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How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

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Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#31

Post by kbos87 »

draw_down wrote: post #25
code4tee wrote: post #24

Imagine the pressure the VCs on the board are under from the people that gave them money to invest. An investment in Uber went from: "Man I can't believe you got our money in there, we're gonna be rich!" to "$&?@! our money is in Uber? We're going to lose our shirts. Do something! Now!" The VCs on the board had no other choice but to kick Kalanick out of the CEO job.

It's unclear to me how much the actual business has been affected by the upheaval. But once they get Sandberg in there, combined with Huffington on the board, and Boz St John on the exec team, the press is going to love it. It's a new day at Uber, Uber goes from harass-y to classy, all that stuff.

Agreed. The great irony of all this is that a more palatable group of people running the company are more likely to take it further and thus do more damage to society, building an even more enormous and dependent economy of drivers they already intend to fire.

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#34

Post by gwern »

The backers:

> By Monday of last week, Benchmark had found four additional investors to sign the letter, including First Round Capital; Lowercase Capital; Menlo Ventures and Fidelity Investments, according to people familiar with the matter. Benchmark’s Mr. Gurley attempted to get other board members to sign, but at least one refused out of reluctance over being represented by Mr. Gurley, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.​

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#35

Post by loxias »

gnicholas wrote: post #32
vesrah wrote: post #3

Non-paywall version?

FYI, the WSJ recently launched a partnership with my startup, which gives our users free access to unlimited WSJ content. Our app and Chrome extension are free also. www.ReadAcrossTheAisle.com

This is great news, I was just thinking that I was annoyed at their paywall... What's the catch?

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#36

Post by narsil »

gnicholas wrote: post #32
vesrah wrote: post #3

Non-paywall version?

FYI, the WSJ recently launched a partnership with my startup, which gives our users free access to unlimited WSJ content. Our app and Chrome extension are free also. www.ReadAcrossTheAisle.com

It appears the extension would like to read and change the data on any website I visit. I assume users are the product here, so this appears somewhat sketchy since I'm not sure what personal data of mine is being sold.

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#37

Post by refulgentis »

carbocation wrote: post #30
jbigelow76 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley.

> That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley. /s/John Sculley/Steve Jobs/

Not sure why you're being downvoted - it's from Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech. http://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#38

Post by draw_down »

kbos87 wrote: post #31
draw_down wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear to me how much the actual business has been affected by the upheaval. But once they get Sandberg in there, combined with Huffington on the board, and Boz St John on the exec team, the press is going to love it. It's a new day at Uber, Uber goes from harass-y to classy, all that stuff.

Agreed. The great irony of all this is that a more palatable group of people running the company are more likely to take it further and thus do more damage to society, building an even more enormous and dependent economy of drivers they already intend to fire.

The more I think about this, the more I respect the moves they're making, even as I agree with you that they're evil.

In fact, this is a brilliant pattern: start by winning with shitty, extortionate tactics. When everyone eventually, inevitably hates you, fix the image problem by replacing leadership with a more optically-appropriate team. Continue as before.

And why not? Do investors care who is ostensibly in charge, as long as the wheel keeps turning? They do not. Employees love that action has been taken, voices have been heard, wrongs have been righted. Plus, now they don't work for just another bunch of white dudes like everywhere else in tech. Press is all about it, of course.

It's smart!

Re: How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick’s Ouster as CEO

#40

Post by [deleted] »

tyingq wrote: post #21
Allvitende wrote: post #19

While I do agree that the culture at Uber was toxic and ultimately Travis was to blame for that, on a human level I do feel for the guy. At the end of the day, he just lost his mother and now also his life's work for the foreseeable future. And damn that must suck.

Maybe eventually, he will view it differently. "Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

[deleted]
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