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

by Brad Stone

“On the East Coast you give money to charity,” Seibel says. “On the West Coast in the startup world, if you want to give back, you help young founders. This is a game where karma matters.”

If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard—in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave. At the end of the day, without that great wave, even if you are a great entrepreneur, you are not going to build a really great business.

Silicon Valley’s startup scientists have a name for this phase in a company’s gestation; they call it the Trough of Sorrow, when the novelty of a new business idea wears off and the founders are left trying to jump-start an actual business.

McAdoo and Graham were discussing that most essential characteristic of great entrepreneurs: mental toughness, the ability to overcome the hurdles and negativity that typically accompany something new. McAdoo and his partners had identified this kind of true grit as the most important attribute in the founders of their successful portfolio companies, like Google and PayPal.

“Lukas, everyone is going to give you advice,” Kalanick told him. “Ask for the story behind the advice. The story is always more interesting.”

Uber’s financial results also looked promising. The company was exhibiting an elusive phenomenon called negative churn, in which users who joined the service were more likely to stay with it and gradually increase their frequency of use than they were to leave.

It contained a guidebook to setting up an Airbnb-like working environment and included various props, like a portable Ping-Pong table and the books Delivering Happiness by Zappos founder Tony Hsieh and Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss.

What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption,

Uber execs “were extremely hungry and immature and caught up in a whirlwind of money and growth,” says Christopher Dolan, a local plaintiff attorney who represented Sophia Liu’s family. “They got seduced by the possibility rather than stopping to think about their responsibility.”

There’s an old saying that it’s hard to hate up close. I have found that. It’s really hard to hate somebody when they are standing right in front of you.”