What if Daimler thinks of buying Uber...
Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#142As a former Uber employee (left 6 mo ago) this is shocking. Can't imagine who will step in...
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lyft? That is just another corporate-controlled centralized system. I'd much prefer something along the lines of http://libretaxi.org/
Libretaxi sucks. I don't want to negotiate with the driver and I don't want to pay cash. In typical fashion, open source/FS people fail to understand what makes a product popular when they try to clone it. Nobody gives a fuck about "Libre", I just want to get a fucking ride.
That's too reactive. The point is that there may be services we want (ride) on infrastructure we can inspect and control and we might want to have respect for the operators while we're at it. I see those as features which make execution more expensive and tend to attract less investment and thus not as well done, when done by volunteers in their spare time. That is a incentive problem, not an open source problem.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#144If 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…
But has any of the press coverage translated into actual business impact? Uber's been all over the news in Silicon Valley's incestuous little bubble for the last few months, but the general public has a solid track record of continuing to use whatever service is cheapest and/or most convenient, which remains... Uber.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#145This 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…
Does anyone think that Amazon could be eying Uber but waiting for them to lose value? Seems like it would be a natural fit for their delivery network especially considering their recent purchase of Whole Foods.
Amazon already has Flex. Source: I'm a software engineer in that team. Uber is way too expensive at this point.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#146This 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…
> This may kill Uber.
Counterpoint: businesses in good shape don't just drop CEOs. This move might just help it die slower.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#147This 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…
I hear all this doom & gloom, but could Uber not just... raise prices? Sure, they would lose a lot of customers, but they would stay alive.
How could Uber, barring wholly incompetent leadership, completely implode?
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#148I have no idea why everyone is going on about Fowler/harassment scandals.
He should have been fired by the board for the results of the Otto acquisition and the handling of Waymo lawsuit, and that was probably a much larger factor.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors Exactly. I would be wary of these specific folks. I bet you they would do the same to any founder in a heartbeat.
Any founder? Or just founders who drag their company's name and culture into a swamp of immoral behavior?
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Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#150Do VCs care more about public perception than long-term health of the company? Uber has been in the news for all the wrong reasons but thinking from the VCs POV, I doubt there is a better person to run Uber than TK. The company's monopoly is still precarious and I have a feeling that without a CEO like TK, the fate looks like a combination of retreating from markets, heavy losses, and a huge drop in valuation.
It's not just public perception - it's internal perception too. Attrition at Uber is through the roof. Yeah, Travis is one of the best people for the job and his aggressiveness built Uber, but you can't build and maintain Uber if the rest of your talent is fleeing and you can't replace them because of your rep. Plus, he's obviously created a lot of liabilities for Uber at the same time that he's created value - besides the massive cultural problems, Uber's facing a number of dangerous lawsuits.