It's not just Shervin Pishevar that wants Benchmark off the board. Ron Burkle (Yucaipa Cos) and Adam Leber (Maverick) also penned the letter requesting that they divest.
I've seen the inside of a court room a few times, it's really not my favourite past time. Maybe civil is more fun than criminal.
What I'm getting at is, wouldn't you rather go skiing, or hiking, or hanging out with friends or family. Or whatever your thing is.
Wouldn't you, at some point, just think "righteo, this ain't that fun, let's just agree to something already"? Or do these things take on a life of their own and sweep you away with them? Or are people really just that keen to prove how right they are?
Do you think anyone, on their death bed thinks "I wish I'd spent more time sueing the pants off everyone."
There is real money on the line here. Kalanick is being accused of fraud, and Benchmark is trying to expand its control of Uber. You don't really just say "oh, I'll let people call me a fraud and destroy my credibility and take away my company and go skiing instead."
I think it's more of a sunk cost thing. Like gosh I've spent the last 8 waking years to get to this place. I'm not letting these investors screw me over. Even if he goes skiing or hiking, or hanging out with friends or family its going to gnaw at him for the rest of his life.
i get what your saying, but want to add some precision:
1) using the term "sunk cost" is not quite correct here - sunk cost implies that the future value doesn't justify continued investment. in this case, it's likely that further investment (in time and cost of this court case) results in billions of dollars in value to one or both of the litigants. it's in fact very rational to pursue this litigation because there is real monetary gain at stake (and not simply the face-saving variety).
2) there's a fairness issue at play: "i did the work so i should get the reward.", or "i provided the money, so i should get the reward." you have to balance these two impulses fairly, not just for this case, but for future iterations of the game (in the game theory sense). for future iterations, it is "worth" applying a punishment now (in the form of an expensive court case) so that future rewards are meted out fairly as well.
If we're going to have pedantry, lets make sure we have correct pedantry.
"sunk cost" just means that a cost has been paid, and it's non-recoverable. When it comes up, it's usually to point out that only the future cost and benefits matter when making a decision.
It's about proving a point, standing firm on that point (even if you're eventually proven wrong) then doubling down. Most civil individuals would have reached a mediation point. This case also seems pretty personal and despite what most would think, i'm of the camp that thinks emotions are driving a lot of it.
> Wouldn't you, at some point, just think "righteo, this ain't that fun, let's just agree to something already"?
That is what the opposition is hoping you do. Seems to me that a large number of legal cases amount to little more than a siege. First party to cry uncle loses.
When you're talking about millions and billions of dollars at stake, sure people think what you typed above first ... then they go "nah ... fuck that. I'm suing".
I'm sure all the board members have sued and been sued many times. It's just work. I've worked with people, it was a fact of life, they prepared for it, they built war chests, CYA in contracts just ambiguous enough with arcane clauses, weird stuff, it was as important as the regular projects, sometimes the contract wasn't the objective.
And if the "CYA Clause" doesn't protect you from getting fucked up the ass, you should always have a "Reach-Around Clause" so at least you get some attention while it's happening.
He probably is the guy to run a business like Uber. In an industry rife with corruption that often resorts to bully tactics, you need someone who will not bend on vision and principles because of personal threats.
He could have sat back and avoided a public smear capaign and retire to nice life as a billionaire. Instead he choose to fight for what he believes is right.
One has to believe that given the options for him, the choice to resist is not about money for him. It maybe about ego and his desire to change the course of history, but the latter is probably good for Uber if he gets to stay on.
We're seeing some of his principles are what landed Uber in this situation in the first place. So I'd be more careful with idolizing him. This is not the first or last drama from Uber. There are many other companies having similar impact in the world (or better) without using illegal methods.
This sort of attitude is why tech has a reputation as a privileged boys club. These qualities may have helped in the early days but he also applied them internally and to great negative effect. How you can conveniently ignore that is beyond me.
There is a mountain of poor decisions that put Kalanick in the dog house. The culture he created at Uber is notoriously toxic, senior management has been either leaving in disgust or forced out over malfeasance.
Kalanick should gain some humility and leave it to the adults on his board to find someone who can run Uber responsibly.
'Responsibly' is a pretty subjective term in the context of Uber. If Kalanick had been running Uber by any conventional definition of 'responsibly', it would be a fraction the size it is today.
And it's still nowhere close to what I imagine Kalanick imagines. Short sighted investors will see Lyft, Ola, Grab, Didi as competitors. Kalanick will see private car ownership as competition. I have a feeling if he doesn't come back, Uber in it's current form is the best of it we will see. If Benchmark would have had 20% control over Facebook, it would be the best social network colleges ever had. Nothing more.
It's amazing to me how successful the smear campaign against the taxi industry has been. It's mostly a bunch of small business run by immigrants. But they're the corrupt ones who resort to "bully tactics." The MegaCorps dumping onto the market by operating at losses are the good guys/victims.
It's very reminiscent of how companies successfully smeared unions.
Taxi companies didn't have a great reputation before uber, though. Stories abound of long and circuitous routes, "broken" credit card readers and surly drivers. I'm not sure I've heard of too many cases of great customer service (though of course people talk more about negative experiences). It's also certainly true that Uber did not innovate on the model of "independent contractors" that do the actual driving.
I see a couple of possibilities. One is that the corruption in cab companies is similar to that in other industries, which people also smear (e.g. finance), and ridesharing PR plays that up. Another thought is that their "local" sketchiness (unclean cars, shady drivers) gives a sort of halo effect, so people are more willing to believe stories of in deeper corruption.
I guess they also tend to be (at least marginally) involved in local politics (to the extent that any local business is going to lobby local politics), and local politics tends to be more corrupt.
A few uber employees showed up in a thread yesterday and showed support for Kalanick. One employee comment i found interesting wrote:
Travis had a deep empathy for the challenges of building successful products, and would offer tremendous grace and thoughtful advice to his team solving problems in the trenches. When projects went sideways, and we presented numbers that were less than stellar, Travis was both empathetic and optimistic while offering actionable guidance and a path forward.
"Bro culture" is a loaded term and the wrong one to describe the environment Travis cultivated. He had tremendous focus on the problems at hand and pushed his team to operate with a sense of urgency to solve them. If anything I think he cared too much about each individual problem, which propelled his teams forward but sometimes left him too deep in the details of his business rather than focusing on the big picture.
In their minds, it is. He built the company from the ground up and was forced out of it by external forces. The loyalists are mourning his loss. Of course, that interpretation differs if you think his being forced out was justified.
