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Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

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Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#91
post #13

Agreed. Fuck Benchmark. Travis makes each partner $1 billion personally and this is how they treat him? They should be blackballed by every great founder out there. I had respect for benchmark but not anymore. They are greedy assholes.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14983424 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#92

Before Travis got booted some Techcrunch article or other was submitted here on an almost daily basis about him and other issues Uber were having, some days two! I thought to myself: 'Boy! Techcrunch really have it in for Uber and Travis' (mit einen kleine schadenfreude, me being no fan of either). Once he left though, the posts seemed to me to end rather abruptly even though there were still newsworthy shenanigans a…

Benchmark, apparently?

Though honestly it seems that a lot of the stories were because of Kalanick's leadership. It wasn't a single instance of bad behavior, it was that the bad behavior persisted and became part of company culture when in most companies it would have been dealt with immediately, or at least without a pattern.

Rehashing the stories like that when the old leadership was out and new leadership was on its way in would be less newsworthy.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#93

Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc will all crumble. They may continue to exist, but they'll be more like Twitter than Facebook. None of them are anything special. Maybe Dropbox will get acquired after their failed IPO. Snapchat could also get filed away in a similar fashion, but it may be too late. I wonder why they invested so much in a taxi company. It only makes sense if all cars are replaced with Uber autonomo…

I don't think AirBnB is going to die, everyone has reported them as being profitable for nearly 2 years now. Agreed with the rest though.

I think AirBnb and Redfin are the big bets that have worked well so far.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#94
post #37

Who in their right mind, except for the utterly desperate, would accept money from Benchmark? Talk about letting the fox into the henhouse, you can't trust those guys whatsoever.

Care to provide details ? I don't live in the valley so i'm not up to date with the latest gossip. Last time i heard about this firm, it was pretty complimentary

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14609184

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#95

There is nothing new here other than Benchmark Capital thinking they can choose and pick a shareholder decision to revert based on the recent Uber gates. Seems very thin on the ground given there is no ruling in a court of law against Kalanick in any of those.

There is a whole lot that's new here. Benchmark, one of the most renowned VC firms in the world suing the CEO of its biggest current investment. That's huge news.

*former

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#96

Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc will all crumble. They may continue to exist, but they'll be more like Twitter than Facebook. None of them are anything special. Maybe Dropbox will get acquired after their failed IPO. Snapchat could also get filed away in a similar fashion, but it may be too late. I wonder why they invested so much in a taxi company. It only makes sense if all cars are replaced with Uber autonomo…

> Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc will all crumble. None of these companies are anything special.

Lol. Please share some of your wisdom with us. Leaving aside taxi companies like Uber and useless things like Airbnb, can you tell us what companies do anything special these days Master Foo?

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#97

Before Travis got booted some Techcrunch article or other was submitted here on an almost daily basis about him and other issues Uber were having, some days two! I thought to myself: 'Boy! Techcrunch really have it in for Uber and Travis' (mit einen kleine schadenfreude, me being no fan of either). Once he left though, the posts seemed to me to end rather abruptly even though there were still newsworthy shenanigans a…

TechCrunch is owned by AOL, which also owns the Huffpo. Arianna Huffington is a board member of Uber - she stepped down from editorial work at Huffpo/AOL media group in 2016, but I"m sure she has a lot of influence on her namesake. This is totally unsubstantiated but there's generally a lot of mucking about at the board level of high profile companies like this.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#98
post #8

If actual fraud is not found what sort of message does this send to entrepreneurs that Benchmark is founder friendly? Looks like a grudge match to me. Apparently unhappy with merely removing Travis from the CEO's chair they want to make certain he's never allowed to ever enter the building.

Best comment here. Sueing their CEO for no real reason but just as powerplay to get back control feels like an act of pure desperation from a mediocre VC but not Benchmark. Would love to know which partner at Benchmark triggered this. Then we have a name to this insanity (Gurley?).

Eh, Benchmark shafted most of the Epinions founders, who sued and settled.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there wasn't anything bad in the report we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If there was anything bad in the report they would have come out and said so in the complaint. It's not a magic game of telephone. they would have had a material impact on Benchmark's decision is probably the weakest possible complaint.

They have a conflict of interest there. They need to do what they can to get as much control as they can without damaging the value of their shares. There is no fine line there, there is considerable overlap and no matter what they do their shares will drop in value. It's a risky game at best.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#100
post #96

Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc will all crumble. They may continue to exist, but they'll be more like Twitter than Facebook. None of them are anything special. Maybe Dropbox will get acquired after their failed IPO. Snapchat could also get filed away in a similar fashion, but it may be too late. I wonder why they invested so much in a taxi company. It only makes sense if all cars are replaced with Uber autonomo…

> Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc will all crumble. None of these companies are anything special. Lol. Please share some of your wisdom with us. Leaving aside taxi companies like Uber and useless things like Airbnb, can you tell us what companies do anything special these days Master Foo?

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