Can employees also cash out in the Softbank deal?
Came here to say something along those lines.
Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
131–140 of 294 posts
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#132or he is planning to get off the sinking ship
Personally, I really hope Uber does well. The leadership is new, they have more capital, and can do really well if they execute properly. No other company has that sort of a global reach in the on demand transport business right now. It's incredible that I can use the same app to hail a ride in so many cities and countries.
They got my business back after he left.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#133Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt. I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift. We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.…
Two points: 1. You write as if Uber has solved the transportation problem sustainably. The end state of an Uber job is that it will pay less than minimum wage. Why? Because the barrier to entry is the same as most minimum wage jobs (assuming you have a car made in the last 10 years) and it is more desirable than minimum wage jobs (flexible hours, no boss). The pay may look better on paper, but when all the hidden cos…
Wow, you do realize that you can mention the Uber rape case without trying to make it so personal to the OP, right? he's not defending him in that regard at all.
All he's saying is that he brought about the concept of ride sharing (debatable since there was, for instance, Sidecar before the advent of UberX) to the public and that he understands the pain of being ousted by your own company.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right? You could say people voted with their wallets.
>>Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right? >You could say people voted with their wallets. Money should never overwhelm the will of the people. I say this even though I hated the way taxis used to work, with the artificial limitation, and I love a chance to take a much more convenient app based ride, I really despise how they got away with violating at least any standard of reasonable behavior, but also they…
Everything you say is true, but the vested rent-seeking interests of the medallion holders that for years caused untold costs to people who needed transportation, and to the economy as a whole, was also despicable. Money was already overwhelming the will of everyone who couldn’t get a cab, who had to buy a car they didn’t want to own, and who had to put up with a higher percentage of drunk drivers. Just because it was that way for decades and few imagined it could be different, it didn’t make it right.
It’s like the quote from the Chronicles of Riddick, “sometimes the only way to stop evil is not with good. You must confront it with another kind of evil”.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#135Seems like a good time to dump this =). I think I know the kind of world Travis comes from. He was in a fraternity, and he treated it like a business like I did. When he owned a real business he applied those lessons far too liberally. Fraternities are ruthlessly competitive, going as far as planting fake pledges and building internal dossiers on all the other frats on campus. Very valuable was your loyal man with a…
As someone who knows nothing about fraternities: what on earth are they competing over? Are they competing over who throws the best parties?
They compete with eachother on everything.
Who throws the best parties is just a small piece, an effect rather than the cause. Its who hangs out with the best sororities, who has the most power on campus, who's the biggest, who wins the most sports (which really is a meathead metric IMO)
But its not all pompous crap, they also compete for the best grades and the most successful alumni.
Fraternities are very elitist which is both good and bad, they try to find the best members, the most powerful attractive and smart guys on campus. If you have nothing to offer you probably won't be allowed in. What's offerable is anything that would help the fraternity reputation or finances.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who knows nothing about fraternities: what on earth are they competing over? Are they competing over who throws the best parties?
They compete over things that seem absolutely critical in your early twenties, somewhat impressive in your late twenties, and foolish at best by your mid thirties.
Eh, I joined one when I was 25 so I have to disagree. One of my fraternity friends followed me across the country and let me live on his couch for about two years. Another was my best man. Best friends I've ever had, easily.
Yeah the competition doesn't mean as much when you get older but you still get fired up years later on homecoming when you hear your old rival got more members or a bigger house or whatever.
I'm in my early thirties now and I still think it was worth it, competition and everything.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#137Seems like a good time to dump this =). I think I know the kind of world Travis comes from. He was in a fraternity, and he treated it like a business like I did. When he owned a real business he applied those lessons far too liberally. Fraternities are ruthlessly competitive, going as far as planting fake pledges and building internal dossiers on all the other frats on campus. Very valuable was your loyal man with a…
Did you ever consider what a tremendous waste of time this competition with other frats was? Trying to determine how many people were at their parties? Are we supposed to take this seriously?
Compared to what the average college student was doing? No. It was a great use of time. We had a team, a goal, and a purpose. No stupider than being on mock trial or chess team.
It's all pointless if you think about it too much, but that competition drove a ton of benefits to the school. IFC (Interfraternity counsil) ran most of the school events. Our attendance at official school functions like football games or president speeches was about 30% of attendees, even though 'greek life' was only 4% of the student population.
Over 50% of alumni endowment/donation money was from sorority/fraternity members even though they made up a single digits percentage of graduates since the 60s.
I don't understand why Greek life is attacked so judiciously on HN when it's clearly a net positive to schools and the students that join. Of course it's not for everyone but that's not a reason to vilify it.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#138Seems like a good time to dump this =). I think I know the kind of world Travis comes from. He was in a fraternity, and he treated it like a business like I did. When he owned a real business he applied those lessons far too liberally. Fraternities are ruthlessly competitive, going as far as planting fake pledges and building internal dossiers on all the other frats on campus. Very valuable was your loyal man with a…
Sorry to say this but I sometimes wonder if most members of fraternities who talk about them realize that literally everything they say makes fraternities sound like an absolutely terrible concept.
I don't see anything wrong with it. What don't you like?
The basic concept is to throw 40 twenty year old college guys (hopefully well chosen) into a 10000 sq ft house worth a mil, and they sink or swim.
You learn a ton. Keeping it afloat is a huge challenge, and the competition with other houses demands constant attention and good decision making.
I was president about two years after joining as a random guy in undergrad, and suddenly in charge of 300,000 a year budget. Our alumni pledges plus assets were almost a million and that's normal. Keep in mind I was just a guy elected by 23 of my 40 peers voting for me.
It was one of the best learning experiences in my life. If you know of something equivalent that's accessible for a random guy in college and not in the Greek system it would surprise me.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for providing a balanced view that’s so often missing on anything Uber related on HN. There is no denying that Travis threw ethics out of the window and took his paranoia way too far and never matured into a peacetime CEO. But every time a HN user takes an Uber, Lyft, Via, Grab, Ola etc etc you can thank Travis for his ruthlessness in fighting some of the most powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of…
There's no evidence that the unethical behavior was necessary or even helped. > powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of NYC as an example) DeBlasio is entrenched because he was elected by a majority of his constituents. The people get to write the rules, called laws. Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right?
I can understand people arguing for the rule of law. Yes, we have laws, and they should be followed. Breaking them carries the risk of punishment.
What I can't understand is the moral grandstanding, e.g. "What gave him the right?" Are taxicab medallions worth it? I never take it seriously when someone starts talking like this about the marriage between taxis and local governments, like it was some holy industry that didn't deserve to be disrupted.
Imagine how long it would have taken for local governments to "fix" something like that. Can you explain to me what it would take for a city council to (1) identify a problem (and in a timely manner, instead of twenty years of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"), (2) come up with a solution, and (3) somehow prioritize this ahead of all of the other important things they work on?
You are correct, no one handed Travis Kalanick the "right" to change something, but I'm okay with the fact that he took it upon himself.
Re: Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Said to Plan Sale of 29% of Stake
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and no. Was it operating in a gray area, yes. However, that gray area wasn't the equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a river to build some product. The gray area was around how taxis were regulated in markets. As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic. I never want to use a taxi again for many reasons. 1. There's very little recourse for lost ite…
> Yes and no. Was it operating in a gray area, yes. Why is it a grey area? I don't think those laws are good but they exist. I don't believe a company's willingness to ignore laws should give them a competitive advantage because that just creates an incentive to do so. Also, companies should not be in the business of deciding what laws are okay or not okay to disobey. > As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can…
> proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.
Unfortunately, businesses tend to heavily influence the creation of the laws that give them an unfair advantage. Businesses get started, they get big, and then use their money to buy lobbying power. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true in the taxi industry.
I don’t care for laws which exist to favor industry leaders.