In December 2009, I was in Paris.
One day it snowed a good amount (a rarity in Paris) and the whole city was in gridlock. People in our group started complaining as we couldn’t get a taxi. Some people even said (seeing all those empty seats in the cars that weren’t moving anywhere) what if they could hail passenger cars using smartphones.
Years later, when Travis Kalanick was interviewed on stage and asked what gave him inspiration for Uber, he said: “When I was in Paris in December 2009…”
Could it be yet another made-up founding story? (“Did Reed Hastings really pay the late fees to Blockbuster?”) Who knows. But the point is — many people know the problem and can even think of potential solutions, but very few people go on to grind years of their life and build a working product. It’s all about execution.