Wow -- I'm amazed to hear this sentiment. I'm personally proud that one of our VCs was involved.
Travis helped build an incredible company, but his disregard for the law, for his employees' well-being, for basic decency threaten to tear all of that down. Just in the past six months:
* Susan Fowler's blog post exposed a terribly broken HR system and a culture of sexual harassment that reached the very top. This has huge legal implications in addition to the obvious moral and ethical ones.
* Waymo's lawsuit could shut down Uber's self-driving car program, into which they have put hundreds of millions of dollars. There may be evidence that Travis colluded with Levandowski to steal Google's self-driving techonology.
* Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.
* On top of all this, Travis was videotaped cursing at a driver who complained about pay rates.
At this point, Travis had to go. It's going to be hard for Uber to recover from all this, but this is the first step. I hope that this becomes a lesson in SV that there are consequences to this kind of behavior, and that at some point the adults will step in.
I don't think these examples are all that damning, aside from the Susan Fowler and HR failure:
- Waymo: the judge has not ruled yet, and there is no evidence revealed to the public which implicates Uber. There is lots of evidence implicating Levadowski.
- Greyball: I can see investors forgiving this as a necessary play to fuel growth.
- Cursing the driver: a private conversation, neither here nor there.
That said, there may be issues that are not public, and the sexual harassment problem alone may be enough. Senior leadership was rapidly leaving. We don't know what the full Holder report said.
Waymo: the judge has not ruled yet, and there is no evidence revealed to the public which implicates Uber. There is lots of evidence implicating Levadowski.
But uber is still lagging behind Waymo/Lyft in the self driving technology. They were desperate to catch up, hence the acquisition of lewandowski's new company in the first place. Now that path is no longer viable regardless of the verdict.
Whoever becomes the new CEO will have to be laser focused to make their auto pilot program work somehow. Without that, Uber has no path to profitability.
They really should have done what lyft did, building partnership with companies like Google/Waymo and GM instead of trying to build their own auto pilot program from scratch.
Agreed. Whether or not your listed events are the exact same set of reasons for his ousting, it's a good thing for our industry that his brand of unethical leadership is being shown the exit. As if TK is the only leader than can deliver the same type of value. Good riddance! Lyft just got their opportunity, hopefully they learn from Uber's mistakes.
Are you saying someone else can deliver the same value as TK (so Uber is fine), or are you saying Lyft just got their opportunity (so Uber is not fine)?
The problem with getting rid of any leader, a CEO, President, Prime Minister, or even a Dictator even when they seem 'bad' is that you can't be sure the replacement won't be even worse or even more ineffective in meeting objectives. Unless there's a clear and obvious replacement waiting in the wings it's not certain him leaving is a good or bad idea, especially if they end up scrambling to find someone, anyone, to bring in.
Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Kalanic as a terrible leader is the complete absence of any kind of serious leadership team or program around him.
Sadly, Uber's board sounds more likely to be the kind of disaster that controlled Yahoo, HP and so many other faded stars from the valley.
Looks like Apple's decision not to invest was well played.
Travis helped build an incredible company, but his disregard for the law, for his employees' well-being, for basic decency threaten to tear all of that down. Just in the past six months:
* Susan Fowler's blog post exposed a terribly broken HR system and a culture of sexual harassment that reached the very top. This has huge legal implications in addition to the obvious moral and ethical ones.
* Waymo's lawsuit could shut down Uber's self-driving car program, into which they have put hundreds of millions of dollars. There may be evidence that Travis colluded with Levandowski to steal Google's self-driving techonology.
* Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.
* On top of all this, Travis was videotaped cursing at a driver who complained about pay rates.
At this point, Travis had to go. It's going to be hard for Uber to recover from all this, but this is the first step. I hope that this becomes a lesson in SV that there are consequences to this kind of behavior, and that at some point the adults will step in.