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Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

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Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#161

Post by tyingq »

WisNorCan wrote: post #154
malandrew wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber has 31,537 employees as of August 2017. If that's the number you are getting from LinkedIn, then you can consider the LinkedIn numbers to be absolutely worthless. That number is 2x to 3x the actual value.

Yes, that is directly from the LinkedIn dashboard for Uber [1] which has company employment data. I am assuming that they are dependent on people listing their employment as Uber for it to be correct. I believe you have to be a Premium user to get the data. Where did you get the 2x to 3x data point? Also, does your data source show anything different on the other issues around slowing of hiring and additional churn t…

Probably a lot of Uber drivers, who are not employees, choose to list themselves as such.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#162

Post by WisNorCan »

jasonbarone wrote: post #158
WisNorCan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is directly from the LinkedIn dashboard for Uber [1] which has company employment data. I am assuming that they are dependent on people listing their employment as Uber for it to be correct. I believe you have to be a Premium user to get the data. Where did you get the 2x to 3x data point? Also, does your data source show anything different on the other issues around slowing of hiring and additional churn t…

> Yes, that is directly from the LinkedIn dashboard for Uber [1] which has company employment data. I am assuming that they are dependent on people listing their employment as Uber for it to be correct. I believe you have to be a Premium user to get the data. You're sourcing Linkedin for employment data and using that to say there's a churn problem at Uber?

LinkedIn shows new hires and total employees. Churn can easily be calculated by [June Employees] + [June New Hires] - [July Employees]

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#163

Post by deeth_starr_v »

kuschku wrote: post #136
calafrax wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, no problem then. just stealing your employer's property to use to use for extortion. what a nothingburger.

They had previously refused to pay him wages that they had agreed to pay. It is common in parts of the programming world — especially when dealing with untrustworthy clients — to keep a way to take their IP/disable their website/turn off their domain/etc unless they pay you on time.

If this was his intention this is a really dumb strategy. He went from having a valid lawsuit for his bonus to loosing his company and being at the loosing end of a lawsuit. I don't buy him being that dumb. He just didn't think he was going to get caught.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#164

Post by djsumdog »

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…

> I heard someone talk about interviewing at Uber as a practice interview before interviewing with companies they are actually interested in.

That is kinda hilarious.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#165

Post by jasonbarone »

WisNorCan wrote: post #162
jasonbarone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, that is directly from the LinkedIn dashboard for Uber [1] which has company employment data. I am assuming that they are dependent on people listing their employment as Uber for it to be correct. I believe you have to be a Premium user to get the data. You're sourcing Linkedin for employment data and using that to say there's a churn problem at Uber?

LinkedIn shows new hires and total employees. Churn can easily be calculated by [June Employees] + [June New Hires] - [July Employees]

Good plan. It's not like that number includes vendors, contractors, drivers or anything that could skew the numbers.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#166

Post by cookiecaper »

matt4077 wrote: post #115
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…

What ultimately got him wasn't his "maverick rule-bending to compete against the establishment". He created this bro-themed caricature of a corporate culture, and he did so for no reason other than enjoying that sort of atmosphere, or being incompetent to stop it. Or both. Let's not start some sort of myth of martyrdom around Kalanick by conflating these two. Although, yes, this strategy of braking local regulations…

I haven't really paid close attention. Are we basing our assumption that Uber was a "bro-themed caricature of a corporate culture" off the sexual harassment claim that kicked off the uproar a few months back?

While sexual harassment is, of course, indefensible, that story didn't really make Uber sound like the frat house implied by "bro-themed caricatures", it just makes them sound dryly indifferent to the employee's complaint. Are there other events that gave Uber that title?

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#167

Post by forapurpose »

fapjacks wrote: post #134
monknomo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"maverick rule-bending to compete against the establishment" seems like a really complementary way to say "lawbreaking company". I mean, their whole model was to go places, ignore the law and continue operating until they either got thrown out, or they pumped money to the right places to get the law changed. Scofflaw corps get nailed sooner or later, and a corp the is built on breaking laws might break some laws inve…

Perhaps, but I've heard politicians on the national level talk about this as just business as usual. If the system creating the laws sees "move fast and break things (like laws)" as the norm, then we can scold and shame all we want, but it's not going to change things. Regulatory capture and law-breaking startups seems to be what's expected out of American business by the very people doing the legislation.

Which politicians said what exactly? I read a lot of U.S. national news and I've never heard that.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#168

Post by jforman »

HNNoLikey wrote: post #160
throwawy11111 wrote: post #61

Benchmarks in a bind and at war with travis; they need to liquidate their stake in next year or two. Softbank deal to buy out their shares fell apart in part b/c no CEO. Benchmark wants safe-hands leader who will cost-cut firesale their way to quick IPO. travis + allies being more long term; blocking benchmarks CEO picks (meg). so board civil war continues with benchmarks dirty tricks like this sour grapes lawsuit an…

This is no excuse to sue their investee. WORST VCs ever. This will serve as a cautionary tale to avoid working with benchmark.

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.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#169

Post by forapurpose »

geofft wrote: post #76
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.

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.

Re: Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud

#170

Post by HNNoLikey »

jforman wrote: post #168
HNNoLikey wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is no excuse to sue their investee. WORST VCs ever. This will serve as a cautionary tale to avoid working with benchmark.

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 should be CEO again just yet (he can take a break and recover) but to sue him at this time like he wasn't directly responsible for the billions they're now so eager to cash out on...?

Don't forget the toll entrepreneurship can have on someone's personal life: you know it from experience and you can also read on how Travis had to move back home in the early days because things didn't work out with initial projects. This is why I would always give first priority of investment to someone like Vinod Khosla who says, 'in 30yrs, I have never once voted against an entrepreneur in a board meeting'. He goes further to criticize most of these VCs as incredibly unsympathetic towards entrepreneurs because they don't know the pains of building a company. Benchmark are exactly the type of VCs Vinod Khosla warns entrepreneurs to avoid.

> I would 100% have expected Sequoia to sue me

Don't know much about Sequoia but I have never seen an article where they've sued an investee.

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