on Uber at that time that I actually had no idea what was going on at AirBNB. The stories being told together in an intertwined way was actually perfect. These are really exciting times in the worlds of technology and commerce and this book captures that. I don't know what the future will hold, but the idea of the sharing economy is so compelling that it certainly is here to stay.
February 26, 2017
Tahukah kamu kalau mungkin saat ini tidak akan ada aplikasi Uber bila sang founder tidak menonton film James Bond Casino Royale? Dan mungkin saat ini tidak ada lagi yang mengenal Airbnb jika para foundernya tidak bertindak gila dengan menjual sereal di masa kampanye Presiden Obama?
Apakah kamu tahu kalau bila tidak ada sebuah hujan salju yang cukup deras sekitar tahun 2012, mungkin tidak akan ada cerita tentang aplikasi pemesanan kendaraan terkenal asal Cina, Didi Chuxing?
Semua itu bisa kamu temukan di dalam buku ini, lengkap dengan bagaimana para founder startup tersebut berjuang menghadapi hadangan regulasi pemerintah, bisnis konvensional terkait, hingga pesaing yang juga berusaha menyerang mereka.
Seperti biasa, sang penulis Brad Stone menggunakan gaya bercerita yang sangat menarik. Ia hampir selalu mengawali cerita dengan latar belakang para tokoh-tokohnya, yang kemudian dilanjutkan dengan alasan di balik pengambilan tindakan yang dilakukan para tokoh tersebut.
Saya sendiri mengenal Brad Stone ketika dia menulis The Everything Store, biografi dari Amazon. Dan sejak saat itu, secara tak langsung tulisan-tulisannya seperti membawa pengaruh kepada tulisan saya.
Kombinasi cara bercerita yang baik, dengan kisah para startup yang mengubah dunia, tentu menghasilkan sesuatu yang layak kita baca.
Apakah kamu tahu kalau bila tidak ada sebuah hujan salju yang cukup deras sekitar tahun 2012, mungkin tidak akan ada cerita tentang aplikasi pemesanan kendaraan terkenal asal Cina, Didi Chuxing?
Semua itu bisa kamu temukan di dalam buku ini, lengkap dengan bagaimana para founder startup tersebut berjuang menghadapi hadangan regulasi pemerintah, bisnis konvensional terkait, hingga pesaing yang juga berusaha menyerang mereka.
Seperti biasa, sang penulis Brad Stone menggunakan gaya bercerita yang sangat menarik. Ia hampir selalu mengawali cerita dengan latar belakang para tokoh-tokohnya, yang kemudian dilanjutkan dengan alasan di balik pengambilan tindakan yang dilakukan para tokoh tersebut.
Saya sendiri mengenal Brad Stone ketika dia menulis The Everything Store, biografi dari Amazon. Dan sejak saat itu, secara tak langsung tulisan-tulisannya seperti membawa pengaruh kepada tulisan saya.
Kombinasi cara bercerita yang baik, dengan kisah para startup yang mengubah dunia, tentu menghasilkan sesuatu yang layak kita baca.
February 12, 2017
At times the author seems a little too in awe of the companies he covers, rather than an outsider looking clinically at them (especially when covering the legal issues).
November 4, 2021
Well written. Thoroughly documented. Informative. Recommended.
October 24, 2018
Eh. I expected to like this, since I liked his Amazon book a lot, and I enjoyed his book talk at the LA Book Festival. But this one didn't really catch my interest, maybe because the companies are more works-in-progress, and the writing was pretty meandering. His topics never seemed to come into focus.
Anyway, the book came due after I was maybe a third of the way in, including a fair bit of skimming. I'll probably call that good. 2.5 stars for what I read. It's not as if I'm short of stuff to read....
Anyway, the book came due after I was maybe a third of the way in, including a fair bit of skimming. I'll probably call that good. 2.5 stars for what I read. It's not as if I'm short of stuff to read....
April 3, 2018
So far I have not come across a book about a startup that can beat Nick Bilton's Hatching Twitter, but this was pretty good, definitely better than Stone's book about Amazon.
In Upstarts, Stone weaved the parallel stories of airbnb and Uber from their inception to almost current day. Fast paced, very readable, informative, and addictive. Definitely recommend.
In Upstarts, Stone weaved the parallel stories of airbnb and Uber from their inception to almost current day. Fast paced, very readable, informative, and addictive. Definitely recommend.
April 1, 2017
Books about highly successful firms and their often legendary founders and leaders are often of mixed quality and not very interesting. Many are hagiographies that tell the amazing stories of their subjects with clarity and near omniscience, so that the reader recognizes that the success of the firm and its leaders was a necessary development owing little to luck. But readers are likely drawn to such books because they already know the firms are successful due to the blaze of media coverage and self-promotion that tends to follow such firms. What can a popular trade account add to the media story? Besides, if the author is too critical, access to entrepreneurs and managers will be limited and lawyers promptly notified. To tell contemporary negative stories, authors need to rely on already accessible information that also rehashes well known situations, unless of course some new information from whistle blowers or untapped sources is used.
Brad Stone is a journalist who has written an informative and entertaining book about Uber and Airbnb, along with their start entrepreneurs Travis Kalanick and Joe Chesky. These firms are the most visible example of the latest wave of internet start-up that use high tech communications and data analysis capabilities to disrupt large and locally organized industries that have been resistant to innovation and reorganization. Uber has revolutionized taxi and limo businesses and was a pioneer in ride sharing. Airbnb is facilitating a similar revolutionn in the hotel business. Both firms follow what might be called "network platform" strategies that allow scalable market- matching transactions that were unthinkable as early as 2000. As a result, both firms are valued in the tens of billions of dollars and examples of "unicorn" start-ups.
There is no doubt that these "matchmaker" businesses provide services that many consumers value highly. To be able to quickly and safely hail a ride in strange surroundings with your cell phone is a wonderful development. To settle lodging arrangements in advance of travelling to a new city takes a lot of stress out of a trip. It is not surprising that these services are popular.
There is also much ambivalence about these businesses and concerns about how they relate to broader social and economic conditions. To start with, the business strategies of Uber and Airbnb fundamentally involve contesting (and often ignoring) existing laws and regulation that had developed around incumbent industries. While I do not wish to defend entrenched local bureaucracies, I am also very reluctant to endorse civil disobedience as a business strategy. Related to this is the place of Uber and Airbnb in the "sharing" economy. Drivers for Uber are not employees but contractors who must acquaint themselves with all local regulations, pay their own insurance, and pay their own health care and benefits. For Airbnb, hosts are not employees either and there is potentially much woe to be had by them if they do not read the fine print in their agreements and then run into the guest (or inspector) from hell. For both firms, there is more then a little suspicion that the "contractor" framing of employee relations is better explained by the need to reduce liability and lower the employee wage bill than it is to pay homage to individualism.
Don't get me wrong on this. Corporate paternalism has never been that prominent in capitalism and business history provides much evidence that the builders of great firms often did so on the back of their low paid and little protected workers. Better conditions for workers have been won through more conflict than cooperation and often do not last long into the onset of bad times. So it is not surprising to find that employee relations in the internet world have more continuities with those sponsored by prior titans of industry than discontinuities. Try to find out how much Uber drivers actually make after their housekeeping chores. What will happen to the drivers/contractors once Uber follows through on its plans to launch a fleet of driverless cars for hire?
One of the interesting aspects of "the sharing economy" is that the pushing of costs onto employees and off of the parent firm balance sheet is publicly glorified as a social good. Uber is not forcing its employees to make ends meet by working multiple jobs, including being a driver. No the drivers are "sharing" - I am not sure what - and driving to fulfill themselves. Airbnb hosts are not kicking long term tenants out and raising housing costs but instead are fostering a community of sharing accommodations. Stone notes throughout his book the dual face of these two firms.
Tied up with the stories of these firms are the stories of their founders. Stone is art his best in showing how these firms likely would not have survived and prospered without the steely determination of their founders - even if the founders do not come across in a sympathetic manner. I do not have to like these guys to acknowledge their roles in building huge and influential businesses. This is not a new story for internet or tech firms. The biographies of Steve Jobs are notable examples in which the often antisocial side of the founder was a central role in the story.
Stone's book is not dependent on these outsize personalities, however. He does a good job in showing how Uber and Airbnb can be seen in the context of other less successful startups that were trying to provide similar services but did not figure out how to do so. The book is useful in showing how different parts of these business models, for example, surge pricing for Uber, were developed, tested, and included in the firm's strategy. Far too many books do not explain why and how a start-up strategy works and why it succeeded. Stone is also effective as balancing the good and the less good in these firms, as well as how they have evolved based on their experiences. He could have spent more time on the threats ot these firm's long term viability (after they have an IPO) and the prospects for these firms developing scaled up models for ongoing operations once growth levels off.
This was better than most books of the genre and is well worth reading.
Brad Stone is a journalist who has written an informative and entertaining book about Uber and Airbnb, along with their start entrepreneurs Travis Kalanick and Joe Chesky. These firms are the most visible example of the latest wave of internet start-up that use high tech communications and data analysis capabilities to disrupt large and locally organized industries that have been resistant to innovation and reorganization. Uber has revolutionized taxi and limo businesses and was a pioneer in ride sharing. Airbnb is facilitating a similar revolutionn in the hotel business. Both firms follow what might be called "network platform" strategies that allow scalable market- matching transactions that were unthinkable as early as 2000. As a result, both firms are valued in the tens of billions of dollars and examples of "unicorn" start-ups.
There is no doubt that these "matchmaker" businesses provide services that many consumers value highly. To be able to quickly and safely hail a ride in strange surroundings with your cell phone is a wonderful development. To settle lodging arrangements in advance of travelling to a new city takes a lot of stress out of a trip. It is not surprising that these services are popular.
There is also much ambivalence about these businesses and concerns about how they relate to broader social and economic conditions. To start with, the business strategies of Uber and Airbnb fundamentally involve contesting (and often ignoring) existing laws and regulation that had developed around incumbent industries. While I do not wish to defend entrenched local bureaucracies, I am also very reluctant to endorse civil disobedience as a business strategy. Related to this is the place of Uber and Airbnb in the "sharing" economy. Drivers for Uber are not employees but contractors who must acquaint themselves with all local regulations, pay their own insurance, and pay their own health care and benefits. For Airbnb, hosts are not employees either and there is potentially much woe to be had by them if they do not read the fine print in their agreements and then run into the guest (or inspector) from hell. For both firms, there is more then a little suspicion that the "contractor" framing of employee relations is better explained by the need to reduce liability and lower the employee wage bill than it is to pay homage to individualism.
Don't get me wrong on this. Corporate paternalism has never been that prominent in capitalism and business history provides much evidence that the builders of great firms often did so on the back of their low paid and little protected workers. Better conditions for workers have been won through more conflict than cooperation and often do not last long into the onset of bad times. So it is not surprising to find that employee relations in the internet world have more continuities with those sponsored by prior titans of industry than discontinuities. Try to find out how much Uber drivers actually make after their housekeeping chores. What will happen to the drivers/contractors once Uber follows through on its plans to launch a fleet of driverless cars for hire?
One of the interesting aspects of "the sharing economy" is that the pushing of costs onto employees and off of the parent firm balance sheet is publicly glorified as a social good. Uber is not forcing its employees to make ends meet by working multiple jobs, including being a driver. No the drivers are "sharing" - I am not sure what - and driving to fulfill themselves. Airbnb hosts are not kicking long term tenants out and raising housing costs but instead are fostering a community of sharing accommodations. Stone notes throughout his book the dual face of these two firms.
Tied up with the stories of these firms are the stories of their founders. Stone is art his best in showing how these firms likely would not have survived and prospered without the steely determination of their founders - even if the founders do not come across in a sympathetic manner. I do not have to like these guys to acknowledge their roles in building huge and influential businesses. This is not a new story for internet or tech firms. The biographies of Steve Jobs are notable examples in which the often antisocial side of the founder was a central role in the story.
Stone's book is not dependent on these outsize personalities, however. He does a good job in showing how Uber and Airbnb can be seen in the context of other less successful startups that were trying to provide similar services but did not figure out how to do so. The book is useful in showing how different parts of these business models, for example, surge pricing for Uber, were developed, tested, and included in the firm's strategy. Far too many books do not explain why and how a start-up strategy works and why it succeeded. Stone is also effective as balancing the good and the less good in these firms, as well as how they have evolved based on their experiences. He could have spent more time on the threats ot these firm's long term viability (after they have an IPO) and the prospects for these firms developing scaled up models for ongoing operations once growth levels off.
This was better than most books of the genre and is well worth reading.
February 7, 2017
Journeys Marked By Nonstop Controversy.
In THE UPSTARTS, author Brad Stone explores how Uber and Airbnb (and a few other "also-rans") drastically increased their business (and market value). This book caught my attention because both of the two big firms in this book are located pretty closed to me. I was vaguely familiar with the history of each company, but didn't really know much detail. Well, I know a LOT more now.
What's really amazing is how quickly Uber and Airbnb blasted-off: "How did they maneuver past entrenched, politically savvy incumbents to succeed where others had failed and build large companies in a staggeringly short amount of time?"
The author notes something really interesting about both Uber and Airbnb. They each have huge market value, but don't really have many assets: "Airbnb can be considered the biggest hotel company on the planet, yet it possesses no actual hotel rooms. Uber is among the world’s largest car services, yet it doesn’t employ any professional drivers or own any vehicles."
Much of the book details the long, bitter fights with regulatory commissions. I did not find these sections terribly interesting, but of course, regulatory battles figure prominently in the history of each firm. (FYI: In my area, San Francisco, the city enacted regulations hugely restricting how often owners can rent out rooms.)
Especially with Uber, the internal fighting and strategizing plays a big part of the book. The contention with Uber founder Kalanick reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs. The bizarre work atmosphere at Uber in the early years reminds me of Jobs cracking the whip on his elite team at Apple.
One really zany story regards one of Uber's original managers, Matthew Kochman. He became so fed up with Kalanick that he left behind 50,000 shares of stock. He has ample reason to regret this: "in just a few years, those shares would be worth more than a hundred million dollars."
As recently as 2010, Uber was puny--just a handful of employees and a score of drivers. Now, some estimates put Uber at $70 billion market capitalization. I had not realized the huge ramp-up in Uber business. In 2014, Uber had UberX in 26 cities. By 2017, Uber was in 500 major cities worldwide.
Both Uber and Airbnb made early missteps and paid the price in negative publicity. Uber had trouble getting enough drivers to meet wildly changing demand. (This led to the "surge pricing" idea.) I found the story of Uber's "surge pricing" fascinating. For instance, at one point, surge pricing caused massive spikes in the cost of a ride: "After midnight, prices spiked seven times the normal rate in New York and San Francisco. Passengers were paying more than a hundred dollars for relatively short rides."
Airbnb suffered horrific publicity of a different sort, when a blogger detailed how her home was wrecked by an Airbnb renter. This news spread quickly: "The tech-news sites piled on— Airbnb was bringing strangers together in homes without ensuring a safe experience." Obviously, this was a massive PR issue: "If this host’s home had been vulnerable to such methodical destruction, what could be in store for other people?" (The home-wrecker was later arrested in San Francisco on charges of possession of stolen property.)
All in all, I found THE UPSTARTS to be an interesting read on the history of two big players. The internal strategizing was fascinating; I thought the bitter fights over regulations was tiresome at times, but I understand the story would not be complete without these chapters. To be honest, I never thought Uber would "win" that regulatory battle, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Advance Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.
for more views like this, see:
https://www.bassocantor.com
In THE UPSTARTS, author Brad Stone explores how Uber and Airbnb (and a few other "also-rans") drastically increased their business (and market value). This book caught my attention because both of the two big firms in this book are located pretty closed to me. I was vaguely familiar with the history of each company, but didn't really know much detail. Well, I know a LOT more now.
What's really amazing is how quickly Uber and Airbnb blasted-off: "How did they maneuver past entrenched, politically savvy incumbents to succeed where others had failed and build large companies in a staggeringly short amount of time?"
The author notes something really interesting about both Uber and Airbnb. They each have huge market value, but don't really have many assets: "Airbnb can be considered the biggest hotel company on the planet, yet it possesses no actual hotel rooms. Uber is among the world’s largest car services, yet it doesn’t employ any professional drivers or own any vehicles."
Much of the book details the long, bitter fights with regulatory commissions. I did not find these sections terribly interesting, but of course, regulatory battles figure prominently in the history of each firm. (FYI: In my area, San Francisco, the city enacted regulations hugely restricting how often owners can rent out rooms.)
Especially with Uber, the internal fighting and strategizing plays a big part of the book. The contention with Uber founder Kalanick reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs. The bizarre work atmosphere at Uber in the early years reminds me of Jobs cracking the whip on his elite team at Apple.
One really zany story regards one of Uber's original managers, Matthew Kochman. He became so fed up with Kalanick that he left behind 50,000 shares of stock. He has ample reason to regret this: "in just a few years, those shares would be worth more than a hundred million dollars."
As recently as 2010, Uber was puny--just a handful of employees and a score of drivers. Now, some estimates put Uber at $70 billion market capitalization. I had not realized the huge ramp-up in Uber business. In 2014, Uber had UberX in 26 cities. By 2017, Uber was in 500 major cities worldwide.
Both Uber and Airbnb made early missteps and paid the price in negative publicity. Uber had trouble getting enough drivers to meet wildly changing demand. (This led to the "surge pricing" idea.) I found the story of Uber's "surge pricing" fascinating. For instance, at one point, surge pricing caused massive spikes in the cost of a ride: "After midnight, prices spiked seven times the normal rate in New York and San Francisco. Passengers were paying more than a hundred dollars for relatively short rides."
Airbnb suffered horrific publicity of a different sort, when a blogger detailed how her home was wrecked by an Airbnb renter. This news spread quickly: "The tech-news sites piled on— Airbnb was bringing strangers together in homes without ensuring a safe experience." Obviously, this was a massive PR issue: "If this host’s home had been vulnerable to such methodical destruction, what could be in store for other people?" (The home-wrecker was later arrested in San Francisco on charges of possession of stolen property.)
All in all, I found THE UPSTARTS to be an interesting read on the history of two big players. The internal strategizing was fascinating; I thought the bitter fights over regulations was tiresome at times, but I understand the story would not be complete without these chapters. To be honest, I never thought Uber would "win" that regulatory battle, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Advance Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.
for more views like this, see:
https://www.bassocantor.com
February 10, 2017
An account by Brad Stone on the sharing economy giants Uber and Airbnb. It does paint a more balanced picture of the actions of Uber in contrast to the over sensationalized negative media coverage on them. Brad usually gives both accounts of the story and let's the reader decide. Brad also gives a blow by blow account of the important moments that defined each companies history in a fair way. One big voice that was missing was the people who have been displaced or affected by this shift in the economy.
October 31, 2017
Found it boring and not compelling at all. Jumped back and forth between Uber and AirBnb. Didn't care about anything that was happening and didn't like any of the players involved.
I had recently finished 2 books by Nick Bilton (Hatching Twitter and American Kingpin) which were both excellent - read those instead of this one.
I had recently finished 2 books by Nick Bilton (Hatching Twitter and American Kingpin) which were both excellent - read those instead of this one.
March 1, 2017
2.5 stars. A little one sided but I guess you get this from one of these types of novels. Was more interested in the chapters on Uber.
December 31, 2018
Shared economy innovators, craziness ensues.
January 16, 2019
Did you ever have this: someone tells you a story for some reason, but the story is long and not that interesting, and there is no point in listening to it at the end? Yeah that's it.
June 2, 2024
I enjoyed reading about the early days of Uber and AirBnB, and the cut throat world of business. People interested in business books would find this one interesting!
September 23, 2017
It’s All About The Brand
“Every company creates its own origin myth. It’s a useful tool for expressing the company’s values to employees and the world and for simplifying and massaging history to give due credit to people who made the most important contributions back when it all started.”
This is possibly the most convincing and honest statement in this book. The revisionism and distortion that routinely go into re-inventing the story of almost any major company, is always told with one eye on Hollywood and the inevitable movie deal. From a certain fast food chain to a specific social network, we all know the script, one that is dumbed down and simplified to feed into creating and perpetuating the mythology surrounding the brand.
There is a well-established, tried and tested formula to these success stories. It is essential to play down the origins as much as possible, in order for the successful outcome to appear all the more dramatic and powerful by comparison. The story of rich, white and privileged American kids getting more rich and privileged never sounds as good and doesn’t play into the American myth, though more often than not it is the American reality and it’s not about reality. At one point we are told, “The spam operation earned Blecharczyk close to a million dollars, he saw, and paid his college tuition to Harvard University and more.” This gives us a telling insight into what world we are looking into here and who gets to play.
Stone is based in the Bay Area and so is well equipped as any journalist to cover his subject and he comes from a global technology background which helps. He explains how he initially struggled to get everyone on-board to agree to this project, this does initially arouse some fears over his objectivity, but overall I’d say that he has made a fairly consistent and sound job of keeping a reasonable balance throughout this book. He manages to get a good grasp of both companies, reveal the driving force behind them, and is not afraid to show the mistakes they’ve made and the problems they’ve caused. He explains early on that,
“The juggernauts Uber and Airbnb did not generate this technological wave, but more than any other companies over those eight years, they rode it and profited from it. The two companies, both in San Francisco, their headquarters only a mile apart, are among the fastest growing start- ups in history by sales, overall market value, and number of employees. Together they have scrawled in the annals of entrepreneurship the most memorable stories of a third phase of internet history.”
The framing and rhetoric involved with both companies, is really no different to a politician and his political party. It’s worth noting that not only did Airbnb hire a former political operative of Clinton and Gore, but Uber also hired the manager of Obama’s 08 presidency campaign. So often these guys manage to hide behind a smokescreen of corporate language and laughable euphemisms, producing odious terms like ‘escape velocity’ and ‘price surging’. As is the nature of politics there appears to be no tactic too low or no cliché too ridiculous to be aired. This is America after all.
At one point Uber are telling us that we, “Decided to take on an entrenched taxi industry that they felt was more interested in blocking competition than in serving customers.” Yet we learn that, “On January 24, 2014, the Israeli start-up Gett reported that over a three day period in NYC…Uber employees ordered and then cancelled more than a hundred of its cars and then texted the drivers and attempted to get them to switch to Uber.”
Apparently Uber’s valuation in late 2016 was $68 billion, more than any other private start-up in the world. If you are looking for absurd numbers like this, then you are spoiled for choice, though if you are looking for role models or inspirational figures, this is maybe not in here. In fact, you will do well to find a likeable or relatable character amongst the main players. This is a group of brash, entitled, bratty white American boys, who seem tarred with every conceivable business related cliché. They are bloated with self-entitlement and breathtaking self-importance, and seem perfectly at ease in the ugly world of lawyers, lobbyists and other liars who are all out to line their own pockets.
In spite of their never ending self-promotion and bravado, they are never really quite as smart or forward thinking as they would like to believe. Stone shows us some of the various setbacks and controversies that both companies have had to endure. The story of the three Germans, known as the Samwar brothers, was interesting and very symptomatic of the start-up culture. These are guys who make an incredibly lucrative living from building clone companies of successful internet brands and then selling them onto the very companies they cloned, for immense amounts of money. The EJ case was fairly shocking too, this is a registered host whose house was robbed and ransacked by a junkie. In fact it got so bad that the three founders of Airbnb described the week following EJ’s second blog post as “the most difficult of their careers”.
Stone also talks of Uber’s controversial surge pricing policy, which after midnight eventually saw, “prices spiked seven times the normal rate in New York and San Francisco.”. One customer in NYC was charged $107 for a 1.5 mile trip. After some naïve and incompetent PR work they refined it somewhat, though still retaining some aspects of it. By 2011 during the month of September, it had generated $9 million in fares and kept $1.8 million in commissions and this was all before Uber would move to a straight 20% commission on all journeys.
This is obviously a highly contentious subject and there are at least two sides to this on-going debate with these emerging “upstarts”. On one hand it is good to shake up the often lazy, cynical entitlement, (and in some cases, monopolies) that can creep into the hoteling and taxi world. Most of us will have experienced shockingly poor service from both sectors at some stage. Then on the other hand these people have often had to study, pay and work long and hard to get into their line of work, like “the knowledge” that the black cab drivers in London have to master, which takes a phenomenal amount of memory power. What about the years people have put into learning and developing their trade? It is an absurd scenario where so many people are allowed to flood the market and operate without adhering to the same costs, regulations or responsibilities as those who make a living from it full time.
Either way, whatever side of the argument anyone falls into, the hard facts remain that these start-ups have had a devastating impact on lives and livelihoods of countless people across the globe. That’s not to say that these start-up guys didn’t work incredibly long and hard to get where they did, they are clearly highly talented, hugely determined and ruthless individuals. But what about the social responsibility?...How much do you think these guys care about that?...This is where questions and conflicts arise. Is the immense profit of a few millionaires/billionaires and some middle class Americans more important than all the people it hurts, and who go onto foot the real cost?...But of course this is almost irrelevant, certainly to those gaining from it, because as they will tell you, this is the nature of capitalism, one which is structured to always favour the wealthy and privileged over the poor and disenfranchised, and as long as they feel like they are winning, why would they want to change it?...
Hyperbole and airbrushing aside, we should remember well, that just because these people don’t wear a shirt and tie, doesn’t mean that they are just like us. This is deliberately misleading, and a dangerous assumption to make. In spite of all the contrived window dressing of foosball tables, lunchtime yoga and kickball games, these guys are the robber barons of the 21st Century, going to incredible lengths and expense to avoid regulation, transparency and tax in order to acquire vast and often immeasurable sums of wealth and power. Just like any other man in a suit and tie, in any boardroom in any city, they will shrug their shoulders and tell you everybody’s doing it, if they didn’t, then someone else would and all of those associated clichés. They are happy to claim ownership for the expansion and profit, but not so much for the responsibility, accountability and consequences that comes along with it.
Since this was published, there have been some fairly large developments occurring within the last few months, to add to future chapters of this on-going story. Uber CEO Kalanick was fired and Uber were kicked out of London, showing that this story is far from over and that many more chapters are still waiting to be written.
June 23, 2019
This is a a smart and evenhanded look at how two companies, Airbnb and Uber, changed our world in the eight short years from 2008 to 2016. Both companies emerged out of the sclerotic world of San Francisco's urban politics, and both spent most of their early lives battling diffident regulators and entrenched opponents. They are now worth tens of billions of dollars and are household names around the globe.
Garrett Camp came up with the idea of Uber after he sold an early social media site to eBay, and used the money to buy a series of Mercedes he couldn't drive in San Francisco's crowded streets. He loved the night life and hated having to take cabs, especially to see his new girlfriend Melody McCloskey, so he wanted to start his own internet taxi fleet. Camp then convinced the serial internet entrepreneur, and early file-sharing advocate for movies, Travis Kalanick to sign on to Uber after a trip to Paris in 2008 (where Kalanick had been pondering on the possibilities of a personal hotel site remarkably similar to what became Airbnb). A cabbies's irate attack on Camp's tall girlfriend's heels poking through the middle seat convinced Kalanick their had to be a better way. After deciding to become CEO in 2010, Kalanick came up with the idea of just distributing apps instead of trying to start their own fleet, and instituting surge pricing on holidays. Later, pushed by John Zimmer of Lyft, he moved to offering the apps to non-taxi-licensed drivers, and eventually anyone with a car. He had to battle local taxicab and blackcab regulators in San Francisco, DC, and New York City, which, under Bill de Blasio, attempted to limit the total number of drivers in the City in 2015, only to be attacked and foiled by State governor Andrew Cuomo. In other furious battles with Lyft, Didi in China, Hailo in Britain, and others, Kalanick established Uber as the predominant internet transportation company in the world, but pissed off almost everyone in the process.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were both graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design who were friendly and excitable. They started a home-sharing service to make some money during a San Francisco design conference in 2008, and hopefully pay for their apartment while they came up with a better idea. They enlisted the aide of Y Combinator's Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman at Greylock Capital, and, in their "Series B" round, Marc Andreesen. They had to fight a series of local political battles to keep their business going. In New York, they faced regulators like state senator Liz Kruegar, state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, and the Office of Special Enforcement in NYC, which enforced the new Multiple Dwelling law of 2010 against short-term rentals. After Schneiderman sent a massive subpoena for every user the site, they negotiated a deal to send over a handful of anonymized data, and then helped to create a task force to shut down illegal hotels in New York. Later, in 2014, Airbnb struck their first official deal with a city, agreeing to limit unhosted rentals to ninety days a year, and to collect registration fees. They soon agreed to many other "taxes-for-legalization" deals, such as to start collecting the 14% hotel tax in San Francisco. Yet they also faced blowback, such as the fierce Prop F campaign to ban Airbnb in their home town, which ended up failing 55% to 45%. Like Uber, they had become a popular part of urban life, and their opponents had underestimated their clout.
These two companies reshaped both the internet economy and urban living, both for better and for worse, and this book shows why and how. It also shows why, just 10 years later, it's hard to remember how recent this change was.
Garrett Camp came up with the idea of Uber after he sold an early social media site to eBay, and used the money to buy a series of Mercedes he couldn't drive in San Francisco's crowded streets. He loved the night life and hated having to take cabs, especially to see his new girlfriend Melody McCloskey, so he wanted to start his own internet taxi fleet. Camp then convinced the serial internet entrepreneur, and early file-sharing advocate for movies, Travis Kalanick to sign on to Uber after a trip to Paris in 2008 (where Kalanick had been pondering on the possibilities of a personal hotel site remarkably similar to what became Airbnb). A cabbies's irate attack on Camp's tall girlfriend's heels poking through the middle seat convinced Kalanick their had to be a better way. After deciding to become CEO in 2010, Kalanick came up with the idea of just distributing apps instead of trying to start their own fleet, and instituting surge pricing on holidays. Later, pushed by John Zimmer of Lyft, he moved to offering the apps to non-taxi-licensed drivers, and eventually anyone with a car. He had to battle local taxicab and blackcab regulators in San Francisco, DC, and New York City, which, under Bill de Blasio, attempted to limit the total number of drivers in the City in 2015, only to be attacked and foiled by State governor Andrew Cuomo. In other furious battles with Lyft, Didi in China, Hailo in Britain, and others, Kalanick established Uber as the predominant internet transportation company in the world, but pissed off almost everyone in the process.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were both graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design who were friendly and excitable. They started a home-sharing service to make some money during a San Francisco design conference in 2008, and hopefully pay for their apartment while they came up with a better idea. They enlisted the aide of Y Combinator's Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman at Greylock Capital, and, in their "Series B" round, Marc Andreesen. They had to fight a series of local political battles to keep their business going. In New York, they faced regulators like state senator Liz Kruegar, state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, and the Office of Special Enforcement in NYC, which enforced the new Multiple Dwelling law of 2010 against short-term rentals. After Schneiderman sent a massive subpoena for every user the site, they negotiated a deal to send over a handful of anonymized data, and then helped to create a task force to shut down illegal hotels in New York. Later, in 2014, Airbnb struck their first official deal with a city, agreeing to limit unhosted rentals to ninety days a year, and to collect registration fees. They soon agreed to many other "taxes-for-legalization" deals, such as to start collecting the 14% hotel tax in San Francisco. Yet they also faced blowback, such as the fierce Prop F campaign to ban Airbnb in their home town, which ended up failing 55% to 45%. Like Uber, they had become a popular part of urban life, and their opponents had underestimated their clout.
These two companies reshaped both the internet economy and urban living, both for better and for worse, and this book shows why and how. It also shows why, just 10 years later, it's hard to remember how recent this change was.
July 12, 2018
The Future of Business - Uber 'n' Airbnb's Digital Disruption
The future of business has always been a topic people have talked about. Right now it's as hot a topic as it has ever been before with the types of technology you can get your hands on and how fast they develop.
Many industries are changing, such as the transportation and hospitality industry among hundreds of others. In fact, there are many products and services for existing industries that haven't even been invented yet. Some people say this is for the good and other say for it's for the bad. I guess it depends on whether you're the one making the disruption or being disrupted by it.
About this article/review
Originally published at: http://bookmattic.com/reviews/the-fut...
“It’s about a crucial era during which old regimes fell, new leaders emerged, new social contracts were forged between strangers, the topography of cities changed, and the upstarts roamed the earth.”
I recently finished the audiobook version of 'The Upstarts' by Brad Stone which takes a close look at the behind the scenes of the CEOs of both Uber and Airbnb.
The Upstarts - The Future of Business
The is the first book I've ever listened to on audiobook (besides a Star Trek book way back when I was a child). I've never really been a fan of audiobooks. I've tried them before but just couldn't get into them, but as I get further into developing myself, I realized that listening to a few books here and there is not a completely bad thing and in fact will exercise your ability to retain information. I can always go back and buy the physical book in the future to mark it up.
Related Post: Reading Books is Not Enough - Alternatives to Reading Books
After listing to this book it changed my opinion of audiobooks since the story is quite compelling for any entrepreneur or business person.
The book focuses on both of the companies, Uber and Airbnb, mostly from the point of view of the founders of Uber, Travis Kalanick, and Garrett Camp, and the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk.
Before these two companies became well-known they both had a vision for the future of business which actually became a reality. Most investors laughed when they heard either Uber or especially Airbnb's ideas for their business.
But as these small startups started gaining momentum investors jumped on the opportunity to invest in both of these disruptive apps.
The Future of Business - Other points in the book
“Wow, you guys are like cockroaches,” Graham finally said. “You just won’t die.”
Brad Stone, the author, does a very good job of making the book seem like a drama with tons of quotes like the one above. I personally was more interested in listening to Kalanick's Uber story as he is quite rough around the edges and very straightforward in speaking his mind.
He's definitely got a mind for business.
Although the book is written in a prose format like a biography of the two companies, there are many takeaways you can apply to your own business, especially about the type of attitude and perseverance you must have in order to succeed.
Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen - The Future of Business
Both companies had to jump through many legal hurdles in order to achieve billion-dollar stardom. Uber and Airbnb had the most trouble in New York. Uber has been and still is accused of being an illegal taxi. Airbnb has been and still is accused of violating hotel tax laws among other dangerous issues such as guests robbing hosts. The list goes on.
You can find more about Uber's violations here, and more about Airbnb's here.
At one point in the book, I kind of felt bad for the companies, but both Kalanick and Chesky persevered through some of the toughest times.
The Future of Business For Uber and Airbnb
“If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard—in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave.”
Overall The Upstarts was informative and entertaining most of the time. I personally love stories about unique inventions in technology and disruption. The future of these companies is really unknown though. Uber already has self-driving cars (which are currently suspended since March 18th, 2018 due to a fatal pedestrian death caused by the automated car and 'safety driver' as Uber calls them.) and Airbnb has developed an experience and places feature.
The Future of Business - Setbacks for Uber in Indonesia and the rest of Asia
Both companies seem to have a lot of room to grow despite some setback in expansion taking, for example, Uber in Indonesia and the rest of Asia, was acquired by Grab, a company originating in Singapore. Although this is not a complete loss since Uber still gets a 27.5% stake after the acquisition.
The Future of Business - Setbacks for Airbnb because of racism
Sadly racism is ever alive in the US right now ever since Trump came into office. It's always been there but because of Trump's racist remarks during his campaign and after the election, racism has gone rampant. The only control Airbnb has over hosts when they make racist remarks is to ban them from ever using the app again. There is already a protocol in action.
Nonetheless, there have been a few incidents where the Airbnb host refused to give service to their guest just because of their race. This video actually made me cry and feel disgusted at the way people treat each other.
What is next for the future of business?
The future of business as we know it now is no doubt going to be almost unrecognizable 5-10 years from now and beyond. So many industries are changing rapidly and becoming so advanced it's mindblowing and exciting at the same time.
For you employees out there you've got to keep a close eye on the industry you're in. Even if you're not planning on building your own disruptive company you still have to be aware of the potential loss of your job due to disruption of the place you work at.
For us entrepreneurs out there you must be resilient in the ever-changing and cutthroat environment of the business world just like Kalanick and Chesky were throughout the whole life of their companies so far. In order to innovate, you must think about some sort of problem which needs to be solved, gather an awesome team, build an awesome business model and get your technology working to help the billions of people out there that need your help.
The future of humanity depends on the brilliant minds of entrepreneurs and scientists to create a future we will never be able to imagine until it's here. You are the future of business.
Thank you for reading. Please share this post with your friends, family, and coworkers. If you're interested in buying the book click on and buy the book from the Amazon link below.
The future of business has always been a topic people have talked about. Right now it's as hot a topic as it has ever been before with the types of technology you can get your hands on and how fast they develop.
Many industries are changing, such as the transportation and hospitality industry among hundreds of others. In fact, there are many products and services for existing industries that haven't even been invented yet. Some people say this is for the good and other say for it's for the bad. I guess it depends on whether you're the one making the disruption or being disrupted by it.
About this article/review
Originally published at: http://bookmattic.com/reviews/the-fut...
“It’s about a crucial era during which old regimes fell, new leaders emerged, new social contracts were forged between strangers, the topography of cities changed, and the upstarts roamed the earth.”
I recently finished the audiobook version of 'The Upstarts' by Brad Stone which takes a close look at the behind the scenes of the CEOs of both Uber and Airbnb.
The Upstarts - The Future of Business
The is the first book I've ever listened to on audiobook (besides a Star Trek book way back when I was a child). I've never really been a fan of audiobooks. I've tried them before but just couldn't get into them, but as I get further into developing myself, I realized that listening to a few books here and there is not a completely bad thing and in fact will exercise your ability to retain information. I can always go back and buy the physical book in the future to mark it up.
Related Post: Reading Books is Not Enough - Alternatives to Reading Books
After listing to this book it changed my opinion of audiobooks since the story is quite compelling for any entrepreneur or business person.
The book focuses on both of the companies, Uber and Airbnb, mostly from the point of view of the founders of Uber, Travis Kalanick, and Garrett Camp, and the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk.
Before these two companies became well-known they both had a vision for the future of business which actually became a reality. Most investors laughed when they heard either Uber or especially Airbnb's ideas for their business.
But as these small startups started gaining momentum investors jumped on the opportunity to invest in both of these disruptive apps.
The Future of Business - Other points in the book
“Wow, you guys are like cockroaches,” Graham finally said. “You just won’t die.”
Brad Stone, the author, does a very good job of making the book seem like a drama with tons of quotes like the one above. I personally was more interested in listening to Kalanick's Uber story as he is quite rough around the edges and very straightforward in speaking his mind.
He's definitely got a mind for business.
Although the book is written in a prose format like a biography of the two companies, there are many takeaways you can apply to your own business, especially about the type of attitude and perseverance you must have in order to succeed.
Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen - The Future of Business
Both companies had to jump through many legal hurdles in order to achieve billion-dollar stardom. Uber and Airbnb had the most trouble in New York. Uber has been and still is accused of being an illegal taxi. Airbnb has been and still is accused of violating hotel tax laws among other dangerous issues such as guests robbing hosts. The list goes on.
You can find more about Uber's violations here, and more about Airbnb's here.
At one point in the book, I kind of felt bad for the companies, but both Kalanick and Chesky persevered through some of the toughest times.
The Future of Business For Uber and Airbnb
“If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard—in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave.”
Overall The Upstarts was informative and entertaining most of the time. I personally love stories about unique inventions in technology and disruption. The future of these companies is really unknown though. Uber already has self-driving cars (which are currently suspended since March 18th, 2018 due to a fatal pedestrian death caused by the automated car and 'safety driver' as Uber calls them.) and Airbnb has developed an experience and places feature.
The Future of Business - Setbacks for Uber in Indonesia and the rest of Asia
Both companies seem to have a lot of room to grow despite some setback in expansion taking, for example, Uber in Indonesia and the rest of Asia, was acquired by Grab, a company originating in Singapore. Although this is not a complete loss since Uber still gets a 27.5% stake after the acquisition.
The Future of Business - Setbacks for Airbnb because of racism
Sadly racism is ever alive in the US right now ever since Trump came into office. It's always been there but because of Trump's racist remarks during his campaign and after the election, racism has gone rampant. The only control Airbnb has over hosts when they make racist remarks is to ban them from ever using the app again. There is already a protocol in action.
Nonetheless, there have been a few incidents where the Airbnb host refused to give service to their guest just because of their race. This video actually made me cry and feel disgusted at the way people treat each other.
What is next for the future of business?
The future of business as we know it now is no doubt going to be almost unrecognizable 5-10 years from now and beyond. So many industries are changing rapidly and becoming so advanced it's mindblowing and exciting at the same time.
For you employees out there you've got to keep a close eye on the industry you're in. Even if you're not planning on building your own disruptive company you still have to be aware of the potential loss of your job due to disruption of the place you work at.
For us entrepreneurs out there you must be resilient in the ever-changing and cutthroat environment of the business world just like Kalanick and Chesky were throughout the whole life of their companies so far. In order to innovate, you must think about some sort of problem which needs to be solved, gather an awesome team, build an awesome business model and get your technology working to help the billions of people out there that need your help.
The future of humanity depends on the brilliant minds of entrepreneurs and scientists to create a future we will never be able to imagine until it's here. You are the future of business.
Thank you for reading. Please share this post with your friends, family, and coworkers. If you're interested in buying the book click on and buy the book from the Amazon link below.
April 6, 2017
Many Americans, not to mention millions of people in other countries around the world, may find it difficult to imagine a world without Uber or Airbnb. Yet Uber was founded only in 2009 and Airbnb a year earlier. (Neither company’s success—or, for that matter, the sharing economy as a whole—would have been possible without the iPhone, which Apple introduced in 2007.) As the cover graphic suggests on Brad Stone’s captivating new book, The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World, these two iconic companies have been riding the wave of new and ever-improving technology.
Is this the sharing economy?
“Airbnb and Uber didn’t spawn ‘the sharing economy,'” Stone writes, “. . . so much as usher in a new trust economy, helping regular folks to negotiate transportation and accommodations in the age of ubiquitous internet access.” Even before going public, the two companies together were valued at close to $100 billion. There is no evidence that their principals have shared any appreciable portion of that wealth. Nor does it seem consistent with a gentle label such as “the sharing economy” for Uber to resist every effort to classify its drivers as employees and provide them with benefits.
Stone contends that “Together, these companies have come to embody a new business code that has forced local governments to question their faithfulness to the regulatory regimes of the past.” In the course of doing so, both companies have engaged in bare-knuckle fights with local governments around the world. For the most part, they’ve won. But not always. Stone tells the fascinating story, blow by blow.
The five men behind the two companies’ rise
Stone’s book is tightly focused on Uber and Airbnb, with digressions about the many companies that have tried to compete with them, with only meager success for the most part. In fact, in a sense, the book is about the two companies’ cofounders, and especially the two young men who have emerged as CEOs. Travis Kalanick runs Uber. Brian Chesky is at the helm at Airbnb. However, the two companies’ success may well be due as much to the contributions of their cofounders: Garrett Camp in the case of Uber, and Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk in the case of Airbnb. All are featured in Stone’s account. They’re all billionaires now, many times over.
The trouble with Uber and Airbnb
Stone makes clear that many of the problems that have surfaced in the news media about Uber have been caused by its CEO. “Chronically combative” (and sometimes abusive), Travis Kalanick continues to generate negative publicity, seemingly on almost a daily basis. Here’s one recent example that emerged in The Guardian—an article about Kalanick’s abusive treatment of one of his company’s drivers. And here’s an even more recent report about the company’s use of software to evade police in at least five American cities and six other countries. These are not isolated instances of controversy surrounding the company: trouble seems to follow Uber with disturbing regularity.
Many of these reports reflect Kalanick’s combative personality, but there are other problems as well. For instance, Anna Weiner wrote in the Feb. 28, 2017 New Yorker about recent reports of sexual harassment at the company: “Uber is, in some ways, a model villain. The company has long inspired Schadenfreude. It has been accused of mishandling customer reports of sexual harassment by drivers.”
A shared reputation for aggression
As a result of the frequent, high-profile accounts of Uber’s misbehavior, Airbnb tends to be regarded more highly. But Stone argues that CEO Brian Chesky is frequently as aggressive as Kalanick. Neither has shied away from blatantly breaking local laws or confronting local officials. “Reflecting on the years 2011 through 2013,” Stone notes, “a person might find it difficult to conclude that one company was the more ethical operator . . . Both CEOs seized the tremendous opportunities before them with steely determination, pausing just long enough to turn around the repair some of the carnage they left in their wake.” Stone adds, “in the end, there emerged an unavoidable fact: Chesky was every bit the warrior Travis Kalanick was. He believed so much in the promise of his company that he was going to fight for every inch of territory.” Both companies racked up so many victories against local officials because their services had come to be regarded as essential by so many residents—and the high-priced lobbyists they both hired managed to mobilize so much support that local officials were forced to back down.
A final assessment
After cataloguing a litany of offenses by both companies, Stone relents in the end. “Both Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky had made big promises: to eliminate traffic, improve the livability of our cities, and give people more time and more authentic experiences. If these promises are kept, the results might well be worth the mishaps and mistakes that occurred during their journeys; perhaps they’ll even be worth the enormous price paid by the disrupted.” Not to mention that $100 billion the two companies’ founders and investors have amassed.
About the author
Brad Stone is a senior executive at Bloomberg News in San Francisco. The Upstarts is his third nonfiction book. The second was the bestseller The Everything Store about founder Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com. I reviewed that book here under the title “Why I hate Amazon.com.”
Is this the sharing economy?
“Airbnb and Uber didn’t spawn ‘the sharing economy,'” Stone writes, “. . . so much as usher in a new trust economy, helping regular folks to negotiate transportation and accommodations in the age of ubiquitous internet access.” Even before going public, the two companies together were valued at close to $100 billion. There is no evidence that their principals have shared any appreciable portion of that wealth. Nor does it seem consistent with a gentle label such as “the sharing economy” for Uber to resist every effort to classify its drivers as employees and provide them with benefits.
Stone contends that “Together, these companies have come to embody a new business code that has forced local governments to question their faithfulness to the regulatory regimes of the past.” In the course of doing so, both companies have engaged in bare-knuckle fights with local governments around the world. For the most part, they’ve won. But not always. Stone tells the fascinating story, blow by blow.
The five men behind the two companies’ rise
Stone’s book is tightly focused on Uber and Airbnb, with digressions about the many companies that have tried to compete with them, with only meager success for the most part. In fact, in a sense, the book is about the two companies’ cofounders, and especially the two young men who have emerged as CEOs. Travis Kalanick runs Uber. Brian Chesky is at the helm at Airbnb. However, the two companies’ success may well be due as much to the contributions of their cofounders: Garrett Camp in the case of Uber, and Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk in the case of Airbnb. All are featured in Stone’s account. They’re all billionaires now, many times over.
The trouble with Uber and Airbnb
Stone makes clear that many of the problems that have surfaced in the news media about Uber have been caused by its CEO. “Chronically combative” (and sometimes abusive), Travis Kalanick continues to generate negative publicity, seemingly on almost a daily basis. Here’s one recent example that emerged in The Guardian—an article about Kalanick’s abusive treatment of one of his company’s drivers. And here’s an even more recent report about the company’s use of software to evade police in at least five American cities and six other countries. These are not isolated instances of controversy surrounding the company: trouble seems to follow Uber with disturbing regularity.
Many of these reports reflect Kalanick’s combative personality, but there are other problems as well. For instance, Anna Weiner wrote in the Feb. 28, 2017 New Yorker about recent reports of sexual harassment at the company: “Uber is, in some ways, a model villain. The company has long inspired Schadenfreude. It has been accused of mishandling customer reports of sexual harassment by drivers.”
A shared reputation for aggression
As a result of the frequent, high-profile accounts of Uber’s misbehavior, Airbnb tends to be regarded more highly. But Stone argues that CEO Brian Chesky is frequently as aggressive as Kalanick. Neither has shied away from blatantly breaking local laws or confronting local officials. “Reflecting on the years 2011 through 2013,” Stone notes, “a person might find it difficult to conclude that one company was the more ethical operator . . . Both CEOs seized the tremendous opportunities before them with steely determination, pausing just long enough to turn around the repair some of the carnage they left in their wake.” Stone adds, “in the end, there emerged an unavoidable fact: Chesky was every bit the warrior Travis Kalanick was. He believed so much in the promise of his company that he was going to fight for every inch of territory.” Both companies racked up so many victories against local officials because their services had come to be regarded as essential by so many residents—and the high-priced lobbyists they both hired managed to mobilize so much support that local officials were forced to back down.
A final assessment
After cataloguing a litany of offenses by both companies, Stone relents in the end. “Both Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky had made big promises: to eliminate traffic, improve the livability of our cities, and give people more time and more authentic experiences. If these promises are kept, the results might well be worth the mishaps and mistakes that occurred during their journeys; perhaps they’ll even be worth the enormous price paid by the disrupted.” Not to mention that $100 billion the two companies’ founders and investors have amassed.
About the author
Brad Stone is a senior executive at Bloomberg News in San Francisco. The Upstarts is his third nonfiction book. The second was the bestseller The Everything Store about founder Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com. I reviewed that book here under the title “Why I hate Amazon.com.”
August 7, 2017
Was nice to know the story behind some popular companies, like uber, and changed some wrong thoughts I had about some companies like Lift. Never knew how these companies started.
unfortunately, a lot been changed since Trump Won, which this book won't cover, but still enjoyed how they started. some parts was boring especially political conflicts and long discussions and their names, but overall a nice book.
The copy on Tunein was incomplete unfortunately, I guess chapter 9 was missing.
unfortunately, a lot been changed since Trump Won, which this book won't cover, but still enjoyed how they started. some parts was boring especially political conflicts and long discussions and their names, but overall a nice book.
The copy on Tunein was incomplete unfortunately, I guess chapter 9 was missing.
April 11, 2017
Amazing book about the history of Airbnb & Uber. Stone is really one of the best storytellers out there and the obtained details are very accurate. Would have been 5 stars if there was a bit less emphasis on all the legal details. Especially the first chapters and the last Uber China chapter make you love this book. 👌🏻
December 31, 2021
I enjoyed listening to this book and I learned quite a bit. That's the combo I'm looking for. I kept wanting to know more, another trait I look for.
The stories of Both Uber and Air B&B were both told well, with detail about the companies and the major employees. I've read quite a bit about the history of the internet and about a number of important companies, but there was a hole in my knowledge about these two. The Upstarts filled it perfectly.
The stories of Both Uber and Air B&B were both told well, with detail about the companies and the major employees. I've read quite a bit about the history of the internet and about a number of important companies, but there was a hole in my knowledge about these two. The Upstarts filled it perfectly.
June 13, 2022
really good. super good investigative journalism, combined with the right amount of storytelling and technical speech. pretty digestable too. helps that the stories are fascinating !
August 4, 2017
A good book about the rise, almost fall, and continued rise of the startups most responsible for the new sharing economy. The Uber side of the story is much more interesting, perhaps because of the heated competition with Lyft, much stronger threats and legislative pushback from cities and taxi companies / unions, and the hotheaded, sometimes self-destructive alpha bro personality of Travis Kalanick. (Side note, it's really odd that a book that just came out this year feels dated, but the only Uber legal woes discussed relate to reckless driving accidents, not the wave of driver / passenger sexual assault cases that came to light right after this book was published.)
April 21, 2017
It's not a self help book or a book about how to build a startup. It's a captivating story of two huge startups and how they came to be. Has all the history of both. It reads like a novel and will be a good movie one day.
February 23, 2017
Fín bók. Frásögnin er nokkuð hlutlaus (þó ég sé alveg tilbúinn að láta sannfæra mig um annað) og þetta er mjög ítarleg og lifandi yfirferð yfir sögu Uber og Airbnb og deilurnar sem fyrirtækin (eða öllu heldur tæknin) hafa átt í og komið af stað. Það sem mér finnst Brad Stone, höfundur bókarinnar, gera sérstaklega vel er að setja sögu fyrirtækjanna í samhengi við ytra umhverfi sitt á hverjum tíma. Fyrirtækin tvö eiga jú breyttum ytri skilyrðum, þ.e. bættri tækni, allt að þakka, og gerir þeim kleift að bjóða þá þjónustu sem þau gera. Snjallsímar, Apple Store & 4G eru lykilatriði sem hafa þróast gríðarlega á þeim skamma tíma sem liðinn er frá stofnun Uber & Airbnb, og staða þeirra á hverjum tíma er sett í samhengi við þessa þróun.
Í bókinni er farið nokkuð ítarlega yfir þær deilur sem fyrirtækin hafa átt í gagnvart stjórnvöldum, notendum og einnig innanhúss. Stone var augljóslega með aðgang að fjölda fólks beggja megin borðsins. Eins og nýlegar fréttir sýna (í febrúar 2017), þá halda umdeild mál áfram að poppa upp og munu eflaust gera áfram. Þótt bókin geti varla talist tæmandi um einstök mál, þá útskýrir hún vel stefnu og stemningu fyrirtækjanna, sem er sérstaklega áhugaverð í tilfelli Uber sem tekur jafnan nokkuð harða og óvægna stefnu í þeim málum sem upp koma.
Ég hef lesið bókina The Everything Store eftir sama höfund, sem fjallar um Amazon, og ég get líka mælt með henni.
Í bókinni er farið nokkuð ítarlega yfir þær deilur sem fyrirtækin hafa átt í gagnvart stjórnvöldum, notendum og einnig innanhúss. Stone var augljóslega með aðgang að fjölda fólks beggja megin borðsins. Eins og nýlegar fréttir sýna (í febrúar 2017), þá halda umdeild mál áfram að poppa upp og munu eflaust gera áfram. Þótt bókin geti varla talist tæmandi um einstök mál, þá útskýrir hún vel stefnu og stemningu fyrirtækjanna, sem er sérstaklega áhugaverð í tilfelli Uber sem tekur jafnan nokkuð harða og óvægna stefnu í þeim málum sem upp koma.
Ég hef lesið bókina The Everything Store eftir sama höfund, sem fjallar um Amazon, og ég get líka mælt með henni.
March 4, 2018
1. Couchsurfing + Craigslist + VRBO + Wimdu < Airbnb
2. Seamless Wheels + Taxi Magic + Cabulous + Hailo < Uber = Lyft = Didi (in China)
The core ideas by which Airbnb and Uber have become the symbols of 'sharing economy' are not revolutionary in nature. Several entrepreneurs tried their luck with the same or similar business concepts beforehand without a lasting success. Some got in too early on the act when GPS technology was nascent and prior to the abundance of smartphone applications. Others lacked business savviness and pursued idealistic objectives in vain. A few found it difficult and disheartening to envision how they could successfully challenge the vested interests of incumbent market players operating in an antiquated and rigid legislative environment.
Brad Stone, in his style of factual but entertaining storytelling, provides a sound overview of Airbnb’s and Uber’s evolvement from scratch to their current gigantic size and market value. These companies with their talented CEOs and executives have done most things rightly. If not, they were quick in changing course and rectifying faults. They showcased flexibility and market adaptation skills on multiple occasions. Also, quite interestingly, Uber initially discarded the viability of the ridesharing concept but they were speedy to change their mind and to catch up as soon as another innovator had proved them to be on the wrong side of equation. Airbnb and Uber started off at the right time, executed well, grew prudently based on well-thought out strategies about their US and later international expansion. They were innovative in their marketing campaigns as well as in their pricing models.
One of the most interesting aspects in the book is the continuous legal battles the companies fought with rigid and often unfriendly legislators. Uber mastered Travis’s Law, while Airbnb pursued its equivalent labelled ‘escaping velocity’. Their unspoken strategy was to dynamically build up a big enough population of riders / drivers / hosts, shortly after having entered a new market, to be able to rely on the support of these interest groups in the course of ensuing fracas with legislators and politicians. In other words, to quickly grow too big to be banned or regulated. Especially through the example of Uber it is also quite instructive to see the widely differing level of market penetration and legal tolerance these disruptive technologies could reach in the US but not (yet) in Europe.
Good stuff, I am ready for the next Brad Stone book now.
2. Seamless Wheels + Taxi Magic + Cabulous + Hailo < Uber = Lyft = Didi (in China)
The core ideas by which Airbnb and Uber have become the symbols of 'sharing economy' are not revolutionary in nature. Several entrepreneurs tried their luck with the same or similar business concepts beforehand without a lasting success. Some got in too early on the act when GPS technology was nascent and prior to the abundance of smartphone applications. Others lacked business savviness and pursued idealistic objectives in vain. A few found it difficult and disheartening to envision how they could successfully challenge the vested interests of incumbent market players operating in an antiquated and rigid legislative environment.
Brad Stone, in his style of factual but entertaining storytelling, provides a sound overview of Airbnb’s and Uber’s evolvement from scratch to their current gigantic size and market value. These companies with their talented CEOs and executives have done most things rightly. If not, they were quick in changing course and rectifying faults. They showcased flexibility and market adaptation skills on multiple occasions. Also, quite interestingly, Uber initially discarded the viability of the ridesharing concept but they were speedy to change their mind and to catch up as soon as another innovator had proved them to be on the wrong side of equation. Airbnb and Uber started off at the right time, executed well, grew prudently based on well-thought out strategies about their US and later international expansion. They were innovative in their marketing campaigns as well as in their pricing models.
One of the most interesting aspects in the book is the continuous legal battles the companies fought with rigid and often unfriendly legislators. Uber mastered Travis’s Law, while Airbnb pursued its equivalent labelled ‘escaping velocity’. Their unspoken strategy was to dynamically build up a big enough population of riders / drivers / hosts, shortly after having entered a new market, to be able to rely on the support of these interest groups in the course of ensuing fracas with legislators and politicians. In other words, to quickly grow too big to be banned or regulated. Especially through the example of Uber it is also quite instructive to see the widely differing level of market penetration and legal tolerance these disruptive technologies could reach in the US but not (yet) in Europe.
Good stuff, I am ready for the next Brad Stone book now.
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