Brad Stone

“With tough interpretation of taxi and zoning regulations, neither Uber nor Airbnb would have gotten started. By the time many cities recognized their existence, both were fairly large and had the political support of their customers.”

“Life inside successful Web startups - especially the really successful ones - can be nasty, brutish, and short. As companies grow exponentially, egos clash, investors jockey for control, and business complexities rapidly exceed the managerial abilities of the founders.”

“There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent - see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do.”

“Uber's issue, I think the biggest one is driverless cars. That could be a complete reset to the business.”

“I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.”

“No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension - those moments in which character is forged and revealed.”

“A lot of the drawbacks, a lot of the difficulties that Uber has had, have been completely predictable, and they handled them poorly, so by their own standards they made a lot of mistakes, and I think that they would admit that.”

“Airbnb is a company with values around hospitality.”

“Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary... That has always been a potent combination.”

“Amazon is famously run by studying and responding to its own data; yet when it comes to promotions, decisions are often subjective and guided by human emotions and petty political dynamics.”

“Airbnb's genius was moving into cities and recognizing that millennials would want to go and maybe spend a vacation or visit some friends in an urban center.”

“You don't feel thirty percent smarter when the stock goes up by thirty percent so when the stock goes down you shouldn't feel thirty percent dumber" Jeff Bezos”