Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

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

#391

Post by Applejinx »

ckastner wrote: post #276
ckastner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. I don't think Kalanick had much to do with it. He created the product, but it pretty much sold by itself -- similar to how Zuckerberg created Facebook, which sold by itself. I'm very optimistic about this change. To me, Kalanick, and the culture he bread, were toxic to Uber. I'm reminded of how Microsoft's share price jumped by 12% the day Steve Ballmer's re…

My comment that Kalanick didn't have much to do with it seems to be generating a lot of downvotes. This is surprising to me. The reason I compared Uber's success to Facebook was because demand for the product was so great, it was viral . It's hard to mess up a product that is so incredibly popular. Perhaps Instagram would have been a better example to communicate my point. Its initial success was clearly not anticipa…

Kalanick had everything to do with the valuation. This, however, is a problem: what you might think of as premature optimization. Yes, Kalanick is why Uber got an impossibly high valuation from the collective fantasy known as Wall Street: they were operating based on personalities and primitive ideas of conflict, rather than a real understanding of how systems work.

But it was a premature optimization because those responsible for turning 'viciously competitive evil guy' into raw capital failed to acknowledge that he'd screw them in turn as soon as he needed an exit strategy. You simply cannot turn to childish human dominance battles as a model for what will work in large systems and interdependent markets.Even propping up your 'pet winner' with near-infinite capital won't save you forever.

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

#392

Post by parhurs »

adamnemecek wrote: post #357
naskwo wrote: post #352

A few weeks ago, I posted on HN about my experience in Hamburg (no Uber in Germany. The local taxi authority has its own app which works equally well, if not better). Last weekend, I was in Budapest. There is no Uber in Hungary (anymore), but the main taxi company (Fötaxi) has its own app which works brilliantly. I honestly see no "moat" around Uber in markets where (large) taxi dispatchers have the insight to build…

Ubers other differentiator is the fact that I can go to just about any city in the world and use it. I guess I could research and install fotaxi but as a 21th century consumer, I'm extremely lazy.

I read the GP as saying there'll be a unified UI to various local taxis ("interconnected ecosystem"). I could see this emerging from EU regulation, in a similar way they mandate banks to open up their APIs (which is much bigger than taxis).

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

#393

Post by matt4077 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #178
fnovd wrote: post #98

>Mr. Kalanick last week said he would take an indefinite leave of absence from Uber, partly to work on himself and to grieve for his mother, who died last month in a boating accident. He said Uber’s day-to-day management would fall to a committee of more than 10 executives. >In the letter, titled “Moving Uber Forward” and obtained by The New York Times, the investors wrote to Mr. Kalanick that he must immediately lea…

I think this is right on. It's a crucial moment for Uber and that is no time to hand leadership off to a big committee. I'm seeing a bunch of references in these comments to when Steve Jobs was fired from Apple.[1] A more relevant reference might be when Jobs stepped down to treat his cancer. He named one interim CEO--Tim Cook--and fully empowered him to run Apple. If it was Travis's idea to leave a 10-person committ…

Kalanick is no Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was an asshole at times, but that behaviour was always about driving people hard to create what he considered a perfect product.

Kalanick's brohaviour has nothing to do with economic success. You absolutely do not need to harass people sexually to be successful, and that idea must die, fast.

In fact: If you promote such a culture, you're giving up the opportunities that employees with different backgrounds, motivation, ad loyalty can bring to the table.

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

#394

Post by baby »

dfabulich wrote: post #100
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…

You're right, but I think that's exactly how/why Uber's investors were able to convince Kalanick to step down. Uber may or may not take over the world at some point, but Uber needs another round of investment in the next 18 months just to survive. If the existing investors refused to play ball, they could kill the next round, which really would kill Uber. And here's another important moral of this story for founders:…

You guys are talking about Uber dying, but I cannot fathom how this is possible from just the user's perspective. Uber seems to be everywhere, people take Ubers or driver for Ubers every day. How could a company this big fail?

Stop growing maybe, but going bankrupt and shutting down?

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

#395

Post by matt4077 »

wbillingsley wrote: post #29
muglug wrote: post #2

This proves that speaking out makes a difference. Edit: HN discussion of Susan J. Fowler's original blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022

It clearly makes a difference as to who is CEO -- on several occasions a succession of bad news stories has effectively removed a tech CEO (Mozilla, GitHub, Uber, ...) Questions I'd be interested in your thoughts on: - does it actually change corporate behaviour? - is it a good thing that press (which it seems is sometimes influenceable) can effectively hire and fire by continued pressure? (And please note that's not…

There was no conspiracy to undermine Kalanick. Nobody is actually questioning the accusations levelled against him. The press simply followed the story, and people were interested in hearing about it. In doing so, they affected positive change at Uber. Everything worked as designed.

And yes: even as a private company, you're not immune from scrutiny of your action by the public. Your company is part of society, depends on the institutions, and can't ride roughshod over established norms of behaviour without also accepting the consequences.

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

#396

Post by bhouston »

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…

> Notice that leveraged loan in 2016.[2]

Traditional firms will generally prefer debt to equity as you will generally get a better shareholder return on debt. VC backed firms do not usually raise debt -- even if it is preferred -- because they are viewed as too risky by banks. When VC-backed firms raise debt it is because they are transitioning out of high risk to the stability of a established and predictable firm.

In some Nobel-winning economic theories the best capital structure is all debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_structure

If the only thing about this loan that makes it "leveraged" is its interest rate of 5% then that is probably preferable to equity and not a red flag.

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

#397

Post by dagw »

jlebrech wrote: post #261
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…

why can't they just stop the burn rate, most drivers won't jump ship and they can have a skeleton crew? or does this prevent them paying back investors?

Being a glorified taxi dispatcher probably isn't Uber's idea of a successful endgame. They desperately want to be a big player in the future of autonomous transportation and are clearly willing to bet the success of their taxi dispatching company to do so. Cutting their burn rate to a skeleton crew means giving up on that ambition and spending the rest of their 'life' as a reasonably successful company, with perhaps some modest profits, dispatching taxis via a phone app, and neither they nor their investors seem to want that.

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

#399

Post by matt4077 »

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.

Firstly, I will continue to kid myself. Investors are humans, my friend. Everyone is capable, and should be expected, to put decency above money when the two come into conflict.

Secondly, it doesn't matter. Many people cared about the morality, and it was enough to make a difference.

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

#400

Post by Applejinx »

vit05 wrote: post #192
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…

"If you want a higher building, you should build strong columns" They will change the company's current culture. Slow down the pace of growth to try to adjust what is wrong. Probably focus on where they have margin to operate. This is clear in Gary ( Uber Co founder) text on Medium. "In a highly competitive market it is easy to become obsessed with growth, instead of taking the time to ensure you’re on the right path…

Their valuation is entirely and utterly founded on the idea of growth, and that there is no other path. They have absolutely no chance of turning around and telling Wall Street, of all people, that it's time to pause. Wall Street only loved them when they moved fast and broke everything there was to break.

This is death. I mean, it's sensible talk, in another context it would be seen as enlightened, in a larger sense it's the right answer.

Uber aren't IN another context. They depend completely on Wall Street continuing to think they are the biggest shark that ever sharked, and now that's ruined and the only big investment opportunities are in betting AGAINST Uber. Most likely the smartest money is already out.

This is death. Shouldn't be, in a more sensible context, but it absolutely is. You can't tell Wall Street 'it is time to think sustainability' when they bet on you eating the goddamn world for them.

Post reply on HN