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Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

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Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#161

Post by usrusr »

tdurden wrote: post #61
fastball wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you make a good point about general portfolio diversification, the difference between a "normal" employee and a co-founder is fairly large in this instance. Co-founders are supposed to have confidence in the business they built - if they don't, why should other investors?

That kind of changes when one is forced out of the company.

Might even get a kick out of devaluing the stakes of those who forced him out. And I don't even write this in the tradition of "mean things Travis Kalanick would do", I believe that that the desire to do so would be there even for the best of us.

I do hope that vengeful behavior like that would subsequently hurt one's ability to find investors for future projects. Unfortunately there is also a lot of that "this only shows that he is ruthless, we like ruthless" attitude in the world so I'm not sure that it would actually be taken as a negative signal. But that surely won't be an issue for someone with a reputation so firmly dialled in already as Kalanick.

On top of that, the idea of him going back to square one doesn't fit too well with the mental model I formed back when he was constantly on the news, I'd rather type him as the rare exception amongst founders who can easily leave it all behind and indulge in the spoils - but that's just a gut feeling of course, I know less about that guy than I know about some people who have been dead for more than a thousand years.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#162

Post by papito »

jjeaff wrote: post #94
Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are realms of wealth. Even 100m is not enough to comfortably afford a private jet. Several ultra wealthy like Bill Gates diversified a billion dollars from their company which seems to be about the limit where more money mostly becomes an abstraction. One example is people who actually own mansions generally live in a relatively small space inside. You can only really use one room at a time and walking around t…

$100m can very comfortably afford a private jet. Maybe not a brand new G6, but a small to mid size jet could be comfortably purchased and maintained while barely spending more than the market appreciation of that $100m.

This is something silly one would do if they suddenly got a windfall - spend a chunk of it on a flashy purchase. You can just charter one for the once in a while you want a jet. How many flights is that, even for the 1M a year maintenance? Or fly 1st class. Or, you know, spend it on something that appreciates instead of losing value, like luxury real estate.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#163

Post by ericd »

naveen99 wrote: post #122
frockington1 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax rate is 20% on long term capital gains. Will be a nightmare to figure out the cost basis for everything

There is a startup exemption for investments that happened below $50 million valuation, that he might qualify for.

That's only on the first $10M of gain, so it's not a huge percentage for him.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#164

Post by frockington1 »

javajosh wrote: post #145

A bit meta, but I wonder how this became a story. Is someone constantly analyzing data for this kind of thing? How did it get surfaced? And, in general, what kinds of news services trigger off of polling public data?

Large insiders have to send forms to the SEC of their purchases/sales of equity in their company and then the SEC makes it public

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#165

Post by dangoldin »

jacquesm wrote: post #149
martin_bech wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a sidenote, here in Denmark, our Version of the 401k, its illegal to have more than 20% in a single stock, for your own safety.

I love to make my own decisions about my safety. That's a ridiculous. Does the state compensate those who 'for their own safety' were disadvantaged?

I wonder if you can have 20% in the stock and the remaining in various forms of options that end up acting as the remaining 80%. If each of the options counts as its own stock you can do some interesting financial engineering work to make it happen.

Although options themselves are riskier so not sure what sort of incentive that sets.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#166

Post by jacquesm »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #150
jacquesm wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love to make my own decisions about my safety. That's a ridiculous. Does the state compensate those who 'for their own safety' were disadvantaged?

You can loose your money outside of your retirement account too though.

And if I cross the street I could get hit by a car. I'm all for countries teaching their citizens about financial responsibility, right in school with the rest of the curriculum. But I would not want the state to tell me how I can invest, they are protecting their own interests as much or more than mine.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#167

Post by aianus »

ummonk wrote: post #84
aianus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has positive unit economics. Uber gets ~20% of what you spend on a ride and their per-unit expenses are basically moving a few bits around and having someone in a Filipino call center present to provide customer support.

After taking into account driver incentives (which should be classified as cost of revenue, not sales and marketing), their unit economics are unprofitable.

I have had an Uber driver account for years and have never had an incentive (besides things like surge pricing which are paid by riders)

That may depend on the market, but the unit economics in my market (Toronto) are undoubtedly positive.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#168

Post by gumby »

CRUDite wrote: post #114
gumby wrote: post #93

Steve Jobs dumped all his apple stock when he was ousted in 1985

I was thinking about this also. Perhaps he will come back in when it hits rock bottom

He’s been dead for more than three days so I doubt he’ll be back.

Of, you mean Kalanick. I doubt it but who knows.

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#169

Post by icedchai »

Stasis5001 wrote: post #139
nostrademons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends how the company is doing. Depending on the internal transparency of the company, as an employee you're often privy to a lot of information that Wall Street does not have access to, eg. you'll oftentimes know their upcoming product pipeline, employee morale, culture, and key metrics for the success of the business that are not published in their financials. If those are doing well but Wall Street is treating t…

As an employee at a megacorp, sure, you can see a little bit about how things are going from the inside. That said, you probably spend less time looking at reports than professional analysts. Secondly, sure, maybe you can see how great your company is, but do you have a frame of reference to a million other companies and their projects and cultures? There's a strong bias towards thinking you know more than the market…

You forgot to mention that many analysts are full of BS anyway: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/financial-analysts-are-ut...

Re: Travis Kalanick Is Exiting His Uber Holdings Uber Quickly

#170

Post by martin_bech »

jacquesm wrote: post #149
martin_bech wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a sidenote, here in Denmark, our Version of the 401k, its illegal to have more than 20% in a single stock, for your own safety.

I love to make my own decisions about my safety. That's a ridiculous. Does the state compensate those who 'for their own safety' were disadvantaged?

This is for pensions only, If you want to do stocks on your own, you can do whatever, and even leverage the f out of it.

But I actually think this is fine for pensions.

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