Can Uber Survive Without Travis Kalanick as CEO?
EXCERPT: [...] An Uber without its founding CEO is an Uber untethered to the principles that the company has associated with its rapid growth since it launched in 2009, for better and perhaps for worse. Uber has recently tried to distance itself from some of what it long described as core competencies—qualities like “super pumpedness,” “always be hustling,” and “toe-stepping.” It even announced this week it will allow tips to drivers in a longstanding reversal of a controversial policy.
With Travis Kalanick out, we'll see the real value of Uber — and it won't be pretty
EXCERPT: Now that its bad-boy co-founder Travis Kalanick has resigned as Uber’s CEO, the question will be asked: Is Kalanick’s departure bad for Uber, or good for Uber?
The answer is yes.
It’s good for Uber, because the company has a better chance of shedding its reputation as a howlingly bad place to work unless you’re a young white male; and its reputation for getting its way with civic officials by breaking rules, regulations and norms. These changes, if they occur, will improve its ability to recruit talented personnel, and reduce the friction — ultimately costly — that attended its truculent entry into every new market and its continuing squeeze on its 200,000 drivers.
It’s bad for Uber, because Kalanick’s messianic sales pitch obscured the fundamental unprofitability of its business model. It’s not that the company’s humongous losses were invisible, since its venture investors undoubtedly knew the numbers and the few financial reports the privately-held company dribbled out were all written in deep red.
But Kalanick had persuaded his backers and an uncritical tech press that, trust him on this, the endgame would be glorious — after all, the company was growing incredibly fast. Uber rode his self-confidence to a putative value of $70 billion. Never mind that this valuation was based only on arithmetic, derived from the meagerness of the stake in the company purchased by the latest round of investments. In the venture world, you’re only as valuable as the last round, so the next round will tell us a lot.
("Uber has not shown that it can profitably produce better taxi service under competitive conditions." — Transportation expert Hubert Horan)
(Jun 23, 2017 02:05 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]It's another one of those "create employment" paradoxes. Without Kalanick's unbridled management and hocus-pocus illusions of the company's strength and value, it never would have bloated into a giant to begin with that could offer jobs which one could feel ill-treated over.
Since it has already reached orbit using Kalanick's "toxic" rocket boosters, perhaps it can still stay aloft by adopting conventional standards -- by maturing, by ejecting its male anachronisms (including Kalanick). But Uber may have a deteriorating elevation, if it has just been growing on the smell of self-assurance and a promised light at the end of a tunnel, rather than actual profit and a battle-tested scheme.
Can Uber Survive Without Travis Kalanick as CEO?
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EXCERPT: [...] An Uber without its founding CEO is an Uber untethered to the principles that the company has associated with its rapid growth since it launched in 2009, for better and perhaps for worse. Uber has recently tried to distance itself from some of what it long described as core competencies—qualities like “super pumpedness,” “always be hustling,” and “toe-stepping.” It even announced this week it will allow tips to drivers in a longstanding reversal of a controversial policy.
With Travis Kalanick out, we'll see the real value of Uber — and it won't be pretty
EXCERPT: Now that its bad-boy co-founder Travis Kalanick has resigned as Uber’s CEO, the question will be asked: Is Kalanick’s departure bad for Uber, or good for Uber?
The answer is yes.
It’s good for Uber, because the company has a better chance of shedding its reputation as a howlingly bad place to work unless you’re a young white male; and its reputation for getting its way with civic officials by breaking rules, regulations and norms. These changes, if they occur, will improve its ability to recruit talented personnel, and reduce the friction — ultimately costly — that attended its truculent entry into every new market and its continuing squeeze on its 200,000 drivers.
It’s bad for Uber, because Kalanick’s messianic sales pitch obscured the fundamental unprofitability of its business model. It’s not that the company’s humongous losses were invisible, since its venture investors undoubtedly knew the numbers and the few financial reports the privately-held company dribbled out were all written in deep red.
But Kalanick had persuaded his backers and an uncritical tech press that, trust him on this, the endgame would be glorious — after all, the company was growing incredibly fast. Uber rode his self-confidence to a putative value of $70 billion. Never mind that this valuation was based only on arithmetic, derived from the meagerness of the stake in the company purchased by the latest round of investments. In the venture world, you’re only as valuable as the last round, so the next round will tell us a lot.
("Uber has not shown that it can profitably produce better taxi service under competitive conditions." — Transportation expert Hubert Horan)