Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O. • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#401

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:27 AM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #99

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

For an embattled company like this in a fiercely competitive industry, you need committed leadership and not a rotating cast of hired guns looking to make a quick buck. Kalanick has serious issues but he's demonstrated unquestionably forceful (and polarizing) leadership that mere "managers" will never be able to replace. I've been bullish on Uber despite all their mistakes and internal issues because at the end of th…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#402

Post by randyrand » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:29 AM UTC

santoshalper wrote: post #94

anothercomment wrote: post #67

Did he sexual harass anybody, or what is the point of his resignation? Another case of scapegoating?

The buck stops with the CEO, and it's clear that in the very least, he condoned the asshole culture.

Asshole culture is as valid as any other culture IMO. Not everyone wants to work at "lets all be jolly good friends" workplaces.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#403

Post by jhylau » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:29 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

There is a lot of vested interest in this company - it will for sure never go down. Plenty of investors around the world who will buy in. Valuation is a different topic - but this company is here for the long haul.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#404

Post by Retric » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:30 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #394

dfabulich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think that's exactly how/why Uber's investors were able to convince Kalanick to step down. Uber may or may not take over the world at some point, but Uber needs another round of investment in the next 18 months just to survive. If the existing investors refused to play ball, they could kill the next round, which really would kill Uber. And here's another important moral of this story for founders:…

You guys are talking about Uber dying, but I cannot fathom how this is possible from just the user's perspective. Uber seems to be everywhere, people take Ubers or driver for Ubers every day. How could a company this big fail? Stop growing maybe, but going bankrupt and shutting down?

It's easy to grow when you sell dollars for 70c each. But, when you suddenly need to sell them for 1.01+$ nobody wants to buy.

Uber's problem is taxi companies have lower overhead because among other thing their drivers sometimes get hailed by people at street level. Which means their either taxi prices are lower and people stop using Uber or they pay drivers more and drivers mostly stop working for Uber.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#405

Post by bunkat » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:31 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #394

dfabulich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think that's exactly how/why Uber's investors were able to convince Kalanick to step down. Uber may or may not take over the world at some point, but Uber needs another round of investment in the next 18 months just to survive. If the existing investors refused to play ball, they could kill the next round, which really would kill Uber. And here's another important moral of this story for founders:…

You guys are talking about Uber dying, but I cannot fathom how this is possible from just the user's perspective. Uber seems to be everywhere, people take Ubers or driver for Ubers every day. How could a company this big fail? Stop growing maybe, but going bankrupt and shutting down?

Uber doesn't make enough from fares to be profitable, they use investors' money to heavily subsidize them. Once the investor money runs out, Uber won't be able to pay drivers unless they jack up prices considerably. Once they are no longer price competitive, customers will move to other services.

Turns out the car service business isn't very sticky at all (even the drivers work for multiple companies...). Drivers start to leave and the downward spiral begins. They just couldn't get to self driving vehicles fast enough - which may be why they were trying to borrow technology from Google.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#406

Post by georgespencer » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:32 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #394

dfabulich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think that's exactly how/why Uber's investors were able to convince Kalanick to step down. Uber may or may not take over the world at some point, but Uber needs another round of investment in the next 18 months just to survive. If the existing investors refused to play ball, they could kill the next round, which really would kill Uber. And here's another important moral of this story for founders:…

You guys are talking about Uber dying, but I cannot fathom how this is possible from just the user's perspective. Uber seems to be everywhere, people take Ubers or driver for Ubers every day. How could a company this big fail? Stop growing maybe, but going bankrupt and shutting down?

If the unit economics don't stack up, then the bigger it is, the faster it'll go out of business without external investment. Pervasiveness doesn't mean it's profitable, it means it's popular. If I had a network of people giving away $1 for $0.90 it'd be super popular.

As it is, Uber doesn't need to do too much to hit break even. Some central costs cut, and a slight rise on price.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#407

Post by Applejinx » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:33 AM UTC

rmason wrote: post #12

Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors behind this horrid behavior. Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them. They pressure him into taking a sabbatical, then two days in they pull this cowardly act of firing him remotely. Not only was it a cowardly act, but it was the wrong thing to do for the business. It will lead to an epic destruction of value. Wo…

Here's the trick: literally only those actually on the committee will be arrogant enough to think that will work, and that they can replace Travis.

Nobody else is going to buy it, and this is death for Uber.

But the reason anybody's fool enough to trigger the apocalypse is because THEY will be in charge and assume that's the answer. If they were on the outside looking in, they would have a very different opinion.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#408

Post by rimliu » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:36 AM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #221

ckastner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. I don't think Kalanick had much to do with it. He created the product, but it pretty much sold by itself -- similar to how Zuckerberg created Facebook, which sold by itself. I'm very optimistic about this change. To me, Kalanick, and the culture he bread, were toxic to Uber. I'm reminded of how Microsoft's share price jumped by 12% the day Steve Ballmer's re…

> it pretty much sold by itself -- similar to how Zuckerberg created Facebook, which sold by itself. Haha don't know where to start. Facebook could have gone to shit in so many ways just like all the predecessors like Myspace and Friendster, but they made all the right decisions and won. Same goes for Uber.

Ok, what is Facebook's Lyft then?

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#409

Post by Super_Jambo » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:37 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #394

dfabulich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think that's exactly how/why Uber's investors were able to convince Kalanick to step down. Uber may or may not take over the world at some point, but Uber needs another round of investment in the next 18 months just to survive. If the existing investors refused to play ball, they could kill the next round, which really would kill Uber. And here's another important moral of this story for founders:…

You guys are talking about Uber dying, but I cannot fathom how this is possible from just the user's perspective. Uber seems to be everywhere, people take Ubers or driver for Ubers every day. How could a company this big fail? Stop growing maybe, but going bankrupt and shutting down?

The reason it's so big is they're burning VC cash to subsidize rides.

So yea when billionaires are paying your taxi fair to try and drive the local taxi firms out of business naturally they're everywhere.

But when that cash runs out the necessary price hike could just as easily drive them out of business. It's not like the drivers have any great loyalty.

We really need pro-competition legislation to stop this sort of predatory capitalism.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#410

Post by Inconel » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:38 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #374

rtx wrote: post #338

This shows how important virtue signalling is today's America. We have well loved CEO's of billion dollar companies using actual slave Labour. No one write a about them. But here we have journalists like Sarah Lacy going on a crusade against him. Though she always forgot to mention that she has taken funding from VC supporting Uber's rival.

"Virtue Signaling" is the most asinine, mean-spirited concept invented since about the middle ages. Its only ever used as a blanket dismissal of others' opinions, even going so far as to blatantly use the moral strength of an argument as a weapon against that argument.

mean-spirited concept invented since about the middle ages. I'm unsure if this is hyperbole or not.

With regards to it's use, in my observation I don't think it's used so much as a weapon against an argument as much as perhaps a weapon against the self congratulatory and rather shallow nature of online protest. I didn't always feel this way but it seems that whenever the term is brought up you have a number of posters who feel it's incredibly important that it be known, to complete strangers on an internet message board, that they are the good guys and are sincere in their beliefs and actions.

In any case, I'm not very smart so I could be wrong in my observations.