{"id":179861,"date":"2017-10-02T19:12:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T00:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/02\/lord-of-the-flies-uber-edition\/"},"modified":"2017-10-02T19:12:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T00:12:00","slug":"lord-of-the-flies-uber-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/02\/lord-of-the-flies-uber-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord of the Flies, Uber Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that Travis Kalanick has gotten to the breaking sh%$ of grief, specifically, he just appointed two board members without consulting with the board of Uber’s new President<\/a>:<\/div>\n

The phone calls began late Friday among Uber\u2019s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and the ride-hailing company\u2019s executives, as well as board members and a raft of lawyers. They were facing an emergency.<\/p>\n

The problem was that Travis Kalanick, Uber\u2019s former chief executive and a board member, had appointed two new directors<\/a> \u2014 Ursula Burns, the former chief executive of Xerox, and John Thain, the former chief of Merrill Lynch \u2014 to the privately held company without informing them. The moves, which pushed the nine-member board to 11 people, gave Mr. Kalanick new potential allies on major decisions at Uber.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kalanick\u2019s actions were \u201cdisappointing,\u201d Mr. Khosrowshahi wrote on Friday in a letter to employees that was obtained by The New York Times. \u201cAnyone would tell you that this is highly unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trigger for Mr. Kalanick\u2019s move \u2014 one made possible by a board vote last year giving him control of three seats \u2014 was a proposal that Mr. Khosrowshahi and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, an Uber shareholder, brought to the board on Thursday. The proposal, which is set to be discussed by directors on Tuesday, includes measures that would shift the power on Uber\u2019s board by reducing Mr. Kalanick\u2019s voting clout, expanding Mr. Khosrowshahi\u2019s powers and imposing a 2019 deadline on the company to go public, according to three people with knowledge of the proposal who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Parts of the proposal were also read to The Times.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me translate this into English, the investors realize that Kalanick has become toxic, and as a result is facing increased regulatory and media scrutiny.<\/p>\n

In particular, people are beginning to notice that, “Uber has no conceivable path to profitability<\/a>,” because once they rise prices to reach profitability, entrants re-enter the market, and suddenly they are not particularly special and unicornish any more.<\/p>\n

The big investors want to go public before it is too late, and that means rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and then getting into a lifeboat before the rush starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that Travis Kalanick has gotten to the breaking sh%$ of grief, specifically, he just appointed two board members without consulting with the board of Uber’s new President: The phone calls began late Friday among Uber\u2019s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and the ride-hailing company\u2019s executives, as well as board members and a raft …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,406,471,403],"class_list":["post-179861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-stupid","tag-transportation","tag-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}