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Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

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.

Worst business move since Apple's board (with John Sculley's behind the scenes string pulling) fired Steve Jobs. How well did that work out for Apple's shareholders at the time?

Travis Kalanick needed to change but do you really think that running Uber by committee is going to work? Guess it's time to try Lyft.

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Wow -- I'm amazed to hear this sentiment. I'm personally proud that one of our VCs was involved.

Travis helped build an incredible company, but his disregard for the law, for his employees' well-being, for basic decency threaten to tear all of that down. Just in the past six months:

* Susan Fowler's blog post exposed a terribly broken HR system and a culture of sexual harassment that reached the very top. This has huge legal implications in addition to the obvious moral and ethical ones.

* Waymo's lawsuit could shut down Uber's self-driving car program, into which they have put hundreds of millions of dollars. There may be evidence that Travis colluded with Levandowski to steal Google's self-driving techonology.

* Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.

* On top of all this, Travis was videotaped cursing at a driver who complained about pay rates.

At this point, Travis had to go. It's going to be hard for Uber to recover from all this, but this is the first step. I hope that this becomes a lesson in SV that there are consequences to this kind of behavior, and that at some point the adults will step in.

Agreed. Whether or not your listed events are the exact same set of reasons for his ousting, it's a good thing for our industry that his brand of unethical leadership is being shown the exit. As if TK is the only leader than can deliver the same type of value. Good riddance! Lyft just got their opportunity, hopefully they learn from Uber's mistakes.

Are you saying someone else can deliver the same value as TK (so Uber is fine), or are you saying Lyft just got their opportunity (so Uber is not fine)?

I don't think these examples are all that damning, aside from the Susan Fowler and HR failure:

- Waymo: the judge has not ruled yet, and there is no evidence revealed to the public which implicates Uber. There is lots of evidence implicating Levadowski.

- Greyball: I can see investors forgiving this as a necessary play to fuel growth.

- Cursing the driver: a private conversation, neither here nor there.

That said, there may be issues that are not public, and the sexual harassment problem alone may be enough. Senior leadership was rapidly leaving. We don't know what the full Holder report said.

Waymo: the judge has not ruled yet, and there is no evidence revealed to the public which implicates Uber. There is lots of evidence implicating Levadowski.

But uber is still lagging behind Waymo/Lyft in the self driving technology. They were desperate to catch up, hence the acquisition of lewandowski's new company in the first place. Now that path is no longer viable regardless of the verdict.

Whoever becomes the new CEO will have to be laser focused to make their auto pilot program work somehow. Without that, Uber has no path to profitability.

They really should have done what lyft did, building partnership with companies like Google/Waymo and GM instead of trying to build their own auto pilot program from scratch.

There is also the matter of obtaining medical records of a woman who was raped by an uber driver in India, which to me shows abject moral bankruptcy.

Only if Travis could have said the right things.

The problem with getting rid of any leader, a CEO, President, Prime Minister, or even a Dictator even when they seem 'bad' is that you can't be sure the replacement won't be even worse or even more ineffective in meeting objectives. Unless there's a clear and obvious replacement waiting in the wings it's not certain him leaving is a good or bad idea, especially if they end up scrambling to find someone, anyone, to bring in.

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Kalanic as a terrible leader is the complete absence of any kind of serious leadership team or program around him.

Sadly, Uber's board sounds more likely to be the kind of disaster that controlled Yahoo, HP and so many other faded stars from the valley.

Looks like Apple's decision not to invest was well played.

> Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.

^^ this is why I never stopped using Uber.

I don't (yet) have an opinion on this, but it's important to note the other side of the coin...

> 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.

He's been very well compensated for the value he's created. You don't keep a job because of what you've done in the past, you keep a job based on what you can do in the future.

Firing founders was tried in the nineties and it always resulted in failure. Guess the Uber VC's need to painfully relearn that lesson?

If Travis had been smart enough to create two classes of stock like Mark Zuckerberg and the Google founders he'd be calling the shots, instead he's out of a job.

Travis was calling the shots. That's why he's getting blamed for the alleged toxic culture (which includes not just sexism, but mistreatment/underpayment of drivers, among other things).

Travis does control the majority of voting shares, no one can force him to step down....on paper. The real world is a bit more complicated than that.

Lots of other comments here suggest he had majority and could have stayed.

You're going to face a lot of harsh criticism if all you can focus on here is VC and profit.

His issues are real but small in comparison

Always? Really?

And how many promising companies failed with their founders at the helm?

Google only became a successful business because of Eric Schmidt. If Larry & Sergey never stepped aside, Google would have died long ago.

Or, maybe if he had treated Uber as a place of business, instead of a frathouse, and Susan Fowler's blog post was never needed to be written.

Travis himself has exhibited poor public behavior that was recorded by an Uber driver. That in itself reflects upon the company.

Yes his assertiveness and drive got them where they are, but sometimes companies do need to grow up.

Jobs was a consistent asshole expecting perfection. That is way different than emboldening a climate of harassment, degradation, etc. that took place under his watch. Having recent external c-level hires quit due to the revelations of "culture" speak much.

I hope Uber can continue. As someone who travels internationally on business, it's quite useful. Seeing him go, it's just one more example. Pincus felt screwed through how Tribe.net went through, set himself up in a sheltered position at Zynga and through a combination of "management style" and problems at the company had to step down.

The cultural issues made public between Zynga and Uber are way different, but in both cases you had CEOs that structured the holdings such that they could retain power despite turmoil.

Sometimes the turmoil is too great.

My last international trip, I used Lyft.

Does Lyft operate outside the US?

My bad, it was Left in Seattle. My last international trip was Uber just for the fact that it was the only available service (and takes amex).

You assert that:

> Travis himself has exhibited poor public behavior that was recorded by an Uber driver

Do you have any evidence of this, or is this hearsay?

If you're referring to the video I suspect you might be - have you actually watched it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejZL5Flwmjc

All I see if a bitter, vindictive man try to ambush the CEO of Uber on a night out - who then actually sits down and tries to explain his reasoning to him for several minutes, before giving up, and being "stuff this" and getting out.

And I see the opposite. I see a CEO being confronted by one of the people who actually makes his company work, and the CEO telling him to go get fucked.

It isn't a bad business move. Removing Kalanick allows them to start fixing their brand. He sounds like a bad manager anyway.

But who cares about that? He created and maintained a culture that systematically abused people and covered it up.

Fuck the investor value. People were harmed. This was the only ethical move they could make regarding Kalanick.

> Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them.

It's business. Travis ought to understand that.

Kalanick is no Steve Jobs,

Kalanick is a bro on an ego trip who stumbled upon a business. But harassing women, and all his other flaws, are not what created uber.

Steve Jobs' flaws actually served Apple. The worst he's been accused of is driving people hard to achieve the perfection he sought.

> The worst [Steve Jobs] has been accused of is driving people hard to achieve the perfection he sought.

And colluding with other tech companies to fix his employees' wages.

And belittling people and treating them down emotionally.

Abandoning his daughter.

Jobs did some bad stuff apart from that and Kalanick is reputed to be quite talented.

You've been praising Steve Jobs throughout this thread, saying his flaws "served" Apple. We don't know that they did. All we know is that they didn't run it into the ground.

If we are angry about Kalanick sexually harassing people (as we should be), Steve Jobs mentally/emotionally harassing people is as bad. There is no difference, don't make it seem like it is okay or that it was "good for Apple".

I've been doing saying it all over the thread to nip this idea in the butt that sexual assault is in any way a feature of a successful break-the-rules, disrupt-the establishment startup.

I'm not primarily interest in defending Steve Jobs, although I think his reputation may be a bit overblown, and largely based on a few anecdotes from rather early in his career.

But the repeated reference to him shows how people are equating the two, which is just terribly wrong, at least in as far as it concerns the sexism at Uber.

Because from the stories I know about Jobs, a credible case can indeed be made that he was slavedriver in search of perfection, and that his nastiness contributed to his success.

For Kalanick that may also be true in regards to Uber's repeated trouble with local law regarding employment and licensing. But the sexual harassment charges simply have nothing to do with it,

There aren't reports of Kalanick himself harassing women.

    > he created an awful lot of value for them

Has he though? No one who bought Uber for $70bn right now would ever get their money back, despite that being it's 'value' (I know, I must be new here). This is all just fantastical and silly, a constant game of persuading investors to play along. Unless there is some great master plan for pivoting into a business that's actually feasible as a business, he's no more a great CEO than the Wizard of Oz or Bernie Madoff.

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.

> epic destruction of value

Better than abiding by an epic destruction of values.

Don't kid yourself for a second that investors are kicking Travis out because of a moral imperative.

I would call it an indirect imperative. Consumers think Lyft is more ethical and the board thinks removing Kalanick will fix that.

No, they're kicking him out because the public is coming to see it as a moral imperative that Uber needs to be held accountable in some way for their behavior. I don't really care if the investors have or follow their morals, as long as they are in some way strongly incentivized to behave in that manner. We can't make the people have morals, but we can strongly encourage them to act like they do.

I don't disagree with that – the effect is hopefully the same.

Yep, agreed.

The investors could have gotten away with much less, certainly without firing him, from a PR angle. I say this as someone who hates Uber with a passion because of the senior management's sliminess, and who no longer uses Uber because of it.

My guess is that there are also much deeper issues here. And things like the Waymo deal indicate that there may be a whole slew of other slimy behavior that will end up hurting Uber more in the end. My guess is that we don't know the depths of poor decisions at Uber.

Don't kid yourself into thinking that a majority of the public knows or even cares about the things that Uber has done. They use Uber because everyone else uses Uber and to take an "Uber" is to use a "Kleenex" or to "Google" something.

Firstly, I will continue to kid myself. Investors are humans, my friend. Everyone is capable, and should be expected, to put decency above money when the two come into conflict.

Secondly, it doesn't matter. Many people cared about the morality, and it was enough to make a difference.

> Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors

I hope everyone pays attention to the identity of the people that invests in his next company.

With Apple again, if Jobs had not been fired then we may not have the Jobs that people remember today. When he returned Apple had nothing and the board basically kneeled at his feet. He had complete freedom. Way more than he did before his departure.

Jobs did say that looking back getting fired from Apple was a good thing. So who knows maybe Travis will come back later with a some new perspective in life.

So all that matters to you is investor value?

Maybe some things matter more, like, not fostering an environment where sexual harassment is tolerated.

>Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors

Exactly. I would be wary of these specific folks. I bet you they would do the same to any founder in a heartbeat.

Any founder? Or just founders who drag their company's name and culture into a swamp of immoral behavior?

Most founders. I don't think it had come to that yet. The good he has done immensely outweighs any wrongdoings. There was a degree of penance on his part and it should count for something.

Travis has had to make a lot of hard decisions to get Uber where it is. These decisions have at times cost him goodwill of the public but I think they are (were) worth it for the long term.

Perception is the same as reality here, though. He could be a great leader, but still too controversial to keep at the company. If it wasn't an organizational decision, it was a marketing decision.

Weighing the good vs the bad is something you can only do after a while. It's possible that Uber, which has yet to turn a profit, will effectively go away in a couple of years -- in which case, Kalanick will have spent billions of investors money with nothing to show for it.

> Travis has had to make a lot of hard decisions to get Uber where it is. These decisions have at times cost him goodwill of the public but I think they are (were) worth it for the long term.

For sure. But it will take a few years to know if that's actually a good place; at present, it doesn't look that way (but it's too early to tell for sure either way).

I am paying attention, and I'm just upset this didn't happen sooner. Travis needed to go a long, long time ago.

It's like what PayPal did to Elon

It was actually pretty different from that. PayPal merged with Elon's X.com and had technical differences with the PayPal founder and they decided to stick with PayPal's tech strategy. There weren't similar scandals. (See Founders at Work).

In Paypal's case, Elon Musk went on his honeymoon trip to Australia and when he landed there he got the news that he had been removed from the position of CEO (See Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future), just like how Kalanick got fired on his sabbatical.

> Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them.

Valuation != value

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