它的创始人现在个个身家50亿美元：Uber最真实的创业史

    为了与男友团聚，雷切尔•霍特搬到了华盛顿——他的男友现在已经成了他的丈夫。她回复了Uber的一份招聘启事，开始在美国首都推广Uber。

    我是在2011年11月8日来到华盛顿的。我们在11月18日做成了第一单。所以在10天时间里，我们差不多把所有事情都抛在脑后了。一开始只有我和另一个推广团队在做，他们大概是在我的两周后开始的。我觉得当时有一种盲人骑瞎马的感觉。

    华盛顿是我们碰到监管挑战的第一个市场。讽刺的是，我刚到华盛顿时就说过，我不想干任何跟政治哪怕有一丁点关系的事。我们在2011年的12月15日正式发布产品。

    我记得那是2012年1月11日，也就是离我们正式发布还不到一个月，我当时刚从旧金山返回华盛顿，但Uber在华盛顿已经火得不行。从一家企业的观点看，Uber已经做得很好了。我在旧金山与特拉维斯和比尔•格尔利见了面，他们当时都在办公室。我们当时真的工作得非常努力，整个团队每天都忙得团团转。

    我刚回到华盛顿，Twitter上就冒出了出租车管理部门宣布Uber在华盛顿为非法的消息。我们想方设法地去解决这个问题。当然，由于这是华盛顿，所有人都对监管领域的故事感兴趣，所以《华盛顿邮报》和很多博客都在评论此事。结果发现，有一名出租车管理部门的官员在没有引用任何法规的情况下，就断言“它是非法的”。轻轻一句话，就让大家疯了似的急了两天。然后我接到了一个电话：“那位出租车管理官员要求试乘一下，我们怎么办？”我说：“让他试乘，反正我们什么也没做错。”他让车子停在五月花酒店，然后召集媒体，扣留了司机的车子，并且开了一张2000美元的罚款票据。

    当天我就挨个打电话给每个合作伙伴，对他们说：“现在发生了这件事，我们百分之百地支持你们。如果像这样的事情再发生，不管是什么罚单传票，我们都会原价赔偿。我们支持你们。”我们给每名司机都打了电话。当晚，我们上路的司机比发生这件事以前还要多。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文科

    Rachel Holt moved to Washington, D.C., to be with her boyfriend, who is now her husband. She answered a job listing to start Uber’s operations in the nation’s capital.

    I got to D.C. on November 8th, 2011. We did our first ride on November 18th, 2011. So in 10 days, we sort of got everything fully spun off. In the beginning it was just me and another launcher team that started about two weeks after me. I think it was a little bit of the blind leading the blind.

    D.C. was the first market that we ever had any regulatory challenges. Ironically, when I went to D.C. I said I wanted to do nothing remotely political. Our official launch was December 15th, 2011.

    I remember it was January 11th, 2012—less than a month after we launched. I actually had just come back from San Francisco. D.C. was really on fire. It was doing so well from a business perspective. In San Francisco I had met with Travis and with Bill Gurley, who was in the office at the time. I was so excited to share all this early success we had had. We were really working—really, really working hard. The team was working their tails off.

    I got back to D.C. and this tweet comes up saying that the taxi commissioner declares Uber D.C. illegal. Suddenly we were scrambling to figure out what to do. And of course, because it was D.C., everyone is interested in this regulatory story. So the Washington Post was writing about it and blogs in D.C. were writing about it. And then there is a taxi commissioner, not citing any rules, saying, you know, “This is illegal.” And that really sparked two incredibly crazy days. I got a call saying, “The taxi commissioner has requested a ride. What do we do?” And I was like, “Let him take the ride. We’re not doing anything wrong.” And he had called the press before he took this ride, and ended the ride at the Mayflower Hotel, which of course is where all fun things go down in D.C. And he had the press there, and he impounded the driver’s car and gave him $2,000 worth of tickets.

    I spent the rest of the day calling every partner that we had, saying, “This is what happened. We’re 100% behind you. If anything like this happens again, we’re going to reimburse you for any tickets and any citations. We’re behind you.” We called every driver personally. We had more drivers on the road that evening than we had ever had before.