Uber has to get into skirmishes to battle the "taxi cartels," but the CEO of the emerging ride-sharing network says his company's aggressive startup mentality is misunderstood.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick didn't make a salary during one of his startups first four years and he spent a year of that time living with his parents, he said at TechCrunch's Disrupt. Memories of those days and his competitive ferocity have helped Uber grab strong market traction, he says.
"If you bring that scrappy fierceness with you it works until you get big, when really pushing all the way really feels uncomfortable.... When you're the little guy that's lauded, that's heroic," says Kalanick before elaborating on his view of Uber's current position. "You have to find different ways of doing things, of communicating, of understanding that people look at you as the big guy now, not the scrappy guy, and it requires a different way of running your business."
Before Kalanick's early struggles with Uber, he was focused on an earlier business venture, Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer network for file sharing that chewed through all of its funding on several occasions. So when it came to another shot at turning a startup into a sustainable business, Kalanick says he learned to be perfectionist.
"[Running a startup] requires you to be abnormally perfectionist, abnormally fierce because the difference, the last inch, is the difference between living at Mom's one more year...the difference between epic failure and making something happen," says Kalanick.
Uber's aggressive efforts to expand its ride-sharing network all around the world have drawn criticism from taxi services and city transit authorities. Instead of receiving the company model as the future of economical transport, those opposed to the service allege Uber's ride-sharing networking will result in lost wages, and eventually jobs, for taxi drivers and the companies behind them.
Recently, Uber announced that it was expanding it network into Seoul, South Korea.
The South Korean ministry warned that only taxis were permitted to deliver chauffeur services. Anyone without a taxi license could be fined up to $19,700 or face two years in jail.
An Uber spokesperson refuted the assertion that ride sharing was illegal in Seoul and stated the act is supported by the South Korean government. Uber's services in Seoul will be free during the trial run of the program and a South Korean official indicated that the government would look the other way, until Uber seeks to monetize the service.
