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Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

> But we acted out of a deep conviction that it would be better for Uber, its employees, and investors to have a fresh start.

Bull-fucking-shit. Don't condescend to us and pretend like you have the employees' interests at heart. I have no great love for Travis, but come on don't act like this isn't about getting your returns. The letter would have a lot more credibility if they just came out and admitted what is obvious to everyone.

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Are you saying that Benchmark thinks/knows this lawsuit is worse for Uber and its employees?

It's an open secret that Kalanick is trying to regain control of the company, telling people that he plans to return as CEO; that he's "Steve Jobs-ing it." [1] That's what this lawsuit is trying to prevent.

I don't think Kalanick's return would be good for Uber, its employees, or its investors. Clearly Benchmark feels the same way.

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/7/30/16066332/uber-ceo-search-tr...

Any examples of companies that have done significantly better after publicly ousting their founder CEO?

I've worked at more than one where it turned to shit...

But if they are ousting their CEO publicly it's probably because things are going extremely badly. I don't think ousting the founder is necessarily making it worse and thus the cause for those companies to worsen after the ousting.

Paypal? Well, things are complicated.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ciscos-founders-were-oust...

Look up "Rich or King". Companies tend to do better when the founders give away control to people better suited to do the job they would otherwise do.

It just doesn't tend to be very public when it happens successfully.

I think most of us believe Benchmark couldn't give a fuck less about anybody but Benchmark and their personal billions (assuming they get paid 2 and 20, cashing out of Uber really could be worth a billion a partner). Given the behavior that has gone on while Benchmark has been on the board, this comes off as treacle.

(Which is not to say that Benchmark and employees' interests couldn't align in this case...)

Steve Jobs returned to Apple after 10+ yrs. I don't think that's a fair reference with Travis.

Many would agree with you, but the "Steve-jobsing it" comparison comes from Travis himself.

> Steve Jobs returned to Apple after 10+ yrs

also the Steve that returned to Apple was a complete different person.

I don't think they are somehow attempting to hide their motivations or mislead employees.

As you say, it is obvious.

They are only arguing that both employees and investors have a shared interest in the long-term success of the company. Which sounds pretty reasonable.

The problem is a lot of people believe that Benchmark has interest in the short-term success (until it IPOs) due to its fund cycle. So it's pretty obvious that there's no such "shared" interest here. Which is why this letter comes off as deceitful

Benchmark have a deadline.

And if the authors had shown their personal convictions by putting their names on the bottom...

Are Benchmark's interests not aligned with employees' interests in this case? They would have preferred stock, so it seems like there's plenty of scenarios where they extract benefit, but common stockholders don't, there's one scenario - perfect execution - where common stockholders benefit while Benchmark benefits enormously, but there are zero scenarios where common stockholders do well, but Benchmark doesn't.

Benchmark here has quite different time pressure than potential common stock holders. They need to get liquid.

> They need to get liquid

Benchmark or Uber's employees who hold illiquid common stock?

Benchmark.

At least that's according to this throwaway but highly upvoted comment [0] from some days ago.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14983957

The urgency is never quite explained. If Benchmark needs to wind down a fund, they can just distribute shares directly to LPs.

Why?

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