A Case Study on the Uber Alumni Network

https://trailruncapital.substack.com/p/beyond-the-paypal-mafia-a-case-study

by amrrs • 3 years ago

92 115 3 years ago

trailruncapital.substack.com

ipython• 3 years ago

Don’t forget that the secret formula also includes a certain, shall I say, moral flexibility: https://gizmodo.com/portland-says-uber-targeted-more-than-a-...

roopawl2• 3 years ago

I think the moral flexibility of the diaspora and the people who encouraged it for $ would be a way more interesting article.

From the linked article linked about 'Fast':

Earlier this year, NPR reported on how CEO Holland had his share of controversy in Australia prior to starting Fast. Holland’s former startup, Tow.com.au, which aimed to be “the Uber of towing,” failed in what at least one person described as a “disaster.” NPR’s article noted that Holland’s previous venture was embroiled “in a multimillion-dollar billing dispute with the Australian state government over towing and impounding fees that led to the startup’s liquidation in 2018.”

blaufast• 3 years ago

I had lunch with an early Uber employee (male) who told me 'wokeness killed uber'. He said the famous cultural issues "weren't real", an if TK hadn't been ousted they'd have destroyed Lyft completely in a few months.

A couple of months before the self driving car killed a pedestrian in Arizona, a drunk engineer from that team told me 'everybody is lying on their human intervention reports to the state, that's just how the sausage is made'

Late Uber produces seriously impressive technology and mature, reliable services. Early Uber was so errr.. problematic... that I'd be hesitant to wear that as a badge.

jhatemyjob3• 3 years ago

Susan Fowler killed Uber.

texmex123456• 3 years ago

The cultural issues were overblown out of proportion with a clear agenda to bring Uber down. The delete Uber campaign was also pre-meditated to malign the company by associating it with trump election.

isityouyesitsme• 3 years ago

this is a half truth.

everybody was lying on their takeover reports. EXCEPT Uber.

Uber was banned from California because they refused to lie, and refused to be made to look stupid compared to the companies who WERE lying, and who have literally decapitated multiple people while their vehicle was in control.

my time with Uber was rocky, and I had many qualms. I left partially because I didn't want to be part of the culture that produced Herzberg's death. but this specific thing is not one they should be criticized for.

the cultural issues were real. that's fair to say.

rapfaria• 3 years ago

What were TK's strengths in this case?

dnissley• 3 years ago

To be fair the laws those regulators were in charge of enforcing were unjust. A victory for modern day civil disobedience, even if it was to make a buck.

myhrvold7• 3 years ago

A lot was also in a gray area. In fact France ending up (I think very unfairly, but ofc I worked at Uber) passing laws specifically against Uber to make it retroactively illegal. Which basically was a tacit admission that is was OK by the rules initially. Obviously the idea of being able to "hail" a ride -- specific to you -- in near real-time was not really considered around the world when a lot of taxi rules and regulations were done.

So you ended up having insanity, like the necessity for even a black car service to "return to their base" after a ride, for time periods up to 1.5 hrs. Basically trying to nix the notion of efficiency in ridesharing.

We all know that nowadays most of those rules were battled back.

But the taxi industry and regulators had some very crooked ways which were really to the detriment of broader society trying to get places without having their own car.

indus2• 3 years ago

Isn’t mafiadom a representation of a clique? Closed network for the benefits of its members.

Not undermining the success of entrepreneurs but curious about tech’s obsession with mafia.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

People want to be in the “in” group and desire status.

postsantum• 3 years ago

This, add money and lack of self-reflection to get this special kind of "mafias" and "fraternities"

indus2• 3 years ago

Incidentally, my LinkedIn feed shows this TC article[1] where investors are looking for non-network deal flow.

Aside, retargeting works!

[1]https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/05/venture-capital-using-data...

mi_lk• 3 years ago

Not to undermine the good effort to put those data together. But for reasons the author didn't mention she's ex-Uber who founded Fast which was a disaster to put it lightly

https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/05/fast-shuts-doors-after-slo...

juunpp4• 3 years ago

Hey, but at least she's getting claps on Substack.

PragmaticPulp• 3 years ago

Normally I wouldn’t fault someone for trying at a startup and failing, but Fast was an extraordinarily bad situation. They relentlessly hyped the company across social media while it was a disaster behind the scenes.

The employees of Fast got screwed the most. Remember that. They were misled into believing the company was successful when it was famously almost completely devoid of revenue. The founders lied to them.

The data may stand on its own, but I’d be very suspicious of any narratives being pushed by these people. Fast was a disaster, and the money they raised on those lies is included in those graphs.

Closi• 3 years ago

It's hard - the fast product really required them getting a network-effect and that required a lot of hype.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad pitch, but clearly it was a business that was only ever going to either be wildly-successful or a complete disaster, and nothing in the middle.

Also they were probably way-too-late and stripe were much better positioned.

(And I'm not suggesting that those two scenarios are equally likely - it had probably a 5% payoff chance!).

roopawl2• 3 years ago

Another commenter mentions the 'moral flexibility' of Uber. From the featured photo this appears to be another attribute of the diaspora. The business model of Arrived is frankly disgusting.

I highly recommend "Poverty, By America" if you'd like the background for my comment.

https://www.amazon.com/Poverty-America-Matthew-Desmond/dp/05...

guynamedloren• 3 years ago

The business model of Arrived is frankly disgusting.

Interested in learning more about this. Tagged the book for a future read, but in the meantime, can you enlighten us on the business model of Arrived?

subpixel2• 3 years ago

When all the single family residential homes are owned by investors, more people are forced into long term rental life who might traditionally be prepared to buy. But the investor speculation drives prices well beyond what working and some middle class earners can afford.

Rents increase bc a return has to be made, and there is no escape. The poor stay poor. The rich get richer.

Disgusting is a matter of opinion but it does seem a zero sun game with a lot of losers.

circles_for-day2• 3 years ago

It pushes up housing prices and decreases supply for low income people and transfers that wealth to already well off people.

As long as the wealthy can keep housing out of reach they can influence the distort the entire market and charge as much as they like. This is why housing is such a ‘good investment’. It’s reverse Robin Hood.

Fomite• 3 years ago

I'd like to know how many of these companies actually made money.

juunpp4• 3 years ago

Well, in this case it was much closer to an actual mafia, given how "fucking illegal" they all were. CEO's words, not mine.

BhavdeepSethi• 3 years ago

Raising money in a low interest market seems to be the metric of being influential here. It'll be nice to see how these companies are still alive in the next 3-4 years. We can then measure the impact of these companies vs the paypal mafia.

bloodyplonker22• 3 years ago

After looking at the excel spreadsheet of companies, to even speak of the two in the same sentence is kind of a joke.

medellin2• 3 years ago

As someone who worked at Uber at this time and a fair amount after it is really funny reading the comment sections on threads like these. I wish we were as comically “morally flexible” (also seems to mean evil for a lot of you) as you think. It would make for a good book.

juunpp4• 3 years ago

What is your argument? What's written about the company is pretty clear.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/10/uber-investigation-...

medellin2• 3 years ago

I’m not arguing as it’s pointless online and with people who get so emotional at Uber. But you can find lots of news pieces that makes every company look bad posting one or several isn’t really saying anything about the employees who worked at the company.

jasmer2• 3 years ago

AirBnB and Uber were the same company breaking similar local rules.

AirBnB is illegally operating in tons of areas. Knowingly. Systemically.

And yet where is all the negative press?

Don't believe press narratives and try to put everything into context.

You really could make any company look bad or good if you wanted. There are a lot of actors, and a lot of different ways to slice it.

I think Uber and AirBnB were both aggressive, I suggest there should have been more regulatory pushback everywhere, but only for public good as a lot of mayors were just interested in backing this group or that, not really thinking about the true benefits of constituents.

Finally we have to consider the net benefit, and even while I think both companies have overplayed their hands, I do think there's a general benefit. It seems that regulations around Taxis and Hotels were far too onerous, and the surpluses lost to those de facto oligarchic situations were quite a lot. I'm grateful that both those companies shook things up, even at the cost of a bit of shenanigans.

lhorie9• 3 years ago

Uber is a ship of Theseus.

Lots of early people left since the Travis days. Since then, fixing the reputation damage has been a big focus in the company. Safety center, electric fleet commitments, DEI, Ukraine initiatives, etc, are all newer initiatives in that vein.

"Do the right thing" is now a company core value plastered all over the offices.

Even the "off the shelf stuff doesn't meet our needs" culture alluded in the article has given way to adopting 3rd party solutions more (e.g. Slack replacing uChat, Oracle partnership, etc). Lots of things have changed over the years.

blairbeckwith• 3 years ago

Is this a sarcastic comment, given a pretty good book was written about exactly that?

Insanity• 3 years ago

which one?

zamnos• 3 years ago

How (in)accurate is Superpumped?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Pumped_(TV_series)

myhrvold7• 3 years ago

Inaccurate overall IMO; a caricature of what actually went on. But accurate in terms of capturing the sentiment that a lot of Uber skeptics had during the height of Uber mania, say 2015-2019. So the series is more a reflection of that than a faithful accounting of Uber's rise.

blindriver9• 3 years ago

When I was at Uber, the vast majority were extremely moral people who felt strongly that we were empowering people to work for themselves in a well paying job. Everyone I worked with had the drivers and riders at the top of their minds and it's the only company where I strongly believed in the mission.

Yes, there were problems with incentives where some bad actors would do whatever it took to get into Zone 1 and get a 10X multiplier for a bonus, but the sad fact is that happens in every company. And yes, things that happened to Susan Fowler were horrible and the idea that it actually happened when everyone was trying to create a very progressive environment was extremely demoralizing. But her experience at Uber was definitely uncommon, all the women I worked with felt strongly that Uber was a principled and progressive company.

Eisenstein6• 3 years ago

I hate to say it but intentions mean fuck all when the results are bad. People working at Facebook in the early 10s thought they were bringing people together and fostering openness in communication and helping the world, and instead we got a toxic hotbed of misinformation, conflict, and enabling genocide and the greatest increase in adolescent mental health problems and depression in recorded history.

The people working for the company might have the best intentions, but when the ultimate goal is to extract as much value from the users of the platform as possible and monetize it, by way of technology which upends long establish social and economic mechanisms, you are playing with fire and anyone with a little but of judgement can see that the end result is going to be disaster for everyone but the investors.

Seriously, I don't care if you think you are a good person -- you helped destroy an established industry by subsidizing with loss-leading fares and payouts and created a culture of contract work which has workers grinding all the time with absolutely no network of support to rely on. On top of this the business model of 'not our fault, you are dealing with a 3rd party' platformization which washes its hands of any fault or support is currently wreaking havoc right now.

KyeRussell4• 3 years ago

Oh please.

In that case, it sounds like you were a bunch of naive idealistic tech kids that bought the lie.

SV is very justifiably seen as a group of naive overconfident kids taking on the world and making a mess of it all, just as much as it is very justifiably seen as a group of ancap money men using computers to concentrate wealth and power.

If you want to “believe in a mission”, there are plenty of ethical jobs out there. It’s just a shame that so many smart people on this website are hooked on the high-TC go-go startup lifestyle.

ipaddr2• 3 years ago

As per a comment below were you part of the wokeness or against during this time period.

kodah3• 3 years ago

I hate to break it to you, but if you ask every software engineer which companies are morally flexible you'll quickly have a notch in every companies belt and then some. It also usually isn't engineers that are the morally flexible ones, though that's certainly not a rule. It's executive leadership and people who lead products. It doesn't take many of those types to develop a side brand as morally flexible, and frankly, sometimes it's just the outcome of hard decisions. There's plenty of specific indictments of Uber, but most of them don't involve the peons. Engineers passing on judgement to other engineers about where they've worked is pretty silly.

uoaei2• 3 years ago

Engineers contributing to the ability of assholes to continue making others miserable is a pretty clear chain of causation. Everything I've read about people's moral convictions says they consider causal relationships to be morally relevant.

bumblewax2• 3 years ago

Don’t meant to diminish anyone’s hard work in any way, but am I the only one fascinated by that excel sheet and how all those companies are managing to get funding? At least based on that short description of what they do.

intelVISA• 3 years ago

It should inspire you to get involved on the free $$ :)

bumblewax2• 3 years ago

Indeed, though I suspect it's more about the team rather than the idea in this case.

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

Travis Kalanick was the real secret sauce behind Uber. He is an absolute legend. I do not think there was and will be another operator as skilled as him, knowing exactly how much gas to put in the demand and supply side to get a two sided marketplace off the ground so fast and so furiously, while being absolutely at ease in the chaos.

wslh• 3 years ago

Do you have specific information that is available about your assertion on Trevis?

mdorazio• 3 years ago

Good job by the author assembling all this data, but starting out with statements like

Uber succeeded by hiring Really Smart People all over the world who were not afraid to tackle big challenges and who wanted to win.

Does not instill confidence in the author’s take. Uber succeeded by willfully ignoring laws, massively subsidizing actual costs with VC money, and frequently doing morally questionable things. Yes, they scaled well and worked hard, too, but so do many startups that fail.

sklargh• 3 years ago

I’ve always perceived mid-tens Uber as a regulatory arbitrage and gov’t subsidy play (GPS, regulatory incompetence as subsidy) masquerading as a tech startup, with a sideline in loss-leader pricing (thx SoftBank).

I don’t want to diminish the work of the technologists, I’m sure operating at this scale is very complex.

myhrvold7• 3 years ago

Yeah I think that's in part because so much of the cultural zeitgeist around Uber was on the policy implications, and the effect on consumer behavior etcetera.

There were a ton of technical challenges in scaling.

Uber was also one of the earliest corporate deployers of Node back in 2010 and ended up having one of the largest in the world arguably (have no idea to what extent they've replaced in the last few years).

Uber's open source projects have led to spinout companies that have raised a lot of money successfully like Chronosphere and Tecton.ai .

Halloween and then New Year's were huge traffic challenges and the Uber app (both driver and rider) really pushed the bounds of what was possible in the 2010s with respect to a two-side real-time marketplace for ridesharing and food delivery.

(I worked at Uber 2014-2019 in engineering.)

KyeRussell4• 3 years ago

Yeah. This really sounds like she drank the kool-aid, and is probably a bit, or very, self-congratulatory seeing as she worked there.

Uber only had the opportunity to prove its engineering prowess because nobody else had pockets that deep, and that much disdain for the law.

andrewmutz2• 3 years ago

A list of fund raisings is not impressive. All it says is they are good at raising funds.

The IPOs matter and exits matter. Revenue matters if it's sustainable.

The list has two IPOs, which is great. But one is down 90% from it's IPO (aurora) and the other is down 98% from its IPO (bird scooters). Bird is only worth 75M today.

HWR_143• 3 years ago

Being down from your IPO in percentage terms seems irrelevant. If FB was down 90% from it's IPO it would still be a $13 billion company. That's not a huge behemoth that instead grew by 4x since its IPO, but that's still respectable as an exit.

ies7• 3 years ago

For me being down 90% from IPO means their exit strategy is to take the money by fooling a lot of retail investor.

andrewmutz2• 3 years ago

Fair enough. If you raise 100M, IPO for 10B, and then drop 90% to 1B, you still accomplished a great thing, I agree. You turned 100M investment into 1B.

But Bird scooter raised more than 900M, and today is worth 75M. Yes, it's an IPO and that's great, but it destroyed a lot of wealth. Not clear who ended up holding the bag (VCs or the public investors), but either way it's a bad outcome

elefanten• 3 years ago

Irrelevant to what?

One could argue what the thesis or purpose of this piece might be, but the call to action seems to be this part:

“If you’re interested in supporting, joining, or investing in a company founded by Uber alumni or you’d just like to learn more, full details are below”

If you want to support, join or invest in someone on the basis of them being an Uber alumnus, you may want to know how much value was created by other alumni. The more sustainable (and, ideally, appreciating) that value is, the more likely you are to actually get to enjoy it.

thdespou• 3 years ago

I haven't used Uber. How does it work?

SJetKaran• 3 years ago

I wonder how this looks in relative terms to Netflix

A Case Study on the Uber Alumni Network

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