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I find it interesting that the two example companies of Uber and AirBnB that succeeded by “focusing” solving problems, did so breaking the law and pushing exter

I find it interesting that the two example companies of Uber and AirBnB that succeeded by “focusing” solving problems, did so breaking the law and pushing externalities onto others. AirBnB runs afoul of the hotel laws and makes the neighbors of AirBnb hosts have to deal with the problems while also decreasing supply of housing and pushing up housing prices in cities and communities. Uber basically was an illegal taxi service and succeeded by paying their workers often times less than minimum wage by classifying them as contractors. They also took shortcuts on their self-driving cars and killed a pedestrian. They have also tried to suppress rape victims stories going so far as to invade their medical records. To succeed as a business, you have to do something that others can’t do or won’t do. If you have a tech advantage, you can do stuff that others can’t. If you don’t develop a tech advantage, you have to do stuff others won’t. In these two cases of AirBnB and Uber, it was breaking the law.

subpixel 7y ago
You left out "be first" which is an advantage that is much harder to find these days, which creates even more pressure to differentiate by other means, legal or otherwise.
- davidgh 7y ago
  VRBO was loooong before AirBnB. AirBnB reduced friction by handing the payments and provided social mechanisms for buyers and sellers to vet each other, among other things. In the days before AirBnB I remember booking an apartment in Paris by sending half the payment by wire transfer and the other half in cash on arrival. The apartment was great and the host even better, but the payment was painful, and something very few of my friends and family would have done. AirBnB made it as easy as booking a hotel, and that made a huge difference.
  - subpixel 7y ago
    AirBnb is the canonical example. They weren't first, so they built a business around doing something that in most places is illegal, and it caught on in a big way. I'm not discounting their UX, I'm sure it was a big part of their growth.
- abadar 7y ago
  As an aside, "be second" isn't bad, either. There was an article about European businesses copying successful American startups. Why innovate when you can profit/learn from others' ideas?
  - _fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
    Or American startups like uber copying successful European startups like blablacar.
- baxtr 7y ago
  You mean like google that was there before altavista? Or Facebook before MySpace?
  - claudiulodro 7y ago
    I think these examples are dated and don't hold up in the modern, mature tech ecosystem. Facebook bought Instagram and copied Snapchat's main features to put big pressure on them. It's not as easy to overthrow the king as it used to be.
    - baxtr 7y ago
      If you consider IG to be one of the newer example than also consider that IG copied most features from “first mover” Snapchat
hackingthenews 7y ago
To be fair about one thing, the pedestrian would not have survived with a human driver either. They crossed the road in pitch black darkness. The only reason it was news was because it was a self driving car.
- smolder 7y ago
  Citation? I didn't get that impression at all when it happened and I read up on it.
  - jagged-chisel 7y ago
    > I didn't get that impression at all when it happened... What impression? >> the pedestrian would not have survived with a human driver either. Car meets pedestrian at speed causes death often. I don't think this is questionable. >> They crossed the road in pitch black darkness. The circumstances of the incident were well publicized by the media, and the video released shows this is obvious. >> The only reason it was news was because it was a self driving car. All the statistics around pedestrians being injured or killed ... how many of those stories result in reports across the country in most media outlets? Which part requires citation for you?
    - smolder 7y ago
      The part where a human driver would have hit them. The dark video I just googled myself isn't any proof of that, it was on a road with at least sparse overhead lights and the car had headlights. The poor quality video is not equivalent to human eyes or something adequate for driving a car. There was no reason to downvote me.
- jrkatz 7y ago
  This is not so clear, especially on the darkness point (though I'm sure uber is pleased their message has taken the day in some circles). The car knew it needed to brake over 1 second before impact but failed to apply the brake. [0] A second of hard braking would have made a large difference in the survivability of the crash. What's more, the video uber released was misleading with respect to how dark it was. [1] You can make what you will of the first point - uber had their reasons for disabling automatic emergency braking (who knows how many times erroneous stops would have caused accidents). The second point is fairly clear, though - the pedestrian in fact had every reason to feel very visible. [0] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.as... [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-victim-came-from-the-shadows-dont-believe-it/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-...
est31 7y ago
If all that AirBnB did was break the law, then why did cities have to pass anti-AirBnB laws? Why couldn't they enforce the existing ones? I'm not saying that there was no breakage of any law, I'm saying that your comment implies that AirBnB's only advantage was breaking the law, and that's wrong. The main part of AirBnB's success is that it fixes/fixed an imperfection in the market: In the places with demand, AirBnB took the low priced housing and made it available for short term lets. Yes, long term renters were the beneficiaries of the old model as it gave them a larger and thus cheaper supply of housing, but the real price is the post-AirBnB price. The old model had externalities too, they were just paid by different people like landlords and people who seek short term stays. From a social point of view, for the long term renters, AirBnB does have an impact but the ways to combat it are similar to other phenomena that drive up rents: simply build more cheap housing. In many places in the world, there is a massive immigration wave of people from the countryside into the cities. China has recognized the problem and built housing. In the west, people are more skeptical and rather prefer the value of their homes to increase instead of people getting cheap rents. In the period after WW2, it was much different, at least in europe. Back then, we built lots of houses, for everyone, poor included.
- bhl 7y ago
  Reading this comment has made me think about the effect of technology on increased competition, whether that be globalization, online dating, or physical retail. With the rental market, that increased competition for a fixed housing supply translates into an increase in prices. Without any shifts in the supply curve, changes in demand effectively become a zero-sum game. Kind of strange to ask, but does that mean “demand” is more sensitive than “supply” to improvements in technology?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    AirBnB caused an increase in the supply of short-term rentals, which caused an increase in the demand of housing. I don't you can say either was more affected.
    - bhl 7y ago
unclesams-uncle 7y ago
There was a study done by the national statistics office in Spain recently that stated that Airbnb and short term rentals had[0,1] little impact on rental prices in Madrid in Barcelona. As it turns, out high demand to live in the center of two of Europe's most vibrant and popular cities outpaces supply. Unfortunately, politicians here in Spain prefer to hammer home a populist and incorrect narrative about tourists and foreign companies being responsible for their poor policy decisions. I see where you're coming from, but these companies didn't break any laws when they launched. I think all sides failed (companies and governments) to manage the disruption caused by these firms' meteoric rise. Sources (in Spanish): [0] https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/economia/laissez-faire/2019-09-02/airbnb-no-ha-encarecido-alquileres-espana_2200931/ https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/economia/laissez-faire/2019... [1] https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2018/08/13/companias/1534164896_205331.html https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2018/08/13/companias/...
musicale 7y ago
Whether it's "breaking the law" depends on the jurisdiction, but they certainly managed to sidestep regulation and taxation, at least temporarily, giving them an advantage over competing taxi and hotel services, more so if the latter used employees rather than "independent contractors."

subpixel 7y ago

You left out "be first" which is an advantage that is much harder to find these days, which creates even more pressure to differentiate by other means, legal or otherwise.

davidgh 7y ago
VRBO was loooong before AirBnB. AirBnB reduced friction by handing the payments and provided social mechanisms for buyers and sellers to vet each other, among other things. In the days before AirBnB I remember booking an apartment in Paris by sending half the payment by wire transfer and the other half in cash on arrival. The apartment was great and the host even better, but the payment was painful, and something very few of my friends and family would have done. AirBnB made it as easy as booking a hotel, and that made a huge difference.
- subpixel 7y ago
  AirBnb is the canonical example. They weren't first, so they built a business around doing something that in most places is illegal, and it caught on in a big way. I'm not discounting their UX, I'm sure it was a big part of their growth.
abadar 7y ago
As an aside, "be second" isn't bad, either. There was an article about European businesses copying successful American startups. Why innovate when you can profit/learn from others' ideas?
- _fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
  Or American startups like uber copying successful European startups like blablacar.
baxtr 7y ago
You mean like google that was there before altavista? Or Facebook before MySpace?
- claudiulodro 7y ago
  I think these examples are dated and don't hold up in the modern, mature tech ecosystem. Facebook bought Instagram and copied Snapchat's main features to put big pressure on them. It's not as easy to overthrow the king as it used to be.
  - baxtr 7y ago
    If you consider IG to be one of the newer example than also consider that IG copied most features from “first mover” Snapchat

hackingthenews 7y ago

To be fair about one thing, the pedestrian would not have survived with a human driver either. They crossed the road in pitch black darkness. The only reason it was news was because it was a self driving car.

smolder 7y ago
Citation? I didn't get that impression at all when it happened and I read up on it.
- jagged-chisel 7y ago
  > I didn't get that impression at all when it happened... What impression? >> the pedestrian would not have survived with a human driver either. Car meets pedestrian at speed causes death often. I don't think this is questionable. >> They crossed the road in pitch black darkness. The circumstances of the incident were well publicized by the media, and the video released shows this is obvious. >> The only reason it was news was because it was a self driving car. All the statistics around pedestrians being injured or killed ... how many of those stories result in reports across the country in most media outlets? Which part requires citation for you?
  - smolder 7y ago
    The part where a human driver would have hit them. The dark video I just googled myself isn't any proof of that, it was on a road with at least sparse overhead lights and the car had headlights. The poor quality video is not equivalent to human eyes or something adequate for driving a car. There was no reason to downvote me.
jrkatz 7y ago
This is not so clear, especially on the darkness point (though I'm sure uber is pleased their message has taken the day in some circles). The car knew it needed to brake over 1 second before impact but failed to apply the brake. [0] A second of hard braking would have made a large difference in the survivability of the crash. What's more, the video uber released was misleading with respect to how dark it was. [1] You can make what you will of the first point - uber had their reasons for disabling automatic emergency braking (who knows how many times erroneous stops would have caused accidents). The second point is fairly clear, though - the pedestrian in fact had every reason to feel very visible. [0] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.as... [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-victim-came-from-the-shadows-dont-believe-it/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-...

est31 7y ago

If all that AirBnB did was break the law, then why did cities have to pass anti-AirBnB laws? Why couldn't they enforce the existing ones? I'm not saying that there was no breakage of any law, I'm saying that your comment implies that AirBnB's only advantage was breaking the law, and that's wrong. The main part of AirBnB's success is that it fixes/fixed an imperfection in the market: In the places with demand, AirBnB took the low priced housing and made it available for short term lets. Yes, long term renters were the beneficiaries of the old model as it gave them a larger and thus cheaper supply of housing, but the real price is the post-AirBnB price. The old model had externalities too, they were just paid by different people like landlords and people who seek short term stays. From a social point of view, for the long term renters, AirBnB does have an impact but the ways to combat it are similar to other phenomena that drive up rents: simply build more cheap housing. In many places in the world, there is a massive immigration wave of people from the countryside into the cities. China has recognized the problem and built housing. In the west, people are more skeptical and rather prefer the value of their homes to increase instead of people getting cheap rents. In the period after WW2, it was much different, at least in europe. Back then, we built lots of houses, for everyone, poor included.

bhl 7y ago
Reading this comment has made me think about the effect of technology on increased competition, whether that be globalization, online dating, or physical retail. With the rental market, that increased competition for a fixed housing supply translates into an increase in prices. Without any shifts in the supply curve, changes in demand effectively become a zero-sum game. Kind of strange to ask, but does that mean “demand” is more sensitive than “supply” to improvements in technology?
- icebraining 7y ago
  AirBnB caused an increase in the supply of short-term rentals, which caused an increase in the demand of housing. I don't you can say either was more affected.
  - bhl 7y ago

unclesams-uncle 7y ago

There was a study done by the national statistics office in Spain recently that stated that Airbnb and short term rentals had[0,1] little impact on rental prices in Madrid in Barcelona. As it turns, out high demand to live in the center of two of Europe's most vibrant and popular cities outpaces supply. Unfortunately, politicians here in Spain prefer to hammer home a populist and incorrect narrative about tourists and foreign companies being responsible for their poor policy decisions. I see where you're coming from, but these companies didn't break any laws when they launched. I think all sides failed (companies and governments) to manage the disruption caused by these firms' meteoric rise. Sources (in Spanish): [0] https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/economia/laissez-faire/2019-09-02/airbnb-no-ha-encarecido-alquileres-espana_2200931/ https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/economia/laissez-faire/2019... [1] https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2018/08/13/companias/1534164896_205331.html https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2018/08/13/companias/...

musicale 7y ago

Whether it's "breaking the law" depends on the jurisdiction, but they certainly managed to sidestep regulation and taxation, at least temporarily, giving them an advantage over competing taxi and hotel services, more so if the latter used employees rather than "independent contractors."