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Carl Icahn Takes $100M Stake in Lyft
- gcb0 11y agosigh... and tomorrow lyft will adopt worse printing tactics than uber. that guy makes uber founders look like madre Teresa
- dave_sullivan 11y agoI love how greenmail was rebranded to "activist investing". For those of you who don't know, greenmail is basically going to a company and saying: "Hey, I can convince your investors you suck and should be replaced, or you can pay me to go away." That's also activist investing (but activists are good right?) Yet to be fair, if some random guy can convince shareholders that the board needs to be replaced, the board may be screwing up. Maybe those are the ones most likely to pay someone to settle down.
- maceo 11y agoIt's actually a shame, because the term "activist investor" already had a meaning. It's what you would call nuns in the 80s who used proxy votes from pension funds to push pro-people corporate policy. Or Harvard students in the 60s who used proxies from their university endowment to agitate against corporations profiting off the Vietnam War. These days, that doesn't really exist anymore, but if you have to refer to it its usually called "shareholder activism." Even then, most people who read that assume that you're referring to greenmailing.
- s73v3r 11y agoTo be fair, he doesn't need to convince that many people.
- jusben1369 11y agoHis most recent foray was in eBay and Paypal. He was demonized at the time but it would appear he was right. There are literally thousands of choices for him. He only shows up on your doorstep if he thinks you're vulnerable then puts all his own money at stake. He may not always be right but I think he (and others like him) can have a very positive role in the overall ecosystem. A lot of these management teams and boards are just too dang cozy and it can be nearly impossible to shake them up.
- scottm01 11y agoWhat a great PR move for Uber!
- therealarmen 11y agoI wonder how much of the company the Lyft founders still own. They have raised over $1B at relatively (compared to Uber) low valuations.
- et2o 11y agoN=1 but all of my friends use uber and none use Lyft. Not sure how long they'll last.
- gtaylor 11y agoAnecdotal, but I use Lyft as much as I do Uber. I like being able to tip in-app with Lyft, and I want to see them both survive so we can options.
- uptown 11y agoI don't use either. Is there a way to know roughly how much you're going to pay before you get-in?
- ISV_Damocles 11y agoPretty sure they all have a way to get a fare estimate if you enter the destination before requesting.
- benchtobedside 11y agoWith Lyft Line the price is fixed ahead of the pickup, I don't see an estimate for the standard Lyft. With Uber the price is either fixed also (SF), or there is a fare estimate button after you set your pickup location.
- Apocryphon 11y agoDoesn't Uber need Lyft to be around so they won't get called a monopoly?
- lquist 11y agoI wonder how things will go with Icahn and Andreessen on the same board? http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-04/the-icahn-vs-dot-andreessen-fight-a-blow-by-blow-explainer http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-04/the-icahn-vs...
- pacofvf 11y agowait Ebay did spin-off paypal, Andreessen is still at EBay's board?
- amyjess 11y agoCarl Icahn's shenanigans were part of what drove Marvel Comics to bankruptcy in the mid-90s. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to Lyft.
- scottm01 11y agoHe ruined TWA airlines before that. Argue as you want about his success as a businessman, he is bad bad news for employees, board members, and usually (other) stockholders.
- blueintegral 11y agoMotorola didn't end up so great because of him either.
- alex_anglin 11y agoApple seems to be weathering the storm though.
- JonFish85 11y agoProbably because when things are great and the company is growing in value, it'd be very hard to convince the shareholders that things need to change. If they start missing targets quarter after quarter, that's when he'd have leverage.
- jusben1369 11y agoWell remember he's only getting involved in risky projects because that's where he can maximize upside. If your company is doing well to begin with he's not there.
- s73v3r 11y agoNot quite. Netflix was doing fine, and yet he kept trying to do his shit to them so that he could chop the company up and sell it off, piece by piece. I'm glad the Netflix board was successful in telling him to go fuck himself.
- late2part 11y agoCarl Icahn is a contrarian. There's no question Uber is ahead, but Lyft has material market share. I don't see this as an activist investor issue. In Silicon Valley, people fight, and they get over it and move on. I'd be surprised if Marc and Carl can't, and don't, do the same.
- bababoosh 11y agoIcahn is a raider. He has no plan to grow Lyft. He wants to sell it to someone and make money.
- josu 11y agoIs it possible to change the link to the Google one, so people don't find themselves firewalled https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ficahn-takes-100-million-stake-in-lyft-1431698445&ei=6h9WVa_3MYSdsAXp04HABg&usg=AFQjCNGCBlXqHUlq_W5PG-2Gh84UEaBuww&sig2=xZX7DfeSPn34vIRxWiKzXQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- chimeracoder 11y agoThat doesn't always work - you have to actually access it from the Google search page. Clicking on that link you posted, I still get a paywall.
- digi_owl 11y agoInserting a fake google refer seems to do the trick.
- pkaye 11y agoSomeone posted this bookmarklet the other day and it works pretty good. javascript:location.href='https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=' https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=' + encodeURIComponent(location.href) + '&btnI=I'
- philrapo 11y agoYou could also pay for WSJ journalism. I'm surprised HN doesn't ever seem to care about this issue.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoNot paying for WSJ content is a mitzvah.
- josu 11y agoThe two are not mutually exclusive, and I'm not even sure about the net effect of linking to the non firewalled article. If I couldn't read any article from the WSJ, I don't know how likely would it be that I'd sign up.
- amit_jus 11y agoTo HackerNews, Please don't include stories in your feed that go to paid site.
- function_seven 11y agoWhy not?
- technofiend 11y agoAs a Houston resident, we don't have any competition from Lyft anyway: they exited the market last year. What's interesting is whether Icahn is for or against autonomous cars supplying the service. Obviously Uber/Google have one opinion, but Carl may disagree since lyft has no autonomous car technology.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> but Carl may disagree since lyft has no autonomous car technology. Which they could buy from Tesla or Delphi.
- s73v3r 11y agoWhy anyone would accept a single red cent from Carl Icahn boggles my mind.
- hnnewguy 11y agoHe's no different than anyone else playing the money game (just take a look at his accusations towards Mr. Andreesen, who, I think, is a nice guy). He's just better at it.
- s73v3r 11y agoHe's an ass who has a long track record of basically destroying businesses, chopping them up, and selling them off. Fucking over anyone who isn't himself in the process. There are others who do this, too. He's just the worst at it.
- bababoosh 11y agoSeems he already lost interest in eBay.
- sseveran 11y agoThat's cause he won.
- hownottowrite 11y agoBye bye, Lyft
- EdwCoady 11y agoIcahn for sure just invested so he could be higher in a liq pref stack than A16Z, so when things go south he can take away anything that A16Z could have potentially recouped
- foobarqux 11y agoThere is a theory that Icahn is so rich and old that the money doesn't really matter to him much anymore. Instead he gets the most value from investing his money in ways that entertain him and sometimes that's by poking people he doesn't like in the eye (Ackman, Andreessen).
- metaphorm 11y agothis is Lyft committing suicide and donating its zombified corpse to Carl Icahn.
- hkmurakami 11y ago>Lyft raised $530 million in a funding round earlier this year led by Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten. Mr. Icahn’s investment is the largest portion of a $150 million extension to that round at the same valuation, the company said >The money is an extension of a round of funding Lyft announced in March that values the three-year-old company at $2.5 billion. Doing back of the envelope math, Lyft is valued at $1.97B premoney. This $680MM round gives the new investors 25.6% of the company. Uber raises even bigger rounds while giving away much smaller fractions of the company each time. Fascinating to see how market position dictates these terms in such dramatic ways.
- pdeuchler 11y agoI find the Icahn hate very curious, and very similar to the outrage towards Donald Sterling. Both people have done questionable (I'm trying to be charitable) things that have hit the public limelight, and have been ostracized and scapegoated by their peers so that the public has a visible enemy they can attack instead of realizing the problems are endemic to larger systems and groups of people. Honestly, if you think Sterling/Icahn are even in the bottom 25% of their equally immoral peers you're being duped. Continuing to vilify the symptoms of larger diseases will only allow the disease to spread, and will solve nothing. Maybe we should take a better look at the environments that create such people? It all rather reminds me of this Scarface scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfX0T4LDD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfX0T4LDD8
- univalent 11y agoDangerous move in what could end up being a 'winner take all' market.