Lyft

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac  · 2 Sep 2019  · 444pp  · 127,259 words

on the company. Soon after, Green and Zimmer announced their pivot. Zimride would abandon its long-distance carpooling program and launch a new service called Lyft; the plan was to make casual ride-sharing a fun, friendly experience, asking passengers to ride shotgun next to their drivers and strike up friendships

…

while joyriding to their destination. The cherry on top was a cutesy pink mustache. Lyft sent all of its drivers giant, whimsical, plush hood ornaments to affix to the front of their cars.*** It was an instant hit. Kalanick

…

sprang into action. He told his lieutenants, Ryan Graves and Austin Geidt, to take care of Lyft before it grew into a real threat. Graves, Geidt, and especially Kalanick weren’t above playing dirty. They started booking secret meetings with regulators in

…

San Francisco and encouraging them to go after Lyft and Sidecar. Where once Uber had scoffed at City Hall, now they implored city officials to shut the other companies down. “They’re breaking the

…

had been recruiting drivers for some time, but within limits; all of Uber’s drivers were licensed livery vehicle operators registered with local transportation offices. Lyft turned that on its head. The mustachioed startup invited anyone with a car and an ordinary Class C driver’s license to start driving for

…

weren’t enforcing a damn thing. For all his bluster about ignoring regulators and disrupting an industry, Kalanick hadn’t actually gone as far as Lyft and Sidecar. Up until then he hadn’t been willing to cross the line into extreme ride-sharing. But he was wrong to hesitate. After

…

’s website, Uber announced that it had created a low-cost option, “UberX,” that allowed for ride-sharing. Uber was going head-to-head with Lyft. “We could have chosen to use regulation to thwart our competitors,” Kalanick wrote, disingenuously, upon flipping the switch to launch UberX. “Instead, we chose

…

day, why even show up to the game? At Uber, winning meant the obliteration of any opponent. There wasn’t enough room for Uber and Lyft to coexist, he believed. The game was zero-sum. Every single ride-hailing car on the road in every single important market should have an

…

ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Kalanick would tweet at Zimmer. He loved adding the hashtag “#clone” to his tweets, insinuating that Lyft was an Uber copycat. Zimmer tried to take the high road when he responded, but Kalanick was pissing him off. “He wasn’t satisfied with

…

a master training a dog to submit. It was intense.” Every time Kalanick drew blood, he pushed further. Zimmer spent months on the road as Lyft began to gain traction, soliciting Silicon Valley venture capital firms, hedge fund managers, and private equity outfits for funding to grow their business. Whenever Zimmer

…

out of a meeting with a new potential investor, however, Kalanick would undermine him. Somehow Kalanick always knew where Zimmer had been. “We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money,” Kalanick once admitted on the record, bragging about his desire to cripple his competitor. Kalanick would make

…

water, and might want that need met first, was a detail that the Uber CEO and his peers never addressed. *** Ridiculously enough, the idea for Lyft’s pink mustache sprung out of one employee’s recognition of the popularity of “truck nutz,” literally a pair of fake testicles that drivers could

…

as well as national politics. In Portland, Uber hired Mark Weiner, one of the most powerful political consultants in the city. In Austin, Uber and Lyft paid $50,000 to the former Democratic mayor to lead their campaign against regulation. Later, as Uber matured, the company’s staff swelled to include

…

recruit the driver were met with disgust—something that confused Kalanick and Uber employees. Business, they thought, was supposed to be a competition. Logan Green, Lyft’s CEO, was a good tactician. But Kalanick outmaneuvered his rivals every single time. And he felt fine trouncing his competition. One prime example: Kalanick

…

officer, Jeff Holden, to drop everything and copy the carpooling feature immediately. Uber announced the impending launch of “Uberpool,” a carpooling feature, mere hours before Lyft announced the product it had invented. By the time Green and Zimmer hit the publish button on their corporate blog, they looked like also-rans

…

destination. And of the more than 150 “unicorns” in the Valley by then, nearly a quarter of them were founded by business school graduates. Even Lyft’s co-founder, John Zimmer, was an intern at Lehman Brothers before he turned techie. More than most other tech companies, Uber prized the almighty

…

he left Uber, Mohrer tweeted a photo of Winston taking a dump next to a Citi Bike, the city’s blue rental bicycles—owned by Lyft. Some women at the Chelsea office felt alienated by management. To some staff, Mohrer appeared more comfortable with his “bros,” other alpha-male types

…

to drivers at the end of a ride. It was a simple gesture that would earn the company significant goodwill with their driver base; besides, Lyft offered it. Yet Kalanick remained staunchly against tipping. Kalanick felt Uber worked so well because of the frictionless payment experience. A passenger could exit the

…

giving projects code names. He dubbed his late-night strategy meetings the “North American Championship Series,” or NACS, a nod to Uber’s competition with Lyft. The luckiest employees got to work on “Black Gold,” the code name for Uber’s Asia strategy meetings. The name was special: “Black Gold”

…

everyday life. Kalanick wasn’t fazed. He had overcome corrupt politicians and taxi unions in every major city in the United States. He had fought Lyft and outsmarted its leadership. He had charged into cities worldwide, outspent his opponents, outflanked governments, and won more customers with a better product. Barreling ahead

…

-speak for automating the collection of information through written programs and coded scripts. Uber’s most useful tool scraped information on pricing changes within the Lyft app, allowing Uber to systematically undercut its competitor. Uber also purchased receipts from companies like Slice Intelligence. These data-brokerage firms bought reams of anonymized

…

companies and retailers, sliced up the results, analyzed them by sector, and packaged them for resale to other companies. Aggregate data for trip receipts from Lyft, for instance, allowed Uber to confirm its competitor’s prices. Combine that data with Uber’s scraped location and pricing data and the company could

…

create a remarkably complete picture of Lyft’s business. Sullivan knew it wasn’t sporting. But it worked. Besides surveillance, there were severe safety issues. The India rape scandal was just

…

the beginning, it was Uber against the greedy, unethical taxi companies who had the sleazy local politicians in their pockets. Later, it was Uber against Lyft, the well-funded startup whose warm and fuzzy branding—those pink mustaches—was just cover for its ruthless executives. And now, it looked like it

…

of Chinese food, the two sides presented what each thought would be a fair deal. But they had vastly different ideas of what fairness entailed. Lyft’s founders wanted a 10 percent stake in Uber for selling their company. Kalanick and Michael wanted something closer to 8 percent. As the sides

…

chest. At the moment, Uber was competing against DiDi in China, against Grab and Go-Jek in Southeast Asia, against Ola in India, and against Lyft in the United States. These were costly, painful wars—with battles on multiple fronts on multiple continents against well-funded adversaries. The Saudi capital gave

…

of Kalanick’s financial backing. Kalanick took pleasure in hurting Green and Zimmer, and showed them no mercy. Joe Sullivan, Uber’s security chief, monitored Lyft’s websites, open-source repositories, and data, seeking a knockout blow. Kalanick was presented with a delicious new secret weapon by a group of engineers

…

managers, lawyers, and Kalanick himself. The executives around the table were both excited and nervous. This was a powerful new weapon in the war against Lyft. But detecting sounds in a driver’s car without permission might cross an ethical line. After the presentation ended, Kalanick sat in silence. No one

…

wouldn’t acquiesce for years; he wanted to gain insight into user behavior by seeing where people went after getting dropped off. Uber would outsmart Lyft at nearly every turn. Green and Zimmer were competitive and ambitious, but Kalanick always faster, and more willing to use questionable tactics. Kalanick didn’

…

People hated driving for Uber so much, the company had to recruit new drivers from the widest labor pools possible. That included the obvious, like Lyft and taxi drivers, and the not-so-obvious, like minimum wage–earning workers at McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, even entry-level employees at Jeff Jones

…

tweet was a presidential proclamation. Where once the public and media had adored Big Tech—Facebook and Twitter gave people a voice, while Uber and Lyft gave anyone a ride—now the public devoured stories of state-sponsored hackers using vast databases of personal information to influence the election. Suddenly, nefarious

…

phones. Uber’s all-important ridership growth curves—for years always hockey-sticking up and to the right—started turning downward. Kalanick began to sweat. Lyft, at that point running out of money and on the verge of surrender, benefitted enormously from the backlash. People began to ditch Uber and switch

…

attracted investment from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm, buoying the ride-hailing company with more than a half-billion dollars in additional capital. Lyft’s fundraising sunk Kalanick’s spirits. He had spent the entire summer trying, and failing, to defeat his largest competitor in China. And now, just

…

2014 through 2016, Uber was hiring thousands of Google employees away, now Google began rehiring Uber’s conscience-stricken workforce in droves; Airbnb, Facebook, even Lyft started to pick off Uber employees. Uber needed to fix its morale problem. Fowler’s blog post had only made it worse. Kalanick snapped into

…

used forums like UberPeople.net to congregate, share information, and organize walkouts and other protests. Harry Campbell, an aerospace engineer who drove for Uber and Lyft on the side, started a personal blog to document tips and insights. He called it The Rideshare Guy. Drivers were starving for more help and

…

had become. A report in the tech press unearthed the existence of Uber’s program “Hell,” the one that illicitly repurposed iPhone technology to target Lyft drivers and lure them to Uber. But that was just the beginning. Hell had been created by a group called the “competitive intelligence” team—COIN

…

company’s primary infrastructure and kept “unattributable” to Uber. On those servers, Uber stored, processed and analyzed information Uber engineers had “scraped” or harvested from Lyft’s apps, websites, and code repositories. The team kept tabs on overseas competitors like Ola in India and DiDi in China. Another entity, the Strategic

…

to gather intelligence on whether drivers were organizing or planning to strike against Uber. They conducted physical surveillance, photographing and tracking competitors at DiDi and Lyft, and monitoring high-profile political figures, lawmakers, and police in contentious cities. They followed people on foot and in cars, tracking their digital activities and

…

movements, and even took photographs of officials in public places. They impersonated Lyft drivers or riders to gain intelligence on the competing company. SSG operatives recorded private conversations between opponents at DiDi and at Grab, their Southeast Asian

…

competitor. One Lyft executive grew so paranoid about being followed by Uber that he walked out onto his porch, lifted both middle fingers in the air and waved

…

coaching, but was not let go. POSTSCRIPT After months of speculation, Uber announced that it would hold an initial public offering in May of 2019. Lyft had debuted on the public markets just a few weeks prior at $72 per share. On the opening day the price spiked at first, until

…

acquisition-offer-from-facebook/. Chapter 9: CHAMPION’S MINDSET 82 Kalanick once said onstage: Liz Gannes, “Travis Kalanick: Uber Is Raising More Money to Fight Lyft and the ‘Asshole’ Taxi Industry,” Recode, May 28, 2014, https://www.recode.net/2014/5/28/11627354/travis-kalanick-uber-is-raising-more-money-to

…

-fight-lyft-and-the. 82 “There’s been so much corruption”: Andy Kessler, “Travis Kalanick: The Transportation Trustbuster,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2013, https://www.

…

-a-home-in-silicon.html. 133 “In a meritocracy”: Uber’s list of 14 values, obtained by author. 134 Mohrer tweeted: Winston Mohrer (@WinnTheDog), “#Shittybike #lyft,” Twitter, July 11, 2018, 7:21 a.m., https://twitter.com/WinnTheDog/status/1017005971107909633. 135 designed an algorithm: Caroline O’Donovan and Priya Anand, “How

…

, “One Year In, The Real Work Begins For Uber’s CEO,” Wired, September 6, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/dara-khosrowshahi-uber-ceo-problems-lyft/. 333 “He’s back?”: Anthony Levandowski, “Pronto Means Ready,” Medium, December 18, 2018, https://medium.com/pronto-ai/pronto-means-ready-e885bc8ec9e9. 333 “Way

…

292–306 the JamPad, 47–48, 49, 57 leadership of, 81–91 “leave of absence” and, 274–75, 281, 283–84, 292–93, 292n, 299 Lyft and, 86–87, 186–89, 211, 257–58 meeting at Waverly Inn, 126–28 meets Levandowski, 183 Michael and, 93–99, 122, 126 in Pape

…

Livefyre, 46 London, England, 84, 144 Los Angeles, California, 16–25, 84, 128, 144 Lowercase Capital, 288, 289, 293, 297–98 Lucini, Benedetta, 113–14 Lyft, 86n, 115, 132, 134, 137, 166, 177, 201, 211, 224, 248, 257–58 Kalanick’s attitude toward, 86–89, 119–20 Kalanick’s desire to

…

at Waverly event, 127–29 Google and, 105–6 Gurley and, 125–26 Holzwarth and, 249–53 as Kalanick’s secret fundraising weapon, 92–99 Lyft and, 186 Michels, Oren, 193n Microsoft, 39, 69, 77, 115 Milan, Italy, 85, 113–14 Miller, Stephen, 207 MIT, 153 Modolo, Osvaldo Luis, Filho, 174

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

by Brad Stone  · 30 Jan 2017  · 373pp  · 112,822 words

a car with a stranger. At first they referred to the new service as Zimride Instant, then changed the name to something a little catchier: Lyft. But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves. CHAPTER 4 THE GROWTH HACKER How Airbnb Took Off Son, no one from the internet is

…

problems at the company, advised prospective employees not to take jobs there, and counseled venture capital firms not to invest. He also consulted for both Lyft and Hailo, a UK-based taxi-hailing app.3 “I’ve definitely done my fair share of hyperbolic shit talking,” Kochman said. “At the

…

one of its emerging competitors. As Andreessen Horowitz realized the magnitude of its mistake, it would lead one of the earliest fund-raising rounds in Lyft. Uber’s deal with Pishevar would also lead, indirectly, to the collapse of one of Kalanick’s closest friendships. Over the next few months,

…

product chief at the time, Mina Radhakrishnan, who adds that Uber Green and Uber Eco were briefly considered and rejected. Now, an important clarification: Unlike Lyft and Sidecar, the so-called ridesharing companies that were at that very moment making their debuts in San Francisco, the original UberX accommodated only professional

…

February 2012 via its apps for the iPhone and Android smartphones. Though it went out of business in 2016, outfinanced and outmaneuvered by Uber and Lyft, it can lay claim to being a pioneering ridesharing company.20 Anyone—not just taxi drivers or licensed chauffeurs, but your uncle Frank in his

…

your parents told you never to do. We had to think about the whole experience.” In a grand flourish, Zimmer decided that every driver using Lyft should affix a pink carstache to his or her vehicle’s front grille. The carstache, a jumbo furry mustache recently popularized by another San Francisco

…

on their cubicle walls. Zimmer decided it could be a brand icon and would help turn an otherwise intimidating vehicle into a warm and inviting Lyft car. Carstaches could also command attention. To live in San Francisco in the year 2012 was to wonder, with mounting curiosity, why those weird

…

versa, for that matter, though both companies clearly drew heavily from each other’s product features and rhetoric). In the Zimride founders’ view, Uber and Lyft were entirely different. “We didn’t think of them as similar to us,” Zimmer told me. “Our vision has always been every car, every driver

…

want to be a better taxi; we wanted to replace car ownership.” But Kalanick saw through that and knew immediately that the services were competitive. Lyft had some good ideas; only after the carstaches appeared around town, for example, did Uber begin furnishing its own drivers with a windshield decal of

…

had accompanied Green to Zimbabwe, ran into Kalanick on a largely empty Muni subway car headed downtown, and he asked him what he thought of Lyft. “Not legal,” Kalanick grumbled, according to Van Horn. “If it’s legal, we’ll do it too.” That fall, the California Public Utilities Commission

…

seemed to confirm Kalanick’s suspicion. It sent cease-and-desist letters to Lyft, Sidecar, and TickenGo, a French company that had just moved to San Francisco and introduced its own ridesharing app for the iPhone.22 The companies

…

common carriers like limousines, airport vans, and moving services, as well as the state’s public utilities. To represent its interests in the battle ahead, Lyft hired Susan Kennedy, the assertive and hyperconnected former chief of staff of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and, before that, one of the five commissioners of the

…

rule-making process, to devise guidelines for something that was genuinely new. “The cease and desist approach is the wrong one,” she wrote, noting that Lyft and Sidecar did not employ drivers and therefore did not formally fall under his jurisdiction and could fight any order in court. “What problem are

…

wireless phone service because people were afraid they might be cut off from emergency 911 services if a cell phone battery died. She noted that Lyft and Sidecar were touting one-million-dollar backup insurance policies, a complement to a driver’s personal coverage. And she suggested there was an aura

…

new, all you want to do is ring our building with your cabs in protest and honk at us.’” If Peevey ever considered shutting down Lyft and Sidecar, Kennedy quickly turned him around. That fall, he instructed Marzia Zafar, his director of policy, to let the ridesharing companies operate but

…

there she got an education in the profound differences in these emerging markets. The taxi and limo companies all arrived separately, stating their gripes against Lyft and Sidecar but also Uber and, comically, one another, based on decades of simmering hatreds. Travis Kalanick also visited the CPUC conference room on

…

other way, toward the wall. His back was facing us, very deliberately.” Zafar recalls Kalanick’s first words as being “Why don’t you take Lyft out of the market? They are not complying with your regulations!” Zafar’s colleague Paul Clanon, the CPUC’s executive director, later reflected, “The guy

…

a new set of rules, which were slated to be formulated after a comment period and a public hearing that spring. A few weeks later, Lyft expanded into Los Angeles and Sidecar moved more aggressively into L.A., Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Brooklyn, and DC. The ridesharing wars had begun.

…

Travis Kalanick had watched, waited, and even quietly agitated for Lyft and Sidecar to be shut down. Instead, they spread, undercutting Uber’s prices. Now that their approach had been sanctioned, Kalanick had no choice but

…

s carefully crafted distinctions. “Sooner or later, you will have to face the issue that you are a car service,” he yelled. The testimony of Lyft’s attorney Kristin Sverchek grew even more heated. When the discussion turned to insurance, one driver, a local medallion holder, started showering her with profanity

…

business, and shown itself to be a flexible player unwilling to surrender leadership in the field of transportation apps for smartphones. It had Sidecar and Lyft to thank, which Kalanick was inclined to admit when he was in a charitable mood. “The one area where they brought some thunder was on

…

bruised by it. Uber had waited on the sidelines of ridesharing for seven months, and in that time new rivals had gained critical momentum. What Lyft and Sidecar did was ambitious, he conceded, vowing: “We are not going to let this happen ever again.” Sidecar expanded too aggressively, and its

…

drivers’ cars were impounded in New York, Austin, and Philadelphia.29 Lyft, more careful, was building a distinctive brand. It would become Uber’s most tenacious competitor in the United States. The lessons of the past year

…

not its ally. Within a year, David Bonderman would leave the board of General Motors, which in 2016 would make a sizable investment in archrival Lyft. And remarkably, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction, when the time came for TPG to purchase its second $88 million allotment of Uber

…

times more expensive than a traditional yellow taxi, UberX was, on average, 25 percent less expensive and was starting to dominate the emerging rideshare wars. Lyft and Sidecar had introduced ridesharing, but when Uber started aggressively rolling out the service, first in the United States in 2013 and then in Europe

…

to keep them safe from loosely regulated competition from limos and town cars. It didn’t stand a chance against sustained popular demand for ridesharing. Lyft and then Uber would open for business in Miami-Dade a few months after the visit by Uber employees.2 Though the companies’ services were

…

to change the rules. “Demand is too great,” Miami mayor Carlos Gimenez told the Miami Herald. “I’m not going to drag Uber and Lyft back into the 20th century. I think the taxi industry has to move into the 21st.”3 Uber was entering adolescence, winning political battles, growing

…

lower prices didn’t spark higher demand. But it also accelerated the growth of UberX and, perhaps just as important, forced the less highly capitalized Lyft to introduce its own fare and commission cuts.8 Uber had discovered what startup gurus like to call the virtuous circle, the links between various

…

a tragedy had been eminently predictable, and yet Uber, it seemed, hadn’t been ready for it. (That March, three months later, both Uber and Lyft introduced up to $100,000 of supplementary insurance to cover this gap.14 In 2014, the State of California passed a law mandating the companies

…

compound as their business grew. Less than a month after the Liu tragedy, an unseemly practice among the ridesharing startups roared into public view. Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and a host of smaller players were only as strong as the number of drivers willing to open their apps, so they constantly vied

…

mergers to begin with and wasn’t about to hand over a fifth of his prize. Neither party would budge, and the talks fell apart. Lyft recovered quickly. That spring, with unconventional sources of capital now flooding into Silicon Valley, it raised $250 million from a consortium of investors that included

…

that conversation was.” But to others, it seemed Kalanick was trying to scorch the earth behind him. It must have seemed unfair to Kalanick that Lyft had the better reputation, even though in some ways it was the more aggressive player. It had been the first to introduce unregulated ridesharing in

…

Miami, and Kansas City, yet the endeavors of its founders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, often came off as sincere idealism, not predatory ambition. “Every Lyft ride is an opportunity for positive human interaction,” Zimmer gushed to CNN in one characteristic interview. “I also feel very fortunate to be changing the

…

future of transportation, which will deliver a more people-centered city of tomorrow.”23 That July, Lyft started preparing to launch ridesharing in New York City, where Uber operated only with licensed professional drivers. Sidecar had attempted such a feat the year

…

ly.26 Later that night, Zimmer and Estrada heard the TLC was preparing an injunction. On a conference call with general counsel Kristin Sverchek and Lyft’s outside lawyer, an impassioned Zimmer argued that they should go ahead anyway and wanted to get himself arrested for the cause. The lawyers laughed

…

members about taking over as CEO, according to court filings.30 He also started talking privately to Uber about restarting merger discussions between Lyft and Uber. When Lyft’s founders found out about all this, they were livid. VanderZanden resigned in August and a few weeks later joined Uber as vice

…

president of international growth. The lawsuits promptly flew. Lyft accused VanderZanden in California state court of downloading proprietary financial and strategic documents before he left.31 VanderZanden denied the allegations and on Twitter called

…

to stimulate demand during the winter slowdown and increase the frequency of rides (and, no doubt, to apply further financial pressure to its domestic rival Lyft). NO ONE WINS THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM! read one sign. GIVE US THE RATE BACK. SHAME ON UBER! read another. The drivers that

…

but the drivers said that the company found a myriad of ways to disqualify them from the guaranteed wage. They also complained that Uber, unlike Lyft, had consistently refused to allow passengers to give them tips over the app. “Nobody in America wants to work more and earn less,” said Mohsim

…

2011, a Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies to force their workers to sign arbitration clauses that prevented them from bringing class-action lawsuits. Uber, Lyft, and the other companies in the so-called sharing economy gave plaintiff attorneys a high-profile opportunity to argue once again that workers were being

…

stripped of protections. In 2013, Boston plaintiff lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan brought such lawsuits against Uber and Lyft in the two states where she thought the law was most favorable, California and Massachusetts. She had previously brought similar, largely unsuccessful cases against FedEx

…

doing the jobs shouldn’t get benefits and the protections of employment,” she says. “That is the reason we have these laws.” Both Uber and Lyft tenaciously fought against the cases, arguing that the great majority of their drivers didn’t actually consider themselves full-time chauffeurs and wanted to remain

…

independent and free to take other work. The cases against Uber and Lyft drew widespread media attention and produced an unrealistic expectation that they might somehow change the nature of the sharing economy and undermine Uber’s business

…

giving drivers explanations if they violated company rules and got kicked off the app and creating an appeals process for those decisions. But Uber and Lyft drivers were going to remain contractors. “Drivers value their independence—the freedom to push a button rather than punch a clock, to use Uber

…

the beginning. But when you feel that, that’s going to be a big deal.” “This will be because of carpooling services like UberPool and Lyft Line? Or driverless cars?” I asked. A few weeks before, the company had begun testing fourteen Ford Fusions tricked out with autonomous vehicle technology on

…

m grateful to Kim Rubey, Maggie Carr, and Mojgan Khalili, as well as Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk, Belinda Johnson, and their team. At Lyft, Brandon McCormick had infinite patience for my inquiries, and John Zimmer and Logan Green were generous with their time and recollections. In Silicon Valley, Gina

…

“Why Couchsurfing Founder Casey Fenton Is Unfazed by Competitors like Airbnb,” Mixergy, March 30, 2015, https://mixergy.com/interviews/casey-fenton-couchsurfing/. 4. Ryan Lawler, “Lyft-Off: Zimride’s Long Road to Overnight Success,” TechCrunch, August 29, 2014, http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/29/6000-words-about-a-pink-mustache/. 5

…

29, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-watchdog-peevey-20151230-story.html. 24. Sfcda.com/CPUC, January 11, 2013, http://sfcda.com/CPUC/Lyft_CPUC_SED_IntAGR.pdf. 25. Brian X. Chen, “Uber to Roll Out Ride Sharing in California,” Bits Blog, New York Times, January 31, 2013,

…

Times, June 4, 2014, http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/uberx-will-launch-in-miami-today-defying-miami-dades-taxi-laws-6533024. 3. “Mayor Gimenez: Uber, Lyft Will Be Legal in Miami-Dade by End of Year,” Miami Herald, September 28, 2015, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article36831345

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work

by Alex Rosenblat  · 22 Oct 2018  · 343pp  · 91,080 words

New Age of Uber—How Technology Consumption Rewrote the Rules of Work Appendix 1. Methodology: How I Studied Uber Appendix 2. Ridehailing beyond Uber: Meet Lyft, the Younger Twin Notes Index LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Sample Fiverr advertisement from 2017 2. “Freedom Pays Weekly”: a 2015 screenshot of an Uber

…

livelihoods. The same working conditions can have very different impacts on different categories of drivers. THE DIVERSE MOTIVATIONS OF FULL-TIME AND PART-TIME DRIVERS Lyft had 700,000 active drivers as of November 2017.1 The same month, Uber had 750,000 active drivers, jumping to 900,000 by

…

These differences can have significant impacts on drivers’ experiences. For example, many drivers, especially recreational hobbyists, cite the social connections they make through Uber and Lyft as a main motivation for working. Both occupational and part-time drivers may also enjoy this aspect of work: some are eager to practice their

…

drivers to chafe, in part because his alternatives are limited. Similarly, ridehail drivers with stronger occupational identities as drivers often evaluate the differences between Uber, Lyft, and taxi or truck driving with an eye toward the design of ridehail technology. Pierre-Alexandre, who is originally from Haiti, used to drive for

…

Alexandre, the design and affordances of ridehail app technology offer a kind of safety that taxis do not.28 Many newer drivers prefer Uber and Lyft to their alternative workplaces, but it is also typical for drivers to overestimate their earnings when they start. Drawn in by company advertising with

…

city. There, unlike in other markets, drivers are regulated by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and their capital costs to start driving with Uber and Lyft are higher. They need to pass fingerprint-based background checks, get a TLC license and plates, pass tests, take a class, and obtain commercial

…

does stands in stark contrast to the grand narratives of wealth and entrepreneurship that Uber presents. Another driver, Thomas, lost his job with Uber and Lyft when those companies left Austin, Texas, in the spring of 2016, in a show of protest against regulations passed by the municipal government.6

…

United States, with occasional posts by drivers in Canada and elsewhere. A charismatic presence, he also runs a YouTube channel documenting emergent issues with Uber, Lyft, and other ridehailing companies, as well as describing his experiences as a driver. Harry Campbell runs a blog called The Rideshare Guy, but blog

…

builders are exceptions: they monetize their content-production, blogging, and forum administrator roles by, for example, promoting their driver referral codes to different services. Uber, Lyft, and other on-demand companies offer a “commission,” or referral bonus, to drivers who spread the word.12 Their real entrepreneurship is rooted in this

…

that all the other drivers are following them and, therefore, negating the premium levied for “low supply” compared to “high demand.” Doberman, an Uber and Lyft driver in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, whom I interviewed in the fall of 2017, said, with a thick Italian accent, “Unfortunately, I have two reasons

…

apps. Data surveillance does not produce accountability automatically for all users of the Uber platform, however. Leticia Alcala, who used to drive for Uber and Lyft in California, relocated to Dallas, where she continues to work for both companies. She administrates multiple driver forums online, too, and she is especially proactive

…

toll in an employment context because drivers depend on these CSRs to resolve questions related to their livelihood. Ramon, who drives for both Uber and Lyft in Atlanta, told one story in our interview about a passenger who accused him of drunk driving in the “passenger feedback” comments. When I

…

passengers, whereas others, with different personalities and goals, feel comfortably in charge of their own environment.27 Deedra, a former nursing assistant who drives for Lyft in New Orleans, likes the feedback she gets from the platform through summaries of her passenger reviews and performance, like ratings and comments. She credits

…

entrepreneurs who want to move the needle on data-collection and privacy debates. Kofi, whom I discussed in the introduction, is an Uber and Lyft driver I interviewed in Washington, DC. He was appalled when he learned first from the media in December 2017—rather than directly from his employer

…

with ridehail companies. Yet when the Department of Motor Vehicles developed a license for the budding self-driving cars developed by companies like Uber, Google, Lyft, and others, Uber refused to cooperate, contradicting its stated rhetoric. Instead, it debuted its self-driving cars without licenses in the streets of San

…

start-ups, worker advocates and class-action lawyers have mounted cases accusing Uber—as well as other sharing economy companies, like Handy,21 HomeJoy,22 Lyft,23 and others—of violating labor law meant to protect their workers. Regulators have struggled to “adapt multiple regimes of evaluation”24 to the

…

. When cities try to reign Uber in, municipal regulations can backfire. Consider what happened when Austin, Texas, passed municipal legislation to require Uber and Lyft to comply with fingerprint-based background checks. Both companies pulled out of the city in May 201627 and continued to lobby the state to pass

…

and all its practices are inevitable. The National Employment Law Project, together with the Partnership for Working Families, provides another analysis, suggesting that Uber and Lyft deploy a two-stage “shock doctrine” to get their way. In the first stage, they manufacture a crisis with a municipal regulator, such as

…

if regulations were left to municipal governances, the company would have to accommodate a messy patchwork of requirements. In forty-one states, Uber and Lyft have successfully lobbied politicians to pass laws that erase or mitigate how localities regulate these companies.32 While this approach is rational (it’s technically

…

In other words, Uber’s expansion is synonymous with the expansion of digital economies. Governor Cuomo’s signature on the bill to legalize Uber and Lyft symbolizes the pathways these companies blazed for the future of work, yet these platforms have their local detractors. Initially, Westchester County, adjacent to New

…

to believe bad things about Uber. Deleting an app is a low-barrier action. Only a sliver of the same pointed protest was directed at Lyft, Uber’s main competitor, even though its primary investor, Peter Thiel, was the number one technology-industry booster for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

…

been immense yet hollow. I speculate that many must have furtively re-downloaded Uber as the company promised change, though #DeleteUber reputedly spurred growth for Lyft, as users downloaded an alternative. Despite the ongoing unrest, Uber hit a milestone of 5 billion rides by late June 2017, a mere five

…

enduring debates over the future of work. By the end of 2017, driver pay had fallen precipitously. In internal company documents, Uber quietly cited Lyft and McDonald’s as its primary competition for recruiting drivers.84 The fight over Uber became a proxy for larger ideological battles between pro- and

…

’s a forum administrator, one of many across the globe who put in countless hours managing unofficial online communities where drivers who work for Uber, Lyft, and other ridehail services share advice and warnings, answer questions, and provide a rare sense of camaraderie. Another driver, Doberman, who is also an

…

dynamics of online forums derive from a common sense of the inequities that affect all drivers. At an individual level, some of the Uber and Lyft drivers I interviewed shrugged off pay discrepancies, while others were disturbed by them. (The combination of tipping and up-front pricing can also produce

…

have developed membership requirements and gatekeeping processes over time, meaning they technically aren’t open to the public. Often, drivers work for both Uber and Lyft, and even when drivers start Uber-focused forums, these quickly expand to include members who work for multiple employers. Drivers I spoke with in

…

deducted hundreds of millions of dollars inappropriately from drivers’ paychecks through faulty tax calculations.7 Meanwhile, the New York–based Independent Drivers Guild reported that Lyft was engaging in a similar practice.8 As these reports circulated among drivers both inside and outside of forums, they validated a much longer institutional

…

also conducted formal interviews with two businessmen in the chauffeur industry so that I might learn about their perspectives on the advent of Uber and Lyft as part of my formal research. While much of my recruitment relied on my personal outreach to drivers, in some instances I received referrals

…

23.4 percent of the ridehail market share in the United States and Uber had 74.3 percent.3 The corporate practices of Uber and Lyft in managing drivers aren’t identical, but their similarities vastly outnumber their differences. They both track drivers’ ride-acceptance and cancellation rates. Both dispatch

…

fares through an automated system (Uber claims the nearest driver is dispatched, while Lyft claims the nearest driver is dispatched and determines how long a driver has been waiting for a dispatch). Both companies use a passenger-sourced rating

…

threat of deactivation to penalize drivers for ignoring rules and norms of the system. Both rely on outsourced customer support to communicate with drivers, although Lyft also has a mentorship program in various cities. In this program mentors, who are usually drivers as well, provide help to new drivers. Both

…

2017, after years of protests and feedback from drivers.) Some of the differences drivers describe are similarly reflected in corporate messaging. The first section of Lyft’s homepage in February 2018 promotes three main points, including “HAPPY DRIVERS. HAPPY RIDERS.”6 This emphasizes the idea that happy drivers are an important

…

part of the service Lyft delivers. The first section of Uber’s homepage in February 2018 focuses more on passengers, with three slogans: “Easiest way around,” “Anywhere, Anytime,” and

…

CSR’s, though I see frustration across both companies with automated replies. Ramon, whom I introduced earlier in this book, drives with both Uber and Lyft in Atlanta, Georgia. He told me about one of his most memorable incidents: while he was taking several passengers to their destination, another driver

…

s model, the key may be simply to treat drivers with greater consideration and respect for their side of the story. Frank, an Uber and Lyft driver whom I interviewed in Dallas in 2016, assessed the differences between the two companies according to their passenger bases. He observed, “Uber passengers

…

in Quebec,” Global News, October 22, 2016, http://globalnews.ca/news/3019867/uber-can-now-legally-operate-in-quebec/. 20. Julia Simon-Mischel, “Uber and Lyft: Where Are We Going?” (panel presentation, Continuing Legal Education for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, November 28, 2017); Training Assocs. Corp. v. Unemployment Comp. Bd.

…

, “Love in the Time of Ridesharing,” Motherboard, May 27, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp33yg/love-in-the-time-of-ridesharing-uber-lyft-romance-technology. 70. Lobel, “The Law of the Platform”; Calo and Rosenblat, “The Taking Economy.” 71. Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Credentials, Jobs and the New

…

,” BuzzFeed News, March 6, 2018, www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/uber-driver-earnings-research-mit-dara-khosrowshahi?utm_term=.qdW0E4MJmZ#.glqNagnyYm. 2. MOTIVATIONS TO DRIVE 1. Lyft, email correspondence with the author, December 9, 2017. 2. Uber, email correspondence with the author, March 5, 2018, and May 29, 2018. 3. Cody

…

Motivates Gig Economy Workers.” 15. Rosenblat, “What Motivates Gig Economy Workers.” 16. David Gutman, “Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking to Block Seattle Law Allowing Uber and Lyft Drivers to Unionize,” Seattle Times, August 1, 2017, www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-seeking-to-block-seattle-law-allowing-uber-and

…

Driving for a Car Service Is a Great Side Gig,” The Points Guy, July 1, 2017, https://thepointsguy.com/2017/07/driving-car-service-uber-lyft/. 3. THE TECHNOLOGY PITCH 1. Uber, “Vehicle Requirements Boston,” n.d., www.uber.com/boston-drivers/requirements/vehicle-requirements/. 2. Alex Rosenblat, “What Motivates

…

Press, 2011), 3. 6. Alex Rosenblat, “Uber’s Drive-By Politics,” Motherboard, May 27, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv5jaw/uber-lyft-austin-drive-by-politics. 7. Alex Rosenblat and Luke Stark, “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers,” International Journal of

…

housing-test-black-discrimination. 27. Alex Rosenblat, “Uber’s Drive-By Politics,” Motherboard, May 27, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv5jaw/uber-lyft-austin-drive-by-politics. 28. Michael King, “Lege for Sale?” Austin Chronicle, March 14, 2017, www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2017–03–14/lege-

…

free-designated-drivers-in-24-cities-in-the-us; DrinkingandDriving.org, “Prevention Tools,” www.drinkinganddriving.org/designated-driver-services/. 63. Alex Rosenblat, “Is Your Uber/Lyft Driver in Stealth Mode?” Uber Screeds, July 19, 2016, https://medium.com/uber-screeds/is-your-uber-driver-in-hiding-484696894139. 64. Judgment of December

…

. 73. Lucinda Shen, “200,000 Users Have Left Uber in the #DeleteUber Protest,” Fortune, February 3, 2017, http://fortune.com/2017/02/03/uber-lyft-delete-donald-trump-executive-order/. 74. Alison Griswold, “Uber Did Nothing Wrong, but That Couldn’t Stop the Liberal Outrage of #DeleteUber,” Quartz, January 30

…

/. 3. Rani Molla, “Uber’s Market Share Has Taken a Big Hit,” Recode, August 31, 2017, www.recode.net/2017/8/31/16227670/uber-lyft-market-share-deleteuber-decline-users. 4. San Francisco County Transportation Authority, “TNCs Today: A Profile of San Francisco Transportation Network Company Activity,” June 2017, www

…

also price discrimination; referral promotions; surge manipulation income statistics, 45; differing claims of, 63–64, 226n26; FTC’s fine for misleading, 61, 63, 77; of Lyft drivers, 56; in New York City, 3, 61, 221n3; in San Francisco, 61 independent contractor classification: laws protecting, 3, 8, 18, 155; misclassification lawsuits,

…

Lewandowski, Anthony, 174 Li (driver), 146–47 liability. See automobile insurance Lobel, Orly, 224n2 low-entry barriers to employment, 3, 26, 32, 53, 183–84 Lyft, 217–20; alignment with Trump of, 191; #DeleteUber protest and, 192; driver experiences of, 43, 48, 56; driver management by, 58, 78, 158; driver

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly  · 9 Oct 2017  · 561pp  · 157,589 words

, shaping content sites like Wikipedia and eventually enabling a revolution in which consumers would become co-creators of services like on-demand transportation (Uber and Lyft) and lodging (Airbnb). I was invited to give a talk at the same conference in Würzburg. My talk, titled “Hardware, Software, and Infoware,” was

…

employee turned venture capitalist who became an early investor in Uber, noted that the smartphone is becoming “a remote control for real life.” Uber and Lyft drive home the notion that the Internet is no longer just something that provides access to media content, but instead unlocks real-world services. Uber

…

services than the entire previous taxi and limousine industry. How did this happen? The game changer came early in 2012 when two companies, Sidecar and Lyft, introduced a peer-to-peer model in which ordinary people, not just licensed limousine drivers, provided the service using their personal cars. It was this

…

of them to meet demand. There are many historical examples of peer-to-peer public transportation. Zimride, Logan Green and John Zimmer’s predecessor to Lyft, was inspired by the informal jitney systems they observed in Zimbabwe. But using the smartphone to create a two-sided, real-time market in physical

…

focus on logistics and marketplace incentives, a take-no-prisoners corporate culture, and huge amounts of capital, it has spent billions to outpace its rivals. Lyft is still a strong contender in the United States, gaining, but in distant second place. The amount of capital raised turned out to be surprisingly

…

a race to build the biggest network of customers and drivers. Uber’s willingness to sidestep regulators was also part of its success. Sidecar and Lyft spent time working with the California Public Utilities Commission to craft new rules to legitimize their novel approach. Even earlier, companies like Taxi Magic, founded

…

and make streets safer. When you make transportation as reliable as running water, everyone benefits. Here’s a possible business model map for Uber or Lyft like the one Dan and Meredith Beam drew for Southwest Airlines. What are some of the core elements of this business model? Replacing Ownership with

…

and availability without ownership. The WTF? moment of a brilliant new user experience is often the key to changing user behavior and turbocharging adoption. While Lyft introduced a revolutionary part of the on-demand transportation model, Uber was the first to put it all together into a seamless experience, beautiful and

…

Company. A traditional business that wants to grow must hire people, invest in plants and equipment, and build out a management hierarchy. Instead, Uber and Lyft have created digital platforms to manage and deploy hundreds of thousands of independent drivers, trusting the marketplace itself to ensure that enough of them show

…

there weren’t enough workers to meet demand.) This is a radically different kind of corporate organization. There are those who argue that Uber and Lyft are simply trying to avoid paying benefits by keeping their workers as independent contractors rather than as employees. It isn’t that simple. Yes, it

…

a five-minute response time over a far larger geographical area than traditional taxi and limousine companies. Management by Algorithm is central to Uber and Lyft’s business. It would be impossible to marshal the workers, connect drivers and passengers in real time, automatically track and bill every ride, or

…

the payroll—is a complex problem. Unlike the taxi industry, which creates an artificial scarcity by issuing a limited number of “medallions,” Uber and Lyft use market mechanisms to find the optimum number of drivers, with an algorithm that raises prices if there are not enough drivers on the road

…

meet demand and slacks off when demand is less. The regulatory friction of the traditional approach makes taxi costs higher and availability worse. Uber and Lyft drivers routinely make more money per hour than taxi drivers; meanwhile, customers generally have better experiences and lower prices. Those who complain that Uber and

…

right answer is to develop a social safety net and regulatory frameworks as flexible and responsive as the on-demand business model itself. Uber and Lyft (and Airbnb) have taken the approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission for many of their innovations, relying on swift consumer adoption to

…

into the mix? They potentially destabilize their own marketplace. There will be significant costs to achieve the kind of availability for passengers that Uber or Lyft currently have using centrally owned self-driving cars. Remember that the total number of cars in the system must be sufficient to satisfy peak demand

…

meeting peak daytime demand with renewables. In order to maintain the benefits of the marketplace model, rather than deploying self-driving cars itself, Uber or Lyft might instead create incentives for its drivers to purchase them and make them available to the company. In many ways, this would change their business

…

Airbnb, in which the participants in the marketplace provide an asset they own rather than their labor. But for this plan to work, Uber or Lyft would not need to develop their own autonomous vehicles, but instead could promote interoperability between different autonomous vehicle vendors. If the plan is something like

…

vehicles, requiring investments in interoperable control and dispatch. (Tesla seems to have other plans, though, forbidding their drivers from using their cars for Uber and Lyft, with the intention of rolling out its own competing service. A business model does not exist in isolation; it must adapt to the competition as

…

market demand rather than toward labor, because there are efficiencies to be gained from proximity to the market.” Networked Marketplace Platforms. Not just Uber and Lyft, but Google, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Snap, Baidu, Tencent, and Apple draw a great deal of their strength from the fact that they are

…

on demand. On demand affects both sides of the networked marketplace. Managed by Algorithm. The algorithms at the heart of a company like Uber or Lyft are computationally intensive, just like the algorithms at the heart of search engines, social networks, and financial markets. In many cases, the company with

…

impossible. The amount of augmentation may vary. A service like TaskRabbit augments workers’ ability to find customers, but not to do the job. Uber and Lyft drivers have additional augmentation in their ability to navigate and find clients. Surgeons and oncologists might be working in traditional organizations but are cognitively augmented

…

day come to realize that people are a critical component of what it has built, and make supporting them central to its competitive strategy. Lyft already knows this and uses it to its advantage. It is also important to understand our role as customers in holding companies accountable for creating

…

the future we want. Every time a PR crisis erupts, some of Uber’s customers desert it for Lyft, but most stick around. If you want a human-centered future, support companies that demonstrate human-centered values. Magical User Experiences. The magic goes

…

transportation network similar to the one they’d seen during youthful travels in Zimbabwe, and which had inspired them to create first Zimride and then Lyft. THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE Camp and Kalanick also realized a key payment innovation that went even beyond Amazon’s 1-Click shopping: They realized that in

…

services” without a license. It was Sunil Paul’s efforts to get the California Public Utilities Commission to accept the model that made it thinkable. Lyft jumped on the opportunity. Uber eventually followed. A more recent demonstration of how old thinking holds back even smart entrepreneurs is how long it took

…

leapfrogging progress of technology. Robin Chase, author of the book Peers Inc, describes how services ranging from Zipcar, which she founded in 1999, to Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb are all platforms for unlocking what she calls “excess capacity” and sharing it with others. They put together ordinary people (“the peers”) and

…

curating what would once have been an enormous “slush pile” so that it becomes valuable to its customers and advertisers. Today, on-demand companies like Lyft and Uber in transportation and Airbnb in hospitality bring a similar model to the physical world. Finnish management consultant Esko Kilpi beautifully describes the power

…

human nor machine, independent of their creators and less and less under anyone’s control. THE EVOLUTION OF PLATFORMS On-demand companies like Uber and Lyft are only the latest development in an ongoing transformation of business. Consider the evolution of the retail marketplace as exemplified first by chain stores, and

…

be far higher. NETWORKED PLATFORMS FOR PHYSICAL WORLD SERVICES One way to think about the new generation of on-demand companies such as Uber and Lyft is that they are networked platforms for physical world services, bringing a fragmented industry into the twenty-first century in the same way that

…

by algorithms, network-based reputation systems, and marketplace dynamics. These firms also rely on their network of customers to police the quality of their service. Lyft even uses its network of top-rated drivers to onboard new drivers, outsourcing what once was a crucial function of management. But focusing on the

…

them part-time) than the entire prior taxi industry. (I have been told that Uber has about 1.5 million monthly active drivers worldwide. Lyft has 700,000.) They have also provided an additional source of customers for limousine drivers at the same time that they have provided punishing competition

…

that might be in Uber’s early experiments in making house calls to deliver flu shots and bringing elderly patients to doctors’ appointments). Uber and Lyft are on their way to becoming a generalized urban logistics system. It’s important to realize that we are still exploring the possibilities inherent in

…

and WhatsApp were sold to Facebook. It is why Twitter is still struggling. Ultimately, network businesses need to develop both sides of the market. Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb didn’t have the luxury of user growth without revenue. Unlike advertising-based startups that could sell out to an existing giant in

…

to give a one-star rating. However, this has not stopped opponents of the new services from claiming that the drivers provided by Uber and Lyft have been insufficiently vetted. While all of the new services perform driver background checks before they are allowed to offer rides, opponents argue that the

…

they don’t require fingerprinting and FBI criminal background checks, an onerous and time-consuming step that, from the point of view of Uber and Lyft, is undesirable because it would limit the participation of part-time and occasional drivers, who provide a majority of the service on these new platforms

…

. Uber and Lyft feel so strongly about this issue that they actually pulled their services from the city of Austin after it required fingerprinting and full FBI checks

…

to achieve these objectives is to limit the number of drivers, and to certify those drivers in advance by issuing special business licenses. Uber and Lyft believe that their computer-mediated marketplace achieves the same goals more effectively. Surely it should be possible to evaluate the success or failure of these

…

informed by data. Unfortunately, it isn’t just government that is unwilling or unable to put its data on the table. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb jealously guard much of their data for fear that it will give away trade secrets or relative marketplace traction to competitors. Instead, they

…

There is no better demonstration of how outdated maps shape public policy, labor advocacy, and the economy than in the debate over whether Uber and Lyft drivers (and workers for other on-demand startups) should be classified as “independent contractors” or “employees.” In the world of US employment law, an

…

. Cost optimization for the company, not benefit to the customer or the employee, is the guiding principle for the algorithm. By contrast, Uber and Lyft expose data to the workers, not just the managers, letting them know about the timing and location of demand, and letting them choose when and

…

curves of customer and driver needs, but also competitive business needs. Their desire to crush the incumbent taxi industry and to compete with rivals like Lyft also affects their pricing. And under the rules of the venture-backed startup game, in order to satisfy the enormous prospective valuation placed on them

…

, over time, driver wages will need to increase at some rate that is independent of the simple supply and demand curves that characterize Uber and Lyft’s algorithms today. Even if there are enough drivers, the quality of drivers deeply influences the customer experience. Driver turnover is a key metric.

…

but are driven by fierce competition by companies to expand their market share, as Walmart and Amazon have done with consumer goods and Uber and Lyft have done with taxi fares. These upstarts upset the existing pricing equilibrium between companies and their customers in part as a competitive tactic, a way

…

. You can argue that that is one of the key drivers at the heart of the on-demand revolution that includes companies like Uber and Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, Upwork, Handy, TaskRabbit, and Thumbtack. The drawbacks of these platforms in providing consistent income and a social safety net shouldn’t

…

for the law firm because their business model depends on billable hours. I quit just ahead of getting fired.” ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY An Uber or Lyft driver demonstrates two different kinds of augmentation. The first is provided by Google Maps and similar services, which embed knowledge of the layout of city

…

in the emerging segment. This was true of Microsoft, of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and it is also true of current disruptors like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb or the researchers who are taking us pell-mell into a future of self-driving cars and other applications of artificial intelligence. They

…

–21, 326–32 access to opportunities, 332–34 cognitive augmentation/cyborgs, 321–22 importance of learning, 334–36 neurotech interfaces, 328–32 at Uber or Lyft, 58–59, 69–70, 332 See also education/training; employees Autodesk, 327–28 Autor, David, 305–6 Avent, Ryan, 304, 348–49 Bad Samaritans (

…

11, 323–24, 332–33 creativity-based, 312–19 displacement and transformation of, 94 and education/training, 303, 304 independent contractor status at Uber and Lyft, 59 labor globalization, 67 and new technology, xvii optimism about the future, 298–302 reducing work hours, 304, 308–11 replacing with higher-value tasks

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

students) discussed her excellent early article on the sharing economy with my undergraduate class.3 You can transport yourself across short distances using apps like Lyft and Uber, platforms that connect drivers who have cars and are willing to give rides to people who need them. If a chauffeured car

…

you might not like what you end up with. But it makes me wonder. Might the same hold true for our future regulatory structures? Lyft—Hospitality in Transportation A few blocks down the street from Airbnb’s shiny new corporate headquarters at 888 Brannan in San Francisco’s SoMa district

…

route can pay you a little for a seat in your car. Carpooling on demand, but flexibly, on your own schedule. Over the years, my Lyft drivers have included stand-up comedians, software engineers, deejays, schoolteachers, a retired CIO, a digital marketing executive between jobs, and numerous college students. Taking

…

early employee who is currently their self-described “resident transportation wonk,” and who was kind enough back then to accelerate my approval as a Lyft passenger so that I could use their service to get to the meeting. The car that came to pick me up was instantly recognizable, adorned

…

60 cities around the United States. Although often in the news because of the bruising battles it has waged with Uber for market share, Lyft projects a decidedly kinder and gentler feel than their larger competitor, even as they have graduated from the giant pink mustaches to a more subtle

…

co-founder and president John Zimmer, with whom I have had many fascinating conversations over the years, has famously said that he doesn’t see Lyft as competing with Uber, but rather, as competing with “people driving alone.”13 “For me, personally, it was my interest in hospitality,” Zimmer told

…

me, when I asked him about his motivation for starting Lyft. “There are two main pieces in hospitality success: providing an amazing, delightful experience, and having high occupancy. Both of these aspects were missing from transportation

…

spend billions of dollars building elaborate public transit systems, often imposing crippling costs of both money and inconvenience on their city economies. Could apps like Lyft promise a different approach to building urban transportation infrastructure, foreshadowing a new kind of crowd-based public-private partnership, one that uses digital technology

…

tap into decentralized excess capacity rather than creating new monolithic centralized systems? The Rise of the On-Demand Workforce One of the things that set Lyft and Uber apart from Airbnb is that the weekly time commitment of their “providers”—the folks who are sharing their time and assets to

…

clever new public-private partnership model that can make benefits portable and stabilize people’s incomes over time? BlaBlaCar—Global Infrastructure Built on Trust Interestingly, Lyft’s original business plan wasn’t about transforming urban and suburban transportation. Rather, it was started by Zimmer and CEO Logan Green as Zimride,

…

is very much a market economy, as is Getaround (although environmental concerns might lead one to use these as substitutes for auto ownership); BlaBlaCar and Lyft have some gift economy aspects to them, as does Bandwagon, a platform for sharing yellow cabs in New York, and Hitch, a carpooling network

…

acquired by Lyft in 2015. Natalie Foster, the founder of the (then) sharing economy collective action platform Peers.org, quotes a Peers member named Justin, a ride

…

are at an inflection point in the social impact of digital technologies, from which a more connected society will emerge through Airbnb and Couchsurfing stays, Lyft carpools that take us away from driving alone to commuting together, VizEat social dining instead of TV dinners, and La Ruche Qui Dit Oui

…

that are quite surprising. Jason Tanz, the editor of Wired magazine, puzzled over this trend in his April 2014 cover story “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other”: But one consequence is already clear: Many of these companies have us engaging in behaviors that would have

…

seemed unthinkably foolhardy as recently as five years ago. We are hopping into strangers’ cars (Lyft, Sidecar, Uber), welcoming them into our spare rooms (Airbnb), dropping our dogs off at their houses (DogVacay, Rover), and eating food in their dining

…

continue to play in today’s sharing economy. While there are other platforms that provide shared short-term accommodation (like Airbnb), or urban transportation (like Lyft and Uber), these platforms’ brand recognition continues to be a powerful factor in shaping their growth. In this respect, branding functions much like it

…

address climate change in time to prevent the catastrophic change that we’ve set in motion.”20 The recent popularity of Uber’s UberPool and Lyft’s LyftLine services, genuine ridesharing that pair travelers going in the same direction and assign them a shared vehicle in real time, is perhaps

…

-like discussion forums resembling today’s Google Groups, whose users sometimes facilitated the trading of items like live concert recordings.2 The emergence of Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Etsy might tempt one to conclude that Malone, Yates, and Benjamin had an especially astute view into the future. But are today

…

VizEat and Eatwith, the local tour guide exchange platform Vayable (founded by sharing economy pioneer Jamie Wong) are decidedly more market-like, ridesharing platforms Lyft and Uber fall somewhere in between, and focused services or labor platforms like Luxe, Postmates, and Universal Avenue bear a closer resemblance to hierarchies than

…

the app gets activated. You can then use your accumulated zooz to buy rides, much like you’d use currency to buy an Uber or Lyft ride. As Vitalik Buterin, an influential writer about decentralized peer-to-peer systems and the founder of Ethereum, a decentralized platform that runs smart

…

consumer site Taobao), Alibaba has a significant ownership stake in and control over a number of its highly efficient logistics partners. Similarly, Uber and Lyft rely on systems that optimize their current pool of available drivers in real time. Thus, although additive-manufacturing technologies such as 3-D printers will

…

and expanding an existing economic model rather than replacing it.11 Of course, these platforms are also changing consumer behaviors along the way. Uber, Lyft, and Gett reduce traditional taxi use because they’ve made the service more convenient and less expensive, and because they’ve created more variety through

…

expect similar challenges when, for example, trying to encompass the different economic impacts of increased variety and fit from Airbnb, or increased convenience from Lyft, or Dennis’s increased access to financing on the Isle of Gigha. A number of studies over the last 15 years have documented changes in

…

on Airbnb “training wheels for being an entrepreneur.” We will have to wait a few more years to find out if providers on Airbnb, Etsy, Lyft, and Getaround are more likely to start successful larger companies (although the first two Airbnb hosts, Brian and Joe, clearly have already). But as

…

t get that done.”7 Of course, Airbnb is just one of many peer-to-peer platforms whose activities create new regulatory challenges. Uber and Lyft have faced regulatory pushback in a wide variety of cities looking to enforce taxi licensing laws. In particular, given its global footprint, Uber’s

…

early, ranging from David Plouffe and Ashwini Chhabra at Uber, David Hantman and Chris Lehane at Airbnb, and David Estrada and Joseph Okpaku at Lyft to Althea Erickson at Etsy and Padden Murphy at Getaround. The platforms also make active use of high-powered lobbyists like Bradley Tusk and James

…

the “regulation as an intervention to correct market failure” approach, viewing the challenges raised by the sharing economy through this lens. As platforms like Airbnb, Lyft, Getaround, and Etsy disrupt old economic systems rooted in firm-to-consumer interactions and individual ownership, we are witnessing myriad regulatory issues. These issues,

…

like Facebook and LinkedIn, and view digitally verified government IDs of providers. And this intervention doesn’t end with the use of digital reputation systems. Lyft, independent of any regulatory requirements, conducts in-person driver screenings that also include criminal background checks and an assessment of driving history. Similarly, as

…

mainstream economy, creating service providers who are “in between” personal and professional—like Airbnb hosts who rent out their apartments when they travel, or Lyft drivers who transport people commercially for a few hours a week. This blurring of lines raises a number of new societal challenges. First, it seems

…

risks to consumers posed by part-time providers with judiciously designed safeguards. After all, most Airbnb hosts are not professional hoteliers, a large percentage of Lyft and Uber drivers are active on the platform fewer than 15 hours per week, and only one-fifth of Etsy sellers considers their Etsy business

…

cab in New York systematically doesn’t pick up passengers of a particular ethnicity, its likely to go unnoticed; on the other hand, if a Lyft driver does the same, the ensuing data trail might make it relatively easy to spot and correct. The Evolution of Regulation: Trust, Institutions, and

…

of brand cannot be underestimated in today’s sharing economy. We are still a population that places its faith in brand names: platforms like Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber understand this; eBay understood this when they created Power Sellers; and BlaBlaCar understands this when they place an explicit certification of trust

…

the scale is often quite small, as discussed in chapter 5. For example, over 90% of Airbnb hosts are occasional hosts, two thirds of Lyft drivers drive less than 15 hours a week, EatWith or Feastly hosts prepare far fewer meals than a restaurant, and most Etsy sellers work on

…

to-point urban transportation vehicles (taxis) need to conform to. But rather than taking on the burden of ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar drivers across the state are compliant, they have instead delegated this enforcement responsibility to the platforms. A platform needs to register

…

traditional multifactor test.3 And, in December 2015, the court certified the case as a class action. In a parallel class-action suit brought against Lyft, Judge Vince Chhabra echoed a similar sentiment, but perhaps more strongly, when he wrote: “California’s outmoded test for classifying workers will apply in

…

moderated with Michelle Miller, the co-founder of coworker.org, after highlighting the opportunities created by the future of work heralded by platforms like Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit in an earlier keynote speech. But what exactly do these opportunities look like? On one side of the argument, there are the

…

employment” or “work” generated by underemployed people who were already working at least an hour a week (like a software contractor who now also does Lyft on the side). Additionally, the BLS surveys don’t fully capture people who contribute to the sharing economy while holding regular full-time jobs (an

…

-employee relationship and what is clearly one of independent entrepreneurial dealing.1 As Fox points out, Rutledge is not a local judge commenting on Lyft in 2014 but rather a US Supreme Court justice deciding on the employment status of newsboys in 1944, in a case that pitted the

…

in and tap out as needed, and as suits them.”5 However, this description does not apply to all sharing economy providers. Many Uber and Lyft drivers, Handy providers, and TaskRabbit taskers make a significant percentage of their living through the platforms, and the fraction of the world’s workforce

…

in chapter 7. The 40 or so other initial signatories included the CEOs of Etsy (Chad Dickerson), Handy (Oisin Hanrahan), and Instacart (Apoorva Mehta); Lyft’s president John Zimmer and its CEO Logan Green; the Silicon Valley icon Tim O’Reilly; the influential labor organizer and former SEIU president Andy

…

mentioned in chapter 4, the latter scenario—a threat to any provider-dependent platform—is especially likely for taxi or chauffeured urban transportation platforms like Lyft and Uber, and geography-specific platforms like Instacart, TaskRabbit and Handy, where a majority of demand from each consumer is concentrated in a specific

…

Many platforms require that providers acquire or otherwise “bring” assets to the provision of their services: TaskRabbit’s taskers may need to provide a vehicle, Lyft drivers and Getaround providers must own their cars, Airbnb hosts own or rent their space, and Etsy sellers must have access to their own production

…

its own centralized assets. A second dimension relates to pricing, supply, and merchandizing. For the most part, most sharing economy platforms—TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Getaround—allow their providers to choose when they, their assets, or their services are available. This forces providers to “learn” how to manage their inventory

…

Getaround providers, and Airbnb hosts have to invest significantly in merchandizing (photos, copy that describes their products or properties, and so on), while Uber and Lyft drivers are not called upon to do this, although this perhaps reflects the service being offered rather than the nature of the platform itself. Analogously

…

business sense. In a 2014 Fast Company article, Lisa Gansky summarized the early evolution of the sharing economy by indicating that “early companies like Uber, Lyft, Quirky, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, RelayRides, and 99 Designs garnered much visibility, but these companies were funded by venture capital, with an eye on big paydays

…

: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 31. http://www.fastcompany.com/3057014/fed-up-with-uber-and-lyft-drivers-plan-to-launch-competing-app. 32. Lisa Gansky, “Collaborative Economy Companies Need to Start Sharing More Value with the People Who Make Them Valuable

…

parts of Asia, radically reshaping the automobile industry, shifting market power away from today’s leading manufacturers and towards a range of technology platforms—Uber, Lyft, Didi Kuaidi and Ola, as well as Apple, Google, and perhaps even Amazon. In parallel, the additive manufacturing revolution will change how artifacts are

…

(CPUC), 153–154 Capalino, James, 136 Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), 123 Card, David, 166 Car sharing, 1, 3. See also BlaBlaCar; Getaround; Lyft; Turo; Uber data science and, 157 La’Zooz, 94–95 local network effects, 119–120 regulatory challenges, 135 trust and, 98 Cartagena, Juan, 65 Castor

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy

by Tom Slee  · 18 Nov 2015  · 265pp  · 69,310 words

this new flexible mode of work, setting up our own businesses on Sharing Economy web sites; we can become an Airbnb host, a driver for Lyft, a handyperson for Handy, or an altruistic investor making loans on Lending Club. The movement seems to threaten those who are already powerful, like big

…

in Silver Lake, California, it was Peers that rallied Airbnb hosts to lobby councilors on the company’s behalf. When Seattle City Council decided that Lyft and Uber were breaking taxi regulations, it was Peers that mobilized supporters to sign petitions. And these efforts were not in vain: they succeeded in

…

victories they got the state of California to recognize a new category of transit organization called “Transportation Network Companies,” which created a framework within which Lyft, Uber, Sidecar, and others could operate legally, and which has been imitated in several other states since. In the summer of 2014, Peers listed 75

…

to Spinlister. There are Sharing Economy organizations sprouting up for all kinds of activities. Getting around is the most prevalent offering, represented by ridesharing companies (Lyft, Sidecar), car sharing (RelayRides), bike sharing (Spinlister, Divvy), and more. Sharing meals and sharing household goods are popular, and personal services such as house cleaning

…

Mechanical Turk (Amazon’s online labor market) is not. Airbnb is practically synonymous with the sharing economy, but traditional bed and breakfasts are left out. Lyft, a ride service company, claims to be in, but Uber, another ride service company, does not. Shouldn’t public libraries and parks count? When

…

campuses. But there were limits to the number of inter-city rides that students would take, and Zimride had bigger ambitions. In 2012, Zimride launched Lyft, an app that paired riders and passengers for short-distance rides (within a city, rather than between cities).9 The idea sounds like a carpool

…

ride-matching service, but Lyft made another decision to scale up their offering: it made it possible for drivers to earn enough on a ride that they would undertake journeys

…

did not charge a fee, but riders could make (and, basically, were expected to make) a voluntary donation in lieu of a standardized fare, with Lyft suggesting a donation amount. Marketing promoted its drivers as regular people rather than professionals (“Your friend with a car”), and emphasized the community nature of

…

the experience. Lyft focused on growth. In June 2013 they raised $60 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists led by Andreessen Horowitz. In discussing the deal, Scott Weiss

…

accomplished operators and they understand how to scale a business.” 10 In the early days of the purchase, the media was confused about the business Lyft was in. Time, for example, wrote that “Today, millions of people are driving around in cars with empty seats while millions of others lack

…

aspects of its business were shed as the company’s finances moved to new heights. The oddly named French company BlaBlaCar has stayed closer to Lyft’s original idea of becoming the digital equivalent of the student bulletin board, providing a matching service for long-distance travel that is more like

…

in October 2014. It remains to be seen whether BlaBlaCar can keep to its current model when pressure for returns from its investors increases. UBER Lyft may have started out with a message of community and sharing, but its bigger and more successful competitor Uber had no such pretensions. As the

…

enough to pay the premium that Uber charged over other black car services. Between 2009 and 2013 it grew quickly from city to city, but Lyft and other ridesharing services were offering lower prices. Belatedly, Uber recognized the cost advantage that ridesharing companies had, and decided that if it couldn’t

…

massive regulatory ambiguity leading to one-sided competition which Uber has not engaged in to its own disadvantage.19 So Uber launched UberX which, like Lyft, relied on unlicensed drivers with their own cars, many without commercial insurance. UberX has expanded with lightning speed: The number of drivers rose from

…

Peers and others, California became the first state to create a separate set of rules for what it called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), Uber and Lyft were the main beneficiaries.21 The TNC framework has since been adopted by Colorado, as well as Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Houston, and Washington. While

…

big, especially within a city. That’s one reason why Uber CEO Travis Kalanick admitted to undermining the fund-raising efforts of his main competitor, Lyft.38 The ridesharing model is a “two-sided marketplace” in which Uber manages the supply of both riders and drivers. The more riders on the

…

around.” One effect of the transportation network companies’ rapid rise is that, in some cities, it could remove transit options for wheelchair users.64 If Lyft and Uber claim to provide urban transit then universal access is a challenge they must address, but there is little indication that they are doing

…

accommodations (there is no way to search for listings that provide disabled access, and few listings say whether they are accessible).66 Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft each take steps to nudge or encourage their service providers to provide disabled access, using language that emphasizes their commitment to helping disabled people. But

…

system. Uber drivers are not told where to drive, so they may avoid what they consider as “sketchy” parts of town, and both Uber and Lyft have been accused of “redlining”: not providing services to poor and minority neighborhoods.68 Numerous comments on social media suggest that one of the appeals

…

of Uber and Lyft to young and well-off early adopters was that the drivers matched their age, educational-level, and social background more than did taxi drivers. Instead

…

when competition forces an evolution of business models. TASKRABBIT The first company in the space was TaskRabbit, which started at the same time as Airbnb, Lyft, and others. The listing for TaskRabbit on the business information web site CrunchBase describes the moment when the company founder had her idea: It was

…

platforms have moved from a model that mimics personal interactions to one that models the consumer experience: eBay moved away from auctions toward fixed prices, Lyft gave up on “donations” for fares. The changes are unilateral. The idea (promoted by the company) that they empower taskers turned out to be

…

mobile devices is enabling what I call “People Marketplaces”: two-sided marketplaces that connect consumers with people providing specific services. From finding a ride with Lyft, to getting your house cleaned with Homejoy, home-delivered restaurant meals from DoorDash and Caviar, and instant pet-sitting from DogVacay, the variety and usage

…

else in the system.” 2 Friedman was writing just a couple of weeks after his New York Times stablemate David Brooks described “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other”: “Companies like Airbnb establish trust through ratings mechanisms . . . People in the Airbnb economy don’t have the

…

that Sharing Economy advocates claim can be scaled up by using internet reputation systems. Airbnb and BlaBlaCar both describe themselves as “a trusted community marketplace;” Lyft’s one million rides show “the power of community.” Instead of passing on comments by word of mouth, we now click to rate John the

…

the region’s belief in the value of entrepreneurship,11 so now Sharing Economy companies have coined a word for “people as companies.” Airbnb hosts, Lyft drivers, and TaskRabbit errand-runners are “micro-entrepreneurs”: the self as corporation, and one’s reputation as personal brand. If investment in “reputation as

…

detailed and careful analysis that comes to the same conclusion about Sharing Economy ratings as did Wired magazine’s Kat Kane, a regular Uber and Lyft customer. She admits to giving five-star ratings after white-knuckle rides, and her experience tells her that ratings are no indication of quality: “

…

Couchsurfing is far from unique. Chapter 5 showed how Zipcar failed to sustain a community feel once it scaled up its commercial efforts, and how Lyft’s community-focused model also collapsed as it looked to monetary incentives to recruit drivers and as it raised venture capital to compete with Uber

…

staying in hotels, but when it comes to economic impact, it compares its impact to the same number of people staying at home. Uber and Lyft compare their environmental impact to people driving private cars rather than to people riding buses or taking the subway. They claim that their relatively small

…

hook if things go wrong. Successful Sharing Economy companies also avoid the expense of providing universal access provisions. In Chapter 4 we saw Uber and Lyft claim that access for the disabled is not their problem; suggestions that Airbnb’s platform inadvertently enables the propagation of racial profiling have met with

…

so in a self-interested way that continues to leave cities frustrated. Successful Sharing Economy companies have learned how to minimize insurance costs. Uber and Lyft started by arguing that no commercial insurance was necessary for private rides, and ever since have made efforts to minimize the coverage they provide in

…

service, and you have the responsibilities of being an employer of the people driving the cars.” 21 Liss-Riordan has also taken up cases against Lyft, Handy, Homejoy, and Instacart. In June 2015, the California Labor Commissioner’s Office ordered Uber to reimburse one of its drivers, Barbara Ann Berwick,

…

and Sustainability” 6, no. 3 (2001). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/6/3/chesters.html. Chu, Patrick. “Fedex’s $228 Million Settlement Could Dent Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Homejoy, Caviar and Other San Francisco Companies Using Low-Cost Independent Contractors for Labor.” San Francisco Business Times, June 16, 2015. http://www.bizjournals

…

.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/06/fedex-settlement-uber-lyft-caviar-homejoy-labor.html. Clampet, Jason. “Airbnb CEO Responds to Illegal Rentals Story.” Skift, January 11, 2013. http://skift.com/2013/01/11/airbnb-responds

…

. “Uber-Nasty? Staff Submits 5,560 Fake Ride Requests.” CNNMoney, August 11, 2014. http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft/index.html. Flamm, Matthew. “Strange Bedfellows in Airbnb Dispute.” Crain’s New York Business. Accessed May 9, 2015. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/ 20131013/HOSPITALITY

…

/rpt/2004-R-0380.htm. Sadowski, Jathan. “Hey, Ride-Sharing Services. Stop Greenwashing!,” July 292013. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/29/lyft_and_zipcar_climate_change_environmental_greenwashing.html. Said, Carolyn. “Airbnb Profits Prompted S.F. Eviction, Ex-Tenant Says.” San Francisco Chronicle. Accessed May 9, 2015

…

May 9, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/technology/uber-fund-raising-points-to-50-billion-valuation.html. Tanz, Jason. “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” Wired Magazine, April 23, 2014. http://www.wired.com/2014/04/trust-in-the-share-economy/. Tapscott, Don

…

-uber-battle-at-city-hall/. Trautman, Ted. “Will Uber Serve Customers With Disabilities?,” June 302014. http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/wheelchair-users-ride-share-uber-lyft. Uber. Dynamic Pricing 101. Accessed June 12, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76q7PDnxWuE. Underhill, Justine. “Postmates: Rise of the Anti-Amazon.” Yahoo Finance

…

04/analyzing-postmates-growth/. Wilonsky, Robert. “On the Same Day Dallas Task Force Begins Debating Car-for-Hire Rules, Cab Industry Sues Chicago over Uber, Lyft.” City Hall Blog, February 6, 2014. http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2014/02/on-the-same-day-dallas-task-force-begins-debating-car-for-hire-rules

…

-cab-industry-sues-chicago-over-uber-lyft.html/. Wohlsen, Marcus. “Google Pours Millions Into New Tech Gold Rush: Housecleaning,” December 52013. http://www.wired.com/2013/12/google-homejoy-funding/. Zervas,

…

://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2554500. Zipcar. “Green Benefits,” n.d. http://www.zipcar.com/universities/how/greenbenefits. Endnotes Chapter 1 1 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 2 In a completely different context, I am following the example of MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception. 3

…

Is Trust.’” 2 Fowler and Rusli, “Don’t Talk to Strangers, Unless You Plan to Share Your Mac-and-Cheese.” 3 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 4 Botsman, “The Sharing Economy Lacks a Shared Definition.” 5 Owyang, “The Collaborative Sharing Economy Has Created 17

…

, Ride-Sharing Services. Stop Greenwashing!” 8 Schor, “Debating the Sharing Economy.” 9 Gannes, “Zimride Turns Regular Cars Into Taxis With New Ride-Sharing App, Lyft.” 10 Gustin, “Lyft-Off: Car-Sharing Start-Up Raises $60 Million Led by Andreessen Horowitz.” 11 Ibid. 12 Gannes, “Zimride Turns Regular Cars Into Taxis With New

…

, “An Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber’s Driver-Partners in the United States.” 21 Geron, “California Becomes First State To Regulate Ridesharing Services Lyft, Sidecar, UberX.” 22 Ferguson, “Recent Transportation Network Company Ordinances.” 23 California Public Utilities Commission, “Transportation Network Companies.” 24 Hirsch, “Taxi Trouble.” 25 Watters, “The MOOC

…

BBB and Uber”; Huet, “Uber’s ‘F’ Rating At Better Business Bureau Isn’t For Surge Pricing--Just For Unresponsiveness.” 19 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 20 Sauchelli and Golding, “Hookers Turning Airbnb Apartments into Brothels.” 21 CBC News, “Airbnb Renters Who Trashed Calgary

…

§ 230—Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material.” 5 Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Section 230 Protections.” 6 Scola, “The Very Big Thing That Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Didn’t Get From California – Next City.” 7 LoGiurato, “This Is The One Law Airbnb’s Opponents Desperately Want To Change.” 8 Weise

…

Hellscape of Labor Code Violations.” 18 Huet, “Contractor or Employee? Silicon Valley’s Branding Dilemma.” 19 Chu, “Fedex’s $228 Million Settlement Could Dent Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Homejoy, Caviar and Other San Francisco Companies Using Low-Cost Independent Contractors for Labor.” 20 Pyke, “California Truckers Will Get $2.2 Million In

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy

by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle  · 12 Mar 2019  · 349pp  · 98,309 words

am going to be [sleeping] on a bench somewhere.’” Baran, twenty-eight, is a college student at a local university who drives for Uber and Lyft. In New York, app-based drivers have the same insurance and licensing requirements as taxi drivers, a cost that usually runs several thousand dollars. To

…

” as she is renting her home out. TaskRabbit assistants and Kitchensurfing chefs aren’t “sharing” their services but being paid. Likewise, even though Uber and Lyft describe themselves as “ride-sharing,” charging for private vehicle transportation is simply a taxi or chauffer service by any other name. While

…

Lyft (slogan: “Your friend with a car”) originally encouraged riders to “sit in the front seat like a friend, rather than in the backseat like a

…

humans need. . . . Part of the appeal of the sharing economy is helping to bridge that gap.”24 John Zimmer, a cofounder of the taxi app Lyft, compares the sharing economy to his time spent on the Oglala Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota: “Their sense of community, of connection to

…

cars, users were mistrustful of them and relied on the company to police the system. Researchers have suggested that Lyft’s lack of success in relation to Uber may be a result of Lyft “putting too much emphasis on consumers’ desire to ‘share’ with each other,” and that “consumers are more interested

…

the changing relationship between worker and firm and the resulting workplace risks encountered by sharing economy workers. The majority of sharing economy workers—including Uber/Lyft drivers, TaskRabbit runners, Airbnb hosts, and Handy cleaners—are independent contractors. In recent years, the number of workers classified as independent contractors has grown steadily

…

give them little control over their labor, and that they are forced to shoulder personal and financial risks. Numerous lawsuits brought by workers of Uber, Lyft, and Handy argue that the restrictions on, and requirements for, workers mean they should be considered employees—not independent contractors. Other suits, such as one

…

dollars in six months. Other ads promised workers the opportunity to be their own bosses, drive without limits, and escape dispatcher favoritism (see fig. 7). Lyft, Gett, and Via soon followed with their own ad campaigns. Figure 7. Uber advertisement on the back of a Metropolitan Transit Authority bus in New

…

the same way that a high percentage of cab drivers in New York are male (estimates range from 90 to 97 percent), all Uber and Lyft participants were male. Their ages ranged from twenty-two to fifty-nine, with 60 percent falling between twenty and thirty-nine years of age; the

…

, a grassroots organization that aimed to “to grow the sharing economy” was started in 2013 with the support of twenty-two partners, including Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and several foundations. While not directly funded by the platforms, donations from “mission-aligned” independent donors, such as platform executives and investors, have raised questions

…

New York in July 2014, when Uber continued to collect 20 percent of the reduced fares. While drivers who utilize both platforms often view Lyft more favorably, Lyft has also cut rates—reducing fares nationwide in April 2014 by as much as 30 percent.41 Table 2 shows how some New York

…

third. Table 2 UberX Rates in New York City, 2014 to 2018 In addition to reducing rates, both services have also changed their commissions. When Lyft reduced rates in 2014, it “temporarily eliminated its 20% commission ‘to provide our growing driver community with peace of mind’ during the price drop.” In

…

day.” In the video, Kalanick argues that rates were not dropped on UberBLACK, but on services such as uberX as a way to compete with Lyft, before going on to lose his temper and blame the driver for his own financial woes: “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for

…

the Plaza. And the Waldorf has—you have your own vanity inside the stalls, and it’s kind of ridiculous.” Larry, fifty-four, an Uber/Lyft driver, explained, “I have an app on my phone, a McDonald’s app. A lot of them are open twenty-four hours, and they’re

…

a homicide victimization rate that is between twenty-one and thirty-three times higher than the national average for all workers. Although drivers for Uber, Lyft, Via, and other car-sharing services do not carry large amounts of cash, they do carry valuable smartphones, tablets, and GPS systems. Additionally, for-hire

…

up his Uber driver was also fired. But these are only the incidences that are caught on tape. Cameras are not required by Uber or Lyft, and many drivers, whether owing to the expense or to concerns about the legality of the cameras, don’t have them. It doesn’t help

…

access to general liability insurance, auto excess insurance, and accidental occupational liability while on duty. Although most transportation and delivery services, such as Uber and Lyft, offer general liability insurance to protect individuals hurt by workers, the Postmates accidental occupational liability policy is otherwise unmatched by any competitor (as of this

…

the home of a fellow unknown either to cook (Kitchensurfing), or to sleep (Airbnb), or to clean, make minor repairs, or assemble furniture (TaskRabbit). Meanwhile, Lyft and Uber and other app-driven car services involve people getting in a stranger’s vehicle—violating one of the first “stranger danger” rules that

…

service does. How often do app-based drivers have sex with their passengers? It’s hard to say, and it’s doubtful that Uber or Lyft will be researching or publicizing such statistics anytime soon. Officials with the Whisper website, an anonymous social media site that allows users to post secrets

…

and confessions, say that they’ve “vetted accounts of several people who said they have had sex with an Uber or Lyft driver, and of drivers who said they had sex with customers. And based on things such as geo-location of the posts and direct inquiries

…

on, workers may be in a dangerous situation where it is safer to acquiesce than protest. This is especially evident with ride-sharing services such Lyft and Uber. New York is one of the few locations to embrace sharing economy drivers as its own: drivers are fully licensed by the Taxi

…

piggy bank on wheels. You don’t want to make the opportunity for crime any easier than it is.”9 In part because Uber and Lyft drivers do not carry cash and are prohibited from picking up street hails in New York or accepting cash payments, there’s an expectation that

…

the app-based invisibility of payment, partnered with user profiles, promotes the idea of trustworthiness and small-town safety. When you request an Uber or Lyft, the company is supposed to have your name, credit card number, billing address, and photo on file—a taxicab driver simply has an anonymous figure

…

on the side of the road. Indeed, as noted earlier, when Lyft, with its motto “Your friend with a car,” began operating, passengers were even encouraged to sit in the front seat, further reducing a driver’s

…

made about $1,200. So I was just saying, ‘All right, I made the right decision.’” Like many drivers, Hector drove for both Uber and Lyft, often deciding which app to activate based on the active guarantees and his own experience with passengers and demand. He described

…

Lyft passengers as nicer, but also noted that Uber had more clients. Although his income appears to be higher than his earnings at the furniture rental

…

of who was in the car. Hector believes that ride-sharing services may be especially appealing to drug dealers because the prevalence of Uber and Lyft cars in the outer boroughs of New York City may mean that they are less likely to draw the attention of the police. Hector’s

…

my roof; I feature that too.” In New York, where app-based drivers are governed by Taxi and Limousine Commission rules, driving for Uber or Lyft has presented a high capital barrier. As noted previously, drivers must provide access to a relatively new car that meets Uber requirements (high capital investment

…

commercial insurance requirements also constitute a considerable capital investment. However, there are ways around these barriers. In New York City, drivers can lease an Uber/Lyft-approved vehicle from another driver or from a car service. While the cost is high—Baran, twenty-eight, noted that at least two full days

…

the decision to accept a guest. It’s this worker control that sets Kitchensurfing and Airbnb apart from TaskRabbit and car services like Uber and Lyft. While all four services promote the entrepreneurial ethos and promise that workers can be their own bosses (see chap 2 for a more complete discussion

…

), workers were free to accept or reject as many gigs as they wished on Kitchensurfing and Airbnb. Unlike TaskRabbit or Uber/Lyft, where participants had to accept a certain percentage of gigs or face the risk of deactivation, Kitchensurfing and Airbnb workers were entirely in control of

…

financial implications of driving for the service. “According to an internal slide deck on driver income levels viewed by The New York Times, Uber considered Lyft and McDonald’s its main competition for attracting new drivers.”56 There are stories of super successful drivers, but their high incomes are not the

…

hired someone online for a task/errand (4 percent). The Pew study also found racial differences by service platform. Car services, such as Uber and Lyft, have been identified as helping equalize the playing field by reducing the discrimination that racial minorities may otherwise experience in hailing a cab. Latinos (18

…

percent) and blacks (15 percent) were slightly more likely than whites (14 percent) to have used a transportation service such as Uber or Lyft. But, while 13 percent of white adults had used a home-sharing service, only 9 percent of Latinos and 5 percent of blacks had used

…

real need. Indeed, while I was doing this research, one of my family members, seeking to soften a financial blow, began driving for Uber and Lyft. As he put it, driving was helping “make ends meet.” As critical as I am of the sharing economy and its lack of worker protections

…

of hours actually worked (factor 12, regarding payment), is he an employee or an independent contractor? If a driver can work for both Uber and Lyft (factor 17, regarding working for more than one firm), but her rates are determined by the services (factor 3, regarding integration), where does she fall

…

avoid detection by the boss at least some of the time, the app-based tools allow for constant tracking. Thanks to GPS systems, Uber and Lyft know exactly when a driver arrives, picks up a passenger, where he goes, and when he drops them off. With required in-app communication, Airbnb

…

(2015); Balsamini (2016) 28. Manjoo (2016). 29. Kwon (2005). 30. The vast majority of for-hire drivers—whether they drive yellow taxicabs or through Uber/Lyft or a black car service—in New York City are male. Estimates vary, but roughly 5 to 7 percent of drivers are female. Norén (2010

…

Chores for You.” Business Insider, June 17. Kravets, David. 2016. “Judge Calls Uber Algorithm ‘Genius,’ Green-Lights Surge-Pricing Lawsuit.” Ars Technica, April 4. ———. 2017. “Lyft Agrees to Pay $27 Million to Settle Driver Classification Lawsuit.” Ars Technica, March 18. Kricheli-Katz, Tamar, and Tali Regev. 2016. “How Many Cents on

…

. Mahmood, Omar. 2016. “Uber Driver Suspended, Responds to Anti-Semitism Accusations.” Michigan Review, March 28. Mangalindan, J.P. 2014. “In Price Wars, Some Uber and Lyft Drivers Feel the Crunch.” Fortune, May 28. Mani, Anandi, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao. 2013. “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” Science 341(6149):976

…

, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsman. 2012. “Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students.” PNAS 109(41):16474–79. Murray, Rheana. 2014. “Uber, Lyft Drivers and Customers Kiss and Tell.” ABC News, July 30. Nadeem, Shehzad. 2015. “On the Sharing Economy.” Contexts (Winter). Nanos, Janelle. 2013. “The End of

…

of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press. Surowiecki, James. 2013. “Airbnb’s New York Problem.” New Yorker, October 8. Tanz, Jason. 2014. “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” Wired, April 23. Tedesco, Austin. 2015. “Boston Police Officer Indicted for Allegedly Assaulting Uber Driver.” Boston.com, April

…

. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage. Wingfield, Nick, and Mike Isaac. 2015. “Seattle Will Allow Uber and Lyft Drivers to Form Unions.” New York Times, December 14. Wise, Scott, and Jon Burkett. 2016. “‘He Was Trying to Kill Me’: Uber Driver Attacked on

…

Fuel and Iron Corporation, 68–69 Commission on Industrial Relations, 93 commission structure model: independent contractor status and, 199–201box 1; Juno/Gett, 190–91; Lyft, 75; TaskRabbit, 6, 80, 185; Uber, 75–76, 184; worker control and, 182 Committee on Public Safety, 93 communication issues: Airbnb, 63; anonymity and, 141

…

Employers’ Liability Acts of 1906 and 1908, 93 enclosure movement, 66 entrepreneurial ethos: Airbnb, 44–45, 45fig. 6, 171; Kitchensurfing, 58–59, 161–62, 171; Lyft, 171; personal responsibility and, 181–82; TaskRabbit, 56, 171; Uber, 52–53, 171; worker control and, 64, 171 entrepreneurship: overview, 6, 23, 31; Airbnb and

…

-barriers, 42–43, 43tab. 1 Lowell, Massachusetts, 66–67, 70 low skill-barriers, 42–43, 43tab. 1, 160 low-skill work, 41 Ludlow Massacre, 69 Lyft: bathroom use, 88; comparison to, 32–33, 75, 185; competition with, 78; criminal activity and, 143–47; employee monitoring, 204; general liability insurance, 110; high

…

capital-barrier, 43tab. 1, 167; lawsuits by workers against, 38; low skill-barrier, 43tab. 1; LyftLine, 105; Lyft worker, 2–3; payment rate changes, 75; Peers.com and, 72; safety issues, 101–4, 113; as sharing economy company, 26; start-up expenses, 2

…

homicide victim rate, 101; report on job injuries, 36 oDesk, 204 Omidyar, Pierre, 26 on-call services, 55 on-call taxi service, 26. See also Lyft; Uber on-demand contractor status, 202 on-demand economy: as form of sharing economy, 28fig. 2; sharing economy comparisons, 27; term usage, 5 on-demand

…

–15; challenges of, 23, 25; client response rates and, 84; Donald, 61–64; fear and, 11, 17; gig economy and, 15–18; hosts as, 166; Lyft case study, 2–3; middle-wage workers, 219n12; portable benefits plan, 202, 203; TaskRabbit case study, 1–2, 3–5; TaskRabbit worker, 1–2; Uber

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

by Adam Lashinsky  · 31 Mar 2017  · 190pp  · 62,941 words

as various missteps caused many riders and drivers to sour on the company. Well-funded competitors also sprang up everywhere Uber did business. These included Lyft and Juno in the United States, Gett in Europe, Didi in China, GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia, and Ola in India. All raised ample funding,

…

in 2016 that while 51 percent of Americans had heard of the concept of ridesharing, just 15 percent had used a service like Uber and Lyft, and another 33 percent were unfamiliar with them altogether. Surveys suggest that Uber has had a meaningful impact on the life of young adults in

…

did to Scour, would never forget the importance of rapidly innovating on a competitor’s good ideas. More than a decade later when he saw Lyft out-innovate Uber, he reacted quickly. Napster became a viral sensation and a part of the cultural conversation. It quickly outshined Scour: by 2001

…

. In 2014, Hickenlooper signed a bill that lightly regulated Uber and its competitors, effectively legalizing the service. These battles played out almost everywhere Uber—and Lyft, often behind it—went. In early 2014, for example, the news site BuzzFeed counted seventeen active regulatory fights in various U.S. cities, counties, and

…

most instances a massive lobbying and public-relations onslaught succeeded in allowing the ridesharing companies to operate. But not everywhere. In May 2016, Uber and Lyft left Austin, Texas, after refusing to comply with the city’s fingerprinting measures. New ridesharing services willing to comply with Austin’s rules quickly offered

…

began in July as a service that provided rides in hybrid cars. It was a small-scale response to a new competitor, a company called Lyft, which beginning in May 2012 started a service that enabled anyone with a car to slap a giant pink mustache on the grill and “share

…

defined itself as an upscale service, with its network of independent contractors consisting of licensed, professional limousine drivers. Now, though it initially stayed away from Lyft’s anything-goes approach, it was ready to move down-market. “The best way to describe it is that the experience will be efficient, but

…

ordinary people popped up around town with a giant pink mustache plastered on the front. The young company associated with the pink grill ornament was Lyft, the first of a new breed of so-called ridesharing companies. (Others included Sidecar in the United States and Hailo in the United Kingdom.) “Ridesharing

…

term of art among tech companies. Only professional drivers sat behind the wheels of taxis—and, at the time, limos operating on the Uber platform. Lyft was different. In fact, it positioned itself as the antithesis of its better-known competitor. If Uber was “Everyone’s Private Driver,” charging a hefty

…

premium over cabs, Lyft represented a friendly neighbor who’d invite you into her front seat, fist-bump you once you sat down, and charge you merely the cost

…

plus a “donation” for her trouble. What’s more, that price might well be less than a cab ride. Sharing was a misnomer, given that Lyft’s drivers were out to make a buck every bit as much as Uber’s. But by promoting the fiction of a friendly gesture rather

…

t illegal taxi rides and didn’t fall under any regulator’s jurisdiction. In reality, Uber worked only with licensed livery drivers; Lyft’s drivers were freelancing amateurs. Yet Lyft had one critical similarity with Uber in that its smartphone app adopted the push-a-button/get-a-ride simplicity that catapulted

…

study in contrasts, especially in their origins. Uber grew out of the San Francisco “brogrammer” culture and Garrett Camp’s delight in rolling in style. Lyft sprang from the idealistic mind of Logan Green, who’d served on the Santa Barbara, California, public transit board when he was a university student

…

?’” After writing the software for a smartphone app over three weeks in the spring of 2012, Zimride launched a new service in San Francisco called Lyft. It was a hit, especially with young people who shunned the elitist stigma of riding in a limousine. Says Zimmer: “It was so popular

…

so quickly we had to create a wait list.” Uber’s customers hadn’t needed to be told how to be chauffeured, but Lyft’s unique approach required some consumer training. “One thing that we had to solve that they didn’t in doing the limo experience was that

…

s what your parents told you never to do. It’s also not aspirational to get in the backseat of someone’s Honda Accord.” So Lyft encouraged riders to hop in front, which is where you’d sit with a friend. “Sitting in the backseat was something you do in a

…

want to know why a fluffy pink mustache was attached to the front of cars on the streets of San Francisco.) Uber caught wind of Lyft, but initially it decided “ridesharing” not only wasn’t its thing but likely represented a violation of rules regulating taxis. “We watched it closely,”

…

says Ryan Graves, Uber’s head of operations. “And we were keenly in touch with the reality that it was against the rules.” At first, Lyft assumed Uber would leave the grubby end of the market to them. “They had this view of a luxury lifestyle brand, and they had always

…

into the new market. In mid-2012 it experimented with offering inexpensive rides in fuel-efficient hybrid cars, calling the new service UberX. Yet as Lyft grew, especially in Uber’s home market, Uber was clearly rattled. Kalanick publicly showed his ire. On a March morning in 2013 he posted a

…

message on Twitter suggesting that Uber had spoken to “dozens” of Lyft drivers who hadn’t seen Lyft’s insurance policy. About twenty minutes later, Zimmer replied, “Travis—seems like you’re fishing for info and might need some insurance

…

back, “you’ve got a lot of catching up to do . . . #clone.” These were fighting words. Over time, Uber would frequently use “clone” to denigrate Lyft, including in its presentations for investors. It apparently stung that the smaller and less well-funded company had beaten Uber to the punch in the

…

in April 2013 justifying Uber’s entry into the market for cars driven by amateur drivers. He concluded that the absence of regulatory action against Lyft in San Francisco amounted to a tacit approval to operate. As well, letting another company test the market was a painful lesson for Uber. “

…

2013 Uber executed a pivot of its own, repositioning UberX and beginning to recruit drivers for its new service. It made no effort to simulate Lyft’s goofy hood ornament or faux-friendly demeanor; Uber was about getting an inexpensive ride from point A to point B as quickly as possible

…

offer ridesharing, sold its Zimride business to the car-rental company Enterprise Holdings, which continues to operate it and still caters to universities and companies. (Lyft, Zimride’s ridesharing product before the sale, became the company’s name.) Uber went through a product repositioning as well. UberX, initially promoted as an

…

limo, became Uber’s taxi-beating offering. What had been Uber was now UberBlack, which in time became a tiny percentage of Uber’s business. Lyft may have had a new approach, but due to its head start with limos, Uber had a broader network in which to insert UberX. It

…

-seven markets worldwide by the end of 2013. Size didn’t prevent Uber from feeling threatened by its pesky and preternaturally cheerful competitor. To keep Lyft in its place, Uber repeatedly used aggressive tactics against it. In 2014, the technology news site The Verge published a stunning exposé of Uber’s

…

.) In e-mails, Uber encouraged its recruiters to “#shavethestache.” Uber owned up to “Operation SLOG,” saying its recruitment drive was fair competition. But after allowing Lyft to build one new market under its nose, Uber was ever vigilant about not letting it happen again. Both companies maintained a constant dialogue with

…

of millions, then hundreds of millions of dollars. Its most prominent early backer was Andreessen Horowitz, the same firm that had snubbed Uber in 2011. Lyft would continue to feel stymied by Uber, and not just in the competition for riders. “For a company so confident that it’s a single

…

-horse race, they’ve historically been quite scared of us,” says Zimmer. As Lyft has discussed stakes with investors, he says, Uber has “tried to talk to whoever we’re talking to, somehow knowing sometimes pretty close to when

…

look more and more alike, with many drivers registering to offer rides through both services, depending on which company’s short-term incentives were better. Lyft would never come close to Uber in size. But its mere existence forced Uber to spend far more money than it had anticipated, denting and

…

said, ‘Emil, we just raised $250 million. I don’t think we’ll ever need to raise money again.’” Circumstances suggested otherwise. With Uber combating Lyft at home and multiple players around the world, the company’s capital needs suddenly seemed endless. By mid-2014 Kalanick had indeed tapped Michael to

…

I had that up.” If Kalanick was feeling the heat, it would only get worse for him and for Uber. The “Operation SLOG” campaign against Lyft had solidified a sense of Uber’s nefariousness among a growing slice of the tech-aware public. “Hopefully people understand what an evil company UBER

…

is and boycott their service,” read one comment on The Verge, which published the exposé of Uber’s campaign against Lyft. Said another: “What can you expect when UBER’s CEO is another one of those Ayn-Rand loving libertarian nutjobs.” It became politically correct

…

. If investment hurt potential profitability, competition was a much bigger problem. During the first week of 2016 Uber’s primary competitor in the United States, Lyft, announced a partnership with and investment by General Motors. GM agreed to invest $500 million, with plans to build its self-driving car capacity on

…

the strength of Lyft’s national network. Lyft gave GM a seat at the technology table. GM provided Lyft with money, which it promptly began using to take market share from Uber in crucial markets, including San

…

market share in major markets typically had been around 20 percent. In early 2016, with Uber attempting to squeeze costs out of its operations, Lyft began taking share, growing its share to as much as 37 percent, by Uber’s calculations, in San Francisco. With similar products, market share was

…

make a conscious decision to forgo profitability in a city like San Francisco to gain market share back,” says Gupta. By midyear, Uber had reduced Lyft’s share in the headquarters city they shared from 37 percent to 30 percent. Uber referred to this as a “balance sheet war,” and its

…

balance sheet, with $5 billion at the time, was considerably bigger than Lyft’s. At the end of the day, Uber moves to the occasionally eccentric and frequently capricious beat of its CEO, who sometimes inspires and quite

…

of independent-contractor drivers everywhere. Campbell started by writing about his own experiences as a driver, particularly for Uber, but also for competing services like Lyft and DoorDash and any other company pursuing a similar business model. He was bullish on the field, considering that he liked the independence and freshness

…

cashes out drivers on a daily basis. The Rideshare Guy’s steadiest source of revenue is derived from the drumbeat of new drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other services. As Campbell’s blog is the go-to source for information about driving for Uber, anyone trying to learn the ropes checks

…

, Campbell has a take on all the important debates involving Uber. In 2016 a federal judge in San Francisco overturned an agreement by Uber and Lyft with their drivers in California and Massachusetts that would have seen Uber paying out $100 million to confirm the drivers’ status as independent contractors. The

…

strict policy for deciding when to drive. “I don’t drive if it’s not surging.” A ridesharing driver since 2015—he also drives for Lyft—Snover has been able to track the decline in Uber payments. He says he earned about $1.50 per mile when he started out. That

…

90 cents, which explains his surge-only practice. On the other hand, Snover deftly learned how to take advantage of the generous incentives Uber and Lyft have paid to build up their driver rolls. He said he got $500 for signing up his wife to drive for each service. Together with

…

minimum-level bonuses, the two banked $1,400 from Uber and Lyft just for starting to drive. Many Uber drivers also follow a predictable path from excitement to disappointment to resignation. Bineyam Tesfaye, a former cabbie in

…

billion; Uber China was in a mere sixty, and already had lost $2 billion. Its position in China, in other words, was directly analogous to Lyft’s in the United States. The local managers were worried, and they wanted to gauge the CEO’ s staying power. Kalanick was encouraging, but his

…

might enhance its business. An example was “Test Drive,” which allowed users to request specific models of cars they might then want to buy. Like Lyft and unlike Uber, Didi allowed tipping, a driver favorite. Didi also had something of a chip on its shoulder, an emotion not foreign to Travis

…

was to go on the offensive on Uber’s home turf. In September 2015, it invested $100 million in Uber’s main U.S. rival, Lyft. Then, two months later, it unveiled a cooperation pact with two other Uber adversaries, Ola in India and GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia. The Didi-led

…

when asked its goals. This was all well and good, but not Didi’s main goal. It knew as well as Uber did that funding Lyft raised Uber’s costs in the United States, sapping its energy in China. Organizing the global opposition was a fringe benefit. In Didi, Uber had

…

R&D investment costs obscured what kind of business Uber ultimately could be. Competitors promised to be a continued thorn in Uber’s side too. Lyft, flush with GM’s investment, continued to lose as much as $50 million a month. In early 2017 it vowed to expand into an

…

meeting with the president. Then the situation got out of control. Overnight, anti-Uber fury spread on social media. The next morning, January 29, 2017, Lyft fanned the flames by announcing a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union over four years. Later that day, Uber pledged to create

…

a $3 million defense fund for immigrant drivers affected by the ban, a move that appeared to be in reaction to Lyft. But the damage had been done. More than 200,000 users deleted their Uber accounts, and in an all-hands meeting that week Uber employees

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie  · 6 May 2019  · 328pp  · 84,682 words

party suppliers to create all of the millions of software applications that work on their platforms, even though they built some applications themselves. Similarly, Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, and Airbnb did not have to own any of the cars and homes that their users accessed when they got rides or rented

…

Facebook, or WeChat developer networks, or the millions of people with rooms to rent or cars to drive who have already registered with Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, and Didi Chuxing. As the number of complementors grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for a new firm to enter late and build a competing ecosystem

…

about how expensive it would have been if Airbnb had tried to buy all the homes and apartment buildings its users accessed, or if Uber, Lyft, or Didi had tried to buy all the vehicles its drivers use. In short, we learn from looking at market fundamentals that a platform business

…

few active complementors and only around two dozen employees.3 TRANSACTION PLATFORMS Transaction platforms, such as Amazon Marketplace, Google Search, Facebook, Alibaba’s Taobao, Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, are online marketplaces that enable the exchange of goods, services, and information. They can help people or organizations access and use assets such

…

but it has to overcome several cost drivers before it can earn a profit. To compete with taxis as well as other companies such as Lyft, Uber subsidized the cost of rides, keeping prices artificially low. Uber also paid many drivers a set fee in addition to per-ride compensation or

…

than rides, a tacit admission that it had lost its battle to compete with the larger and more well-known ride-hailing platforms Uber and Lyft.3 That pivot failed to pay off, and the company announced it would suspend operations entirely on December 31. The next month it announced that

…

Sidecar never became a household name. Its failure was nonetheless significant because Sidecar had pioneered the peer-to-peer ride-sharing model before Uber and Lyft transitioned their start-ups into the space. By 2015, ride-sharing platforms—where smartphone apps connected riders with nonprofessional drivers operating their personal vehicles—had

…

app provided information to riders about average donations to help them decide how much to contribute if they chose to do so. Sidecar (and competitor Lyft, which adopted the same payment model) claimed that since they only supplied the technology to connect riders and drivers, they were not a transportation company

…

get the pricing right. Just two months after Sidecar launched, a start-up called Zimride introduced a new peer-to-peer ride-sharing service named Lyft, also based in San Francisco. Zimride had been in business since 2007, operating a long-distance carpooling service that connected riders to drivers using Facebook

…

service to the general public. In 2010, Zimride hit upon the idea of local peer-to-peer ride sharing and developed it into Lyft, which launched in 2012. Lyft quickly eclipsed Zimride’s existing long-distance carpooling business and became its main source of revenue and the company’s major focus. Zimride

…

reincorporated as Lyft in March 2013 and then, in July, sold its original Zimride business to car rental giant Enterprise.9 Meanwhile, things were getting worse for Sidecar:

…

car using a smartphone app. By the time Sidecar launched in mid-2012, Uber had expanded to seventeen cities. Its model differed from Sidecar and Lyft in that Uber at that time partnered with existing taxi and car services, so its drivers were professional drivers, including the lower-cost UberX service

…

introduced in July 2012. Recognizing the threat from Sidecar and Lyft, which could offer lower prices because of the reduced licensing and insurance costs faced by nonprofessional drivers, Uber responded. In September, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

…

10 In April 2013, Uber announced it would begin offering ride-sharing services from nonprofessional drivers using their personal vehicles in cities where Sidecar and Lyft operated and began rolling out the platform under the UberX name that summer. Despite its first-mover status, Sidecar expanded much more slowly than its

…

millionth driver, including over 150,000 active UberX drivers in the United States, and claimed to cover 75 percent of the U.S. population.11 Lyft had expanded to 65 cities with 100,000 drivers, all in the United States, by March 2015.12 With Uber and

…

Lyft in the market, competition for drivers and riders was fierce. Both Uber and Lyft aggressively recruited drivers, offering cash bonuses of up to $500 or even $1,000 for drivers who switched

…

received bonuses by referring drivers from another platform. Riders received credits for their first ride and additional credits when they referred other riders. Uber and Lyft periodically cut fares to attract riders. Although the companies claimed that increased ridership would more than make up for the reduced fares in putting money

…

on each ride from 20 percent to 5 percent until April, when it raised its commission back to 20 percent on the new, lower fares. Lyft followed suit, dropping its fares by 20 percent in April 2014, and reducing its commission to zero. On and off again subsidies for drivers increased

…

the number available on both Uber and Lyft. Uber and Lyft both lost money as they pursued aggressive growth strategies and incurred enormous costs just to find and replace drivers. For example, as we noted

…

in Chapter 3, Uber in 2017 lost $4.5 billion despite gross booking revenues of $37 billion. Although Lyft and Uber were primarily targeting each other in their aggressive strategies, Sidecar was caught in the cross fire and attempted to match some of its

…

to compete at the scale of its rivals. Once Sidecar fell behind in recruiting drivers and riders, network effects made it extremely difficult to compete. Lyft and Uber were able to sustain their aggressive growth strategies because they had raised billions of dollars in equity capital. By contrast, Sidecar had raised

…

—$500 for a driver, or $20 credit—versus our more typical $5 offerings of credit.”16 Sidecar’s failure to keep up with Uber and Lyft in raising capital was a strategic blunder: Management misread the competition, misread the critical role of a supply side (drivers) for a platform market,

…

take the ride-sharing innovation, rebrand it as UberX, and grow it and scale it like clearly no one else was able to—us or Lyft. It shows that our idea really does work. We’re still proud of the authorship even if it ends up being executed by someone else

…

.”19 Of course, the jury was still out on Uber, as well as Lyft and other ride-sharing platforms that relied heavily on driver and rider subsidies. Beyond its enormous expenses and financial losses, Uber had to contend with

…

for both conventional taxi drivers (including six suicides) and ride-sharing drivers. Uber’s strategy to counter the new regulations was to persuade drivers from Lyft and taxi companies to drive for Uber. It was not yet clear how this move would play out.20 In the long run, Uber seemed

…

that fit Amazon’s strategy of offering great retail value, and it was not so large that Amazon felt compelled to copy it. GM AND LYFT: SUPPORT A COMPETING PLATFORM Sometimes belonging to the dominant platform can be a winning strategy when you can take advantage of the platform rules, but

…

its own self-driving cars, GM could be frozen out of the loop. GM’s response was to invest $500 million into Uber’s competitor Lyft to improve the prospects of a competitive industry. Within the taxi industry itself, firms across the world have been striving to fend off Uber’s

…

workers as contractors. California lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan became notorious for leading worker class-action suits against transaction platform companies, having spearheaded lawsuits against Uber, Lyft, and nine other firms that provided on-demand services. In an interview with Fortune magazine, she scoffed at the comments made by Handy’s CEO

…

is also likely to influence practices outside California. Shortly after the California Supreme Court ruling, San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera announced he was subpoenaing Lyft and Uber to see how they classified their drivers and to obtain data on pay and benefits. If those drivers should in fact be considered

…

them minimum wages along with sick days, paid parental leave, and health benefits, according to Herrera. This would have drastic financial consequences for Uber and Lyft in California. These issues were also part of a national debate in the United States about workers in the gig economy more broadly. We cannot

…

has been the emergence of self-driving cars. Ironically, this new technology may replace some of the most widely used platforms in the world: Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, and other ride-sharing businesses. Despite the strong cross-side network effects, the ride-sharing platform revolution could actually disappear. The business challenge

…

drivers as well as keeping ride prices low has squeezed profit margins. In addition, many drivers multi-home (serve both Uber and Lyft, or conventional taxi companies). Therefore, Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing, and other ride-sharing companies have announced that their long-term strategy is to move away from being a pure

…

direction. Despite a long history of selling products, even the most conservative car companies see AI as the route toward becoming a service company. As Lyft CEO Logan Green said in 2018, “We are going to move the entire [car] industry from one based on ownership, to one based on

…

it would buy 24,000 self-driving vehicles from Volvo, giving it a fleet to test and later deploy in an autonomous ride-hailing service. Lyft has taken a different approach. Rather than develop its own self-driving technology, it is trying to form partnerships through its “Open Platform Initiative,”

…

which resembled Google’s Open Handset Alliance for Android smartphones. Lyft’s platform initiative brings together several automakers, including GM, Land Rover, and Ford, to integrate their autonomous vehicle projects into one ride-hailing network.11

…

is offering partners access to ride data for testing purposes, but ultimately plans to make their self-driving vehicles available on its ride-hailing platform. Lyft’s chief strategy officer noted in late 2017 that “we’re focused on partnering with the auto industry because frankly, we think we can’t

…

do this alone and need each other to be successful.”12 Lyft cofounder John Zimmer even predicted that “autonomous vehicle fleets will quickly become widespread and will account for the majority of

…

Lyft rides within 5 years.”13 Lyft’s strategy may signal the emergence of a different type of transaction platform, where Lyft connects riders to self-driving vehicles from a variety of manufacturers. But many of its

…

partners have also invested in ride-hailing technology and could launch self-driving taxi services of their own. In response, even Lyft invested in a self-driving research center to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology, indicating that it, too, might move away from the open-platform

…

3.Ellen Huet, “Sidecar Puts Passengers Aside, Pivots to a Mostly-Deliveries Company,” Forbes, August 5, 2015. 4.Douglas MacMillan, “Sidecar Succumbs to Uber and Lyft in Car-Hailing Wars,” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015. Also Sunil Paul, “Why We Sold to GM,” Medium (blog post), January 20, 2016, https

…

2015); and Andrew J. Hawkins, “Uber Covers 75 Percent of the US, but Getting to 100 Will Be Really Hard,” Verge, October 23, 2015. 12.“Lyft CEO: We Have Over 100,000 Drivers Across the Country,” Bloomberg Technology, March 6, 2015. 13.Scott Van Maldegiam, “Sidecar: The Ins and Outs,” Rideshare

…

Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown,” New York Times, August 8, 2018. 21.Greg Bensinger and Maureen Farrell, “Uber Joins Lyft in Race to Tap Investors,” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2018. 22.See Robert Burgelman, Robert Siegel, and Henry Lippincott, “PayPal in 2015: Reshaping

…

11, 2018); and Andrei Hagiu and Rob Biederman, “Companies Need an Option Between Contractor and Employee,” Harvard Business Review, August 21, 2015. 38.Kia Kokalitcheva, “Lyft to Pay $12.3 Million as Part of a Proposed Labor Lawsuit Settlement,” Fortune, January 27, 2016. 39.Jeff John Roberts, “Is a Maid an

…

“Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month,” Bloomberg, August 18, 2016. 11.See Lyft, “The Open Autonomous Era,” https://take.lyft.com/open-platform/ (accessed June 2018). 12.Mike Isaac, “Lyft Adds Ford to Its List of Self-Driving Car Partners,” New York Times, September 27, 2018, https://www

…

for the Next Ten Years and Beyond,” Medium, September 18, 2016, https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revolution-27860f05fa91 (accessed June 2018). 14.Isaac, “Lyft Adds Ford.” 15.This section is based on Michael A. Cusumano, “The Business of Quantum Computing,” Communications of the ACM 61, no. 10 (October 2018

…

Bill, 3–5, 127 Gebbia, Joe, 74–75 gene editing technology, 229–34 General Electric, 160–62, 167–68. See also Predix General Motors and Lyft, 147–48 Gett (ride-sharing platform in London), 150–51 gig economy, 47, 57, 113, 192–93, 206–7. See also workforce, contract labor vs

…

145–47 liability limitations, 93 LinkedIn, 70–71 Liss-Riordan, Shannon, 194–95 London’s black cabs, 148–51 Lore, Marc, 156, 157 Lotus, 87 Lyft and autonomous vehicle technology, 225–26 and General Motors, 147–48 labor lawsuit settlement, 193 as start-up, 115, 116, 117, 118 Ma, Jack, 65

…

, 75–76 social networks as, 71 telephone service as, 34 Open Handset Alliance (Google), viii, 45–46 openness and curation tradeoff, 191 Open Platform Initiative (Lyft + automakers), 225–26 open source software, 125–26 OpenTable, 84–85 PaaS (platform-as-a-service), 163 Palm personal digital assistant (PDA) app store,

…

Toys “R” Us and Amazon, 152 traditional businesses, 141–71 overview, 27, 141–44, 169–71 building a new platform, 159–69 General Motors and Lyft, 147–48 joining a competing platform, examples of, 145–51 joining a competing platform, pitfalls of, 151–52 London’s black cabs, 148–51 peer

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy  · 15 Mar 2020  · 296pp  · 83,254 words

). Among the for-profit cases, Robert took the lead on TaskRabbit and our consumer interviews. Isak did Airbnb and ride-hail driver interviews (Uber and Lyft). Juliet was a lead researcher for the for-profit cases (chaps. 1, 2, 3). Samantha did the Stocksy case (chap. 6). Mehmet did all

…

cure social disconnection, inequality, and environmental degradation. You will know by now that things haven’t turned out exactly as expected. The big platforms—Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb—have been exposed for paying poverty wages, destabilizing urban neighborhoods, and accelerating carbon emissions. Many argue that rather than ushering in an alternative

…

the average consumer.” A decade in, tens of millions have earned on platforms. Hundreds of millions have stayed at Airbnbs, gotten into Ubers and Lyfts, and hired labor from apps.5 Many share Devon’s optimism. But there’s an opposing view, which focuses on the companies Devon minimized as

…

appearing in the facade of the idealist discourse. The “revolution” in goods sharing turned out to be a bust.14 Studies of Uber and Lyft show that they cause congestion, increase air and carbon pollution, and pull people off public transportation.15 These findings put the lie to the sector

…

. . . I think it is transformative. . . . And I have enjoyed its disruptive power. . . . Right now we’re seeing it in Boston with the new taxi service [Lyft] coming online.” Mark loved all the new services available to him as a consumer. “[If] I need an executive assistant, I’ll go to TaskRabbit

…

and preferable to Craigslist because it linked users to Facebook, which allowed them to research each other before committing. In 2012 Green and Zimmer started Lyft, which offered short rides in urban areas. The company emphasized its friendliness and adopted the idealist discourse, promising lower carbon emissions and good treatment of

…

who were making trips for their own purposes rather than to earn), jitney services, and apps that promised to treat drivers better than Uber and Lyft. Peer-to-peer rental schemes emerged for boats, airplanes, bicycles, and cars left at airports while their owners were traveling. In lodging, the offerings

…

ridiculous. Like no, your profits are in the millions, hundreds of millions. You can afford to pay an hourly wage.” Mitch, who was combining Lyft, Postmates, and DoorDash as he tried to build an audio-engineering business, also considered the whole setup problematic. “Is it fair to me to have

…

because of its long history of licensing and medallions.55 So far the evidence suggests that these predictions are exaggerated.56 Only the big three (Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb) have really scaled—with valuations in mid-2019 of $15 billion, $72 billion, and $31 billion, respectively.57 Delivery also has

…

giant question mark hovers over this sector. Uber has lost nearly $20 billion since 2014, including $5 billion in the third quarter of 2019.63 Lyft is following a similar path.64 Is the future likely to bring anything more than these oceans of red ink? Transportation economist Hubert Horan says

…

founders, venture capitalists, nonprofits, consultants, lay enthusiasts, community critics, and a few researchers. Just about everyone was there, with the exception of Uber. Its competitor, Lyft, gave free rides to attendees. Airbnb sent cofounder Nate Blecharczyk and held a reception at its headquarters. Community sharing initiatives were well represented, from people

…

the organization was not a grassroots movement of sharing enthusiasts but an “astroturf” effort by the companies financing it. Those happened to be Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and the Omidyar Foundation, started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who had recently invested in Couchsurfing as it went for-profit.75 Was the real

…

city licenses. The signup process has been a flashpoint for controversy because lax background checks have been linked to driver malfeasance and criminality. Uber and Lyft left Austin, Texas, after the city required fingerprinting, only to return after successfully lobbying at the statehouse for a law that effectively overruled Austin’s

…

and dancer whose career was going relatively well, relied on platform work to supplement his theatrical earnings. He worked about twenty hours a week on Lyft and TaskRabbit and has also put in time on Instacart, which he liked less because the work was “isolated and lonely.” Earlier, he’d

…

better off working at McDonald’s. Perhaps not surprisingly, an internal slide deck from Uber seen by the New York Times showed that other than Lyft, the company considered McDonald’s to be their primary competitor for labor.33 Isabelle, another dependent Task Rabbit also didn’t earn above a poverty

…

While total earnings aren’t high, effort is minimal, so income per hour is good. TaskRabbit has more autonomy and better hourly wages than Uber/Lyft or Postmates/Favor, with respondents reporting a floor of twenty dollars to twenty-five dollars an hour. There’s debate about hourly wages in ride

…

the only task on Postmates and Favor. Driving is the most prevalent service overall in the platform sector, given the large size of Uber and Lyft. As TaskRabbit Josh explained about the work: “It’s manual labor in person.” In the conventional economy nearly all these occupations are dominated by

…

and their P2P structures are normalized, will the social connections of the early days melt away or even evolve into the snobbishness Kelly noticed? When Lyft started, passengers sat in the front. In 2019 Uber announced what is essentially a “Mute” button passengers can push—or what one headline termed a

…

University of Chicago took advantage of the fact that ride-hailing was rolled out gradually, and they tracked before-and-after patterns as Uber and Lyft entered 2,955 cities.30 To estimate the carbon and air pollution impacts of ride-hailing, relevant variables are the number of cars on

…

with low ridership, and providing service during off-peak times. Some locales have been partnering with the companies to address these real needs. In 2018 Lyft committed to carbon offsetting, meaning they are paying money to compensate for the carbon emitted by their vehicles.37 But this is a false solution

…

market domination by individual companies, on account of network effects, patient venture capital, and political power.7 (That patience is what has allowed Uber and Lyft to subsidize rides for so long and other tech companies to make losses for years.) In 2018, Amazon accounted for about half of all U

…

“maximum conveniences for seamless consumption.”9 Some have a more dystopian view of market dominance and see a future of predatory behavior. If Uber bests Lyft (or vice versa), will it raise fares? Once ride-hail apps have battered or eliminated the competition, including public transit, consumers may not have

…

urban residents? We didn’t cover this topic in most of our interviews, but occasionally it came up. Angelo was skeptical. Talking about Uber and Lyft, he believed “they [officials] waited too long to try to impose regulations and they [the companies] became too powerful. It came to the point

…

. That dynamic is the origin of taxi regulation and the basis on which driving became a viable occupation. By breaking the law, Uber and Lyft destroyed that viability, and we’re now seeing their drivers subjected to a similar race-to-the-bottom.27 And what the ideological high ground

…

legislatures to pass laws overriding local ordinances and regulation. In a mere four years (from 2014 through 2017), using language provided by ALEC, Uber and Lyft succeeded in getting forty-two states to pass laws with preemption provisions.34 This deregulation spree included taking away workers’ rights, outlawing employee status for

…

posted around town. This sample consisted of twenty people who had used Airbnb, TaskRabbit, or Turo. Dates of data collection: July 2014–March 2015. Uber/Lyft (Isak Ladegaard) We conducted seventeen semi-structured interviews of forty-five minutes to sixty minutes with each participant. Most interviewees were recruited through the ride

…

of Uber, which originally did not accept the designation but was almost always identified as a leading sharing economy platform. But a situation in which Lyft is included and Uber is not is incoherent, given how similar the companies are. Our practice has been to include P2P platforms and organizations that

…

Vallas and Schor (2020). 5. Hundreds of millions: Airbnb statistics from https://ipropertymanagement.com/airbnb-statistics; Uber www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics; Lyft www.businessofapps.com/data/lyft-statistics. 6. Stranger sharing is from Schor (2014). Benkler’s work a decade earlier on public carpooling sites emphasized that peers were “weakly

…

57. A possible IPO value of $120B for Uber was floated earlier in the year. Since the IPO, Uber’s valuation has fallen. Uber and Lyft valuations are from Collins and Hoxie (2017). Airbnb valuation is from Lunden and Dillet (2018). 58. The most valuable, Postmates, was estimated to be

…

). 70. Shapiro (2018). 71. https://payup.wtf/blog/2019/5/29/postmates-workers-are-fighting-back. 72. Uber analysis in Horan (2019b, pt. 18). 73. Lyft analysis in Horan (2019b, pt. 18). 74. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2019). 75. Dubal (2019b). 76. UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2018).

…

and Cheshire (2016). 22. Parigi et al. (2013); Parigi and State (2014). 23. Margolies (2019). 24. Shaheen (2018, 6). 25. Paul (2019a). Speculation abounded that Lyft was also considering such an option, but in line with its friendlier veneer, its term is “Zen” mode. 26. Friedman (2013). 27. Center for a

…

the Inn? Disability Access in the New Sharing Economy.” Academy of Management Discoveries, February. https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2018.0054. Anzilotti, Eillie. 2019. “Lyft Has Spent Enough Money to Offset More Than 2 Million Tons of CO2. Is It Enough?” Fast Company, May 29, 2019. Aptekar, Sofya. 2016. “Gifts

…

eBay.” RAND Journal of Economics 46 (4): 891–917. Balding, Melissa, Teresa Whinery, Eleanor Leshner, and Eric Womeldorff. 2019. “Estimated Percent of Total Driving by Lyft and Uber: In Six Major US Regions.” Fehr and Peers. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FIUskVkj9lsAnWJQ6kLhAhNoVLjfFdx3/view. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. 1996. “The

…

/file/679987/171107_The_experiences_of_those_in_the_gig_economy.pdf. Brustein, Joshua. 2018. “New York Sets Nation’s First Minimum Wage for Uber, Lyft Drivers.” Bloomberg News, December 4, 2018. Burgen, Stephen. 2018. “Barcelona Continues Crackdown on Illegal Holiday Apartments.” The Guardian, July 27, 2018. Burston-Marsteller. 2016. “

…

Bus Service, Too.” New York Times, August 7, 2019. Conger, Kate, and Noam Scheiber. 2019a. “California Labor Bill, Near Passage, Is Blow to Uber and Lyft.” New York Times, September 9, 2019. ———. 2019b. “California’s Contractor Law Stirs Confusion Beyond the Gig Economy.” New York Times, September 11, 2019. Cook, Cody

…

can-uber-ever-deliver-part-nineteen-ubers-ipo-prospectus-overstates-its-2018-profit-improvement-by-5-billion.html. ———. 2019b. “Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Eighteen: Lyft’s IPO Prospectus Tells Investors That It Has No Idea How Ridesharing Could Ever Be Profitable.” Naked Capitalism (blog). March 5, 2019. www.nakedcapitalism.com

…

/2019/03/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-eighteen-lyfts-ipo-prospectus-tells-investors-no-idea-ridesharing-ever-profitable.html. Horn, Keren, and Mark Merante. 2017. “Is Home Sharing Driving Up Rents? Evidence from

…

’re Drunk.” The Guardian, June 11, 2018. Malin, Brenton J., and Curry Chandler. 2017. “Free to Work Anxiously: Splintering Precarity among Drivers for Uber and Lyft.” Communication, Culture & Critique 10 (2): 382–400. Mallett, William J. 2018. “Trends in Public Transportation Ridership: Implications for Federal Policy.” R45144. Washington, DC: Congressional

…

Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: PublicAffairs. Newcomer, Eric. 2019. “Uber and Lyft Investors Are Looking for Signs of a Détente.” Bloomberg News, August 2, 2019. Njus, Elliot. 2018. “Oregon Airbnb Discrimination Suit Can Proceed, Judge Rules.” The

…

January 14, 2018. ———. 2018b. “Airbnb Lists in San Francisco Plunge by Half.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 18, 2018. Schaller, Bruce. 2018. “The New Automobility: Uber, Lyft and the Future of American Cities.” Brooklyn, NY: Schaller Consulting. www.schallerconsult.com/rideservices/automobility.htm. Scheiber, Noam. 2017. “How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to

…

Todd W. 2019. “Dashboard: Taxi and Ridehailing Usage in New York City.” Todd W. Schneider (blog). 2019. https://toddwschneider.com/dashboards/nyc-taxi-ridehailing-uber-lyft-data. Scholz, Trebor. 2014. “Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy.” Trebor Scholz (blog). December 5, 2014. https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing

…

Solomon, Brian. 2015. “The Hottest On-Demand Start-Ups of 2015.” Forbes, December 29, 2015. Solomon, Dan. 2017. “One Year After Fleeing Austin, Uber and Lyft Prepare a Fresh Invasion.” Wired, May 7, 2017. Sperling, Gene. 2015. “How Airbnb Combats Middle Class Income Stagnation.” Airbnb and Sperling Economic Strategies. www.stgeorgeutah

…

Working Poor, Georgetown University. https://lwp.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Uber-Workplace.pdf. White, Andy, and Dana Olsen. 2018. “Here’s Where Uber and Lyft Would Rank among the Decade’s Most Valuable VC-Backed IPOs.” Pitchbook: News and Analysis, October 16, 2018. https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/heres-where

…

-uber-and-lyft-would-rank-among-the-decades-most-valuable-vc-backed-ipos. Whyte, William H. 1956. The Organization Man. New York: Simon and Schuster. Wilhelm, Alex.

…

Production, 67 Ford, Henry, 67 for-profit cases: Airbnb, 181–82; demographic data, 186; Postmates/Favor, 183; Stocksy, 183–84; TaskRabbit, 181; Turo, 181; Uber/Lyft, 183 for-profit platforms. See platforms, for-profit Foster, Natalie, 37, 39 France, 153 Frank, Thomas, 23 Freecycle, 26, 146 free market, 23 free riders

…

, 168 Livingstone, Bruce, 148–49 Liz, 140–41 lodging platforms, 116, 160. See also Airbnb London, 153 low-wage earners, 110. See also dependent earners Lyft, 2, 11, 25, 151; carbon offsetting, 118; drivers’ share, 75; lobbying, 157; losses, 35; LyftLine, 108, 118; as sharing economy platform, 193; and social

…

; recruitment, 177 residential segregation, 92–95 retreat from control, 43, 76–81 Rich, 59 Richardson, Lizzie, 193 ride-hailing, 26, 31, 34–37. See also Lyft; Uber; access to, 46; algorithmic management, 66, 68, 159; business model, 151; deactivation, 63, 92; dependent earners, 62–63; discrimination, 87; driver experience, 54–

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You

by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms  · 2 Apr 2018  · 416pp  · 100,130 words

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

by Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman  · 8 Jul 2024  · 207pp  · 65,156 words

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

by Jeremias Prassl  · 7 May 2018  · 491pp  · 77,650 words

Seeking SRE: Conversations About Running Production Systems at Scale

by David N. Blank-Edelman  · 16 Sep 2018

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase  · 14 May 2015  · 330pp  · 91,805 words

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts

by Mark Mahaney  · 9 Nov 2021  · 311pp  · 90,172 words

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You

by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker  · 27 Mar 2016  · 421pp  · 110,406 words

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant  · 25 Sep 2023  · 524pp  · 154,652 words

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 15 Jun 2020  · 362pp  · 97,288 words

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy

by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson  · 30 May 2016  · 324pp  · 89,875 words

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion

by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell  · 19 Jul 2021  · 460pp  · 130,820 words

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition

by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek  · 17 Aug 2015  · 257pp  · 64,285 words

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future

by Alec Ross  · 13 Sep 2021  · 363pp  · 109,077 words

Moon Oregon Trail Road Trip: Historic Sites, Small Towns, and Scenic Landscapes Along the Legendary Westward Route

by Katrina Emery and Moon Travel Guides  · 27 Jul 2020  · 608pp  · 184,703 words

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb  · 14 Sep 2021  · 251pp  · 80,831 words

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary  · 14 Sep 2015  · 302pp  · 73,581 words

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

by Paris Marx  · 4 Jul 2022  · 295pp  · 81,861 words

Virtual Competition

by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke  · 30 Nov 2016

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein  · 6 Sep 2021

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

by Daniel Yergin  · 14 Sep 2020

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing

by Ed Finn  · 10 Mar 2017  · 285pp  · 86,853 words

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman  · 17 Mar 2015  · 527pp  · 147,690 words

Life as a Passenger: How Driverless Cars Will Change the World

by David Kerrigan  · 18 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 80,835 words

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism

by Wendy Liu  · 22 Mar 2020  · 223pp  · 71,414 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham  · 27 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab  · 7 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age

by Andrew Keen  · 1 Mar 2018  · 308pp  · 85,880 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby  · 1 Feb 2022  · 935pp  · 197,338 words

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

by Hamish McKenzie  · 30 Sep 2017  · 307pp  · 90,634 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson  · 26 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 117,093 words

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas  · 27 Aug 2018  · 296pp  · 98,018 words

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy

by Nick Romeo  · 15 Jan 2024  · 343pp  · 103,376 words

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models

by Barry Libert and Megan Beck  · 6 Jun 2016  · 285pp  · 58,517 words

The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design

by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth  · 3 Oct 2019

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World

by Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom  · 3 Aug 2020

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

by Tom Standage  · 16 Aug 2021  · 290pp  · 85,847 words

Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

by Andreas Herrmann, Walter Brenner and Rupert Stadler  · 25 Mar 2018

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit

by Steven Higashide  · 9 Oct 2019  · 195pp  · 52,701 words

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends

by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika  · 12 May 2015  · 389pp  · 87,758 words

Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

by Samuel I. Schwartz  · 17 Aug 2015  · 340pp  · 92,904 words

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It

by Scott Kupor  · 3 Jun 2019  · 340pp  · 100,151 words

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems

by Lauren Turner Claire, Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier  · 14 Oct 2017  · 240pp  · 78,436 words

On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City

by Evan Friss  · 6 May 2019  · 314pp  · 85,637 words

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit

by Marina Krakovsky  · 14 Sep 2015  · 270pp  · 79,180 words

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global

by Rebecca Fannin  · 2 Sep 2019  · 269pp  · 70,543 words

Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber

by Susan Fowler  · 18 Feb 2020  · 205pp  · 71,872 words

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

by Jamie K. McCallum  · 15 Nov 2022  · 349pp  · 99,230 words

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris  · 14 Feb 2023  · 864pp  · 272,918 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar  · 5 Nov 2019  · 380pp  · 109,724 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World

by Scott Galloway  · 2 Oct 2017  · 305pp  · 79,303 words

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland  · 8 Oct 2018  · 225pp  · 70,241 words

The Passenger

by AA.VV.  · 23 May 2022  · 192pp  · 59,615 words

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

by Daniel Knowles  · 27 Mar 2023  · 278pp  · 91,332 words

Fodor's Oregon

by Fodor's Travel Guides  · 13 Jun 2023  · 590pp  · 156,001 words

Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything

by Martin Ford  · 13 Sep 2021  · 288pp  · 86,995 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan  · 1 Feb 2019  · 309pp  · 81,975 words

Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy

by Diane Coyle  · 14 Jan 2020  · 384pp  · 108,414 words

Everything's Trash, but It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson  · 15 Oct 2018  · 257pp  · 90,857 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Give People Money

by Annie Lowrey  · 10 Jul 2018  · 242pp  · 73,728 words

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It

by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert  · 4 Jun 2018  · 244pp  · 66,977 words

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream

by Alissa Quart  · 14 Mar 2023  · 304pp  · 86,028 words

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

by Madhumita Murgia  · 20 Mar 2024  · 336pp  · 91,806 words

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 28 Jan 2020  · 501pp  · 114,888 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott  · 9 May 2016  · 515pp  · 126,820 words

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 May 2020  · 393pp  · 91,257 words

Travel While You Work: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Business From Anywhere

by Mish Slade  · 13 Aug 2015  · 288pp  · 66,996 words

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

by Kevin Roose  · 9 Mar 2021  · 208pp  · 57,602 words

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril

by Satyajit Das  · 9 Feb 2016  · 327pp  · 90,542 words

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

by Kevin Kelly  · 6 Jun 2016  · 371pp  · 108,317 words

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy

by Nathan Schneider  · 10 Sep 2018  · 326pp  · 91,559 words

Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn

by Chris Hughes  · 20 Feb 2018  · 173pp  · 53,564 words

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 1 Mar 2016  · 366pp  · 94,209 words

Economic Dignity

by Gene Sperling  · 14 Sep 2020  · 667pp  · 149,811 words

Fodor's Big Island of Hawaii

by Fodor’s Travel Guides  · 1 Aug 2022

San Francisco Like a Local

by DK Eyewitness  · 4 Oct 2021  · 268pp  · 35,416 words

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back

by Bruce Schneier  · 7 Feb 2023  · 306pp  · 82,909 words

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky  · 1 Oct 2018  · 425pp  · 112,220 words

San Francisco Like a Local: By the People Who Call It Home

by Dk Eyewitness  · 5 Apr 2023  · 168pp  · 33,200 words

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants

by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi  · 14 May 2020  · 511pp  · 132,682 words

Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms

by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee  · 23 May 2016  · 383pp  · 81,118 words

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays

by Phoebe Robinson  · 14 Oct 2021  · 265pp  · 93,354 words

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson  · 26 Mar 2019  · 499pp  · 144,278 words

5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich With Purpose

by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson  · 5 Mar 2018  · 290pp  · 72,046 words

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard

by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel  · 3 Oct 2016  · 504pp  · 126,835 words

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution

by Janette Sadik-Khan  · 8 Mar 2016  · 441pp  · 96,534 words

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh  · 14 Apr 2018  · 286pp  · 87,401 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Feb 2018  · 348pp  · 97,277 words

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

by Alissa Quart  · 25 Jun 2018  · 320pp  · 90,526 words

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Jan 2015  · 457pp  · 128,838 words

Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee  · 10 Mar 2020  · 246pp  · 74,404 words

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century

by Jeff Lawson  · 12 Jan 2021  · 282pp  · 85,658 words

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era

by Gary Gerstle  · 14 Oct 2022  · 655pp  · 156,367 words

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

by Edward Chancellor  · 15 Aug 2022  · 829pp  · 187,394 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow  · 6 Oct 2025  · 313pp  · 94,415 words

Coastal California Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last

by Jimmy Wales  · 28 Oct 2025  · 216pp  · 60,419 words

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber  · 3 Oct 2024  · 424pp  · 123,730 words

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

by Angie Schmitt  · 26 Aug 2020  · 274pp  · 63,679 words

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman  · 19 Oct 2020  · 303pp  · 100,516 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen  · 14 Sep 2020  · 486pp  · 150,849 words

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

by Roger McNamee  · 1 Jan 2019  · 382pp  · 105,819 words

Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need

by Grant Sabatier  · 5 Feb 2019  · 621pp  · 123,678 words

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us

by Dan Lyons  · 22 Oct 2018  · 252pp  · 78,780 words

The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them—And They Shape Us

by Tim Sullivan  · 6 Jun 2016  · 252pp  · 73,131 words

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee  · 14 Sep 2018  · 307pp  · 88,180 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)

by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest  · 17 Oct 2014  · 292pp  · 85,151 words

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl  · 14 May 2018  · 463pp  · 105,197 words

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann  · 17 Jun 2019

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

by Matthew B. Crawford  · 8 Jun 2020  · 386pp  · 113,709 words

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney  · 7 Mar 2017  · 526pp  · 160,601 words

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century

by Tim Higgins  · 2 Aug 2021  · 430pp  · 135,418 words

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

by William Davidow and Michael Malone  · 18 Feb 2020  · 304pp  · 80,143 words

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction

by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham  · 17 Jan 2020  · 207pp  · 59,298 words

Chokepoint Capitalism

by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow  · 26 Sep 2022  · 396pp  · 113,613 words

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

by Brett King  · 5 May 2016  · 385pp  · 111,113 words

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

by Ben Tarnoff  · 13 Jun 2022  · 234pp  · 67,589 words

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

by Anu Bradford  · 25 Sep 2023  · 898pp  · 236,779 words

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters

by Eric J. Johnson  · 12 Oct 2021  · 362pp  · 103,087 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

The Enlightened Capitalists

by James O'Toole  · 29 Dec 2018  · 716pp  · 192,143 words

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

by Brian Goldstone  · 25 Mar 2025  · 512pp  · 153,059 words

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

by Max Fisher  · 5 Sep 2022  · 439pp  · 131,081 words

Lonely Planet Pocket Reykjavík & Southwest Iceland

by Lonely Planet  · 139pp  · 34,917 words

The Long History of the Future: Why Tomorrow's Technology Still Isn't Here

by Nicole Kobie  · 3 Jul 2024  · 348pp  · 119,358 words

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America

by Garrett Neiman  · 19 Jun 2023  · 386pp  · 112,064 words

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy

by Christopher Mims  · 13 Sep 2021  · 385pp  · 112,842 words

The Rough Guide to New York City

by Rough Guides  · 21 May 2018

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

by Charlotte Alter  · 18 Feb 2020  · 504pp  · 129,087 words

Health and Safety: A Breakdown

by Emily Witt  · 16 Sep 2024  · 242pp  · 85,783 words

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere

by Kevin Carey  · 3 Mar 2015  · 319pp  · 90,965 words

Work in the Future The Automation Revolution-Palgrave MacMillan (2019)

by Robert Skidelsky Nan Craig  · 15 Mar 2020

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance

by Eswar S. Prasad  · 27 Sep 2021  · 661pp  · 185,701 words

Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk

by Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz  · 8 Jul 2024  · 259pp  · 89,637 words

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

by Maria Konnikova  · 22 Jun 2020  · 377pp  · 117,339 words

The Capitalist Manifesto

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Jun 2023  · 295pp  · 87,204 words

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen  · 13 Sep 2021

Lonely Planet Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest

by Lonely Planet  · 1,006pp  · 243,928 words

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success

by Tom Eisenmann  · 29 Mar 2021  · 387pp  · 106,753 words

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet

by Pamela Paul  · 14 Oct 2021  · 194pp  · 54,355 words

The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future

by Jeff Booth  · 14 Jan 2020  · 180pp  · 55,805 words

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

by Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt  · 20 Apr 2015  · 294pp  · 82,438 words

Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning From It

by Brian Dumaine  · 11 May 2020  · 411pp  · 98,128 words

Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

by Alvin E. Roth  · 1 Jun 2015  · 282pp  · 80,907 words

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World

by Timothy Ferriss  · 14 Jun 2017  · 579pp  · 183,063 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral  · 14 Sep 2020  · 475pp  · 134,707 words

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5

by Taylor Pearson  · 27 Jun 2015  · 168pp  · 50,647 words

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World

by Jeffrey Tucker  · 7 Jan 2015

The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want

by Diane Mulcahy  · 8 Nov 2016  · 229pp  · 61,482 words

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson  · 15 Jan 2018  · 523pp  · 61,179 words

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

by Dambisa Moyo  · 3 May 2021  · 272pp  · 76,154 words

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

by Yasha Levine  · 6 Feb 2018  · 474pp  · 130,575 words

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons  · 4 Apr 2016  · 284pp  · 92,688 words

Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World

by Andrew Leigh  · 14 Sep 2018  · 340pp  · 94,464 words

Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman  · 22 Sep 2016

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

by Matt Ridley  · 395pp  · 116,675 words

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters  · 15 Sep 2014  · 185pp  · 43,609 words

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future

by Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson  · 27 Mar 2017  · 293pp  · 78,439 words

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence

by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb  · 16 Apr 2018  · 345pp  · 75,660 words

Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage

by Douglas B. Laney  · 4 Sep 2017  · 374pp  · 94,508 words

Platform Capitalism

by Nick Srnicek  · 22 Dec 2016  · 116pp  · 31,356 words

Designing Web APIs: Building APIs That Developers Love

by Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni and Amir Shevat  · 28 Aug 2018

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

by Peter Morville  · 14 May 2014  · 165pp  · 50,798 words

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher  · 14 Feb 2017  · 290pp  · 87,549 words

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

by Ryan Avent  · 20 Sep 2016  · 323pp  · 90,868 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

by Andrew Keen  · 5 Jan 2015  · 361pp  · 81,068 words

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

by Martin Ford  · 4 May 2015  · 484pp  · 104,873 words

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet

by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider  · 14 Aug 2017  · 237pp  · 67,154 words

Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly

by Evy Poumpouras  · 20 Apr 2020

Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business

by Ken Auletta  · 4 Jun 2018  · 379pp  · 109,223 words

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

by Edward Niedermeyer  · 14 Sep 2019  · 328pp  · 90,677 words

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

by Melanie Swan  · 22 Jan 2014  · 271pp  · 52,814 words

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis

by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac  · 25 Feb 2020  · 197pp  · 49,296 words

Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price  · 5 Jan 2021  · 362pp  · 87,462 words

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction

by Derek Thompson  · 7 Feb 2017  · 416pp  · 108,370 words

The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials' Economic Future

by Joseph C. Sternberg  · 13 May 2019  · 336pp  · 95,773 words

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

by Rahm Emanuel  · 25 Feb 2020  · 212pp  · 69,846 words

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

by Guy Raz  · 14 Sep 2020  · 361pp  · 107,461 words

Trixie and Katya's Guide to Modern Womanhood

by Trixie Mattel and Katya  · 15 Nov 2020

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play

by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant  · 7 Nov 2019

Billion Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy

by Lawrence Ingrassia  · 28 Jan 2020  · 290pp  · 90,057 words

China's Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Other Companies Are Changing the Rules of Business

by Edward Tse  · 13 Jul 2015  · 233pp  · 64,702 words

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves

by John Cheney-Lippold  · 1 May 2017  · 420pp  · 100,811 words

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy

by Jamie Raskin  · 4 Jan 2022  · 450pp  · 144,939 words

Automation and the Future of Work

by Aaron Benanav  · 3 Nov 2020  · 175pp  · 45,815 words

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away

by Julien Saunders and Kiersten Saunders  · 13 Jun 2022  · 268pp  · 64,786 words

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

by David Sax  · 15 Jan 2022  · 282pp  · 93,783 words

Docker: Up & Running: Shipping Reliable Containers in Production

by Sean Kane and Karl Matthias  · 14 May 2023  · 433pp  · 130,334 words

Lonely Planet Iceland

by Lonely Planet  · 394pp  · 104,952 words

Docker: Up & Running: Shipping Reliable Containers in Production

by Sean P. Kane and Karl Matthias  · 15 Mar 2018  · 350pp  · 114,454 words

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

by Branko Milanovic  · 23 Sep 2019

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen  · 14 Jan 2021  · 297pp  · 88,890 words

Portland Like a Local

by DK  · 162pp  · 32,864 words

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI

by Ethan Mollick  · 2 Apr 2024  · 189pp  · 58,076 words

Nashville Like a Local: By the People Who Call It Home

by Dk Eyewitness  · 28 Sep 2021

The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America

by John Fabian Witt  · 14 Oct 2025  · 735pp  · 279,360 words

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

Northern California Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman  · 9 Oct 2025  · 312pp  · 103,645 words

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power

by Jacob Helberg  · 11 Oct 2021  · 521pp  · 118,183 words

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman  · 17 Jul 2023  · 329pp  · 99,504 words

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe  · 26 Jan 2021  · 490pp  · 153,455 words

Collaborative Society

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska  · 18 Feb 2020  · 187pp  · 50,083 words

Wanderers: A Novel

by Chuck Wendig  · 1 Jul 2019  · 1,028pp  · 267,392 words

Financing Basic Income: Addressing the Cost Objection

by Richard Pereira  · 5 Jul 2017  · 177pp  · 38,221 words

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

by George Packer  · 14 Jun 2021  · 173pp  · 55,328 words

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar  · 8 May 2023  · 413pp  · 115,274 words

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

by Meredith Broussard  · 19 Apr 2018  · 245pp  · 83,272 words

Early Retirement Guide: 40 is the new 65

by Manish Thakur  · 20 Dec 2015

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War

by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff  · 8 Jul 2024  · 272pp  · 103,638 words

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

by Jia Tolentino  · 5 Aug 2019  · 305pp  · 101,743 words

Bit Rot

by Douglas Coupland  · 4 Oct 2016

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill  · 4 Oct 2021  · 569pp  · 165,510 words

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

by Jimmy Soni  · 22 Feb 2022  · 505pp  · 161,581 words

The New Prophets of Capital

by Nicole Aschoff  · 10 Mar 2015  · 128pp  · 38,187 words

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin  · 1 Oct 2018

McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

by Ronald Purser  · 8 Jul 2019  · 242pp  · 67,233 words

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time

by Allen Gannett  · 11 Jun 2018  · 247pp  · 69,593 words

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It.

by James Silver  · 15 Nov 2018  · 291pp  · 90,771 words

Money Moments: Simple Steps to Financial Well-Being

by Jason Butler  · 22 Nov 2017  · 139pp  · 33,246 words

Habeas Data: Privacy vs. The Rise of Surveillance Tech

by Cyrus Farivar  · 7 May 2018  · 397pp  · 110,222 words

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis

by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron  · 13 Dec 2019  · 241pp  · 81,805 words

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

by Rebecca Henderson  · 27 Apr 2020  · 330pp  · 99,044 words

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following

by Gabrielle Bluestone  · 5 Apr 2021  · 329pp  · 100,162 words

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference

by Alice Ross  · 19 Nov 2020  · 197pp  · 53,831 words

You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

by Phoebe Robinson  · 3 Oct 2016

Mastering Blockchain: Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts

by Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey  · 8 Dec 2020  · 434pp  · 77,974 words

The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality

by Brink Lindsey  · 12 Oct 2017  · 288pp  · 64,771 words

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era

by Ellen Ruppel Shell  · 22 Oct 2018  · 402pp  · 126,835 words

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era

by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith  · 17 Aug 2015  · 353pp  · 91,520 words

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig  · 14 Jul 2019  · 2,466pp  · 668,761 words

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future

by Hal Niedzviecki  · 15 Mar 2015  · 343pp  · 102,846 words

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang  · 2 Apr 2018  · 300pp  · 76,638 words

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

by Paul Jarvis  · 1 Jan 2019  · 258pp  · 74,942 words

The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon!

by Joseph N. Pelton  · 5 Nov 2016  · 321pp  · 89,109 words

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott  · 1 Jun 2016  · 344pp  · 94,332 words

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown  · 24 Apr 2017  · 344pp  · 96,020 words

I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

by Luvvie Ajayi  · 12 Sep 2016  · 232pp  · 78,701 words

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone

by Brian Merchant  · 19 Jun 2017  · 416pp  · 129,308 words

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance

by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna  · 23 May 2016  · 437pp  · 113,173 words

The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future

by Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever  · 2 Apr 2017  · 181pp  · 52,147 words

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

by Lisa Servon  · 10 Jan 2017  · 279pp  · 76,796 words

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs

by Tim Draper  · 18 Dec 2017  · 302pp  · 95,965 words

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us

by Nicholas Carr  · 28 Sep 2014  · 308pp  · 84,713 words

Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside Down

by Tom Standage  · 27 Nov 2018  · 215pp  · 59,188 words

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley

by Emily Chang  · 6 Feb 2018  · 334pp  · 104,382 words

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

by Mark O'Connell  · 28 Feb 2017  · 252pp  · 79,452 words

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us

by Will Storr  · 14 Jun 2017  · 431pp  · 129,071 words

Berlitz Pocket Guide Stockholm

by Berlitz  · 19 Dec 2017

Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married

by Abby Ellin  · 15 Jan 2019  · 340pp  · 91,745 words

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It

by Richard Florida  · 9 May 2016  · 356pp  · 91,157 words

Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl From Somewhere Else

by Maeve Higgins  · 6 Aug 2018  · 169pp  · 61,064 words

The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America

by Sarah Kendzior  · 24 Apr 2015  · 172pp  · 48,747 words

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

by Gregg Easterbrook  · 20 Feb 2018  · 424pp  · 119,679 words

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

by Bruce Schneier  · 2 Mar 2015  · 598pp  · 134,339 words

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction

by David Enrich  · 18 Feb 2020  · 399pp  · 114,787 words

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever

by Alex Kantrowitz  · 6 Apr 2020  · 260pp  · 67,823 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Together

by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.  · 5 Mar 2020  · 405pp  · 112,470 words

When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession With Economic Efficiency

by Roger L. Martin  · 28 Sep 2020  · 600pp  · 72,502 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy  · 25 Feb 2020  · 706pp  · 202,591 words

The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands

by Eric Topol  · 6 Jan 2015  · 588pp  · 131,025 words

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

by Klaus Schwab  · 11 Jan 2016  · 179pp  · 43,441 words

Parkland: Birth of a Movement

by Dave Cullen  · 12 Feb 2019  · 368pp  · 108,222 words

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

by Julian Guthrie  · 15 Nov 2019

Slow

by Brooke McAlary  · 22 Aug 2017  · 149pp  · 44,375 words

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

by Amanda Montell  · 14 Jun 2021  · 244pp  · 73,700 words

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now

by Sergey Young  · 23 Aug 2021  · 326pp  · 88,968 words

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

by Carl Zimmer  · 9 Mar 2021  · 392pp  · 109,945 words

API Marketplace Engineering: Design, Build, and Run a Platform for External Developers

by Rennay Dorasamy  · 2 Dec 2021  · 328pp  · 77,877 words

Hands-On RESTful API Design Patterns and Best Practices

by Harihara Subramanian  · 31 Jan 2019  · 422pp  · 86,414 words

Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days

by Chris Guillebeau  · 18 Sep 2017  · 206pp  · 60,587 words

Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives

by Chris Bruntlett and Melissa Bruntlett  · 28 Jun 2021  · 225pp  · 70,590 words

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland  · 15 Jan 2021  · 342pp  · 72,927 words

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

by Eric Kaufmann  · 24 Oct 2018  · 691pp  · 203,236 words

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future

by Henry A Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher  · 2 Nov 2021  · 194pp  · 57,434 words

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back

by Jacob Ward  · 25 Jan 2022  · 292pp  · 94,660 words

The Future Is Asian

by Parag Khanna  · 5 Feb 2019  · 496pp  · 131,938 words

The Rare Metals War

by Guillaume Pitron  · 15 Feb 2020  · 249pp  · 66,492 words

Lonely Planet Iceland

by Lonely Planet

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital

by Kimberly Clausing  · 4 Mar 2019  · 555pp  · 80,635 words

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

by Amy B. Zegart  · 6 Nov 2021

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next

by Andrew McAfee  · 30 Sep 2019  · 372pp  · 94,153 words

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

by Thomas W. Malone  · 14 May 2018  · 344pp  · 104,077 words

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

by Alec MacGillis  · 16 Mar 2021  · 426pp  · 136,925 words

AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together

by Nick Polson and James Scott  · 14 May 2018  · 301pp  · 85,126 words

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill  · 19 Sep 2023  · 487pp  · 124,008 words

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich  · 6 Nov 2023  · 279pp  · 85,453 words

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie  · 8 Oct 2019

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

by Keach Hagey  · 19 May 2025  · 439pp  · 125,379 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

The Crux

by Richard Rumelt  · 27 Apr 2022  · 363pp  · 109,834 words

Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

by Erik Baker  · 13 Jan 2025  · 362pp  · 132,186 words

Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

by Jennifer Pahlka  · 12 Jun 2023  · 288pp  · 96,204 words

The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay

by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman  · 14 Oct 2019  · 232pp  · 70,361 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

by J. David McSwane  · 11 Apr 2022  · 368pp  · 102,379 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee  · 10 Mar 2025  · 393pp  · 146,371 words

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

by Andrew Ross  · 25 Oct 2021  · 301pp  · 90,276 words

We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation

by Eric Garcia  · 2 Aug 2021  · 398pp  · 96,909 words

Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire

by Hans Gremeil and William Sposato  · 15 Dec 2021  · 404pp  · 126,447 words

Chicago Like a Local

by DK  · 167pp  · 33,334 words

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth

by Guillaume Pitron  · 14 Jun 2023  · 271pp  · 79,355 words

A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging

by Lauren Markham  · 13 Feb 2024  · 234pp  · 74,626 words

Boston Like a Local

by Dk Eyewitness  · 166pp  · 33,248 words

Austin Like a Local

by DK  · 171pp  · 34,369 words

Vancouver Like a Local

by Jacqueline Salomé  · 165pp  · 33,113 words

New York City Like a Local

by Dk Eyewitness  · 168pp  · 33,675 words