
Uber Investors Clash with Board Over Voting Power - hkmurakami
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-investors-clash-with-board-over-voting-power-1506970454
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jiqiren
Greed is the root of these investors problems. They offered up anything to get
a piece of each round - in this case voting power and board seats.

Uber investors are not alone - Facebook and Google investors also have little
control.

~~~
dogruck
Google explicitly gave little power to common shareholders when at IPO, and
the shares continue to willfully trade.

I don't understand your point about greed. Do you propose some alternative
structure to corporate ownership? Seems beside the point of negotiating over
voting rights.

~~~
pkaye
The investors willingly gave away their voting rights in order to get early
shares. So really there is nothing wrong except their own greed got the best
of them.

~~~
dogruck
I don't understand your comment about "greed."

Some people decide to buy, at say $54 in 2004. Others avoided the temptation
for "greed," and decided not to buy.

Then the stock went up 18x.

Who's greedy now?

~~~
pkaye
Greed means they had a strong desire for something. It has nothing to do with
success. It is just that when they fail and ask why, people say their greed
was their downfall. In otherwords look within themselves. Their strong desire
for something overrode any critical thinking of the other risks involved. And
if they succeed they will of course gloat about how great a investor they are.

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hkmurakami
link to letter sent by a law firm representing the shareholders:
[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/UberShareho...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/UberShareholdersLetter10-02-2017.pdf)

 _Dear Mr. Kalanick, Mr. Graves and Mr. Camp: We represent Shervin Pishevar
and Steve Russell, individually, jointly and as putative class representatives
on behalf of several hundred Uber employees and other prominent investors who
will suffer billions of dollars in damages (exclusive of penalties and
punitive damages) if you support the covert effort, apparently led by
Benchmark, to strip Class B Common stock holders of their voting rights._

~~~
sackofmugs
I'm completely confused. Why would those three people, who have supervoting
rights, vote to take away their own supervoting rights and side with Benchmark
the people who tried to remove Travis in the first place? It seems like the
sender and recipients of the letter are on the same side.

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beefman
Archived version: [http://archive.is/MiUTK](http://archive.is/MiUTK)

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sergefaguet
Benchmark is getting deservedly fucked in public here for their atrocious
behavior.

Wouldn't ever walk into their office as a founder after this. And repeatedly
advised other founders against it.

~~~
alexasmyths
I'm not so sure.

Travis did a great job of building Uber, but he's become a massive public
liability.

He's getting sued by Google for apparently blatantly stealing billions in IP.
Maybe he's innocent, but the optics are bad.

He's going to be the public figure on which we will scorn for all those
scandals.

He's tainted pretty badly - rightly or wrongly - and it just will not go away.

He's a little toxic to have around, especially when the company needs to wind
up to an IPO - they need the opposite of 'scandals'.

I'm weary that there's really nobody that can ever replace a founder, but
hopefully they've found a good CEO.

Travis's dragging out this board fight is just jeopardizing the company. He
owns 10%, not 100%.

I don't know if Benchmark are good guys or bad guys in the grand scheme of
things, but their position of wanting to Travis to move on is grounded and
reasonable I think.

