I read this at warp speed. Like, I read it in the tube, I read it in a taxi (bad idea,) I read it while code was compiling. I had to know what happens next.
Did it address any of the big issues about the sharing economy?
Let’s put it this way: the author is very clearly aware of all the questions that come up. The narrative is always set in the context of the impact the sharing economy is having on all of us: those who work in it, those who share in it (and often would not have access to some rather basic services without it), those who invest in it, those who are fighting it, those who win from it and those who stand to lose.
But “The Upstarts” is not an economics book or a sociology text.
If you’re buying it to find out what’s about to happen to the hotel industry in North America (my take: 5% of the world’s population / 42% of the world’s hotel rooms before AirBnb came out of nowhere, you do the math), you’ve come to the wrong place. If you ordered the book to look for an analysis of how much unpaid tax is being transferred from heretofore protected cab drivers to the city hall and if the rest of us are left better off or worse off, again, you’ve come to the wrong place. Funky observations about how in London AirBnb is threatened with a ceiling on days while in New York it’s having to deal with a floor are conspicuous through their absence.
The book does not particularly dwell on the long-term either. The rather rude fact that all money ever made from taxis has historically come from exercising market power? Look elsewhere. Uber and AirBnb’s prospects of dominating markets with only limited network effects? Pass.
There’s good news here, though:
If you bought “The Upstarts” to get to know Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky, if you’d like to ride with them from their ramen noodle eating days to the David Guetta-DJ’d super parties, you have come to the right place. You could not possibly be in better hands than Brad Stone’s.
If this book (which, let’s admit it, is a business book) had been written as a novel, it would still be pretty awesome. You get fed new faces only when they help develop the story and they’re woven into the narrative at a pace that will not leave you guessing. There is significant character development here too, as you witness young idealists transform into steely capitalists and, if you’re paying attention, there’s a bonus waiting for you in the shape of an mini-course in entrepreneurship!
The author is not afraid to tell you why these guys are doing the winning, but he does not want to you take his word. He does the necessary work to get the view out of somebody else’s mouth. The director of Y Combinator, for example, leaves you in no doubt that the founders of AirBnb succeeded for one reason only: they were “cockroaches” who refused to die. So they kept it alive long enough on their own, until their “world is my oyster, I’m busy on a million better things” Harvard-grad, former teenage spamming industry millionaire friend deigned to turn his magic to their project. Significantly, the author is NOT making it up as he goes, he knows it all and he knows it first-hand. He’s on first-name basis with everybody in the industry that counts and he has not been shy about getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth, doing his own “cockroach” thing and stalking the young CEOs to the other side of the globe if that is what it will take to get an audience.
I’m sure a lot of the detail is how “the good guys” see it (for example, do we really believe it was Travis who broke up with his girlfriend?) but the point is Brad Stone is only ever quoting first-hand here. He really is the man to write this story and he tells it in a style that would leave Quentin Tarantino breathless, jumping from Uber to AirBnb, via Zimride and Didi and all the regulators and competitors too. “Jumping” as in jumping and “jumping” as in tracking them all down to talk to them and giving them their chance to tell their story. It’s tremendous stuff. It never sags, it never lets up and it brings it all the way up to a couple hours before publication.
Anything I didn’t like? Actually, yes: how about editing out every single instance of “this turned out to be the best investment he / she / it had ever made!” Not only does it get tiring, but most of these guys have not yet taken profit, have they? The story is compelling enough on its own, besides.
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From the Publisher
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Stone's access to the CEOs and their inner circle is what makes this book!
I've never met Travis Kalanick in person but most of the stories you read about him describe the man as ruthless, arrogant and sometimes worse. I read this book because I was interested in the Uber side of the story but it turns out that the Airbnb portion was just as interesting. Brian Chesky and Travis Kalanick have more parallels than you might think and the companies faced many of the same regulatory challenges during their early years but how they handled these battles was vastly different. I enjoyed this book and found the style similar to Ashlee Vance's book on Elon Musk; it turns out that Stone and Vance are good friends. What makes this book stand out compared to others though is the unparalleled access that Stone had to the CEOs and their inner circle. I'm sure it helps to be a New York Times best-selling author and Bloomberg Editor but I don't think the book would have been the same without that level of access. I work in the rideshare industry as a blogger and I kept wanting to think to myself that Stone missed something or was inaccurate on a specific account, but that never happened. As others have noted, it's a little heavy on the regulatory side of things but I'm not sure you could do a book on Uber and Airbnb's meteoric growth period without talking about regulation, a lot. I think this book will appeal to anyone that's ever been involved with Uber or Airbnb or the general entrepreneur looking to learn from two of our generation's most successful CEOs.
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2017
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- Kindle CustomerReviewed in Australia on May 18, 2018
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- Argento brothersReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2017
Fast paced and a good read
