Lyft Accuses Former COO of Stealing Confidential Docs Before Joining Uber
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I try to avoid people and companies with poor ethics.
It's pretty damning if it is proven. Be on the lookout for a confidential settlement.
The factual question is whether the defendant did in fact copy all that information as described, and there might be additional questions later about whether that information was passed to Uber, and if so, how that came to pass. If Lyft were to prevail and a jury was awarding damages, then it would be enough to know what sort of documents were taken to establish whether they were important commercial information or not, no?
What a fool. Hubris.
I would literally never have heard of Lyft without all of their accusations against Über. Über is trying to poach drivers; Über is getting our C-level guys to baldly incriminate themselves and then jump ship to Über; Über is stealing our cookies; waaaah waaah waaah Uber.
Honestly, I find it impossible to believe the Über team is both this B-movie-level evil, and stupid. It's really, really hard to believe that a COO of a successful startup wouldn't know how to copy documents that are on his OWN MACHINE (the private dropbox documents).
So, since Lyft obviously gets assloads of free publicity from all these accusations, and since I've never seen an actual court judgment against Über reported, I somewhat doubt that these are actually true, or at least not actually provable, since like others have said, if Lyft could successfully sue Über over any one of these things, the media would have even more of a field day than it's having now.
So okay. Über stole your drivers, your COO, shot your dog, made a mean face at you, whatever. Prove it in court. Until then I'm done with this bullshit. And I'll be happily using Über.
(The only thing that Über has really done that's unethical is be as brutally capitalist as they can, but I find that a difficult accusation to level against them since it's not like any other company is doing exactly the same thing. That's a systemic issue, not a local one.)
Edit: You know, if Lyft was running a black-hat PR campaign against Über, it'd be just like them to shill on HN. Thanks for the downvotes, Lyft.
> So, since Lyft obviously gets assloads of free publicity from all these accusations, and since I've never seen an actual court judgment against Uber reported, I somewhat doubt that these are actually true, or at least not actually provable, since like others have said, if Lyft could successfully sue Uber over any one of these things, the media would have even more of a field day than it's having now.
So just to clarify, you think Lyft is making these accusations up for the sake of getting publicity?
And fabricating evidence to file in a lawsuit?
Fabricating evidence seems a bit of a stretch, but hey, we're already believing that a COO can't copy files.
I'd say that the most likely explanation is a nice mix of malice and stupidity on both sides. Maybe Uber did do something wrong. Maybe Lyft blew it out of proportion and went to all the journalists they knew to get it out there. Maybe the whole thing is an elaborate triple ruse.
But seriously, are there any publicly available judgments about any of these yet? It's getting unbelievable without them.
Yet Lyft has the poor ethics. Right.
Considering there is serious civil harm arising from making up a lawsuit, do you have any evidence that Lyft's allegations are false or do you just flap your gums because you like Uber more? It never ceases to amaze me how people in all considerations can pick a side and stick to it, ignoring all data that doesn't fit their narrative. You like Uber more, nobody is begrudging you that. Turning your preference into calling Lyft unethical and the rest of your comment is, quite honestly, stupid.
That's a great attempt at a diversion, though. It's almost enough to make someone forget that in this country, the United States of America, the greatest and freest country on the face of the earth, all people, including and especially corporations, are INNOCENT until proven GUILTY. Lyft needs to do more than just allegate for me to believe them. So if you have any evidence that Lyft's allegations are TRUE, you can show me (and the court! I'm sure they'd love it) now or take a hike.
My guess is that this ends with him fired from Ubert. Now that Lyft has presented the evidence, that may be the only way for Uber to avoid liability itself.
Is it necessary for Uber to be so cutthroat, sneaky, and brutal to survive in the space they've carved out for themselves, or is this just a reflection of the poor character of the management team?
So from that perspective yeah, yeah I guess they do have to be cut throat to survive. The service they provide is not far off from being commoditized. It's easy and cheap for competitors to step in and drive prices down. Will be very, very hard for Uber to secure their space. Honestly the only thing that will make it possible is the same time of legal protection that taxi companies have had.
Oops.
Hence the cutthroatness.
Not going to happen. Those "regulators" they decry so loudly? I'm sure they have plans to buy a few once they get big enough and use them to put barriers in place to put a stop to any competitors. Combine that with their size (and thus their ability to undercut any new competition), and I don't see anything but an Uber monopoly on the way.
In a nutshell, constant confrontation with politicians, taxi medallion owners, its own drivers, and competitors make this a fairly cut-throat industry. Uber took up this battle. Would a nicer, gentler company succeed in this space? Hard to say, so far the data says no.
I have no idea if it's true while over there but enough of them said it that I stopped using Uber while I was in SF and only used Lyft, and managed to convert my partner's parents to using Lyft as well.
I try to distribute my spending equally, since a dominating player would be quick to raise the prices on consumers, but it's certainly hard to spend more money on Lyft unless you happen to live within one of their coverage markets and don't travel much.
Who knows why he did it. Maybe he had anxiety about getting rid of things. But it's worth mentioning that Lyft did not name Uber in the lawsuit, which they would certainly do if they had any belief Uber instigated it.
Who knows why he did it. Maybe he had anxiety about getting rid of things.
Spreadsheet nostalgia!? Defending against this litigation is likely to be very expensive and his personal reputation has taken a severe hit regardless of outcome. That's some weapons-grade OCD you're suggesting.
Lyft hasn't named Uber but has left open the possibility of naming additional defendants. They do mention VanderZanden's admission to a Lyft board member back in August that he was in talks with Uber (before the termination of his employment), so you can bet they'll be wanting to look at any emails he might have exchanged with Uber. It's very common for legal complaints to be amended following the discovery process.
Having anxiety about letting things go has nothing to do with a sense of nostalgia. It's about the power of feeling like you have access and information, about the anxiety of losing something from years of your email that you might someday want or need, about a sense of entitlement that if you write it, it's yours to keep. I'm just speculating, but I could go on and nowhere on my list is "nostalgia". I think it wouldn't be on your list either; maybe you just wanted to score a debate point with a false equivalency?
I'm not one for online debates so please, have the last word. But so far all I've seen is you making a baseless accusation. And yes, it is absurd. Tell me, at what point in the Uber interview process does the coercion and fraud happen? How exactly do you think it went down? And why do you think it's more likely that this was a conspiracy, instead of just a guy who liked having access to things and felt entitled?
The reason Über is trying to crush competition, is that it knows they are currently still vulnerable for real competition to enter. Once they have dominated all the major metropolitan centers, they will know that they dominate to a point that significantly disincentivizes entry by real competition.
I wrote a piece on this just a few days ago. You can read it here: http://johnloeber.com/w/uber.pdf
How so? First you have to line up enough drivers to make it worthwhile, and then get enough app downloads by consumers to make it worthwhile for drivers.
Both groups will inquire about your differentiating factor, and to sign up on either side you would have to promise higher payouts to the drivers or lower prices for consumers, both at expense of your margins, which limits the scale of your deployment.
You're assuming that drivers/consumers will be exclusively using your service.
Few drivers are going to drive exclusively for your service. The assumption is that your drivers will already be driving for Uber, Lyft, etc. and will sign up with your service just in order to marginally raise their expected number of rides per hour (hoping that your service might get them a ride when business is slow on Uber, etc.).
Similarly, few consumers are loyal to exclusively one service. They don't care about the difference between Uber and Lyft, they care about getting a cheap ride, quickly. They'll try Uber for a ride. Maybe Uber will be surge-priced. They'll try Lyft, which might not have any drivers on the road. They'll try your service.
Which tends to involve human costs, so for anything of scale this is not a low-barrier business to enter.
You can probably start a regional competitor fairly cheaply though, as examples of GrabTaxi, Gett or Yandex.Taxi show.
To recruit drivers (maybe in more than one city) might be a little expensive, just in terms of a time cost. If you're paying recruiters, that might cost a month or two of salary for every city you're launching in. Alternatively, some of these employees might just take an equity share in your startup.
The last big part is the design of an app: this could take a handful of competent engineers perhaps one or two months. This might be your biggest expenditure (a team of 10 might cost you $100k/month), but it might also be possible to pay them (partially) with equity.
I would wager that you could start up a competitor regionally (or perhaps even in a small number of cities) for less than $1M, which is a modest amount in the current tech. climate (specifically w/r/t/ venture capital). Especially considering the potential returns, it seems likely that some entrepreneurs will go for this.
And concerning regional competitors: yes, certainly. And it only takes a couple of competitors in every major city to make it very difficult for Uber to hold on to a monopoly or majority market share... :-)
Case in point: Gett in NYC. They are running a $10 flat fare anywhere in Manhattan, and promising drivers double pay for three months already. That should undercut incumbents as well as cause drivers to flee, right? Why is Uber and Lyft totally winning NYC while Gett is not even operating at 1/10th the scale?
I think it's got to do with liquidity and reliability. Even if the driver has 10 apps running, the probability that the driver gets the first/most ping from the app with the best client liquidity is extremely high. As long as he's constantly engaged, there is no need for him to open another app. On the flip side, when you're small, your supply runs out quick. If clients opening the app constantly see that, they'll eventually not open your app and go to one with the most supply liquidity. There are strong network advantages in this game. Your paper mostly discounts that.
Edit: Actually, on re-reading, they appear to mean not "Evernote constitutes a breach" but "We accessed his Evernote and his state of mind, as recorded in it, constitutes a breach." (Eek.)
Weapons-grade stupid on VanderZanden's part.
If it's the companies phone, they can request it be returned. VanderZanden was using his personal phone while at Lyft. When he left, he just sold it. The problem is that it puts Lyft in an awkward position: they are requesting he turn over his personal device so that they can analyze it to confirm no confidential information remains.
"VanderZanden provided no explanation as to why he sold his phone.... it's an odd thing for a high-net worth individual to do..."
I'd probably tell them to stuff it too, it's my phone.
Also, I find it interesting that the complaint is also against one to ten "unnamed defendants". I didn't know you could do that.
MPAA/RIAA did this a lot when suing downloaders. They'd sue based on IP addresses, so the complaint would be against 50 John Does.
http://ia700401.us.archive.org/35/items/gov.uscourts.cand.23...
In the recent past I've had to fight for this with a previous employer who thought it was acceptable to impose security restrictions on personal devices that are used to access company info. Many people just stopped accessing company info from their phones - they would prefer to be able to root / jailbreak their phones if they choose to.
Simple thought experiment: your competitor is caught red-handed doing the thing you are pondering, how do you think it will reflect on them?
Not really cool behavior.
They claim he failed to return his computer, but if you read points 42 and 43, they first asked him on Aug 18th (6 calls and emails went unanswered) then actually retrieved it the next day. Really? If the guy is busy he may not have made it a priority.
Item 27 is probably the first legal usage of "acqui-hire" ever.
At least have the common decency to spend a period as a government industry regulator in between.
Non-compete clauses prevent you from competing and are largely unenforceable, particularly in California.
Is this true? I'm not doubting, I'm just wondering why. I know a lot of people in the games industry who aren't allowed to work on mods for another company's game and are terrified to even do a little bit, so I always thought they were enforceable.
This wouldn't toggle a non-compete action. The primary company might come after you for beach of confidentiality or for conflict of interest, but not non-compete.
Non-competes in California have to be VERY constrained to be enforceable. Generally they are very time limited (12 months at the longest). The biggest arenas where they do get enforced is for people who are involved at strategic planning levels (like this CTO). The non-compete timeframe allows their knowledge to decay/stagnate/become less relevant/become less damaging.
Your friends probably don't do games on the side because of such an agreement. I couldn't even imagine the issues that might arise from an employee working on mods for a competitor's game, especially since for some games modding isn't explicitly supported by the developer and modders are forced to break EULA's (by reverse engineering) in order to make the mods in the first place.
Is the famous case that I know of and from the articles description the "we own everything you do off the clock" part was treated as valid.
I'm sorry, but I just can't have this conversation non-sarcastically. Both companies offer _so_ much better service than their predecessors that I can't understand the desire to go back to the bad old days.
There's nothing in the comment you're responding to that advocates for regressing back to a Regulated Taxi paradigm.
Uber in particular is the most likely to make an entrance here (they're hosting driver registration right now, but the bylaw situation is murky at best) and I'm really worried that if they get shut out for some of the bullshit they pull it'll kill the regulatory framework for other entrants for a long time.