Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to re-post one of my previous comments on this topic because I think it's relevant:

"In my opinion, all they need is someone who is demonstrably competent and experienced to stabilize the ship and steer it towards an IPO.

There's no need for the candidate to be a visionary or meddle drastically with something that's already working extraordinarily well. That part is largely done - the Uber machine is mature and chugging along.

A seasoned operator needs to come in to provide PR cover, put in some basic organizational guardrails and rebuild the executive ranks to get the company IPO ready. Hiring a CFO is probably top priority as well as getting PR back on track.

Those two moves alone would suppress external distractions and start the IPO process by having someone working on it full-time (CFO)."

Original comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15113953

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So I think this is pretty much par for course. Dara will likely be laser focused on removing distractions and kicking off the IPO process and shepherding it along. In fact, there's probably a clause in his employment contract that gives him some kind of large bonus for successfully delivering an IPO within XYZ timeframe.

An IPO will involve a big haircut for current investors, especially the late-stage ones. Uber is way overvalued.

Looking forward to seeing a prospectus with audited GAAP numbers.

Good point. From the outside it does appear Travis go caught up in himself more than focusing on his real role.

Seems to me he was more focused on building and growing the business, while at the same time preventing existential long-term threats (although with hiccups along the way), than wasting time preparing for an IPO .

Uber is still at risk to lose their current monopolistic world market share, everybody knows it (Travis too), and they need to work and fight hard 24/7 to retain it. IPO is a distraction.

The problem is that Travis thinks it's still possible to defend their monopolistic market share but I'd bet (just personal opinion) that investors don't feel that way. Honestly, what could Uber do to ensure their monopolistic world market share would last? They want to IPO soon so they can get some return. Uber has had years and billions of dollars, I don't blame investors for wanting to push the bird out of the nest and see if it can really fly.

Of course Travis still thinks that, he is the founder. He cares about the long term survival of Uber, not about an exit event. Uber is in a complicated industry, in complicated times with very aggressive competitors. It just takes time, but somebody is unwilling to wait anymore.

The bird cannot fly, we already know that. They are crashing Uber against a wall and they just don't care. Do you know what's going to be the next word coming out of the new CEO? It's going to be "layoff". Whatever it takes to fix the books. And then what?

Then maybe Travis comes back to right the ship if it's not too late.

But that doesn't really answer my question, which is what can delaying IPO actually do for them? I agree that the bird can't fly but I don't see how it's going to fly in 18 months or 80 months and I don't see a way around that. Uber exists in a market with no barriers to entry (it destroyed them) and it can't run a profit. Kalanick himself has said Uber needs self-driving but I'm a skeptic on that as well. It's 20+ years before there's going to be real, safe cars without drivers. Kalanick is delaying the inevitable, investors are trying to cash out before the public realizes self-driving is vaporware.

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