You know how tech CEOs come up with some fairy tale
about the magical moment that started their company?
Well, according to Uber's founders,
they were in Paris one night.
It was a snowy evening, but they couldn't call a cab.
So in a moment of brilliance,
they asked themselves,
what if you could just tap your phone and get a ride?
And Uber was born. Well,
it's a total lie.
Everything at the time was moving to apps on our phones.
Hailing a cab was no different.
Uber didn't come up with this.
There were several competitors doing this already,
and Uber wasn't even trying to do this at first.
Uber's idea was to use an app on your phone to order this luxury
black car service, and it didn't really work.
Lift was the one who came up with the ride sharing we know of today
after seeing how car pools were organized in a trip to Zimbabwe.
And that product was doing well.
So Uber launched Uber X afterwards as a copy of lift.
But today, a lot of people think lift was the copy.
And I'm not saying lift is a perfectly wholesome company,
but Uber got ahead simply because of how much more willing it was
to dodge any safety standards
and push others down.
Uber's strategy was to launch in cities so quickly,
get drivers dependent on it for income,
and get riders accustomed to it for convenience.
At regulators didn't have time to Act,
Uber had basically zero safety standards,
while other apps were at least
trying to figure something out with the regulators about this.
But it didn't matter for Uber,
because Uber was so entrenched in people's lives
that regulators now had to accommodate Uber
rather than the other way around.
Well, a lot of libertarian Silicon Valley glorifies this
as a show of how sheer speed and hustle can force slow
boomer regulators to adapt to innovation.
But the problem with this approach is that you're pairing some guys
who were hardly even really checked for driver's licenses,
who were sometimes convicted violent felons,
and pairing them with young woman
who thought this was a trustworthy app
because it was so big and popular.
So it must be regulated to some degree.
And that young woman was now in his car alone.
Well, what did we think was going to happen?
This LED to 400,000 reports of sexual misconduct in five years alone.
But it's not like this was a surprise.
The Uber executives were not stupid.
They knew that they were creating the conditions
where this was bound to happen.
They did so anyway
because things like conducting thorough background checks on drivers
and working with regulators would be too slow and expensive.
They knowingly let women get
and had them pay the price for Uber's growth
because it was cheaper to pay off a few lawsuits
from the few women who did come forward
than it was to Take their time
and prevent those in the first place.
Well, horror stories started going viral about this,
and that could hurt Uber's bottom line.
So if you were working in Uber,
what would you do? Fix the issue?
How about
blackmailing the journalists who were reporting on those stories?
Because that's what a senior executive genuinely proposed.
Seems like Uber's still doing fine regardless of all this.
that means rivals will try to out compete you with better algorithms
or service. So what would you do?
Compete on service? How about
just have your employees create fake accounts on rival rideshare apps,
book rides on them, and then cancel to waste the driver's time
and make them frustrated enough to leave the app and join Uber?
Want to get more customers?
Subscribe to Uber one. Just charge some for it without their consent.
And then when they try to cancel,
make it as frustrating and confusing as possible
by forcing those customers to go through 23 screens and 32 actions
just to cancel. If I listed every horrific thing Uber did,
this video would be an hour long.
But the point is, all of this is Uber's real innovation,
not calling a cab on your phone.
So I. I really don't think it's that impressive.
Because of course you'll grow faster than everyone else
if you have zero morals or standards.
Of course you'll make your service cheaper if your competitors,
like taxi companies, have to do strict Fingerprint based
FBI background checks of their drivers
while you let your drivers, young woman