Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Resigns

[MacRumors]

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has resigned his position as CEO, following a series of controversies and scandals that have recently dogged the ride hailing company.

Five major investors demanded Kalanick's immediate resignation on Tuesday in a letter delivered to the chief executive, according to The New York Times. After "long discussions" with some of the investors, Kalanick agreed to step down, but will reportedly stay on Uber's board and continue to hold the majority of voting shares. Kalanick recently took a leave of absence following the death of his mother.

Kalanick at LeWeb Paris (Image by Adam Tinworth)​

"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight," Mr. Kalanick said in a statement.

Uber's board said in a statement that Kalanick had "always put Uber first" and that his resignation would give the company "room to fully embrace this new chapter in Uber's history." An Uber spokesperson declined to comment further.

The ride-hailing service clearly hopes that news of Kalanick's resignation will be perceived as a company reboot, as it attempts to revive its tarnished image following multiple controversies over recent months.

Just last month it was revealed that the Department of Justice is investigating Uber over its use of "secret" software that allowed its drivers to operate in areas where the company was banned or restricted. The so-called "greyball" software is said to have allowed the company to identify undercover officials and block them from booking rides, in order to prevent them from proving that Uber was operating illegally.

In April it emerged that Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to pull Uber's app from the App Store in early 2015 after discovering that it was secretly "fingerprinting" iPhones that used the app. Uber said it used the identification method to prevent fraud, despite knowing the tactic is a clear violation of Apple's app privacy guidelines. The revelation came in a New York Times article detailing the ride-hailing service's history of controversial business tactics.

Article Link: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Resigns

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

Wowww! Uber is doomed!

 

[44267547]

Uber did this to themself and Travis Kalanick is held responsible for the companies Actions. And anything else Uber has coming to them unannounced, is deservedly so.

 

[Dilster3k]

Rose to fame too quickly unfortunately; but their practices are still down right unacceptable. And they need to be held accountable, the amount of scandals coming out every second by the firm is almost comical. Uber needs to be flushed out and rinsed thoroughly.

 

[macs4nw]

Shady business practices is a sure way to ruin an otherwise promising company. Perhaps they now have an opportunity to turn all the negative perceptions around?

 

[44267547]

Shady business practices is a sure way to ruin an otherwise promising company. Perhaps they now have an opportunity to turn all the negative perceptions around?

At This point for Uber, it's completely damage control. They certainly can't keep operating the way they are now if they want to survive and have a chance of rebounding from all these allegations. I do think the first step was to have the CEO step down and restructure the company from this point forward.

 

[smarch]

Victim of the mob. Uber is amazing. What an amazing thing Travis built and I'm sorry to see him driven out by the nonsense that passes for discourse in this tyrannical mob of a world.

 

[0003462]

Victim of the mob. Uber is amazing. What an amazing thing Travis built and I'm sorry to see him driven out by the nonsense that passes for discourse in this tyrannical mob of a world.

What nonsense is that?

 

[smarch]

What nonsense is that?

The "controversies and scandals".

 

[miknos]

Ride-sharing business model was quite ingenious and simple. With GPS apps these days anyone can be a driver. With internet, you can be a worldwide taxi-company;As such, you can have economy of scale, and without regulations, charge way less than a cab.

Uber instead decided to charge outrageous commission from its naive drivers who are mostly young (inexperienced) and doesn't take into account the wear and tear of the car.
IT'S A BAD DEAL FOR ITS DRIVERS.

Uber already has more drivers available, making more difficult for other companies like Lyft (among others) to compete. Instead of using that to decrease its commission and make Uber even stronger, they decided to burn cash (apart from autonomous vehicles) and be dicks (tracking its users).

Autonomous cars are the future and I think it is a smart move but stealing software from Google's subsidiary looks like a bad bet, specially if you have billions at your disposal.

Uber now has a 170mb app that updates every week just to silence its bad reviews in the app store.

 

[vmachiel]

Victim of the mob. Uber is amazing. What an amazing thing Travis built and I'm sorry to see him driven out by the nonsense that passes for discourse in this tyrannical mob of a world.

I disagree. It's great that he build it etc., they company had a lot of scandals under his leadership. The location thing, the sexual harassment stuff, the ripping off of driver and so on. It's time for change.

 

[hipnetic]

In what way does this impact Apple users?

 

[uwdude]

That's odd, because just yesterday I got an email from Uber as a driver who hasn't driven in a while but hadn't quit the app, that they were making a slew of changes, including adding tipping to the app and offering us medical insurance for accidents. I think the signatures at the bottom were other execs though not Kalanick. So maybe that was part of the shakeup yesterday.

 

[maflynn]

This should have been one of the first things that uber did.

 

[Wide opeN]

As someone who just Uber'd for the first time last week, I can say it was a very seamless experience.

The time arrival was almost too quick (good problem) and riding in a normal passenger vehicle was also welcome.

It's been decades since I was in a taxi, and with Uber and Lyft it'll be decades if ever that I call a taxi again.

TBH it can only be a matter of time before taxis go the way of Blockbuster and other business models that are no longer needed.

They'll survive this controversy just fine.

 

[djgamble]

Ride-sharing business model was quite ingenious and simple. With GPS apps these days anyone can be a driver. With internet, you can be a worldwide taxi-company;As such, you can have economy of scale, and without regulations, charge way less than a cab.

Uber instead decided to charge outrageous commission from its naive drivers who are mostly young (inexperienced) and doesn't take into account the wear and tear of the car.
IT'S A BAD DEAL FOR ITS DRIVERS.

Uber already has more drivers available, making more difficult for other companies like Lyft (among others) to compete. Instead of using that to decrease its commission and make Uber even stronger, they decided to burn cash (apart from autonomous vehicles) and be dicks (tracking its users).

Autonomous cars are the future and I think it is a smart move but stealing software from Google's subsidiary looks like a bad bet, specially if you have billions at your disposal.

Uber now has a 170mb app that updates every week just to silence its bad reviews in the app store.

A very insightful post there, thank you!!!

1. I think it's a simple idea that anybody can be a driver, but the legal greyness of it all made most say 'well that's stupid and we'd get fined a lot of money'. Uber somehow secured the funds to make a mockery of such fines and then pretty much forced countries/states to change their laws. I found it really bizarre!!! However, after they got away with that, Uber seem to have continued to rort their drivers/customers in multiple ways. I've said it all along... cabs aren't perfect but be careful what you wish for!
2. I never thought about it with all the silly app updates that get pushed out weekly/daily. Apple really need to do something about companies pushing out massive updates for no reason other than to quash bad reviews. Surely an update has to 'update' something!! I have really slow internet and really don't look forward to downloading the ~2 gigs worth of 'updates' sitting in my queue. It's really frustrating how many worthless updates are pushed out!

 

[scwinsett]

I’m glad this jerk is gone, but the damage is done. Their culture is awful. I will continue to use LYFT’s better app

 

[smarch]

I disagree. It's great that he build it etc., they company had a lot of scandals under his leadership. The location thing, the sexual harassment stuff, the ripping off of driver and so on. It's time for change.

You're awful dismissive of the "great that he built it" part. That's the point.

The "scandals" are nothing.
[doublepost=1498049954][/doublepost]I feel like there's a lot of conjecture in your theories

Ride-sharing business model was quite ingenious and simple. With GPS apps these days anyone can be a driver. With internet, you can be a worldwide taxi-company;As such, you can have economy of scale, and without regulations, charge way less than a cab.

Uber instead decided to charge outrageous commission from its naive drivers who are mostly young (inexperienced) and doesn't take into account the wear and tear of the car.
IT'S A BAD DEAL FOR ITS DRIVERS.

Uber already has more drivers available, making more difficult for other companies like Lyft (among others) to compete. Instead of using that to decrease its commission and make Uber even stronger, they decided to burn cash (apart from autonomous vehicles) and be dicks (tracking its users).

Autonomous cars are the future and I think it is a smart move but stealing software from Google's subsidiary looks like a bad bet, specially if you have billions at your disposal.

Uber now has a 170mb app that updates every week just to silence its bad reviews in the app store.

[doublepost=1498050035][/doublepost]

I’m glad this jerk is gone, but the damage is done. Their culture is awful. I will continue to use LYFT’s better app

Disagree. I like the Uber app a lot more.

 

[Benjamid]

Victim of the mob. Uber is amazing. What an amazing thing Travis built and I'm sorry to see him driven out by the nonsense that passes for discourse in this tyrannical mob of a world.

And Atlas shrugged or what

 

[Flytrap21]

After "long discussions" with some of the investors, Kalanick agreed to step down, but will reportedly stay on Uber's board and continue to hold the majority of voting shares.
Article Link: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Resigns

I have been on the board of a number of large companies, and I have never seen a large complex company of this scale successfully sideline a shareholder that continues to hold a controlling number of shares.

• At best, senior executives within Uber will continue to run strategic investment decisions through Kalanick because they will all know that he will continue to have the final say in the boardroom. The poor hapless person that is brought into become the new CEO will take the fall for every decision that goes wrong, while being second guessed by other executives who have Kalanick's ear. This happened at Microsoft for years after Gates left - senior engineers and executives (even Balmer) kept running to Gate's home office to get his approval for new projects and strategies that they were pitching, to disastrous effect (https://www.cnet.com/news/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/).
• At worst, Kalanick will get bored of sitting by the sidelines and will move on to some other project. However, he will use his voting majority to hand pick a board that will continue to do his biding... usually this scenario leads to a board that emphasises short term profitability rather than long term growth, as a way of using the company as a source of funds for whatever new venture he is embarking upon.

 

[nburwell]

The fact that Uber waited this long is really surprising.

Until I see some actual real changes with their structure, overall behavior and business practices, I will continue to use Lyft.

 

[ceriess]

This means that there is something really bad that has not been made public yet.

 

[RadioGaGa1984]

The fact that Uber waited this long is really surprising.

Until I see some actual real changes with their structure, overall behavior and business practices, I will continue to use Lyft.

LOL yay for you, and there are 100 people inline to use Uber instead who don't even know about Lyft. Some people seriously need to get over themselves.

 

[macduke]

Uber's board said in a statement that Kalanick had "always put Uber first"

Yeah he did. He put Uber first above their female employees that were harassed, above their drivers, above customer safety and privacy, above Apple's rules for the platform they provide for them, above competitors that they stole trade secrets from, above public safety with their unlicensed self-driving cars that were blowing through red lights, and above the law in general by trying to avoid regulation at all cost. Good riddance. Maybe now they can stop acting like an adolescent locker room full of boys and act like a grown up company, although in all honesty I wish someone else would come in and usurp them. These executives deserve to be punished for running a company in this manner.

 

[Bart Kela]

In what way does this impact Apple users?

In the immediate moment, perhaps very little for Apple users.

However, Apple is involved in autonomous vehicle research and the actions of Uber, Tesla, and other similar companies now may have great impact on how Apple emerges to compete with these companies in the future.

It's something for current AAPL shareholders and prospective investors to weigh on now. It is definitely something that may greatly affect Apple customers, vendors, business partners, etc. in the future.

It is wise for Apple watchers to keep a close eye, not just on Uber, but on other possible future Apple competitors.

Far more tricky to judge is how such an executive departure may affect hiring, especially for top engineering talent. If Kalanick's resignation entices more Apple (and other companies) employees to jump ship and join Uber, there are possibly more short-term implications for Apple and its business, as a brain drain may impact Apple's ability to develop and ship new products and services.

These sort of high-level changes in Silicon Valley often have a rippling affect in the industry. For sure, each company is not compartamentalized.