Little, Brown The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

just finished, its a great read if you want to know the story of Air BnB and Uber. the writer has done a good job to present the story in a detail and understandable way. language is simple and easy to understand. in the middle part some pages drags a little but its a part of the story so manageable. Uber story is great and the way it started and still fighting. Air Bnb start is inspiring and its growth remarkable. so there story becomes saturated after some time but uber continues to thrill you like a suspense drama. must read for everyone.

Stone does a fantastic job of chronicling the rise of the two new powerhouses of Silicon Valley - Uber and Airbnb. He provides plenty of insight into the challenges they faced, the incredible growth they've achieved, and proceeds to lay out a vision of how these companies will shape the future of the urban landscape. Uber and Airbnb weren't the first companies in their market, but they are clearly the leaders, and this book helps explain how they've come to dominate. The first half of the book is probably more interesting for the average reader as it covers their company beginnings and rise, while the second half covers a lot of the regulatory challenges and legal battles they've faced. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in business, technology, and an interest in how these incredibly young (and powerful) companies will shape the future. 5 stars!

Excelente libro. Narra y analiza muy bien el mundo de las startups a partir de los casos de Uber y Airbnb.

Brad Stone beschreibt den Aufstieg der zwei Tech-Giganten Airbnb und Uber sowie deren Parallelen. Sowohl Airbnb als auch Uber haben Milliarden an Risikokapital aufgenommen, teilweise von den gleichen Investoren. Ebenso lieferten sich beide Unternehmen heftige Gefechte mit den Behörden, aufgrund der Gesetztesverstöße. Beide Unternehmen sind vor rund acht Jahren auf Ba­sis des Smart­pho­ne-Booms in­ner­halb kür­zes­ter Zeit zu mil­li­ar­den­schwe­ren Technik-Giganten geworden. Ein sehr interessantes, gut geschriebenes Buch über die Entstehung zweier Start-ups aus denen Milliardenkonzerne geworden sind und wie diese die Welt verändern möchten. Brad Stone ist ganz nah dran und liefert viele Details. Ich kann dieses Buch uneingeschränkt weiterempfehlen!

Ironically, mostly in the back of Lyft and Uber’s on the way to one of the properties I manage on Airbnb. Here’s a quote from p. 13 when I suspected I was going to be pleased by the end of the book: “It is not a comprehensive account of either company, since their extraordinary sorties are still unfolding. It is instead a book about pivotal moments in the century-long emergence of a technological society. It’s about a crucial era during which old regimes fell, new leads emerged, new social contracts were forged between strangers, the topography of cities changed, and the upstarts roamed the earth.” Translation: This book dives deeper into fewer issues in the 9-year history of both companies rather than covering a vast amount of topics with little detail. Even though Airbnb and Uber are in the title of the book, it must have been about 70% Uber. Overall, I felt the book was really well researched and well put together from a storyline point of view. The Uber/Airbnb stories crisscrossed nicely. Actually, I was surprised at the amount of overlap from the founders both attending the 2008 presidential inauguration (though, from different perspectives) to friendships formed between Chesky and Kalanick in the early days that last through today. The book didn’t try to cover every topic over the past 8 years. Instead Brad Stone focused on fewer topics while adding more substance to them. As a prior Airbnb employee and an early adopter of Lyft and Uber, I still learned much from reading this book. Not to mention it was entertaining and more so based on storytelling rather than analyzing past events. I was pleased to learn that my memory of history is accurate (well, kind of). The Uber as we know it today has Lyft to thank. In 2012 when Lyft put those pink mustaches on their cars in San Francisco and popularized ride-sharing as we know it today, Uber was still a black car service for rich people. Uber copied Lyft about six months later and started allowing anyone to drive while offering lower cost alternatives to passengers. In reality, SideCar beat Lyft by about 2 months, but they no longer exist. The book went into an interesting history of Uber’s Chinese competitor, Didi Kuaidi (which means ‘honk-honk speedy’ in English) starting p. 303. It put some color to the news headlines, ‘Uber loses in China, sells to Didi.’ A couple interesting factoids: Lyft was originally named Zimrides (short for Zimbabwe rides). Designer Harrison Bowden came up with ‘Lyft’. On New Yeas Eve 2015, 550K guests slept in Airbnbs; on NYE 2016, it was 1.3M; by the middle of 2016, 1.3M guests per night was the average.