Today at the F.ounders 2013 event at NASDAQ MarketSite in NYC, Travis Kalanick of Uber and Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures talked about  the tension between disruption and regulation. Uber currently operates in 30 cities and recently soft launched in Leone, France. Kalanick says that it’s now serving hundreds of thousands of rides and is growing 20% month over month. He notes that the company is profitable in every city that they’ve operated in over 1 year. Moderator Peter Kafka, of All Things D, asked Kalanick right out of the gate about whether he expected to have to fight regulatory issues at every turn and whether he knew that Uber was ‘illegal’ in many locations (Kalanick disputed the term illegal immediately). “I would characterize it very differently…I didn’t cause the problem,” says Kalanick. “I don’t wish that upon anybody, including myself. When we started in San Francisco, it was a lifestyle play. We wanted to push a button and get a ride…we just wanted to be baller in SF.” Kalanick says that there are various legal issues that they’re fighting including regulators that he says are trying to preserve the ‘status quo’ and what he says is outright ‘corruption’. “We don’t beg for forgiveness,” in those cities, says Kalanick, “because we’re legal.” “I think it takes courage,” says Pishevar on why Menlo invested i
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