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

nytimes.com

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

#671

Post by kevinburke »

efuquen wrote: post #606
kevinburke wrote: post #3

According 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.

If you go to a police station and report a murder do you think they'll a) investigate your claim or b) ignore you? That is the sort of belief we're talking about, a serious investigation with the assumption the person reporting it is not lying. The investigation itself could of course result in not sufficient evidence being found. It's really not that complicated.

Not sure who "we" is but far too frequently at tech companies, harassment allegations are ignored. For that matter prominent men sometimes admit to harassment and are acquitted anyway.

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

#672

Post by cirenehc »

mattlondon wrote: post #297

All this talk about Lyft becoming the new Uber is perhaps a bit unrealistic. Apart from in SF, I've never found Lyft available anywhere I've been (although I understand it is operating on other parts of the US). To momentarily sing-praises of Uber: the same app, the same login, the same card just works internationally pretty much where ever I have gone on work and vacations regardless of currencies etc - morals aside…

have you been to NYC? LA? Seattle?

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

#673

Post by briandear »

api wrote: post #587
exelius wrote: post #523

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. Someone like Kalanick - who has run multiple startups to various exits - has been running startups all his professional life. His management…

Uber isn't a mature company. They're not profitable and are burning cash like crazy. More like "CEO of a growth startup" to "fixer who can pull an over-valued startup out of a nose dive." That's a much tougher leap.

Melissa Mayer is looking for a job. ;)

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

#674

Post by jacquesm »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #549
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…

> 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.

> Most people only go to another city once or twice a year

Is that so? I'm not aware of anybody that never goes to another city multiple times per year and that includes infants and the elderly.

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

#675

Post by rlanday »

pishpash wrote: post #649

The fact that Uber brought in tipping the day it got rid of Kalanick makes me believe it is a money issue. Basically Uber raised prices by 10-20% to match Lyft.

The tip money only goes to the drivers, right? So it presumably will help to retain drivers, but won't give Uber itself any extra money.

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

#676

Post by kevinburke »

macspoofing wrote: post #554
kevinburke wrote: post #3

According 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 This meme is often repeated in context of sexual harrassment (workplace or otherwise). How do you square that with the fact that women are as capable of laying and misleading as men are? How do you square that with "innocent until proven guilty" when accusation are leveled against another individual or company.

The required burden of proof can and should be much lower in the workplace.

Sure everyone is capable of lying but P(harassment occurred | report of harassment) is much greater than P(harassment did not occur | report of harassment).

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

#677

Post by EvanL »

Exuma wrote: post #664
dfabulich wrote: post #100

Earlier 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:…

Can you explain how these large companies operate, explained like I'm a golden retriever? How does a company so big not make a profit/could possibly go bankrupt? My current understanding is companies either focus on growth (at a loss) or choose to focus on profit (with the risk of competition overtaking them or decay over time). But lets say they go bankrupt in 1 year, couldn't they just switch to "profit mode"? If t…

Companies in burgeoning industries at this scale are concerned with longevity, specifically outlasting their competitors. Not short term profits.

They are thinking more along the lines of "how can we make 10 billion dollars per year, for the next 150 years." Think General Electric.

That's why they require huge amounts of money from investors, so they can aggressively grow to a size where other companies can't touch them.

The huge amount of capital is sort of like a moat.

When you're larger, you have something called economy of scale. Which means you have enough resources to do stuff the smaller guys can't do.

When you're larger, you also have something called a data advantage. Which means you know so much more about your customers, you can predict things and make decisions the smaller guys can't.

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

#678

Post by sauravt »

tim333 wrote: post #578
dayaz36 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like what PayPal did to Elon

It was actually pretty different from that. PayPal merged with Elon's X.com and had technical differences with the PayPal founder and they decided to stick with PayPal's tech strategy. There weren't similar scandals. (See Founders at Work).

In Paypal's case, Elon Musk went on his honeymoon trip to Australia and when he landed there he got the news that he had been removed from the position of CEO (See Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future), just like how Kalanick got fired on his sabbatical.

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

#679

Post by numbsafari »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #560
necubi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow -- I'm amazed to hear this sentiment. I'm personally proud that one of our VCs was involved. Travis helped build an incredible company, but his disregard for the law, for his employees' well-being, for basic decency threaten to tear all of that down. Just in the past six months: * Susan Fowler's blog post exposed a terribly broken HR system and a culture of sexual harassment that reached the very top. This has hu…

The problem with getting rid of any leader, a CEO, President, Prime Minister, or even a Dictator even when they seem 'bad' is that you can't be sure the replacement won't be even worse or even more ineffective in meeting objectives. Unless there's a clear and obvious replacement waiting in the wings it's not certain him leaving is a good or bad idea, especially if they end up scrambling to find someone, anyone, to br…

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Kalanic as a terrible leader is the complete absence of any kind of serious leadership team or program around him.

Sadly, Uber's board sounds more likely to be the kind of disaster that controlled Yahoo, HP and so many other faded stars from the valley.

Looks like Apple's decision not to invest was well played.

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

#680

Post by ant6n »

haswell wrote: post #637
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You don't need a standard, the taxi companies just all need some API. Apps like "Transit App" will just integrate them all.
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