Is that actually the story of Uber? They didn't start with "let a random person drive you around"; they did licensed-limousine-by-app (which is the incremental "boring" improvement this post hates) until Lyft came around. They quickly copied the model (Lyft launched in May; "Uber X" in July 2012 [0]) but that's something to be said for agility and not necessarily getting the right idea at first.
[0] here's a launch announcement with Lyft being listed as already being operational https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/01/uber-opens-up-platform-to-...