
Lack of cohesion in Uber's search for a new CEO - rmason
https://www.recode.net/2017/7/30/16066332/uber-ceo-search-travis-kalanick-meg-whitman-steve-jobs-board
======
kartD
Possibly the most incompetent board of directors in the past decade. Can't
reign Travis in, couldn't avoid all of this by forcing Travis to get an adult
COO like Sandberg, fire him after he takes a break to mourn his moms death.
They should all resign as well. A boards job is to reign in the CEO's bad
tendencies. Really what have any of them accomplished by being on the board?
Is there anything they can point to? And on top of all of that, their busy
leaking news instead of picking a CEO...

~~~
sebleon
> Really what have any of them accomplished by being on the board?

They provided high-level guidance of a company that went from non-existent to
$70Bn valuation in 7 years.

I'd be very curious to know what boards you approve of.

~~~
throw2016
The same can be said of Travis if not more yet he is out. So why should the
board remain?

~~~
kgwgk
Because the shareholders have not decided otherwise.

~~~
kgwgk
I don't usually argue with downvotes, but I'm going to make an exception. The
board decided that a change of CEO was requiered. Who has the power to decide
a change in the board is required? HN commenters?

~~~
calbear81
The shareholders who in this case are represented by the board members. In a
public company, an activist investor can bring the votes and force a change in
the board. Similarly, a majority investor could technically sway board members
to vote out another member (as long as it's allowed in the bylaws)

~~~
kgwgk
That was exactly my point. This piece by Matt Levine is relevant
([https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-24/board-
vot...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-24/board-votes-and-
performance-reviews)):

"On the other hand, you know, the buck has to stop somewhere. But where? The
CEO is an obvious answer, and he is gone, but the buck is still moving. It
might get the board. What's next? Should the shareholders fire themselves, for
failing to catch the problem in time?

There is a traditional model in which the board of directors represents the
shareholders: When management messes up, the board gets angry on behalf of the
shareholders; their dudgeon becomes its dudgeon. The modern model is
increasingly that the board is identified with management: When management
messes up, the shareholders get angry at the board; their dudgeon turns
against the board. The modern model might be more accurate in describing the
relationship between many boards and managements. But you want a balance
between dudgeon and continuity. If the managers mess up and the board gets rid
of them, it can demand that the new managers fix the problem, and hold them
accountable for doing it. But if you get rid of the board too, then who stays
around to make sure the problem gets fixed?"

------
whbk
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that a guy that founded a massive company and
drove it to unparalleled success only to be forced out while in the early
stages of mourning his mother's unexpected death (and caring for his severely
injured father) has not gone quietly into the night.

I think the passenger rape records issue was the straw that broke the camel's
back and he had to go, but I don't think it needed to be done the way it was.
Sure, there's a decent argument that he only has one speed and would be
meddling regardless (as he supposedly was while he was supposed to be "on
leave"), but doing it the way they did made Travis lashing out once he'd had a
bit of time to process it an absolute 100% certainty.

~~~
wavefunction
You're completely eliding all the scandals and scummy behavior by various
members of Uber under his watch. And while I sympathize with what his family
is facing in their personal tragedy, that it occurred at the same time those
various scandals came to a head is merely a coincidence in timing, if an
unfortunate one for Kalanick.

~~~
whbk
Check the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph - I agree that he needed to be
replaced due to the multitude of issues. I just think the execution of it was
very poor coming within a week of his mother's death.

Remember, he was already "on leave" \- whether he was honoring it or not. By
public accounts, he wasn't. So the board said "ok, he's not going to change,
let's remove him." My argument is they should've given him a couple weeks and
then sat him down and had the "the well has broken, we need a new face for the
good of the company, please support this" talk. Instead, they blindsided him
at a hotel that he'd flown to halfway across the country to try to help the
company (recruiting a COO) while his father's still severely injured. Had they
done it in a more humane way, they might have been able to secure more
cooperation in the long-term, and they could've begun to quietly get their
ducks in a row during that 2-3 week grace period before giving him the
ultimatum. Instead, they executed it at a moment of maximum weakness for him,
which got the job done in the moment but set themselves up for him to go
scorched earth in the long-term, undermining the whole exercise. Again, I do
think they needed to fire him, but they'd bought a bit of time with him "going
on leave" and I think it might have been more effective had they leveraged it
rather than going for the immediate KO.

Perhaps we would've ended up here regardless, but maybe not.

~~~
jon_richards
Can we address the fact that Travis not honouring his leave was him calling
for the resignation of a board member who practically personified the issues
surrounding Uber at the time?

>Earlier in the day at an Uber staff meeting to discuss the company’s culture,
Arianna Huffington, another board member, talked about how one woman on a
board often leads to more women joining a board.

>“Actually, what it shows is that it’s much more likely to be more talking,”
Mr. Bonderman responded.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Bonderman was fired for that. What more is there to say?

------
surfmike
I'm still surprised that I never see Robin Chase's name floated. She's a
successful serial transportation entrepreneur, and even wrote an op-ed
outlining a vision for Uber post-Travis:
[https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/what-
ubers-n...](https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/what-ubers-next-
ceo-needs-to-say/amp)

~~~
whbk
Decent chance she wanted the job (and penned the op-ed with that in mind), but
the feeling wasn't mutual.

~~~
basseq
I would doubt Uber's board wants a "serial entrepreneur". Uber is going to be
a $12-15B (revs) company this year, potentially with an impending IPO. That's
_two_ orders of magnitude larger than Robin Chase's experience at ZipCar. I
would bet they're looking for someone with experience at (growing) companies
in the $15-30B range, probably from a logistics-centric industry.

------
thaumasiotes
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-28/libor-
pho...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-28/libor-phone-
smashing-and-hacking) is vindicated!

> Who will be the next chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc.? The
> shortlist includes "fewer than six candidates," and they seem to be pretty
> big names: Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has turned Uber
> down, and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric Co. is in the running. It is
> hard to know how attractive an opportunity Uber is for someone who has
> already run a much bigger and more profitable public company, and you could
> imagine a lot of quick "no's" from that list. I hope it's like "Meg Whitman,
> Jeffrey Immelt, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and ... wait ... Travis Kalanick
> ... how'd he get on this list?"

~~~
sschueller
They might as well re-phrase the question to "Who wants to go the prison?" :)

------
elmar
WHAT UBER'S NEXT CEO NEEDS TO SAY by Robin Chase

[https://www.wired.com/story/what-ubers-next-ceo-needs-to-
say...](https://www.wired.com/story/what-ubers-next-ceo-needs-to-say/)

BTW Robin Chase is probably a great candidate to be CEO of Uber.

------
lettergram
I don't really understand why the author of the article is worried about the
CEO not being a woman... Seriously, who cares? It's not going to look good for
who ever takes over and there are a lot less woman candidates. Uber will be
lucky if it makes it to 2019 IMO.

Would give them 6 months, but half the valley invested in them.

~~~
AJRF
Kara Swisher writes "Ew" in news articles. Her work is devoid of substance and
just pushes an agenda that is populist and will get her likes from the largest
group of people on Twitter

~~~
malandrew
There is no better evidence of her bias against Travis and Uber than how she
conducted herself in her interview with Adam Lashinsky. Here's the full
transcript:

[https://www.recode.net/2017/7/16/15980006/transcript-
journal...](https://www.recode.net/2017/7/16/15980006/transcript-journalist-
author-adam-lashinsky-book-uber-wild-ride-live-onstage-recode-decode)

She isn't a journalist. She's an activist pushing an agenda, facts-be-damned.
Long gone are the day's of Walter Cronkite's "And that's the way it is."

~~~
theseatoms
This is a much broader trend in contemporary media. The line between news and
editorial has been all but erased.

~~~
malandrew
Yes, I agree. However, it's one thing to occasionally give an opinion in the
course of practicing journalism and something entirely different to steer the
conversation towards the message you're trying to push. Kara wasn't even
subtle about it this interview. Her bias was not just showing, but on full
display for all to see.

It's really unfortunate because the individuals in the general population
don't really get the facts and an opportunity to each come to slightly
different conclusions. It's journalist malpractice to tell people what to
think, since that's not journalism. That's propaganda.

------
redm
It's a nice article that summarizes the current turmoil of Uber well if it's
all accurate. I don't understand the need to make the article political
thought with the references to Trump and Anthony Scaramucci, there's just no
relevance.

~~~
Sacho
I don't think the mention of Trump was political - it's undisputed that his
presidency has been plagued by leaks so far. The mention of Scaramucci seems
to be closer, I don't understand the relevance of it.

------
pcsanwald
There isn't an interim CEO and the company is currently managed by committee.

The board is waffling around and doesn't seem committed to finding a
replacement, even interim.

I'd say that Travis K isn't the only one planning a Travis K comeback.

------
martinmusio7
This happens when people can't communicate enough.

------
miheermunjal
worst part is, the BoD can't seem to decide on enough strategy to sustain the
momentum Uber has built up. It's more in their incentive to pick someone
short-term to get through IPO-ing to some degree, than you can be sustained by
the public market if nothing else.

------
AmericanOP
None of you have any idea what travis offered on a personal level or did on a
daily basis in the fight to build a brand and open new markets.

No cohesion here either, just more twitter zeitgeist groupthink.

------
Animats
It's a tough problem. Uber's success is due to the CEO being an asshole. Yet
that's become a problem.

How about Peter Thiel? He's a strong enough personality for the job. He's gay,
so the women at Uber don't have to worry. Thiel was at one time talked about
for a job in the Trump Administration, but that's now a worse option than
running Uber. He's on a few boards and nominally runs a not-very-successful
hedge fund [1], so he's more or less available.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-went-wrong-with-Peter-Thiels-
hedg...](https://www.quora.com/What-went-wrong-with-Peter-Thiels-hedge-fund-
Clarium-Capital)

~~~
skewart
> Uber's success is due to the CEO being an asshole.

That's simply not true. Uber's success is due to being in the right place at
the right time and executing well in the early years.

The combination of smartphones and widespread trust in online reviews as a
system of enforcing good behavior were what made ride-sharing as we know it
possible. Uber understood the real value prop - a seamless, low-stress way to
take a car from A to B is what matters; a feel-good community "sharing" vibe
only gets you so far. And they developed their business in a smart way - it's
a commodity product, so you have to become the default in people's minds (like
Xerox or Polaroid before), that means build brand awareness and saturate as
many markets as possible as quickly as possible.

TK being an asshole is orthogonal to their success. There's a good argument to
be made that it actually has held them back and limited their success. Given
the size of the market why are they only a $70B company instead of a $200B or
$1T company by now?

~~~
Jare
There's a line of reasoning for such a statement:

\- TK \- asshole \- doesn't care about legality or ethics \- does questionable
things to gain an unfair advantage \- company succeeds quickly in the short
term \- karma eventually catches up to him \- karma crushes the company

It is very debatable at every point, but it is there.

~~~
Animats
Uber's success rests on three major illegalities - violating labor law by
treating drivers as independent contractors while telling them where to go and
what to do, operating an unlicensed taxi service, and not doing adequate
background checks. It took an asshole to realize that with enough VC funding
you could get away with that at scale.[1]

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/technology/uber-
lawsuits/ind...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/technology/uber-
lawsuits/index.html)

