The Upstarts

Readers will find plenty of food for thought in Brad Stone’s The Upstarts, the most detailed investigation yet into the early years of these Silicon Valley prodigies. It’s an entertaining and well-crafted account… a careful character portrait of both Uber and Airbnb. Read it and you will be able to judge them for yourself. * FT *
A fun, briskly told narrative… Mr. Stone’s reporting is excellent. The Upstarts is not the end of the story but an excellent history of the beginning. * The Wall Street Journal *
Excellent… an unusually gripping business book. * The Times *
Stone brings a big dose of truth serum to the marvels and machinations of the sharing economy and its founders…. ‘The Upstarts’ is rich with inside details. * Forbes *
Technology writer Brad Stone chronicles [Uber and Airbnb’s] swift rise to the corporate stratosphere, juxtaposing visionary zeal with the often deep impacts they’ve left in their wakes… The book is a timely reminder that pushing the digital realm into the physical can disrupt communities as well as the competition. * Nature *
A richly researched and highly readable narrative that provides additional layers of insight by weaving in contrasting stories of competing companies that failed. – Walter Isaacson, * New York Times Book Review *
A colourful and enjoyable read … Compelling. * i *
In The Upstarts, Brad Stone has vividly captured the cultural and economic upheaval brought about by the latest generation of Internet superpowers. His book is a magnificent expose of how companies like Uber and Airbnb came to be, the people that profited and lost out along the way and the ramifications that this technology will have on the world for decades to come. Stone remains the preeminent chronicler of the Internet Age and a master storyteller. * Ashlee Vance, author of Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future *
[Stone] amply illustrates that for every tech champion there is a forgotten crowd of decapitated competitors, pissed-off investors, defenestrated founders and unrewarded early employees … where Stone really succeeds is in providing the reader with the visceral experience of the start-up enterprise. – Antonio Garcia-Martinez * Washington Post *
A fascinating account of the founders and leaders of each company, each of whom have moulded the companies into their own images in many ways… [Stone’s] telling is especially artful. These books are great primers for aspiring entrepreneurs as well as those who are simply interested in what makes entrepreneurs successful. – Peter High * Forbes *

Brad Stone is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Everything Store- Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2013. He has covered Silicon Valley for more than fifteen years and lives in San Francisco.

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