9 ms·

I dunno, my guess is that he was too set in his ways to make the leap from "CEO of a growth startup" to "CEO of a mature company". If you look at founder/CEOs

I dunno, my guess is that he was too set in his ways to make the leap from "CEO of a growth startup" to "CEO of a mature company". If you look at founder/CEOs who have made that leap, they all tend to be very young (Jobs, Gates, Zuck, etc) and had very strong teams behind them. Someone like Kalanick - who has run multiple startups to various exits - has been running startups all his professional life. His management style likely works very well at a startup, where failure is assumed so risk tolerance is high. At a startup, you need a field general leading the troops into battle. But at a large, maturing company, you need a different skill set. Risk tolerance becomes a negative attribute once the company grows so large you can't control the risk anymore. Rather than a field general, you need a therapist capable of massaging the egos of the executive team and the board of directors. The job becomes more strategic and political -- execution is assumed, and failure is no longer an option. I don't think Kalanick is that guy, and I think the board finally convinced him of that. But if I was an investor, I'd still be happy to listen to his next startup pitch...

emilsedgh 9y ago
Uber's valuation is still based on its growth. Therefore, it still needs to be a startup to justify this valuation and burn. I'd argue that a "mature CEO" is not a fit for Uber which needs to keep growing or die.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Some business models are fundamentally broken, then the growth is eventually no longer effective in selling the story that one day the company will be profitable.
- exelius 9y ago
  Uber's valuation is based on a formula that looks something like (raw brand value in an autonomous car world) - (burn rate)^(number of years until autonomous cars are widespread). The valuation can be quite high if you assume that the value in the exponent is low. But I personally think that the "autonomous vehicle revolution" is not going to pay off as well for Uber as they had hoped. It's becoming more clear that the market for autonomous vehicles isn't going to look like the market for human-driven ones -- and vehicle manufacturers are going to be looking to build their own self-driving auto services rather than sell self-driving vehicles directly to consumers. Uber's biggest innovation was their app. Even complex apps like Uber are not hard to clone if you have any sort of budget. There's an assumption a lot of investors make about their brand value: it assumes that another, already strong brand does not enter the same market. Seeing as Tesla has made no secret of their intentions to compete directly with Uber in the ride-hailing space, I don't think that's a fair assumption. Would you rather call an Uber or a Tesla at this point? And what does buying a Tesla in that scenario even look like? Do you buy a car and rent it out a la Airbnb when you're not using it? How much money do you get for that, and how much of a cut does Tesla get since it's their algorithms actually driving the car? Don't get me wrong; the brand value is actually really high because hundreds of millions of wealthy customers worldwide know Uber. Even if the company fails spectacularly, someone will buy them for a few billion in a fire sale just for the brand.
  - emilsedgh 9y ago
    I don't think Uber's valuation is based on autonomous cars. That would be a really stupid bet for investors. Autonomous cars are a side bet. A few hundred millions in R&D that would also attract good talent and nice PR for Uber. But I don't think investors were stupid enough to invest billions into Uber based on that bet. Specially considering the fact that anyone who gets that technology first can make it big and Google had a few years of head start.
    - WalterSear 9y ago
      Uber's valuation has to be based on an anticipation of autonomous vehicles. Otherwise, whether self-driving cars arrive in 5 years or 10, investors are putting money into a horse-and-buggy company.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        Not necessarily. If your projection is that widespread autonomous vehicles don't arrive for 30 years, there is a lot of money in the meantime to be made being a horse-and-buggy company.
  - jonnathanson 9y ago
    Tesla's taking a very long view. They are thinking about what the world will look like when autonomous cars are ubiquitous, and then working backwards from some of the pretty gnarly realizations that sink in when you do that sort of thinking. You realize that nobody will care as much about most of the things they currently care about when buying a car. Performance? Mileage? Handling? Horsepower? Fucking irrelevant if I'm chilling in the back seat and my car is just getting me to where I need to go. So what still matters? Price. Comfort. Amenities. The upsell becomes the main sell. At a certain point, Tesla isn't even selling "cars" so much as it's selling mobile offices to one segment, and mobile living rooms to another segment. I could also see Tesla finding a way to place the burden of price elsewhere and offer effectively "free" cars to consumers. For instance, leasing or selling fleets to employers. Or to cities. Or to Uber. Or to Amazon. Uber, on the other hand, sees a world in which nobody owns a car, nobody drives a car, and everyone hails an automated car whenever and wherever. Like that scene in Minority Report. Both of their strategies are banking on the idea that cars, as we currently understand and experience them, will eventually become pure commodities. The difference is that Tesla is seeking margin and Uber is seeking volume. The cliche that Tesla is Apple and Uber is Amazon is sort of true in that respect.
microtherion 9y ago
> I dunno, my guess is that he was too set in his ways to make the leap from "CEO of a growth startup" to "CEO of a mature company". If you look at founder/CEOs who have made that leap, they all tend to be very young (Jobs, Gates, Zuck, etc) and had very strong teams behind them. And in Jobs' case, it took an absence from the company of more than 10 years…
- samfisher83 9y ago
  Jobs got fired from apple. Edit: Downvotes for simply stating a fact?
  - austinshea 9y ago
    Apple is an electronics company.
  - kronos29296 9y ago
    And then got rehired because Apple needed him
  - krallja 9y ago
    That is why he was absent.
  - microtherion 9y ago
    Precisely. And then he was brought back, and in retrospect, many of his skills the second time around (charisma, design instinct, product focus) were the same that he had brought to Apple originally, but in the meantime, he had learned to temper his worst personal flaws (largely by learning to trust and listen to a small group of people who could counteract them).
    - davidf18 9y ago
      I saw Ed Catmull (Pixar) give a post-Jobs death talk on youtube about how Jobs had completely changed during his 10 year hiatus and was far more empathic.
api 9y ago
Uber isn't a mature company. They're not profitable and are burning cash like crazy. More like "CEO of a growth startup" to "fixer who can pull an over-valued startup out of a nose dive." That's a much tougher leap.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  So Uber is walking down the Twitter path you think?
- briandear 9y ago
  Melissa Mayer is looking for a job. ;)
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    I think you mean Marissa Mayer, no?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Melissa, whoever she is, probably has a better track record turning around nose dives of high profile firms.
cobbzilla 9y ago
> who has run multiple startups to various exits What has he done besides Red Swoosh? btw, Red Swoosh was sold to Akamai and then later disassembled when they realized there was no "there" there.

emilsedgh 9y ago

Uber's valuation is still based on its growth. Therefore, it still needs to be a startup to justify this valuation and burn. I'd argue that a "mature CEO" is not a fit for Uber which needs to keep growing or die.

jacquesm 9y ago
Some business models are fundamentally broken, then the growth is eventually no longer effective in selling the story that one day the company will be profitable.
exelius 9y ago
Uber's valuation is based on a formula that looks something like (raw brand value in an autonomous car world) - (burn rate)^(number of years until autonomous cars are widespread). The valuation can be quite high if you assume that the value in the exponent is low. But I personally think that the "autonomous vehicle revolution" is not going to pay off as well for Uber as they had hoped. It's becoming more clear that the market for autonomous vehicles isn't going to look like the market for human-driven ones -- and vehicle manufacturers are going to be looking to build their own self-driving auto services rather than sell self-driving vehicles directly to consumers. Uber's biggest innovation was their app. Even complex apps like Uber are not hard to clone if you have any sort of budget. There's an assumption a lot of investors make about their brand value: it assumes that another, already strong brand does not enter the same market. Seeing as Tesla has made no secret of their intentions to compete directly with Uber in the ride-hailing space, I don't think that's a fair assumption. Would you rather call an Uber or a Tesla at this point? And what does buying a Tesla in that scenario even look like? Do you buy a car and rent it out a la Airbnb when you're not using it? How much money do you get for that, and how much of a cut does Tesla get since it's their algorithms actually driving the car? Don't get me wrong; the brand value is actually really high because hundreds of millions of wealthy customers worldwide know Uber. Even if the company fails spectacularly, someone will buy them for a few billion in a fire sale just for the brand.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  I don't think Uber's valuation is based on autonomous cars. That would be a really stupid bet for investors. Autonomous cars are a side bet. A few hundred millions in R&D that would also attract good talent and nice PR for Uber. But I don't think investors were stupid enough to invest billions into Uber based on that bet. Specially considering the fact that anyone who gets that technology first can make it big and Google had a few years of head start.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    Uber's valuation has to be based on an anticipation of autonomous vehicles. Otherwise, whether self-driving cars arrive in 5 years or 10, investors are putting money into a horse-and-buggy company.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Not necessarily. If your projection is that widespread autonomous vehicles don't arrive for 30 years, there is a lot of money in the meantime to be made being a horse-and-buggy company.
- jonnathanson 9y ago
  Tesla's taking a very long view. They are thinking about what the world will look like when autonomous cars are ubiquitous, and then working backwards from some of the pretty gnarly realizations that sink in when you do that sort of thinking. You realize that nobody will care as much about most of the things they currently care about when buying a car. Performance? Mileage? Handling? Horsepower? Fucking irrelevant if I'm chilling in the back seat and my car is just getting me to where I need to go. So what still matters? Price. Comfort. Amenities. The upsell becomes the main sell. At a certain point, Tesla isn't even selling "cars" so much as it's selling mobile offices to one segment, and mobile living rooms to another segment. I could also see Tesla finding a way to place the burden of price elsewhere and offer effectively "free" cars to consumers. For instance, leasing or selling fleets to employers. Or to cities. Or to Uber. Or to Amazon. Uber, on the other hand, sees a world in which nobody owns a car, nobody drives a car, and everyone hails an automated car whenever and wherever. Like that scene in Minority Report. Both of their strategies are banking on the idea that cars, as we currently understand and experience them, will eventually become pure commodities. The difference is that Tesla is seeking margin and Uber is seeking volume. The cliche that Tesla is Apple and Uber is Amazon is sort of true in that respect.

microtherion 9y ago

> I dunno, my guess is that he was too set in his ways to make the leap from "CEO of a growth startup" to "CEO of a mature company". If you look at founder/CEOs who have made that leap, they all tend to be very young (Jobs, Gates, Zuck, etc) and had very strong teams behind them. And in Jobs' case, it took an absence from the company of more than 10 years…

samfisher83 9y ago
Jobs got fired from apple. Edit: Downvotes for simply stating a fact?
- austinshea 9y ago
  Apple is an electronics company.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  And then got rehired because Apple needed him
- krallja 9y ago
  That is why he was absent.
- microtherion 9y ago
  Precisely. And then he was brought back, and in retrospect, many of his skills the second time around (charisma, design instinct, product focus) were the same that he had brought to Apple originally, but in the meantime, he had learned to temper his worst personal flaws (largely by learning to trust and listen to a small group of people who could counteract them).
  - davidf18 9y ago
    I saw Ed Catmull (Pixar) give a post-Jobs death talk on youtube about how Jobs had completely changed during his 10 year hiatus and was far more empathic.

api 9y ago

Uber isn't a mature company. They're not profitable and are burning cash like crazy. More like "CEO of a growth startup" to "fixer who can pull an over-valued startup out of a nose dive." That's a much tougher leap.

emilsedgh 9y ago
So Uber is walking down the Twitter path you think?
briandear 9y ago
Melissa Mayer is looking for a job. ;)
- mindcrime 9y ago
  I think you mean Marissa Mayer, no?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Melissa, whoever she is, probably has a better track record turning around nose dives of high profile firms.

cobbzilla 9y ago

> who has run multiple startups to various exits What has he done besides Red Swoosh? btw, Red Swoosh was sold to Akamai and then later disassembled when they realized there was no "there" there.