This is kind of true about all of Tech.

Much of the crowd here isn’t very smart.

They simply happened to be at the right place at the right time, ie a time where “software was eating the world” and also the iPhone/Android took over.

Finally, the success of the actual smart people in Tech (Google, Apple, Amazon, FB) who are largely pre-iPhone companies, meant that there was a lot of venture money flowing around, when the VCs discovered the Uber model. Spend a ton of money to establish monopolies (and break a bunch of laws along the way, which you could get away with because Tech still had a good reputation thanks again to the pre-iPhone pre Web 2.0 companies) and walk away with the money while exploiting customers, clients, governments and employees.