Yeah, I think we fundamentally agree that they haven't paid nearly enough attention to the political end of things.

I guess I just have trouble seeing how you can effectively grow a startup at half speed. PG recently wrote a very persuasive article on growth being pretty much the only metric that matters for a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, and the accepted model seems to be break-neck growth at all cost.

Granted the minefield-like political/regulatory environment may make this a special circumstance, and I definitely understand and respect your reasoning, but I still have trouble seeing "slow and steady" as Uber's path to victory.