My comment that Kalanick didn't have much to do with it seems to be generating a lot of downvotes. This is surprising to me.
The reason I compared Uber's success to Facebook was because demand for the product was so great, it was viral. It's hard to mess up a product that is so incredibly popular.
Perhaps Instagram would have been a better example to communicate my point. Its initial success was clearly not anticipated even by its founders, and its success continued despite numerous hiccups and screwups in its early days. I posit that its founders ability, which was clearly limited (by their own accounts), had much to do with its success.
Kalanick had everything to do with the valuation. This, however, is a problem: what you might think of as premature optimization. Yes, Kalanick is why Uber got an impossibly high valuation from the collective fantasy known as Wall Street: they were operating based on personalities and primitive ideas of conflict, rather than a real understanding of how systems work.
But it was a premature optimization because those responsible for turning 'viciously competitive evil guy' into raw capital failed to acknowledge that he'd screw them in turn as soon as he needed an exit strategy. You simply cannot turn to childish human dominance battles as a model for what will work in large systems and interdependent markets.Even propping up your 'pet winner' with near-infinite capital won't save you forever.
The reason I compared Uber's success to Facebook was because demand for the product was so great, it was viral. It's hard to mess up a product that is so incredibly popular.
Perhaps Instagram would have been a better example to communicate my point. Its initial success was clearly not anticipated even by its founders, and its success continued despite numerous hiccups and screwups in its early days. I posit that its founders ability, which was clearly limited (by their own accounts), had much to do with its success.
https://www.slideshare.net/iammutex/scaling-instagram