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

by Brad Stone

“People don’t like to talk about the fact that this competition will kill our taxi industry,” railed one of the first speakers, Christiane Hayashi, head of the San Francisco MTA and Uber’s first regulatory foe, to applause from the gathered cabbies. “But when this unregulated and illegal competition has devastated the landscape, no one will be left to provide universally accessible door to door transportation services to our residents. Should they be regulated as taxicabs? Yes!” Hayashi had previously taken two Lyft rides, paid nothing of the suggested donation, and then marveled that Lyft drivers would no longer pick her up. When she asked John Zimmer why over breakfast one morning, he looked up her ride history on his phone and noted that she hadn’t paid anything. Hayashi was outraged by what she viewed as a privacy violation. With limited success, Marzia Zafar tried to keep the proceedings moving and civilized. The ridesharing companies testified, one after the other, often over the jeers and taunts of the assembled taxi drivers. After the debacle in DC, Uber’s lawyers kept Kalanick far from the proceedings; instead, Ilya Abyzov, general manager of the business in San Francisco, took the podium and insisted that Uber was only a software company. “Our offices have programmers, not drivers,” he said. “Uber is agnostic about ridesharing. Whatever the decision is, we will follow it.” When Zafar opened the session to questions, an immigrant driver stood up and cut through Ub...