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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Has Resigned Due To Investor Pressure (recode.net)
Travis Kalanick has resigned as chief executive of Uber after pressure from investors, ending eight years of leading the ride-hailing company that has expanded round the globe but became mired in controversies. From a report: Kalanick had become a giant liability to the car-hailing company for a growing number of reasons, from sketchy business practices to troubling lawsuits to a basic management situation that was akin to really toxic goat rodeo. Thus, he had to go, even though some sources said he had the voting power to stay. But big investors also have leverage and a big enough group of them joined to use it. Those investors include Benchmark, Fidelity and Menlo Ventures, all of whom sent Kalanick a joint letter called "Moving Uber Forward" on Tuesday afternoon. Interestingly, Google Ventures was not among the group, even though its parent company Alphabet is now in a major lawsuit with Uber over the alleged theft of self-driving car technology from its Waymo unit.
Not sure what a toxic goat rodeo is. It doesn't sound good.
I understand there's still a vacancy at Yahoo
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I am guessing they lost a ton of users, or haven't been gaining any. Since the whole operation is a money loser now and in the past, and they were pumping money in contingent on growth, the investors forced the situation.
I loved Uber the few times I used it, but deleted my account and quit using it several months ago due to reports of harassment, and the way they treated their drivers. Latest thing was apparently their no-tip thing was that they paid fairly and tipping was built into the cost. Now they offer tipping in the app because they were shorting the drivers and the no-tipping thing was bullshit.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Travis hasn't done ANYTHING that we haven't seen in Robocop. What's the big fuss about? That he got caught? I'm tired of this fucking hypocrisy, it is still the same company with the same business plan - pretending they aren't running a taxi business to avoid taxes, and screwing drivers - why isn't THIS a problem?
Fuck off already.
Building something new is hard. You can't have a touchy-feely CEO who walks on eggshells when you're building something like Uber.
You can however have a constructive respectful CEO that doesn't break the law at every opportunity, doesn't hire utter cunts and defend their working practices, has proper control of their organisation and actually makes a profit.
Sure, it's hard. Doesn't excuse being a cunt.
The difficulty is with the suits (i.e. lawyers). Suits don't like change. They don't like having their industry disrupted. So sometimes you have to apply a force to make that disruption happen.
So why aren't we hearing the same story about Lyft? Oh, you mean it's possible to do this without being a Kalanick?
...and about $1,000,000 for a medallion, right?