
Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board - 101carl
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/technology/uber-board-bill-gurley.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
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goodriddance
For all the future founders on HN, the lesson here is to never do business
with Bill Gurley. He's one of the reasons AngelList exists. I hope his lesser
known reputation finally catches up with him and forces him out of Benchmark
and out of the VC industry entirely.

The Ravikant v. Tolia (and Bill Gurley) Lawsuit:
[http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2005/02/ravika...](http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2005/02/ravikant_v_toli.html)

~~~
JajaMan
I've never heard of the guy, whats hew known for? Also what's wrong with
angellist?

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goodriddance
Everything you need to know is linked to on that page I linked to.

Nothing is wrong with AngelList. AngelList is great. It was Bill Gurley's
slimey VC actions to conspire with Nirav Tolia against the other Epinions
founders and early employees that led Naval Ravikant to found AngelList as an
alternative to the VC system.

~~~
jcrben
That article doesn't say much. Which link in it has the meat?

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goodriddance
The first link which is the actual claim filed in a US court of law.

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johan_larson
I remain flabbergasted by all of this upheaval at Uber. What's happening is
the sort of housecleaning I would expect if the company had to file for
bankruptcy or got caught flat out bribing judges or something. But really,
what triggered all this was acting like jerks.

It seems to me, what should have happened (a long time ago) was that they got
shut down for systematically breaking the law, or encouraging others to do so.
That would have made sense.

But instead they are getting flayed alive by not much more than bad press for
being jerks. Makes no goddamn sense.

~~~
danaliv
A jerk is someone who borrows your car and doesn't pay for the dent he puts in
the bumper. What happened at Uber was the creation of one of the most insanely
hostile work environments in living memory, where flouting not just the law,
but also basic standards of human decency, was not only accepted but
encouraged at all levels of the company.

~~~
hkmurakami
So basically all investment banking divisions should be treated with the same
regard?

I find it strange that we seem to give finance a pass when they've engaged in
this sort of behavior for decades.

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cf
Do we actually give the finance industry a pass? The fact that "Wall st" is a
pejorative these days is some indication that's not the case.

~~~
aioprisan
The fact that there are never any real consequences to Wall St actually tends
to prove the opposite.

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graedus
Wall St has deeply and thoroughly captured all of the regulatory agencies
charged with overseeing it, as well as most of the powerful organs of
government, and thus sits comfortably above the law.

~~~
malandrew
But not above the ire of the media. The media is just as money-corruptible as
every other business enterprise and it found a shiny new toy to play with with
Uber. There are likely orders of magnitude more workplace culture issues in
finance, yet the media has largely moved past lambasting financial firms for
that because it doesn't earn them enough eyeballs. Uber is only getting more
attention for something many many many businesses are guilty of (and to a far
greater degree) because no other company is as lucrative to write about.

------
fnbr
I'm unsurprised. Kalanick has enough support on the board that I'd imagine
they'd make it uncomfortable for Gurley to stay. The whole situation is
fascinating as it has shown how important the soft power board members hold
is. Strictly speaking, no one can force Kalanick or Gurley out, but out they
are.

~~~
sumedh
The reason they were fired was because this whole mess got a lot of publicity.
If there was no publicity, nothing would have happened.

Ask Warren Buffett even he complains board members dont do much work they just
blindly follow what the CEO says.

~~~
draw_down
Maybe. There are also a couple lawsuits in the mix, and the harassment issue
was a lot more than just press.

~~~
fnbr
Yup. The Holder report seems scathing, too, from what little we've seen. I
would think that everything we've seen would have lead to a significant down
round if Kalanick hadn't resigned (we still probably will). Given Uber's lack
of profits & burn rate, a down round could send them into a death spiral.

~~~
malandrew
All that we've seen is a list of recommendations. How did you go from a list
of recommendations with no explanation as to how each recommendation was
arrived at to "seems scathing"?

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neil1
I wonder if Travis resigning was contingent on Bill Gurley leaving the board.
As Bill seems to be the main anti-Travis actor on the board.

~~~
andybg
It's unclear if Gurley actually wants to leave the board. Part of me thinks
that he knows something really bad is coming down the pipes (e.g. potential
criminal liability re: Otto, etc) and he wants to distance himself now. It's
half a conspiracy theory, but makes you think ...

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csmattryder
It's got to be the Otto lawsuit, that's obviously coming, after Levandowski
dropped the ball with that "plead the Fifth" stuff.

Even the Google network forensics team have him bang to rights[1] taking data
while on-site at the campus, Google would be mental to not launch a volley and
destroy a potential competitor in the process.

And you don't drop $680m on an acquisition without going through board
approval first, surely? Somebody's definitely complicit.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2017/02/googles-waymo-just-dropped-
exp...](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/googles-waymo-just-dropped-explosive-
lawsuit-uber-stealing-self-driving-tech/)

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lettergram
I can't imagine Uber doesn't start raising prices and drop out of markets they
aren't profitable in.

No way they can bring in more investments (although maybe they could get a
loan). Given the changes and their runway, I honestly see Lyft managing to
outpace Uber in the next 12 months.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Why do you think they can't get more investments? They just completed this
report and now Travis is out; unless you have proof you can't say they _didn
't_ fix their issues. So not only have they shown concern to solving a major
PR and culture issue but they're absolutely HUGE. If they IPO it could be an
incredible exit.

Am I missing something? They seem far, far more investable now.

~~~
sebastos
Yes, you're missing that this is all wish fulfillment doomsdayism. People are
nursing some recreational outrage because of the revelations regarding Uber's
culture. So now they all have a pet theory that Uber will fail. They're
working backwards from what they _want_ to happen though, so their "theory"
can explain anything: "Kalanick is a loose cannon who's going to run the
company into the ground" _Kalanick steps down_ "They have no leadership,
they'll close their doors in a week" etc.

~~~
rtpg
you're acting like this is the start of the idea that perhaps the entire taxi
industry is not worth what Uber is claiming, or that having a bunch of
autonomous vehicles is probably hard for an iOS app company to manage, or that
they ultimately have never proven they can keep drivers happy without
subsidizing prices, or that they might not get huge backlash from legal action
around driver status, or .....

There's an argument for Uber's eventual success, but there's a lot of stuff
against it too. It's not an absurd theory.

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xyzzy_plugh
Wait so first he demands Kalanick resign, then he resigns? Did he burn all his
bridges, or was there some strategy here?

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flylib
Kalanick forced him to resign as a condition of him resigning

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andybg
It's the f'ing House of Cards, but real life.

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econner
Meanwhile all of the rank and file employees keep the lights on and the ship
afloat. Wishing their on-call teams all the best.

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dandare
Could someone please explain to me how come Uber has 12,000 employees? Drivers
are not employees, there is no content to curate, no brick & mortar
operations, the app and tech stack is pretty much developed and stable. Sure
the Otto and UberEATS are part of that number but still. Did I miss something?

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dagw
_Could someone please explain to me how come Uber has 12,000 employees_

Because they can afford it and desperately want to grow. Let's say Uber
operates in about 300 cities around the world and have their eyes on another
100. Dedicate an average of 3-4 people to grow and market your services in
each city plus another 3 to handle local staffing, admin and regulatory issues
and you're already at ~2500.

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jimjimjim
Finally! After years of assholes being assholes because it's not illegal to be
assholes, now finally they are finding that there are repercussions.

if you piss off everyone, then you better hope like hell that you don't fall
and need someone's help.

tldr: assholes.

~~~
probably_wrong
Unfortunately, it seems the true lesson is "after years of being assholes,
they get to go home with more money than many of us will ever see".

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omarforgotpwd
"Hey, anyone remember how this company is supposed to run? Anybody? Wasn't
ANYBODY here before? Hey, we're still worth $70 billion right?"

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icpmacdo
How well is Garret Camp doing with running Expa?

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Stryder
Uber is now more popcorn worthy than both HoC and Trump administration
combined.

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V-eHGsd_
that person has been elected president.

~~~
dang
Would you please not take HN threads on generic political tangents? They lead
to flamewars and trainwrecks, as seen below. We're hoping for better than that
here.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14609910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14609910)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
V-eHGsd_
pardon?

can you help me understand how my reply was off-topic given the question:

> As an analogy, take every major political scandal you can think of - Monica
> Lewinsky, Watergate, Iran Contra, Chappaquiddick, etc - and imagine a single
> elected official perpetrating them all within the course of a year. How do
> you think they would be treated?

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dang
It's a matter of degree. At least the parent comment was loosely tied to the
original topic, where yours went off the moorings altogether.

It's often a judgment call where to clip these threads, sort of like the
temperature at which to save a boiling frog.

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DonHopkins
Did he resign in a show of support for David Bonderman, because he thinks
women talk too much too?

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carsongross
I wonder if Kalanick saw the writing on the wall and is getting out of the way
of the oncoming train wreck, in order to set up a Jobs-style comeback at some
point...

~~~
castis
Considering Kalanick was one of the people doing the writing I'm sure he did.

