On Sept. 12, 2016, there was a momentary realignment in the constellation of global business. For the first time, the five largest public corporations in the world by market capitalization were all technology companies: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Facebook. Brad Stone Read Quote
Uber’s issue, I think the biggest one is driverless cars. That could be a complete reset to the business. Brad Stone Read Quote
The one thing that Airbnb had was, Brian and Joe were designers, and they did a great job. They also had Nate Blecharczyk, who was the CTO, who I describe his history as a high schooler and at Harvard as really a creator of tools for spammers. Brad Stone Read Quote
The emergence of Uber X was really the most important pivot maybe in the history of Silicon Valley. It’s a vast majority of Uber’s revenues, and so that flexibility and the rapid growth and the fighting the battles, it’s all Travis. You can’t take any credit away from him. Brad Stone Read Quote
I spend a little bit of time exploring why the companies that were doing smartphone ride-hailing before Uber, why they failed. Brad Stone Read Quote
Uber, and Airbnb to a different extent, implemented the same battle plan. Bezos is an investor in both companies and, to some degree, has relationships with both CEOs. It is not a surprise that they are heirs to Amazon. Brad Stone Read Quote
Executives are rarely comfortable speaking on the record, particularly in secretive Silicon Valley companies. Brad Stone Read Quote
Airbnb’s genius was moving into cities and recognizing that millennials would want to go and maybe spend a vacation or visit some friends in an urban center. Brad Stone Read Quote
There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent – see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do. Brad Stone Read Quote
