5 ms·
> Uber's success is due to the CEO being an asshole. That's simply not true. Uber's success is due to being in the right place at the right time and executing
by skewart 9y ago
> Uber's success is due to the CEO being an asshole.
That's simply not true. Uber's success is due to being in the right place at the right time and executing well in the early years.
The combination of smartphones and widespread trust in online reviews as a system of enforcing good behavior were what made ride-sharing as we know it possible. Uber understood the real value prop - a seamless, low-stress way to take a car from A to B is what matters; a feel-good community "sharing" vibe only gets you so far. And they developed their business in a smart way - it's a commodity product, so you have to become the default in people's minds (like Xerox or Polaroid before), that means build brand awareness and saturate as many markets as possible as quickly as possible.
TK being an asshole is orthogonal to their success. There's a good argument to be made that it actually has held them back and limited their success. Given the size of the market why are they only a $70B company instead of a $200B or $1T company by now?
- chrischen 9y agoWhy was Travis an asshole? What did he exactly do?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Jare 9y agoThere's a line of reasoning for such a statement: - TK - asshole - doesn't care about legality or ethics - does questionable things to gain an unfair advantage - company succeeds quickly in the short term - karma eventually catches up to him - karma crushes the company It is very debatable at every point, but it is there.
- Animats 9y agoUber's success rests on three major illegalities - violating labor law by treating drivers as independent contractors while telling them where to go and what to do, operating an unlicensed taxi service, and not doing adequate background checks. It took an asshole to realize that with enough VC funding you could get away with that at scale.[1] [1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/technology/uber-lawsuits/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/technology/uber-lawsuits/ind...