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It also serves as a cautionary tale; as a venture capitalist, be very careful whom you provide capital to. It has been obvious for years that Travis Kalanick w
by vcao2 9y ago
It also serves as a cautionary tale; as a venture capitalist, be very careful whom you provide capital to.
It has been obvious for years that Travis Kalanick will run Uber into the ground, unless controlled. This is not new. One of the reasons there isn't a CFO is so he doesn't have to justify his awful ideas.
It's good to see Benchmark is finally admitting that they (and the rest of the board) have failed to do their job; by failing to more adequately govern Uber.
Uber is a looming disaster for investors, and I pity employees there who think their options are going to make them rich. That will only be true for a very, very few, because Travis has made decisions that will leave most of them with basically nothing.
- rtx 9y agoAs a customer they have my Support. Travis and team have created something amazing.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoThis is a pretty laughable comment to make about a guy who took a company from $0 to $70 billion. Uber has completely changed transportation for millions of people around the globe. You might be right that Uber needs someone different for the next phase, but you make him sound like Michael Scott.
- jon_richards 9y agoWasn't Michael Scott also extremely successful in the show?
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoI've watched like 4 episodes of the office, but we're talking about the same guy, right? The one who is a middle manager at a small sales office in Scranton? Pretty far cry from growing a company from $0 to billions in revenue, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and upending a global industry. In 8 years.
- jon_richards 9y agoIt was a plot point of the show that his branch was the only successful one. The company was literally selling printer paper in an increasingly digital world. He may not have made billions of dollars, but he still succeeded at a seemingly impossible task.
- ethbro 9y ago> creating hundreds of thousands of jobs I'd say it's a stretch to call these jobs until they're proven sustainable without VC money subsidizing drivers.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoFair enough. How about: "he convinced billionaires to give generous subsidies to hundreds of thousands of working class drivers"? :)
- bmm6o 9y agoHe's an incompetent manager. There are suggestions and moments of characterization that suggest that he was a good salesman who was promoted above his abilities. He was not extremely successful.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- valuearb 9y agoHe was a tremendous fund-raiser. He may have been a great early stage CEO. Right now the company isn't worth $70B, and is hemorrhaging money. Which is why he agreed to step down. He's clearly been overmatched as CEO for a long while now.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoStrongly disagree, but we'll see :)