Book Review: How Uber and Airbnb are changing the world

The power of these entrepreneurial ventures is continuously rising.
Updated 09 August 2017
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Book Review: How Uber and Airbnb are changing the world

The rise of smartphones and social media has enabled the expansion of the sharing economy, a phase during which the likes of Uber and Airbnb were born.
The power of these entrepreneurial ventures is continuously rising. Airbnb has already exceeded 10 million guest stays and Uber continues to grow despite its current failings. No matter how bad the PR is getting for Uber, consumers do not seem to care. As long as the company’s ride hailing app continues to outperform rival apps, Uber will continue to dominate the market.
Brad Stone has covered the Silicon Valley as a journalist for more than fifteen years. After his book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,” which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2013, he is back with an enthralling account of how Uber and Airbnb came to be and how a new generation of entrepreneurs are changing the way we live in “The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World.”
Travis Kalanick and Brian Chesky, the young CEOs behind Uber and Airbnb respectively, are part of a new breed of tech leaders who are different from the previous generation of introverted innovators such as Bill Gates, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg.
“Instead, they are extroverted storytellers, capable of positioning their companies in the context of dramatic progress for humanity and recruiting not only armies of engineers but drivers, hosts, lobbyists and lawmakers to their cause” Stone wrote in the book.
Chesky grew up in Niskayuna, New York, in a middle-class family. Joe Gebbia, who co-founded Airbnb with Chesky, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The pair met in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design and became firm friends.
After Gebbia graduated, he went to San Francisco and asked Chesky if he would like to come and share the rent of his apartment. Chesky told Gebba that if he made the move, he would keep a new part-time teaching job in Los Angeles but would spend the weekends in San Francisco. For that reason, he asked Gebbia if he could rent the couch in the living room for $500 a month instead of renting a whole room. Gebbia replied that Chesky needed to be fully committed or else he would have to give up the apartment. Just as Chesky decided to make the move, Gebba sent him the e-mail that would change their lives: “I thought of a way to make a few bucks, turning our place into a designer’s bed and breakfast, offering young designers who come into town a place to crash during the four-day event (a design conference), complete with wireless Internet, a small desk place, sleeping mat and breakfast each morning. Ha!”
It took the pair three days to put together the first Airbedandbreakfast.com website using free tools available online. The first guest to use Airbedandbreakfast.com was Amol Surve. He was greeted at the door by the site’s co-creator Gebbia. Surve, who came from Mumbai, had use the Internet to rent an airbed for $80 a night because all the hotels in the area were either booked or too expensive.
He did not know what to expect but soon loved the experience of living in a temporary home. Two other guests also used the apartment during the design conference. After the three travelers left, the co-founders were not only able to pay their rent but they were also touched by the friendships they had made with their guests.
For a year, nothing happened. Chesky and Gebbia looked for investors but “very few people even met with us, they considered us crazy,” Chesky admitted. However, by 2010, Airbnb covered 8,000 cities.
While Chesky and Gebbia were working on better versions of what was still known as Airbedandbreakfast.com, Garret Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur, had just sold a website discovery tool, StumbleUpon, to eBay for $75 million. He was rich and living the good life but he had one problem — his Mercedes-Benz sports car. It stayed in the garage and he barely used it as he found driving in San Francisco to be too stressful. He became obsessed with the idea of an on-demand car service that passengers would be able to track via a map on their phones. He soon found out about the German word “Uber” and settled for the name “UberCab.”
On Nov. 17, 2008, Camp registered UberCab as an LLC in California. In December, on his way to attend LeWeb, a high-profile technology conference in Paris, he stopped in New York to meet Oscar Salazar, a friend. He shared his idea with Salazar who had also experienced problems with cabs in Mexico, Canada and France. “I don’t know if this is a billion-dollar company but it’s definitely a billion-dollar idea,” Salazar said before developing a prototype for Camp.
When UberCab looked for capital, most Silicon Valley investors passed on the deal, just as they had with Airbnb. Eventually, Uber gathered $1.3 million and proceeded to make history.
Uber, unlike Airbnb which had become global as soon as it was launched, had to enter each market on an individual basis. Each city was different and presented unique challenges. One of the greatest problems that Uber faced was the fact that it used contract drivers instead of full-time employees. This triggered endless controversies linked to background checks, proper insurance and the safety of both the drivers and the riders using its service.
By the end of 2016, Uber introduced a new type of work flexibility for its drivers and it also lowered the price of its fares. These measures boosted Uber’s business. In 2014, Uber booked 200 million rides while in 2016, the total number of rides reached one billion and six months later, the number had already doubled.
By the end of 2016, Airbnb and Uber had thousands of employees and offices around the world.
Stone gives us a detailed account of how this new breed of CEO — bold, ruthless and resourceful — is making a lasting impact on the way we live and travel.


What We Are Reading Today: The Ghana Reader

Updated 16 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Ghana Reader

Editors: Kwasi Konadu, Clifford C. Campbell

“The Ghana Reader” provides historical, political, and cultural perspectives on this iconic African nation. 

Readers will encounter views of farmers, traders, the clergy, intellectuals, politicians, musicians, and foreign travelers about the country. 

With sources including historical documents, poems, treaties, articles, and fiction, the book conveys the multiple and intersecting histories of the country’s development as a nation and its key contribution to the formation of the African diaspora, according to a review on goodreads.com.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Dream Hotel’

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Updated 16 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Dream Hotel’

  • “The Dream Hotel” is more than a compelling narrative; it is a reflection on the complexities of freedom and the influence of technology on our lives

Author: Laila Lalami

Reading Moroccan-American novelist Laila Lalami’s “The Dream Hotel” was an eye-opening experience that left me simultaneously captivated and unsettled.

The novel weaves a story about one woman’s fight for freedom in a near-future society where even dreams are under surveillance.

The narrative centers on Sara, who, upon returning to Los Angeles International Airport, is pulled aside by agents from the Risk Assessment Administration.

The chilling premise — that an algorithm has determined she is at risk of harming her husband — immediately drew me in. Lalami’s portrayal of Sara’s descent into a retention center, where she is held alongside other women labeled as “dreamers,” is both fascinating and disturbing.

What struck me most was how Lalami explores the seductive nature of technology. I found myself reflecting on our current relationship with data and surveillance.

The idea that our innermost thoughts could be monitored and judged felt unsettlingly familiar. As Sara navigates the oppressive rules of the facility, I felt a growing frustration at the injustice of her situation, which echoes broader societal concerns about privacy and autonomy.

Lalami’s writing is lyrical yet accessible, drawing readers into the emotional depth of each character. The interactions among the women in the retention center are especially poignant, showing how strength can emerge from solidarity.

As the story unfolds, I was reminded of the resilience of the human spirit, even under dehumanizing conditions. The arrival of a new resident adds a twist, pushing Sara toward a confrontation with the forces trying to control her. This development kept me invested in seeing how she would reclaim her agency.

“The Dream Hotel” is more than a compelling narrative; it is a reflection on the complexities of freedom and the influence of technology on our lives. It left me considering how much of ourselves we must guard to remain truly free.

In conclusion, Lalami has crafted a thoughtful and resonant novel that lingers after the final page. It is well worth reading for those interested in the intersections of identity, technology and human experience.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The River of Lost Footsteps by Thant Myint-U

Updated 15 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The River of Lost Footsteps by Thant Myint-U

Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Myanmar, only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship.

In “The River of Lost Footsteps,” Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Myanmar, in part through a telling of his own family’s history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling. 

The book is a distinctive contribution that makes Myanmar accessible and enthralling, according to a review on goodreads.com.


What We Are Reading Today: Return of the Junta by Oliver Slow

Updated 14 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Return of the Junta by Oliver Slow

In 2021, Myanmar’s military grabbed power in a coup d’etat, ending a decade of reforms that were supposed to break the shackles of military rule in Myanmar.

Protests across the country were met with a brutal crackdown that shocked the world, but were a familiar response from an institution that has ruled the country with violence and terror for decades.

In this book, Oliver Slow explores the measures the military has used to keep hold of power, according to a review on goodreads.com.


What We Are Reading Today: Elusive Cures

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Updated 13 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Elusive Cures

  • “Elusive Cures” sheds light on one of the most daunting challenges ever confronted by science while offering hope for revolutionary new treatments and cures for the brain

Author: Nicole C. Rust

Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected. We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer’s to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all. Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question.
Drawing on her decades of experience on the front lines of neuroscience research, Rust reflects on how far we have come in our quest to unlock the secrets of the brain and what remains to be discovered.  

“Elusive Cures” sheds light on one of the most daunting challenges ever confronted by science while offering hope for revolutionary new treatments and cures for the brain.