
Uber strips power from ousted CEO Travis Kalanick - empressplay
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/uber-board-kalanick/index.html
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keithwhor
I don't know whether it's real or imagined, but there has been a drop in my
subjective experience with Uber in the last few months since Travis's removal.

\- While in a rush, I've had back-to-back mid-day waits of 15+ minutes for any
and every Uber I called (hailed a cab instead).

\- A day where I experienced $50+ non-surged fare estimate from downtown SF to
the Sunset, something I've never seen before (usually $22-ish... I took MUNI.)

\- Increased rate of bad driver behavior: I've had drivers straight up cancel
calls if I'm not outside immediately, drivers start a fare before I get in the
car (and then lose the ability to find my true pickup point), and worse.

\- Inability to pinpoint my location when there's a conference or venue nearby
- I had to call a Lyft yesterday because Uber insisted I was at an Oracle
conference (I wasn't even that close)

And more. Pretty much every reason I've had for not taking cabs over the past
few years is now becoming a problem with Uber. If they can't regulate the
quality of their service, there's no benefit to Uber in a major urban center
(hailing a cab is far, far faster).

I hadn't used Lyft in three years until about two weeks ago. I've started
using it more frequently and have had a fantastic experience. I'm unbelievably
disappointed - internal company politics aside, I had been a huge fan of Uber.
I haven't fully converted to Lyft yet, but every experience I have continues
to push me in that direction.

~~~
moftz
Sounds more like there is more demand of rides than there are drivers. Whether
that's from less people driving or more people riding is the question. Maybe
Lyft is starting to become more popular. In my area, Lyft wasn't popular at
all for a long time. You would wait forever meanwhile there was always an Uber
driver in the next neighborhood. Now, they are pretty much the same in
experience, wait times, and prices. Only time I've ever had "bad" drivers are
when they call me before pickup and ask me where I'm going and demand I cancel
since my destination would take them too long which I somewhat understand.
There should be some sort of system to help drivers limit the amount of non-
fare driving (giving them fares that might be a little further away to pickup
but the drop off is right near the driver's home, kind of like pooling where
the driver's home is the last "drop off").

I think both companies need to make sure that their drivers are happy. There
will always be a demand for cab services so making sure you can keep drivers
to match the demand will keep the fares coming in.

~~~
axus
Uber could add an option to specify your destination, and provide the
information (or lack of info) to the drivers.

~~~
dbbk
? I always have to specify my destination before booking.

~~~
zem
neither uber nor lyft share that with the drivers till they register that you
are in the car, presumably to prevent just this sort of thing.

~~~
dv_dt
That makes little sense to me, if they can't get drivers to go to certain
routes, then the fare should increase as an incentive should it not? Some sort
of market matchup between drivers and passengers is part of what Uber/Lyft
should be supplying in their platform.

If a driver has say 15 mins of time part time, or left on their intended
shift, as a passenger I really don't want that driver for a 45min trip
thinking they need to be somewhere else..

~~~
zem
i used to feel that way, but then i started thinking of the "bad
neighbourhood" problem. it's historically been a huge problem for people
living in certain neighbourhoods (and typically poor and/or heavily non-white
ones) that cabs don't want to take them there.

~~~
dv_dt
The most I've run into route avoidance is with drivers who don't want to spend
2 hrs on a trip to the airport during rush hour.

Is the "bad neighborhood" problem a race problem, or a problem of not enough
fares in that area (i.e. by taking a fare in, if the density is too low then
you lose the time/cost of fares getting back out of that area...). and of
course, if historically, if fewer fares go there, that problem is exacerbated.

I suppose one way to rebalance that issue without changing fares, is to
preferentially schedule a driver for later fares until the earnings/trip/time
etc are rebalanced. If Uber itself valued getting more uniform coverage, it
seems like it could offer drivers to "undesirable" areas more, and shift some
of the profits over from other areas into the low coverage areas too.

But all of this seems more complex and less transparent than increasing fares.
The whole point of a market is to exchange information and come to some double
ended voluntary deal that is good for both parties. If you fix bad
neighborhoods by imposition onto drivers who don't know what they're getting
into in terms of start/end points.

It's a hard set of tradeoffs.

~~~
zem
it's a race problem in that it disproportionately affects communities of
certain races, due to historical systemic issues. so even if no single uber
driver specifically thought "i don't want to go into a black area", all the
other factors affecting that decision would tend to affect black people more
than white people.

this is nicely illustrative of how these things can feed off each other:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-
day/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/)

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lettergram
I think we're heading for a massive bubble, if Uber collapses investors
everywhere will be spooked, "too big to fail" comes to mind.

Every ride Uber loses money. If they raise prices, then people jump ship, to
Lyft, to a local service, to taxis. If self-driving cars don't start being
used they can't cut down the cost... Of course, they also have lawsuits
hitting them, and the Waymo lawsuit pretty much halted their self-driving car
program.

Combine all this with the ridiculous number of lawsuits, investigations and
criminal proceedings outside of IP that they are facing ("Grey ball" for
instance) and I just don't see how they can maintain their status. Even with
another $1 Billion or $10 billion.

How can they come out of this?

Couple that with having a large number of "chefs in the kitchen" so to speak
and well... you get the idea.

~~~
overcast
I don't see how Uber is considered "too big to fail". They aren't the banking
system, they are a ride hailing app. If they go away, people go back to using
cabs.

~~~
gaius
One ride from another app, and people will forget Uber ever existed.

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moomin
I think the most remarkable thing here is that Benchmark voluntarily gave up
their own weighted voting rights. It tells you just how bad they think
Kalanick's influence is that they think they're better off this way.

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swampthinker
17 person board. Are there other examples of startups that have been taken
over like this with a successful outcome?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Lots of examples of investors succeeding in diluting a founder's power in
their own startup.

One person's takeover is another person's power restructuring.

EDIT: Tesla is a good example (Elon Musk pushing Martin Eberhard out).

~~~
alexandercrohde
The question was are there any that are successful for the startup [longterm]?

