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

by Brad Stone

To solve these mounting transportation challenges, Camp started to experiment with the city’s gypsy-cab fleet—the unmarked black sedans that would approach prospective passengers on the street and flash their headlights to solicit a fare. Most San Franciscans, particularly women, would stay away from those unmarked cars, fearing for their safety or worried by the ambiguity of a cab without a running meter. But Camp found that a majority of the cars were clean and that many of the drivers were friendly. The biggest problem for these drivers was filling in the dead time between rides, when they tended to wait outside hotels. So Camp started collecting the phone numbers of town-car drivers. “At one point, I had ten to fifteen numbers in my phone of all the best black-car drivers in San Francisco,” he says. Then he started gaming the system further: texting a favorite driver hours before he needed him and telling him to meet him at a restaurant or bar at an appointed time. On another night, he rented a town car and driver for himself and a group of friends for an entire evening. It was an indulgence that cost a thousand dollars, and zooming around the city at the end of the night dropping everyone off was a pain. And that is when the futuristic image from the James Bond movie Casino Royale popped into Garrett Camp’s head.

How uber got born