One of the great/weird things about iPhotos is the ‘this day today’ feature. It brings up memories, both good and not-so-good. Today, it popped up a photo of Travis Kalanick hanging out backstage at Loic’s Le Web in 2009. Travis, in case you didn’t know, is the co-founder of Uber along with Garrett Camp. Uber was officially born that year at that event, and for once, the startup origin story is true.
I was looking at the photo when it hit me—Uber is now 14 years old. That’s nearly a decade-and-a-half, which is a lifetime in startup years.
Fast forward to today, and it is now a part of our modern urban infrastructure. A weird idea to ‘get black cars on demand’ turned into a catalyst for the ‘on-demand’ economy. If anyone remembers, the early black cars were mostly Lincoln Continentals with an occasional stretch limo.
It wasn’t until Uber adopted an idea Sunil Paul came up with for his Sidecar that it started to gain traction. Whether it was Instagram, Uber, or Airbnb, most of these companies benefited enormously from anytime-anywhere computing unleashed by the arrival of the iPhone and later Android phones.
It has upended the taxicab industry and, in the process, caused mayhem at both the individual, social, civic, and political levels. However, if you ask any rider, you will probably get the same answer — it is indispensable. (We are not going to talk about the fact that Uber has struggled to be consistently profitable even after all these years.)
Uber and Lyft have made us accustomed to the act of using a phone to call a car on demand. A decade and a half later, not being able to call up an Uber is an outlier. This behavior is deeply ingrained in our modern lives.
Fourteen years is a good run. Looking ahead, if you have taken even a single ride in Waymo, you can see the clear road to the future. There will be a lot of resistance to Robotaxis, but they are here and aren’t going away.
PS: 2009 to 2023 is fourteen years, not fifteen. Oops! I am sorry for the rookie mistake.
December 8, 2023. San Francisco
