Taxis and regulatory controllers found it difficult to challenge Uber because they didn&#x27;t operate a taxi service - they were operating an entirely new market which hadn&#x27;t been envisioned and had little to no regulation around.<p>I guarantee you Uber &#x2F; Lyft would have been shut down hard if they had tried to take street hailing - for 50+ years law&#x2F;regulations controlled who you could hail a taxi from, and so little to no competition on quality&#x2F;service took place in that marketplace.<p>BTW, I&#x27;m not saying this is completely and absolutely true for all markets (though, ironically, you chose one where it is pretty much an absolute) - but the more and more regulation you see around a market, the less and less flexibility new competitors have to come in and disrupt.<p>Zenefits is an interesting case that straddles this though - in Utah, there was some regulation that made life difficult for them, and with effective lobbying by A16Z, the regulation was changed to allow Zenefits to compete there.  And, of course, we&#x27;ve seen ares where they&#x27;ve discovered they really do need to comply with the law - though in most of those scenarios the requirements were so minimal (and probably reasonable) that they weren&#x27;t much of a barrier to competition - just a minimal level of qualification (like having a drivers license, background check, and insurance for Uber)