Travis, if you're looking for a new adventure - I'm looking for a co-founder. Ping me ;)
Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
901–910 of 1001 posts
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#902Earlier 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?
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.
My data points are that I've been taking Uber exclusively, because Lyft can't seem to figure out how to operate outside of the US. :-)
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#903Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors behind this horrid behavior. Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them. They pressure him into taking a sabbatical, then two days in they pull this cowardly act of firing him remotely. Not only was it a cowardly act, but it was the wrong thing to do for the business. It will lead to an epic destruction of value. Wo…
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…
> Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.
^^ this is why I never stopped using Uber.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#904Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…
This is factually incorrect. You're drawing a direct parallel between medallion taxis and Uber/Lyft rides, when they are not in fact the same at all. The outer boroughs, and every neighborhood in the city, has had car service options for decades, where you call a phone number (or often walk to a local storefront stand) to get a ride. This is the exact market segment that Uber has entered. Literally. There wasn't and…
I think this really depends on which city you are in.
When Uber started in SF, the experience of getting a taxi was very frustrating. There weren't enough cabs, the cab drivers were over the top rude, they refused to take credit cards and were aggressive about tips, if you called a cab they would never show up, and they were (and still are) expensive. It was not necessarily about the app, it was just that it was reliable -- you could get a car when and where you needed it and not having to pay in the car made the experience far superior.
At the very same time, there were all these black cars rolling around the city and picking up passengers somewhat illegally. That experience was not great because you often had to negotiate a high rate, but this was mostly because there were no taxis available. In other words, there was a bunch of supply that could be utilized.
I think those conditions made Uber particularly ripe to work in SF and once it did, that proved that it could work elsewhere as well.
The app was also a huge benefit, but in context, I actually think it could have been just as useful in the beginning if you could have texted your address.
It goes to show that for something to be great, you have to get a lot of things right at once. :-)
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#905Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is factually incorrect. You're drawing a direct parallel between medallion taxis and Uber/Lyft rides, when they are not in fact the same at all. The outer boroughs, and every neighborhood in the city, has had car service options for decades, where you call a phone number (or often walk to a local storefront stand) to get a ride. This is the exact market segment that Uber has entered. Literally. There wasn't and…
I'll attest to the original comment by davidf18. Uber/Lyft have radically changed NYC for the better. Ride sharing services are significantly cheaper on the order of multiples, easier to use (eg. no more hailing, paying), and a hell of a lot more pleasant to ride in than taxis. Taxis were notoriously bad. They'd intentionally take slower routes to run up the meter, refuse passengers trying to go to locations the driv…
Your reply doesn't address anything CPLX said. There were already non-yellow cab options in NYC for car service, and there still are. That's the point they were making.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#906Earlier 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:…
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…
> who has run multiple startups to various exits
What has he done besides Red Swoosh? btw, Red Swoosh was sold to Akamai and then later disassembled when they realized there was no "there" there.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#907Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same pushy, aggressive culture that made their some of their employees' lives awful also made it possible to get excellent service that reduces tons of drunk driving and generally improves people's lives. I really don't think they could've broke into the market by asking politely; it took some fire in the belly. However, the side effects are pretty devastating as well.
> The same pushy, aggressive culture that made their some of their employees' lives awful also made it possible to get excellent service that reduces tons of drunk driving and generally improves people's lives. So you're basically saying that stuff like treating women like shit was NECESSARY to provide a good "taxi" service?
The sexism isn't the only problem within the company. It's the easiest to criticize, because it's obvious how stupid and absurd it is--and how there is no excusing it, but I Uber has done a bunch of other things that reflect this same mindset.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#908Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation doubly required because if the net miles driven actually increases due to increased use of cars over public transit (very likely), and increased availability of transportation services overall, the greenhouse gas emissions would go _up_ if anything. There are situations where ride services would encourage public transit utilization (last mile services), but I'd guess those are far from the dominant use case.
There's plenty of people, myself included, who don't have a car but would otherwise probably get one if effortless car services on-demand like Uber didn't exist. You need to take that into account. According to some estimates I've seen just constructing a car is equivalent to 3-4 years of carbon footprint of driving it[1][2]. You might say "buy used!". I would, but over the entire economy it would add up to the same…
That EPA link says nothing about the embodied carbon footprint of manufacturing vehicles.
The Guardian article is very deceptive:
"... the emissions from the manufacture of a top-of-the-range Land Rover Discovery ... may be as much as four times higher than the tailpipe emissions of a Citroen C1."
Did you see the trick they pulled there?
They took carbon emissions from manufacture of a large vehicle (Land Rover Discovery), and divided it by the tailpipe emissions of a very efficient small vehicle (Citroen C1) in order to concoct a large-sounding, but ultimately meaningless comparison "4 times higher". You may as well compare the manufacturing emissions of the Land Rover to the tailpipe emissions of a cow.
But even assuming your point about manufacturing emissions, while you don't buy a new vehicle yourself because of your use of ride services, the cars used for ride services will be replaced more often, because they are more heavily utilized, and hence will have to be replaced more often.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#909Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same pushy, aggressive culture that made their some of their employees' lives awful also made it possible to get excellent service that reduces tons of drunk driving and generally improves people's lives. I really don't think they could've broke into the market by asking politely; it took some fire in the belly. However, the side effects are pretty devastating as well.
> The same pushy, aggressive culture that made their some of their employees' lives awful also made it possible to get excellent service that reduces tons of drunk driving and generally improves people's lives. So you're basically saying that stuff like treating women like shit was NECESSARY to provide a good "taxi" service?
Necessary is a loaded word....
None the less, let's not pretend yellow cab other taxi livery companies never mistreated any of their employees (male, female, lgbtq, etc.)
Mistreatment is not an uber only specialty.
Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
#910Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pardon me for being somewhat rude, but your perspective suggests that you're perhaps relatively young? IBM's recent demise, Lehman Brothers going down under, Enron, Arthur Anderson / Worldcom, the dismantling of Japanese mega conglomerates by the GHQ, Apple's 90's turnaround, the death of workstation companies, deregulation of US airlines, are all orders of magnitude more impactful than if Uber dies and Lyft prevails…
> IBM's recent demise Somebody should let them know! Certainly on a downward trend of late but ~80BN in revenues last year is far from dead
I'm assuming parent meant IBM's "relatively" recent demise. IBM lost many billions in the early 90s and was close to disaster, at the same time Microsoft (originally an IBM supplier!) was surging.