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

by Brad Stone

Austin Geidt had been adrift when she started working at Uber. The company’s first intern got the job after being rejected for a barista position, and she struggled to find a meaningful role. But during that first difficult year, she had a dawning realization: just about everyone else around her was making things up as they went along too. After the epiphany, Geidt gave herself permission to look at problems more constructively. When Ryan Graves made her head of driver operations that March after firing another early employee, Stefan Schmeisser, she had ample opportunity to make a difference. After training a driver in the office in San Francisco one day, she walked outside to get coffee and saw the man getting into a pink minivan. It occurred to her that the company should probably conduct vehicle checks to ensure cars were up to Uber’s high standards at the time. Later, she decided Uber should test whether drivers had at least a cursory knowledge of city landmarks (this was before Uber started having riders enter their destinations into the app). She asked Sofiane Ouali, the driver of the white 2003 Lincoln Town Car known as the unicorn, to obtain for her the city’s entrance exam for yellow-cab drivers. Then, with help from Ouali and other drivers, she changed some of the questions to match the expectations of Uber’s upscale, smartphone-using clientele. Instead of asking directions to the city jail, for example, Uber would ask drivers if they knew the location of the Rit...