A-holes take notice, the times are changing. The only name here that deserves to be in history books is Susan J. Fowler's for having the courage to speak up.
Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may kill Uber. Highly unlikely. Why? Investors who stomach multi-billion dollar annual losses will probably just shrug off the recent bit of trouble. If the choice is to either write off $15 billion or to give another couple to help the company go through a rough patch (what a buying opportunity!) I think I know what investors are going to do. Kalanick's head has now rolled (not that it really hurts him much per…
Also known as the Gambler's Fallacy.
i think it's sunk-cost fallacy rather than gambler's fallacy.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#483Susan J. Fowler's blog post started the snowball that led to the firing of a $70 billion startup's CEO.
I hope this encourages more people to publicly report systematic cultures of sexual harassment.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It's a relished fantasy that Uber is dying or is going to die, because so many people in tech circles hate Uber and Kalanick. It's not actually dying and it's not going to die. Routinely skeptics here will point out that Uber is selling a $1 service for $0.75 (or a similar invented sum). Said skeptics then intentionally, comically ignore that Lyft is and has been doing the exact same thing and has radically less capi…
Lyft seems to be a fundamentally different company in two ways that gives them an advantage over Uber. First of all they are much happier to partner with local players and don't feel a need to 'own' the entire world in the way Uber does. Secondly Lyft seems happy being a ride dispatching service and don't see it as a temporary stepping stone towards much grander transportation ambitions.
The downside of this approach is that Lyft doesn't have anywhere near the upside potential that Uber has. If Uber pulls off all of its ambitions it will be larger than Lyft could ever dream of being. The upside for Lyft's more humble goals is that it's chance of reaching them are much larger.
Unless Uber is willing to change its DNA and scale back its ambition, give up on its long term goals, and stay just a basic ride dispatching service then your analysis is incomplete. However perhaps this scaling back is what the CEO change is fundamentally about.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#485Even if he's out as CEO he still will likely wield outsize influence due to his 1) board seat 2) equity stake 3) majority of leadership are presumably his people.
Will be interesting to see who replaces him and whether the company actually changes.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#486A 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…
>London mirror Uber's functionality
London black cabs have been available by app for a while (Hailo). The main reason people use Uber is that it's about 30% cheaper.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
But does winning have to come at the cost of basic human dignity and law?
What even is this question? Nothing "have" to come at the cost of anything. It's a matter of choices and people will make different choices. Morals are relative.
That's a hyper generalization. Some morals like no tolerance against sexual harassment are not relative.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Anecdotally, I've personally taken Lyft almost exclusively lately. Among my peers, I've noticed similar trends. I've even heard shifting in language -- rather than say "call an Uber", I've heard "call a Lyft"., Plural of anecdote is obviously not data, but those are my data points.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#489This 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. Highly unlikely. Why? Investors who stomach multi-billion dollar annual losses will probably just shrug off the recent bit of trouble. If the choice is to either write off $15 billion or to give another couple to help the company go through a rough patch (what a buying opportunity!) I think I know what investors are going to do. Kalanick's head has now rolled (not that it really hurts him much per…
Your comment is predicated on the fallacy that Uber's success is merely a function of runway / the ability to find new investors.
Bear in mind that the company's growth has been driven by its ability to run a very, very highly-performant backend -- and that's in turn a matter of getting the very best engineering talent on board.
Some, perhaps most of that talent is already pissed off about the fratty work environment and questionable leadership decisions. Recently, their options exercise window changed from 30 days to 7 years[0].
Angry employees + management turnover/uncertainty + limited runway + new rule that basically you don't lose your options when you quit = I'm officially an U-Bear.
On a related topic, I think people's schadenfreude for Travis is getting out of control and he's becoming a bit of a totem for everything that's wrong with SV....while his issues are largely self-inflicted ("boob-er" / treating drivers like crap on camera / etc), all the hatred directed toward him seems excessive in context. The guy just lost his mother, maybe cut him some slack?
[0]: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/05/16/uber...
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#490This 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 don't have a company yet if you're dependent on future investment.