Uber - Inside the Marketplace (The NFX Podcast)

Capital can be a competitive weapon. You have to be good at fundraising if you're going to be doing a startup in a competitive space. If you're going to try to build something at scale and speed, you can't have your competitors out-raise you. It's going to make it very hard for you. If you're not great at fundraising today, you need to get excellent at it really quickly.

When the name of your company and your brand name become shorthand for the entire market category, like Google did with search and now Uber is for ride-sharing, it becomes an incredibly powerful defensive weapon and a growth mechanism.

If you look at chess, I can beat a Grandmaster in chess if I can make two moves to every one move they make—even though they're much better than me. Speed is the ultimate competitive weapon, and Uber has shown that again and again.