If they were smart they would hire a diplomat like Condoleezza Rice (Dropbox). They have a ton of experience dealing with crisis, external perceptions, government relations, and lobbying on an international level.
Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
631–640 of 1001 posts
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#632According to the article 5 different VC firms representing 40% of the voting shares asked him to resign today. Kalanick still controls the majority of voting shares and a board seat. Most of Kalanick's trouble started with Susan Fowler speaking out. Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's.
> Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's.
no evidence? no problem. guilty until proven innocent based on the gender of the accuser.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to grow when you sell dollars for 70c each. But, when you suddenly need to sell them for 1.01+$ nobody wants to buy. Uber's problem is taxi companies have lower overhead because among other thing their drivers sometimes get hailed by people at street level. Which means their either taxi prices are lower and people stop using Uber or they pay drivers more and drivers mostly stop working for Uber.
I travel a lot for work. Uber works in a lot of places where mass transit sucks and taxi service is nonexistent. Even if they cost more I have no idea how I'm going to get around when I travel. The other options are so disgusting I'm not going back to that. I would use them even if prices went up 30%.
me too
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#634Travis Kalanick's words to that Uber driver back in Feb 2017 are very ironic now in retrospect: "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else."
I think the driver's response was more ironic in today's context.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#635This 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…
> 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…
Facebook did many things right. How many people really thought Facebook would be a $450B company in 2017, good for top 5 most valuable company, and pulling in over a billion in profit a month. Yes most of the money is being made on mobile which likely wasn't the master plan of Zuckerberg or others. But things had to go right up to 2013/2014 to allow Facebook to become huge in revenue and profits with its mobile business.
We don't know exactly how much influence Zuckerberg had in all the decisions. For example the common theme for years was for there to be uproar after any major feature or change.
Like the news feed that is now ubiquitous. A worse company might have feared the backlash and slowed down on features and growing the news feed.
I assume Zuckerberg was also fundamental in acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp. Instagram is worth tens of billions now. Whatsapp has 1.2B or so monthly users. There were many comments on how overpriced and silly the Whatsapp purchase was. But most of it was in stocks and the cash at the time may have been a lot ($4B), but Facebook gets that much per month now. Whatsapp tripled its users since its acquisition.
A lot of tech people disliked the Messenger split off. But that seems to be working out for the business too. It is becoming its own platform now and can also boast 1B+ users per month.
Maybe anyone would've done all this. I don't know. But I do know it was Zuckerberg in charge when all this occurred.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#636I am really disappointed that another article discusses a power struggle without mentioning the power struggle.
Something like this is nearly always a power struggle. That the accusations may be valid is just showing that the people attaining power have a higher chance in this situation. It doesn't change the fact that it is a power struggle.
So who are the people taking over? For an news paper that shouldn't be hard to figure out. Who are the three new guys? They are 100% sure linked to the group taking over. They are certainly not "neutral". Who is likely to become the new CEO? This guy is certainly the leader of the coup or a puppet.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#637Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, I hate having to have multiple apps to do the same thing. That would drive me crazy for every city. I would pay a premium not to do that. Second, none of these apps I have seen thus far even attempts to make it easier for the user to add payment methods. Each time I need to put in my credit card information? Twice if I am on business? Nobody has taken advantage of Apple or Android pay integration. I don't cons…
>First, I hate having to have multiple apps to do the same thing Don't worry, once there are enough apps someone will figure out how to scrape and aggregate the info. The same thing happened when airlines and hotels started putting booking info online except at the time it was websites instead of apps.
Scraping and aggregating airline info is not really comparable. Airline data is based on predetermined schedules and is relatively static.
Ride hailing is extremely fluid. Must be real-time. Must be able to provide GPS coordinates of the user to the service in question.
I don't think you'll see an aggregation app until there is some ride hailing standard that is adopted by the various providers.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#638Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
How increased exercise window would hurt the company? I think it's something which pleases and reduces employees' anxiousness.
It practically eliminates the opportunity-cost of leaving. Having seven years to be able to come up with the liquidity to pay the strike/taxes -- plus, critically, being able to wait several years to get a better understanding of whether the options have value before striking -- completely changes the calculus of whether to depart a company, whether because you're unhappy or because you've found something better elsewhere.
Agree this is good for Uber employees and I'm happy they have significantly less of an impediment to leaving than most other workers at pre-exit startups.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#639Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I dunno, my guess is that he was too set in his ways to make the leap from "CEO of a growth startup" to "CEO of a mature company". If you look at founder/CEOs who have made that leap, they all tend to be very young (Jobs, Gates, Zuck, etc) and had very strong teams behind them. And in Jobs' case, it took an absence from the company of more than 10 years…
Jobs got fired from apple. Edit: Downvotes for simply stating a fact?
Precisely. And then he was brought back, and in retrospect, many of his skills the second time around (charisma, design instinct, product focus) were the same that he had brought to Apple originally, but in the meantime, he had learned to temper his worst personal flaws (largely by learning to trust and listen to a small group of people who could counteract them).
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#640I am really disappointed that another article discusses a power struggle without mentioning the power struggle. Something like this is nearly always a power struggle. That the accusations may be valid is just showing that the people attaining power have a higher chance in this situation. It doesn't change the fact that it is a power struggle. So who are the people taking over? For an news paper that shouldn't be hard…
it doesn't mention the power struggle because this article is PART of the power struggle. The journalist who wrote the article is basing the story based on the people who they have interviewed (who are the ones who are struggling for power) as well as the continuing narrative surrounding Uber (which is the story the people struggling for power are trying to create)
you should read this very interesting (but simplified) exploration of power talk for a general idea of why this article was written the way that it is:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...