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If you want a different outcome for your start-up than death by regulators, you have to make it happen […] Your competitive advantage is intellectual—your ideas, your technology, your approach to doing something differently, something better. Their competitive advantage is political—the campaign donations they’ve been doling out for years and the army of lobbyists whose only job is to stop you (Tusk (2018), The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Start-ups from Death by Politics).
In the above-mentioned book and several media outlets (Knee, 2018; Meltzer, 2019; Yglesias, 2017), Bradley Tusk, a well-known US political consultant to business, explains what sharing economy start-ups must do to achieve commercial success when faced by the prospect of stifling government regulation. They must first appreciate that politicians are preoccupied with two related goals; raising ample campaign funds and being re-elected (Tusk, 2018). Thereafter, sharing economy start-ups need to give substantive support to what politicians believe serves these ends (Grandoni, 2015; Lagorio-Chafkin, 2016). Tusk elaborates: “What you have to figure out is what the local politics are, who the politicians are beholden to, and how to make the argument that what you’re doing is for the public good” (Tusk quoted in Lagorio-Chafkin, 2016, p. 2).
Tusk exemplified this approach in 2015 when he was entrusted by Uber, to prevent De Blasio, the Democratic Mayor of New York City (NYC), from capping the number of Uber vehicles allowed on the road (Rubinstein and Nahmias, 2015). For Uber, the proposed restriction posed a serious threat to the commercially successful diffusion of their service innovation (Rogers, 1962), specifically peer-to-peer ride sharing enabled by the internet and mobile technology (Tusk, 2018). Central to Tusk’s approach was the continuous embellishment of the media’s political corruption narrative, especially taxi-medallion company’s hefty contributions to politicians’ campaigns while concurrently having Uber sponsor TV ads targeting non-Caucasian middle-class minorities living on the outskirts of NYC. This group, which was one De Blasio’s core constituencies, had, for decades, experienced poor service by existing taxi companies, a situation widely attributed to racial discrimination (Levitz, 2015). A deciding factor in this campaign occurred when 100,000 of Uber’s customers emailed or tweeted City Hall to impress upon politicians their anger at the possibility of new regulation serving the interests of incumbent taxi companies...