Uber's Original Blog and First Posts

http://uberexpansion.com/flashback-original-uber-blog/

by UberEstimate • 11 years ago

216 75 11 years ago

frazras• 11 years ago

check out the comments on their Techcrunch article - It would discourage any young founder. http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/15/ubercab-closes-uber-angel-r...

As they say, never read the comments.

vcarl• 11 years ago

I like the lady who immediately connected Uber and self driving cars.

themartorana• 11 years ago

Saw the same thing. Someone give her a million dollars and 3 years...

codesushi42• 11 years ago

You know, TechCrunch comments are typically not any better than what I see on YouTube nowadays. But what's scary is many of the commenters are here in the Valley and claim to work in tech.

Ok, maybe not too scary and unexpected if you spend enough time talking to people on CoFoundersLab. But still...

elwell• 11 years ago

Interesting to see that Ryan Graves replied to one of the comments.

starshadowx2• 11 years ago

He actually replied a lot in the early techcrunch articles about Uber.

nugget• 11 years ago

Uber and Airbnb taught me to pay attention to what people do, not what they say. By November 2010 I was taking Uber(Cab) once a day around SOMA and absolutey loving it, referring all my friends to it, etc...and yet I still remember letting the pessimism of the online nay sayer crowd infect my brain and convince me it wasn't an awesome service. Live and learn. Airbnb was a little different in that they had a soft pivot from renting out a spare bed/room to mostly full home rentals (it was just a much easier site to use than the other options available at the time), but not too different than Uber in terms of traction once it really hit.

vacri2• 11 years ago

I thought you were going to go in the opposite direction with that comment, in that Uber says that they're all sweetness and light and awesome for the drivers, yet the actual reports of treatment by the drivers suggest more that they're being screwed.

tripzilch• 11 years ago

Uber ... Airbnb ... now excuse me for asking, but are there any other hugely successful VC-funded startup stories that did not get involved in some nasty legal scandal or other by their own actions or neglect, as they grew?

Especially when spreading out internationally, Uber and Airbnb just thrashed over local laws as if it was perfectly fine to act like they shouldn't have to apply to them as long as they did not get caught.

Is this considered normal?

Should you consider it normal?

What if European startups came to the US with an air of "... yeah, we'll just do whatever we feel like until you catch us and tell us not to"?

patmcguire• 11 years ago

What happened to Garrett Camp?

aaronbrethorst• 11 years ago

http://expa.com

ma2rten• 11 years ago

I was expecting really bad comments. I would say they were actually mostly positive, or constructive criticism.

_nedR• 11 years ago

Indeed the second-highest voted comment is this :

"Freelance taxi's? There must be taxi laws that requires special transportation permits to allow such activity. Taxi companies will not like this and will try to stop drop dime drivers from popping up everywhere. Bandwagon Boy VC investments are the first signs of a sketchy product. "

Quite prophetic words. Uber has been called out several times over the years for its questionable ethics. France banning of UberPop today after severe protests from licensed cabbies, is also rather timely.

etangent• 11 years ago

How lame can it get? There are already iPhone apps that hail cabs for you! I've lost all respect for Super Angels. They are just plain stupid!!

Ah, the importance of being the last rather than the first.

austenallred• 11 years ago

I particularly like the one who suggested that if Arrington gave him the money instead, he would have a billion dollar company in three years.

How long did it take Uber to become a billion dollar company?

aaggarwal• 11 years ago

When I first heard about Uber, it was as a luxury car service through mobile app, that caught my fancy. There were a few mobile based cab booking services before, but none of them ever sends a limo.

bshimmin• 11 years ago

That comment seems quite prescient!

sumedh• 11 years ago

People made fun of dropbox too.

devgutt• 11 years ago

If the dates of the posts are correct, they were moving really really fast.

tristanho• 11 years ago

You don't get to a valuation of $40B in 6 years moving slowly ;)

nostrademons• 11 years ago

I had the opposite impression - the dates on the blog post start in Sept 2010, but the TechCrunch article says that Garrett had the initial idea for the company in 2008. That's almost 2 years between idea and angel funding.

dylanjermiah• 11 years ago

They tried it multiple times, battery life and phone hardware couldn't handle the requirements needed. Even with the phone plugged in, until 2010 when it became possible.

andrewbarba2• 11 years ago

I was lucky enough to meet Curtis last year at Uber HQ. Awesome dude, incredibly smart. His Node talk from 2011 was a big contributing factor to me learning node.js. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jups7FveC1E

Edit: And yes, God Mode was for developers. The media should chill and learn to nerd out every once in a while...

minot2• 11 years ago

God mode existing wasn't the problem. Access to it in production was... Why did managers have access?

cbhl2• 11 years ago

I don't understand how you would optimize routing/matching algorithms if you didn't have a visualization of all the trips/cars in the city. As a entry-level engineer.

Maybe it shouldn't have been tied to PII, but on the other hand there are some wins that you miss out on if you don't. (IIRC someone said that pairing women with women whenever possible increases overall rider engagement?)

liampronan• 11 years ago

This talk is great -- I'm re-watching now!

Anyone have other similar videos? It's always cool to hear the about others' systems and how they evolve

sh1mmer• 11 years ago

You know, we still write lots of stuff in Node (and Python and Go). A bunch of the stuff we are working on can be found on our GH page https://github.com/uber

chinathrow2• 11 years ago

There is absolutely no need to have god mode for developers. Develop your privacy sensitive product on a need to know princinple.

chinathrow2• 11 years ago

Followup: did you had god mode within WhatsApp too for devs?

andrewbarba2• 11 years ago

No, just NSA Mode

trimbo• 11 years ago

Also this: http://ubercab.tumblr.com/post/485301492/entrepreneurial-roc...

benblodgett• 11 years ago

Tone immediately changes post funding, brash excitement early customer phase -> pr.

bakztfuture• 11 years ago

Bit of a plug, I recently put together a collection of changes to homepages from startups in the ride sharing space (including Uber) over time. You can check it out here: http://www.startuptimelines.org/collections/uber_lyft_taxi_s...

butwhy• 11 years ago

Uber.... well that escalated quickly.

beedogs• 11 years ago

Who knew back then that they'd be burning cars in the streets of Paris over this company.

pvdebbe• 11 years ago

Well, in France they burn cars once in a while over any reason really :-)

mrottenkolber• 11 years ago

Any reason? Youth poverty and loss of trust in the government, really.

arank• 11 years ago

Here is a post of the first tweets from popular app companies - https://tapfame.com/launching-an-app/

nlake44• 11 years ago

I didn't know how corrupt YC was until now. How much is your soul worth?

thanatropism• 11 years ago

I'll bite. What?

syllogism• 11 years ago

Wait, I'm confused...

So taxi services had no phone dispatch over there? Like, you couldn't ring the taxi booking, and they would route a taxi to you?

This has been a thing in Sydney for as long as I've been alive --- it probably started up in the 70s. It wasn't great, and sometimes the taxi wouldn't show. But it existed.

Was this not available in SF? Elsewhere in the US...?

SilasX• 11 years ago

Of course it was, but it was extremely unreliable. That's what led to the founding of Uber in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_%28company%29#Founding

From the Wikipedia writeup, it could very well be that they just didn't know the rules, but the experience in SF is the same: you can call a cab, but it's hit-or-miss.

lazerwalker• 11 years ago

It existed in SF, but (at least at the time) the cab would only show up maybe 10% of the time.

kifler• 11 years ago

To echo SilasX, there was (and in most places) no way to ensure that your taxi will acctually arrive if dispatched.

Sometimes while en route to you, they'd pick up another passenger or the wrong cab would pick you up which would frustrate many of the drivers.

danielweber3• 11 years ago

Car services have always existed (with a much smaller regulatory burden than taxis), and taxis have always been significant players in the car service industry

Uber just brought it all together and brought enough players into the fold to make "car service" almost strictly superior to "taxi."

Uber's Original Blog and First Posts

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