Both Uber and Airbnb violated the laws set forth by the cities and states. The advantage for both startups was that the laws only extended to a city or state. S

Both Uber and Airbnb violated the laws set forth by the cities and states. The advantage for both startups was that the laws only extended to a city or state. So both still had 100s of other cities and dozens of other states, that were slow to react, to target and gain traction and turn this into "Principal vs facilitator" and "consumer-benefit" issues. When you are running afoul with a federal law, you are losing the whole country with very little recourse unless you have a war chest. BTW, SHX would have been fine if they stayed under the radar for a while until they had a war chest to hire lawyers to argue and work with SEC to come up with a suitable compromise. See the example of Lending Club and Prosper that were shutdown by SEC in 2008/2009. Both emerged from it because they already had traction and enough of war chest to hire securities lawyers to work with SEC. Now Lending Club is a $5+ billion public company.