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The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World . By Brad Stone . New York : Little, Brown, and Company , 2017. 372 pp. Photographs, notes, index. Cloth, $30.00. ISBN: 978-0-316-38839-9 .
Book Reviews
In less than a decade, Airbnb and Uber have demonstrated Schumpeter's creative destruction on a worldwide scale, upsetting the established taxi and hotel industries and their regulators while diffusing "a new trust economy," decreasing the cost of travel for millions of people, and generating "nearly non-stop controversy" (p. 9). These firms evolved impressively, not just in scaling up in size and impact but also by rapidly experimenting with new technologies and methods. The S curves of growth look smooth but the underlying reality was anything but.
Brad Stone, the Bloomberg News senior executive editor of global technology, has provided an excellent first draft of that history. Stone has covered Silicon Valley for almost two decades and his experience and contacts show, not least in his ability to interview many of his story's key figures, an area of research denied most historians.
This intertwined story of Uber and Airbnb is a deep, well-researched, and balanced account that extends far beyond the dominant personalities of Airbnb's Brian Chesky and Uber's Travis Kalanick (though the picture section does have the mandatory color photos of the two billionaires together). Stone includes a vast array of actors including other founders, upper staff, investors, lobbyists, municipal employees, drivers, hosts, and competitors.
Airbnb's founders...