Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups - Hardcover

Burfield, Evan; Harrison, J.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525533206 ISBN 13: 9780525533207

Verlag: Portfolio, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Named by Inc. magazine as one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2018

Every startup wants to change the world. But the ones that truly make an impact know something the others don't: how to make government and regulation work for them.

As startups use technology to shape the way we live, work, and learn, they're taking on challenges in sectors like healthcare, infrastructure, and education, where failure is far more consequential than a humorous chat with Siri or the wrong package on your doorstep. These startups inevitably have to face governments responsible for protecting citizens through regulation. Love it or hate it, we're entering the next era of the digital revolution: the Regulatory Era.

The big winners in this era--in terms of both impact and financial return--will need skills they won't teach you in business school or most startup incubators: how to scale a business in an industry deeply intertwined with government.

Here, for the first time, is the playbook on how to win the regulatory era. "Regulatory hacking" doesn't mean "cutting through red tape"; it's really about finding a creative, strategic approach to navigating complex markets.

Evan Burfield is the cofounder of 1776, a Washington, DC-based venture capital firm and incubator specializing in regulated industries. Burfield has coached startups on how to understand, adapt to, and influence government regulation. Now, in Regulatory Hacking, he draws on that expertise and real startup success stories to show you how to do the same. For instance, you'll learn how...

  *  AirBnB rallied a grassroots movement to vote No on San Francisco's Prop F, which would have restricted its business in the city.

  *  HopSkipDrive overcame safety concerns about its kids' ridesharing service by working with state government to build trust into its platform.

  *  23andMe survived the FDA's order to stop selling its genetic testing kits by building trusted relationships with scientists who could influence the federal regulatory community.

Through fascinating case studies and interviews with startup founders, Burfield shows you how to build a compelling narrative for your startup, use it to build a grassroots movement to impact regulation, and develop influence to overcome entrenched relationships between incumbents and governments. These are just some of the tools in the book that you'll need to win the next frontier of innovation.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Evan Burfield is the cofounder of 1776 and CEO of Union, where he works with startups around the world tackling important challenges in areas like education, health, energy, transportation, food, and financial services. As an angel investor and venture capitalist, Evan has invested in more than thirty startups with world-changing ideas, from Silicon Valley to Nairobi.

J.D. Harrison is the executive director for strategic communications at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He previously covered startups and entrepreneurship at the Washington Post.

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Chapter 1

 

Regulatory Hacking

 

Uber: The Iconic (Wrong) Example

 

The first time Uber entered my consciousness was in late October 2011, which just so happened to be the same week that Donna Harris and I first met. Rachel Holt, Uber's then general manager for the D.C. region (and now head of North America), had reached out, offering free ride credits to me and other tech CEOs, lobbyists, and media personalities in D.C. I received $50 in credits and was encouraged to pass the same offer on to any of my "influential" friends.

 

Keep in mind, at the time, Uber was a scrappy, relatively unknown startup.

 

On the evening of November 18, 2011, Rachel flipped a switch and Uber began quietly testing their luxury-sedan-hailing service on the streets of Washington, D.C. Armed with an app-powered, car-summoning technology and already operating in a handful of cities, the company seemed to know almost immediately that it was in for a bumpy ride in the nation's capital.

 

While Uber had run into some minor regulatory and licensing speed bumps in places like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, D.C. presented the first major regulatory resistance. Not two months after Uber started operations in D.C., Ron Linton, the chairman of the D.C. Taxicab Commission, declared that Uber was operating illegally. The following morning, Linton hailed an Uber and routed the driver, Ridha Ben-Amara, to D.C.'s Mayflower Hotel. When they pulled up in front of the hotel, Taxicab Commission enforcement officials were already there waiting to impound Ben-Amara's Lincoln Town Car and slap him with $1,650 in fines for, among other charges, not holding a chauffeur license, operating an unlicensed taxi, and charging an improper fare.

 

Which is how I found myself, shortly before Christmas, in the living room of the DuPont Circle row house cum startup office of iStrategyLabs, a digital agency in D.C. owned by Peter Corbett, a tireless advocate for the D.C. tech scene and a founder of the D.C. Tech Meetup. With Uber in dire straits in D.C., Rachel had reached out to Peter, who had quickly convened a war council of leaders in the D.C. tech community. The room crackled with the feeling that this was a pivotal moment for everything we'd been working toward. If D.C. were the first city to shut down Uber, then our burgeoning credibility as a city where people could innovate would be ruined. This wasn't about Uber; this was about protecting this scrappy upstart from Big Taxi. We made plans, determining who could reach which city councilmembers or the mayor, how we could circulate petitions, who could engage what reporters. It was, in a word, a movement. It was more about us and what we believed than about Uber, and we were organizing.

 

I had a strong relationship with Mayor Vincent Gray, who was an advocate for the startup community in D.C. I emailed my friends in his office and stressed that if Uber were shut down, it would irreparably damage our shared vision for the D.C. startup community. Other people reached out to Mary Cheh, David Catania, Jack Evans, and David Grosso, all councilmembers with some sympathy to the tech community.

 

In parallel, Travis Kalanick sent a note to Uber's small but already fanatical customer base in D.C., most of whom, by dint of Uber's launch strategy, were influential people. His note encouraged everyone to write to their councilmember and made it one-click easy to do so. Travis and Rachel gave interviews with local and national reporters, strongly emphasizing the theme of Big Taxi trying to squash an innovative upstart offering better service at a reasonable price.

 

Before Uber, getting around the nation's capital via taxi was at best an outmoded hassle and at worst a headache-inducing nightmare. I can remember spending hours trapped on the congested Washington Beltway on sticky, hundred-degree July afternoons, accompanied by a driver who refused to flip on even the lowest setting of air conditioning; or standing on the curb in freezing January temperatures on K Street, arm outstretched, and after finally catching a driver's attention, learning that he's only commissioned to pick up and drop off in the District of Columbia and legally unable to take me ten minutes across the bridge into Virginia. Taxis in D.C. were also notorious for refusing to go into the historically black neighborhoods in D.C. or pick up people who didn't look "safe." Mayor after mayor had promised to reform the D.C. taxis-at a minimum to get them to start accepting credit cards-but had been thwarted by the entrenched and powerful D.C. Taxicab Commission.

 

The citizens of D.C. were ready to hear a story about someone taking the fight to the taxis.

 

That week in December 2011 marked the start of a long and grueling fight between Uber and the D.C. Taxicab Commission. It's a fight that would continue for years, round after round, but it's a fight the company would eventually win resoundingly. In D.C. and elsewhere, these triumphs have been widely attributed to a taxi-commission-crippling combination of vocal citizen armies (composed of riders and drivers), latent but intense resentment at the poor service provided by traditional taxis, sheer persistence, and of course boatloads of capital (at the time, Uber had already stacked up $50 million of the $16 billion it has raised so far).

 

Understanding the Uber Playbook-and Its Limitations

 

Uber's success gave birth to a new playbook in the Valley for startups where inconvenient regulation might pose an obstacle to growth. It went something like this: Develop a disruptive product or service, launch quickly without asking permission and before anyone knows what you're doing, use early success to stack up an obscene amount of capital, use that capital to blitz your way into new markets and quickly develop a massive army of loyal users, and use those armies to topple the walls of regulators, monopolies, and special interests.

 

It's true that Uber-particularly in their first few years-represents a perfect case study in regulatory hacking.

 

The problem is, much of Silicon Valley learned all the wrong lessons, simplifying the Uber story down to "if you stack up enough capital, you can steamroll government."

 

Not only is that a trite and offensive reduction, it's also wrong. While Uber did have the advantage of capital, they also adroitly applied many of the concepts and tools of regulatory hacking, which you'll read about in later chapters, to achieve incredible growth in the face of obvious regulatory obstacles.

 

Bradley Tusk, a political consultant and early Uber investor, puts it well: "From working with [Kalanick], I found that he is tough and he can be a pain, but in terms of what I saw firsthand for several years . . . he's the smartest client I've ever worked with in terms of understanding political dynamics."

 

Uber understood the nature of the entrenched power they were facing. They studied the power dynamics within the taxi industry and understood that they were a direct and unequivocal threat to major economic interests who had secured political protection in almost every city in America, since taxicab companies are invariably one of the top donors to local politicians. Given the iron triangles that had formed between taxi operators, taxi commissions, and city councils, it was always going to be nearly impossible to compromise with an industry built on the monopolistic restriction of supply by local governments. Uber had to fight. You'll learn about assessing the power dynamics in your market in Chapter 2: Power.

 

Facing this power dynamic, Uber rapidly and systematically tested various...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Portfolio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0525533206
• ISBN 13: 9780525533207
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Portfolio; https://www.wetones.co.uk/; ; 105 Golborne Rd; London; W10 5NL; Vereinigtes Königreich
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