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Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#71

Post by phantom_package »

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

> Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate.

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#72

Post by santoshalper »

jchien17 wrote: post #9

Wow, I thought he was just going to step away and take a break. Do we know who might replace him? It's also interesting that the five shareholders mentioned in the NYTimes article want 2 "truly independent directors". What does that mean? Depending on how many board seats there are, maybe two votes aren't enough?

What it means is that those investors believe that Uber's board is padded by Travis's cronies, and they want adult supervision brought in.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#73

Post by kbenson »

kornish wrote: post #43
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> epic destruction of value Better than abiding by an epic destruction of values.

Don't kid yourself for a second that investors are kicking Travis out because of a moral imperative.

No, they're kicking him out because the public is coming to see it as a moral imperative that Uber needs to be held accountable in some way for their behavior. I don't really care if the investors have or follow their morals, as long as they are in some way strongly incentivized to behave in that manner. We can't make the people have morals, but we can strongly encourage them to act like they do.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#74

Post by delroth »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #60
flyosity wrote: post #5

If Uber ends up going down in flames, unable to recover from the scandals and lawsuits, and Lyft prevails, it will be the most incredible change of fate in the business world this century or perhaps longer. The future of automobiles and transportation is still being swirled about, and it feels like Uber's downfall has blown the game WIDE open, ready for anyone (maybe Uber, maybe Lyft, maybe Tesla, Google, Apple, an a…

Lyft? That is just another corporate-controlled centralized system. I'd much prefer something along the lines of http://libretaxi.org/

> No credit cards. Drivers get paid directly with cash.

I can understand why some people might see this as a feature, but that's severely misunderstanding why people use services like Uber.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#75

Post by Cogito »

joshuamorton wrote: post #37
blazespin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please investigate, not necessarily believe. Innocent til proven guilty still has some place in this world.. That being said, kudos to anyone courageous enough to speak the truth even at the risk of vilification.

Believe. Do not take action against individuals without investigation, but at organization levels, take measures as though the complaints are true.

No that's ridiculous.

Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith.

If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation has already taken place, and determined that they are true. If you're going to act like that why would you need an investigation?

If complaints or concerns are raised in good faith then you have no need to mistrust the representation and instead can look to the facts and context of the situation.

Believing someone is not important, understanding the sequence of events that led to them speaking up is.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#76

Post by [deleted] »

slice_of_life wrote: post #38

Pushing a founder out is often a bad idea. This might very well be the beginning of Uber's demise. This won't be good for the company. All CEOs make mistakes even great ones like Gates with antitrust or Zuck calling users dumb-fucks. They weren't kicked out, they instead were allowed to come into their own. There's a distinct fire that a founder has for the company they founded. You can't hire that. Without this fire…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#78

Post by epistasis »

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

> Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate.

If true, this seems far more likely to be a cause of Uber's death than Kalanick resigning. That, and the valuation being as insane as it is, which is also Kalanick's fault, which as you point out, makes it hard to find greater and greater suckers.

Perhaps they'll be better off all around without Kalanick, assuming they can get the business side on track and get the burn rate under control, and perhaps make their business sustainable rather than a gigantic handout of VC money.

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