Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O. • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by vostrocity » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

Super_Jambo wrote: post #409

baby wrote: post #394

Earlier 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?

The reason it's so big is they're burning VC cash to subsidize rides. So yea when billionaires are paying your taxi fair to try and drive the local taxi firms out of business naturally they're everywhere. But when that cash runs out the necessary price hike could just as easily drive them out of business. It's not like the drivers have any great loyalty. We really need pro-competition legislation to stop this sort of…

People keep saying Uber is burning cash, but their core business model is sound:

$5 per hour per driver goes to Uber

Assume 80,000 drivers (half of # U.S. Uber drivers) drive 8 hours a day, 7 days a week

52 weeks in a year

5x8x80000x7x52=$1,164,800,000

So about $1.1 billion just in the US. The only expenses are at headquarters (engineering, operations, design, legal, marketing, support) and the tiny field support offices they have in each city (local, entry-level employees).

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

#652

Post by davidf18 » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #435

Retric wrote: post #404

Earlier 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.

Uber is profitable in certain cities, e.g. New York City [1]. They could turn cash-flow positive if they just gave up useless market share. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-profit-and-loss...

In NYC, the Yellow cabs have a huge, huge overhead because of Taxi Medallions that used to cost $1.2 million each which effectively added $125 or so for a 12 hour shift. The value of the medallions are now Uber is far more expensive in NYC than other cities such as Chicago.

Now that Uber has allowed tipping and since there is a rating system, everyone must now tip otherwise risk getting low ratings which effectively makes NYC rides even more expensive than they had been.

Most people don't own cars in Manhattan so that they either have to take mass transit or use Uber/Lyft/Taxi. There are many elderly on fixed incomes that have trouble ambulating (moving around) where lower cost taxi service is important.

In NYC at least, Uber doesn't need all of that corporate overhead and perhaps they should spin it off into some low-overhead operation.

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

#653

Post by camelite » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:45 PM UTC

blackrose wrote: post #614

camelite wrote: post #83

Should we believe men too when they're victimised by women, or is this a one way deal? What if it's a man and a woman accusing each other, or two men or two women. What if the dude is a historically oppressed minority?

> or is this a one way deal? FFS, dude. Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. No old fashioned norms are still levied on them everytime a woman speaks to them. They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to. To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just bei…

> Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them.

If you "believe women who report sexual harassment", and more specifically, if you believe women who report sexual harassment in "less clear cut" scenarios than Susan Fowlers, then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent. How much comfort the fact that other people with the same genetalia tend to fill the boardrooms provides to the accused, I will leave to your imagination.

> They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to.

Men aren't reminded constantly by their culture to do things they don't want to do? Where do you live, because it sounds like paradise to me.

> To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick.

It's neither. It was an attempt to puncture what I saw as misguided rhetoric. A good old WhatAboutTheMen is an efficient approach because the commenter's default reasoning for not "just believing" men would likely mirror mine for not "just believing" women. And so I don't have to spell it out for them.

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

#654

Post by martinko » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #362

hkmurakami wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an embattled company like this in a fiercely competitive industry, you need committed leadership and not a rotating cast of hired guns looking to make a quick buck. Kalanick has serious issues but he's demonstrated unquestionably forceful (and polarizing) leadership that mere "managers" will never be able to replace. I've been bullish on Uber despite all their mistakes and internal issues because at the end of th…

Please don't further this narrative that sexually harassing women and his general brohaviour are good for business. They are not. There are ways in which being an asshole ay be good for founders (cf Steve Jobs). Kalanick is just an asshole, and even take-no-prisoner ask-forgiveness-later businesses run much better with a bit of attention to human decency.

> sexually harassing women and his general brohaviour are good for business

Nowhere has he said this. You're conflating two very different issues. No one is disputing that he is an asshole, etc. OP was making a different point.

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

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Post by arprocter » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

NYC has the Arro[0] app for yellow cabs, although I haven't ever used it - every other vehicle on the road is a cab.

I suppose it might be useful during shift change?

[0]https://www.goarro.com/

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

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Post by anindha » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #555

microtherion wrote: post #535

Earlier 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?

I'd say down votes because it wasn't clear whether Apple would have fallen if Jobs remained. He pushed the same vision when he came back as when he was fired.

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

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Post by jcalabro » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

beisner wrote: post #571

toomanybeersies wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would drive me crazy for every city Most people only go to another city once or twice a year, so it's not a significant issue for them.

But is that true for most people who use Uber, or even taxis? I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of Uber/taxi users were in fact people traveling to a different city.

I'd definitely like to see some numbers on this. A lot of the people I know don't travel and use Uber frequently.

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

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Post by vostrocity » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

jamesfe wrote: post #368

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…

I may be simplistic or naïve, but if your business isn't profitable, that's what kills it. Travis or no Travis, it doesn't seem like Uber has found a way to cut a profit yet and at some point, profit becomes a requirement.

Uber can probably be profitable tomorrow if it wanted to be, but then it would have its long-term opportunities gobbled up by others

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

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Post by andruby » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #511

johnbellone wrote: post #472

Earlier 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.

That's exactly what I predict the market will move to

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

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Post by sethrin » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 2:50 PM UTC

leroy_masochist wrote: post #489

rsp1984 wrote: post #453

Earlier 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…

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…

Uber is evil. They always have been. I've been trying to talk my friends into boycotting them for years because of their corrupt practices, and the various scams they've run on their drivers. Their highly-performant backend was used to place "ghost cars" and avoid government officials. The timing on this is, yes, frustratingly arbitrary, but this really is the whirlwind they have sown.