Airbnb and Uber going into hotels and public transportation respectively are examples of successful companies diversifying their income. The point is that their

Airbnb and Uber going into hotels and public transportation respectively are examples of successful companies diversifying their income. The point is that their core innovation has provided the capital and human resources to tackle higher level challenges. It had to be a substantial improvement on the original problem to get that kind of traction in the first place. The hotel experience needed improvement. So did the taxi experience. Incumbents were preventing competition through monopoly and regulatory capture. They won, and in doing so they lost their edge. Some of the regulations Airbnb and Uber skirted have good reasons. Others had good reasons, but new ideas and technologies made these reasons less important. And some were just bad and anti-competitive. The same is true in financial services. 'You shouldn't do that because it is illegal' argument is actually not an argument, it's an appeal to authority. Opening the Overton window to consider why we have the regulations we do, how we got there, and what makes sense moving forward is key to progress. And it often takes unreasonable people (eg: Kalanick) to make that happen.