It will be interesting to see how long a company with that culture can survive. Uber may even be able to flout federal law because of their extensive passenger

It will be interesting to see how long a company with that culture can survive. Uber may even be able to flout federal law because of their extensive passenger & travel data. (Suspect Larry Page got off easy on the illicit drug advertising because of this, others would expect to do hard time.) For service startups we benefit from the early adapter "eliteness." Early drivers as well as users of Uber were of a high social status and fairly sophisticated. Much like the early days of usenet, rules can be lax or non-existent. However when the mass market begins to arrive startups which previously flourished with an tight early adapter user base start to show their cracks. No one wants to kill their own momentum but a way to see if your startup will start to stink as it grows is to recruit both service providers and users from online ad campaigns very early on. Track them as their own segment and see what sort of unique problems they bring.