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Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

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Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#21

Post by eugeniub »

a2tech wrote: post #8

1) Support the self driving thing for another round of funding, then stuff it. I agree with someone else in the thread-its too blue sky now to be wasting money on. Let other companies chase it into the ground then license it when its commercially viable 2) Refocus on the core product. Drop the tipping, convert more drivers through incentives or slightly bumping fare payouts on the backend. They can pull some of the c…

Without something like self-driving, what differentiates Uber from Lyft and other future competitors? A 1.5 star App Store rating? Greyball?

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#22

Post by emilsedgh »

I don't know why is everybody so much against the driverless cars project. I think its a nice R&D project that could pay off really really big. I don't think it costs a lot of money comparing what they are burning nowadays.

I think they should:

* Make sure HR problems are actually resolved internally. Its not a big problem to solve I think.

* Try to grow in more towns and countries aggressively.

* Use the economics of scale to bring down the costs for drivers so they can keep the cost down without paying from VC money. For example:

Buy insurance in bulk for their drivers,

Contract repair shops for their drivers,

Even buy cars in bulk and lease them out to drivers.

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#23

Post by jerf »

YCode wrote: post #10

First spend a few weeks going to the employees in key areas and one/a few on one asking them what needs changed. It's been my experience that the people on the ground know what's wrong with the company, they just don't have the authority or vision to do anything about it. Then look for the most common threads and how to tackle those. Naive, I know. But it's what I would do.

I'd say it's less "naive" than thinking you've got the correct diagnosis for a multi-billion multi-national dollar company off of a collective, oh, let's be generous and call it an hour of reading news articles about a company (time spent chewing the fat on HN and other fora don't much count), and therefore have the correct prescription for it as well.

I'd certainly say I wouldn't be surprised to get in there and discover that, yes, corporate culture is the biggest problem, but it must also be remembered that that could just be the availability heuristic at play [1]. It could also easily be a second-order effect of some more fundamental problem. Or it could end up hardly even rating in the top 3 problems. I don't know. Neither does anybody else here, really. Not because people here are particularly bad people or anything, it's just that quite likely nobody really knows; a culture tends to be blind to its own pathologies (or it would fix them; there's a selection effect in play) so there may be literally nobody currently on Earth who has a good grasp on the true problem, let alone a solution.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#24

Post by dbot »

Uber needs to focus on customer loyalty - having a base of loyal customers means they can engage in licensing deals with the true automakers.

How to build loyalty? Create a rewards/milage program similar to airlines. Most business travelers commit to one airline because of the status and perks they receive. Some Uber perk ideas include:

1. priority response during high demand

2. free "upgrades" from UberX to higher class vehicles when demand/wait time allows

3. partnership with airline lounges to get access when traveling

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#25

Post by atemerev »

Nice try, Thuan. :)

I would have run a management buyout (this is why the smear campaign started, right? 70 billion is way too expensive, and valuation needed to be put down fast, while making plausible reasons for that — congratulations, it worked).

Then, I'd have fired half of those 14k employees (really? for a startup?), and finally pivoted by rolling out their geo-matching API for everybody to run their own businesses and services on it (they should have it for like 2 years already). The first one who will provide something like AWS for shared economy wins!

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#26

Post by castis »

blowski wrote: post #14
castis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it wants to continue to exist it needs to erect new barriers that protect it and keep out competition. If making it illegal for competition to exist is the only way to keep Uber running then it shouldn't keep running.

Erecting barriers to entry is what every single business tries to do. Whether it's buying patents, spending vast sums of money on your brand, monopolising key resources - they're all trying to do the same thing.

It makes complete sense to me why they would go to these lengths.

I'm looking at this from the perspective of: Vehicle manufacturers are not allowed to manage their own dealerships. All vehicles in my state are required to be sold through a 3rd party. That kind of thing is shitty to me.

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#27

Post by CydeWeys »

bsvalley wrote: post #15

1. Hire Chris Lattner who just left Tesla to take over self-driving initiative. 2. Ask Chris Sacca to come out of retirement and to get more involved in Uber's strategy. 3. Find a COO like yesterday. 4. Shut down Uber eats and Uber rush and double down on self-driving initiative. 5. Make the team leaner, more agile and eliminate 1s layer of management (engineering managers, etc.). Dev teams should be %100 autonomous…

The thing about tipping is that it actually helps to solve one of Uber's biggest problem: Their cash burn rate. Tipping allows them to move a good chunk of their driver costs onto their customers, same as how it works for servers in restaurants. I understand the ideological opposition to it, but they might not be able to afford to not have tipping.

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#28

Post by mabbo »

Step 1: Begin with culture.

Get every single employee involved. Have a very big summit with the single goal: creating the culture that Uber should aspire to be, and coming up with a distinct plan for how they're going to get there. Engineers like to solve problems, and it's clear there's a big one here that has been identified.

Once we have our goal of who we want to be as a company, there will need to be continual work to make sure we're still aligned on that goal, aligned on that culture. There will be people who need to leave, by their own choice or not, based on whether they want to and can be part of that change.

Probably worth hiring Fowler to be part of it, if she's willing.

Step 2: Cut some losses.

This Uber/Waymo thing? It's time to settle. It's clear that even if somehow Uber is innocent in all this, we're not going to win the case in court. Come to Google and say "We're sorry we let this happen. We want to be better than that. Waymo and Uber have the same goals in mind, so let's work together." It'll be expensive, but it'll be cheaper than never having self-driving cars.

Step 3: Plan.

Come up with 1, 3, 5, and 10 year plans. Where does Uber intend to be at each of those milestones? How do they relate to each other? On what day is Uber profitable? How does Uber stop the bleeding? And are these milestones achievable while still meeting the cultural goals from step 1? If not, come up with better goals. If I can't find a way to profitability without meeting the cultural goals, I step down and let a better leader step up.

Uber board, let me know when you're ready for my bold and inspiring leadership.

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#29

Post by maxxxxx »

I don't think there is a path for them to be a self sustaining business on the scale their valuation demands. With the investment money they have taken and the resulting growth expectations I don't think they can do much without disappointing their investors massively. If their valuation goes down a lot of employees will leave. I wouldn't be too surprised if they got bought by someone in the future.

Re: Ask HN: You are named CEO of Uber, what do you do in “180 days of change”?

#30

Post by a2tech »

eugeniub wrote: post #21
a2tech wrote: post #8

1) Support the self driving thing for another round of funding, then stuff it. I agree with someone else in the thread-its too blue sky now to be wasting money on. Let other companies chase it into the ground then license it when its commercially viable 2) Refocus on the core product. Drop the tipping, convert more drivers through incentives or slightly bumping fare payouts on the backend. They can pull some of the c…

Without something like self-driving, what differentiates Uber from Lyft and other future competitors? A 1.5 star App Store rating? Greyball?

The car companies are all perusing self driving technology. It's realistically years and years out. If uber hoovers up the drivers now, there won't be (in wide spread consumer perception) competition in the future because uber will have driven the other competitors out of business.
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