Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 196 posts

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#181

Post by dozzie »

btown wrote: post #107
uhhhhhhh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>travis + allies being more long term His actions and bad management hardly seem long term based thinking. While you could be right that is his intention, his actions to date, the bad management issues well documented, or his possible participation in fraud, to the antagonistic business practices hardly seem the best "long term" approaches.

Not to defend his actions, but to consider his possible mindset in doing them: His actions could be explained as pushing hard to build a defensive moat against a world allied against Uber as quickly as possible. If regardless of what you do you lose a bit of PR here and there, you get kicked out of cities here and there, and you have to pay a few hundred million in settlements here and there, you might as well throw…

> If regardless of what you do you lose a bit of PR here and there, you get kicked out of cities here and there, [...]

...which is because the company was built on ignoring laws and regulations to the detriment of both employees (not called employees by the company) and outsiders (competitors) from the very start, so no wonder that nobody is sympathetic to the company.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#182

Post by geofft »

forapurpose wrote: post #169
geofft wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna say. Surely Travis and his allies are interested in Uber's long-term success, yes, but that's a very different claim from them being good for Uber's long-term success.

> Surely Travis and his allies are interested in Uber's long-term success Why is that certain? Many people are interested in their own success at the expense of their companies. Kalanick in particular seems to celebrate selfishness.

Yeah, you're right - I should say rather that Travis and his allies presumably have no interest in a firesale and definitely have no deadlines like people are claiming the VC firm has, and also have no interest in a "safe-hands" leader, because that's never the sort of leader Travis has been.

But yes, Travis' interest is likely to be his own over Uber's if they come into conflict. I just think he believes that they're aligned. (And I also think he's wrong.)

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#183

Post by dbbk »

sjg007 wrote: post #147
WisNorCan wrote: post #146

It's interesting to see how all the chaos at the board and management level has affected employees. Data from LinkedIn paints a troubling picture both in terms of hiring and retention. * Uber has 31,537 employees as of August 2017. * New hiring is down from 1000 per month in 2016 to 500 a month in 2017. July was the lowest month since the start of LinkedIn data which is August 2015 @ 440 hires. * There are currently…

Why so many people?

I imagine there are people working in every city (and every country) focused on that local market.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#184

Post by jforman »

HNNoLikey wrote: post #170
jforman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A humiliating year of PR that makes it impossible to fill the empty executive ranks, followed by a crippling power struggle because I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? I would 100% have expected Sequoia to sue me after I took their money if I had done the same. We are not kings. At some point misalignment with your board is your responsibility. This isn't some Series B spat.

> I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? Consider his mental state during this time. He lost his mother for crying out loud and all these things were happening at the same time. Now the VCs want to pile on to that with a lawsuit. I lost my mom 3 years ago and I wasn't in a good place for months. I'm surprised he was able to even function whilst the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I'm not saying that he sh…

I've lost a parent and left a startup I founded, so I can sympathize with how incredibly terrible it must be to deal with two huge losses at the same time.

But Uber has grown to impact an incredible number of souls. Gurley et al. have a serious fiduciary duty to exercise here, one not just aligned with their own greed.

Separately, Khosla is not a paragon of founder-friendliness despite his public attestations. No VC is. It is silly to think that 100% alignment can ever exist with an investor — they legally cannot abdicate their voice entirely. At some point Travis needs to recognize that he consciously took risks that diluted his power in exchange for funding. Had he run a profitable business that would not have needed to happen. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#186

Post by _jal »

HNNoLikey wrote: post #170
jforman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A humiliating year of PR that makes it impossible to fill the empty executive ranks, followed by a crippling power struggle because I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? I would 100% have expected Sequoia to sue me after I took their money if I had done the same. We are not kings. At some point misalignment with your board is your responsibility. This isn't some Series B spat.

> I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? Consider his mental state during this time. He lost his mother for crying out loud and all these things were happening at the same time. Now the VCs want to pile on to that with a lawsuit. I lost my mom 3 years ago and I wasn't in a good place for months. I'm surprised he was able to even function whilst the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I'm not saying that he sh…

There have been multiple times that I have protested an action taken by executives; sometimes the action harmed me, sometimes I just thought it was shady/immoral because it was unnecessarily hurting someone else. Every time, I heard some variant of "that's just business."

I wonder how often Kalanick has used that phrase.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#187

Post by btown »

uhhhhhhh wrote: post #180
btown wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend his actions, but to consider his possible mindset in doing them: His actions could be explained as pushing hard to build a defensive moat against a world allied against Uber as quickly as possible. If regardless of what you do you lose a bit of PR here and there, you get kicked out of cities here and there, and you have to pay a few hundred million in settlements here and there, you might as well throw…

I would disagree with the order of events here. His actions and business practices directly led to 'a world allied against uber', and getting kicked out of cities. That wasn't incidental, it was a direct result of their choices and behavior. You can't use the results of his actions to explain his actions.

The alternative would be licensing as a taxi company everywhere, which would invite the same political battles with entrenched operators (only with less leverage, since you'd be fighting the battles before you had the user base). So conflict is inevitable with this business model.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#188

Post by wavefunction »

HNNoLikey wrote: post #170
jforman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A humiliating year of PR that makes it impossible to fill the empty executive ranks, followed by a crippling power struggle because I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? I would 100% have expected Sequoia to sue me after I took their money if I had done the same. We are not kings. At some point misalignment with your board is your responsibility. This isn't some Series B spat.

> I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? Consider his mental state during this time. He lost his mother for crying out loud and all these things were happening at the same time. Now the VCs want to pile on to that with a lawsuit. I lost my mom 3 years ago and I wasn't in a good place for months. I'm surprised he was able to even function whilst the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I'm not saying that he sh…

Vinod Khosla's that guy that keeps illegally blocking off the public access to the public beach in California, right?

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#189

Post by HNNoLikey »

wavefunction wrote: post #188
HNNoLikey wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? Consider his mental state during this time. He lost his mother for crying out loud and all these things were happening at the same time. Now the VCs want to pile on to that with a lawsuit. I lost my mom 3 years ago and I wasn't in a good place for months. I'm surprised he was able to even function whilst the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I'm not saying that he sh…

Vinod Khosla's that guy that keeps illegally blocking off the public access to the public beach in California, right?

He claimed there was trespassing on his private property but I didn't follow the court case.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#190

Post by HNNoLikey »

jforman wrote: post #184
HNNoLikey wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I submitted a resignation I didn't mean? Consider his mental state during this time. He lost his mother for crying out loud and all these things were happening at the same time. Now the VCs want to pile on to that with a lawsuit. I lost my mom 3 years ago and I wasn't in a good place for months. I'm surprised he was able to even function whilst the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I'm not saying that he sh…

I've lost a parent and left a startup I founded, so I can sympathize with how incredibly terrible it must be to deal with two huge losses at the same time. But Uber has grown to impact an incredible number of souls. Gurley et al. have a serious fiduciary duty to exercise here, one not just aligned with their own greed. Separately, Khosla is not a paragon of founder-friendliness despite his public attestations. No VC…

> Khosla is not a paragon of founder-friendliness despite his public attestations

There's no evidence he hasn't been anything but. I choose to trust him. If I had to choose between a VC leaving a company and the founder CEO leaving, I'd rather the VC left which is the mantra that Khosla advocates for. Before you say the VCs money is at stake, remember also the founders' and employees' sweat equity is also at stake - you can always make more money, but when time is gone, you can't recover it.

Post reply on HN