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Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

(www.nytimes.com)
198 points 101carl | 3 comments | 22 Jun 17 00:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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johan_larson ◴[22 Jun 17 01:32 UTC] No.14609498[source]▶
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.

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tw04 ◴[22 Jun 17 01:37 UTC] No.14609514[source]▶
You're assuming the current board didn't have this planned for a long time. Let them break the law to get things done, then clean house after the stage was properly set. I STILL think that people are downplaying the Otto thing way too much, especially on this site.

It's easy to say that they're going to win in court... but this is GOOGLE - they're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and likely a decade trying to win this thing. Google isn't going to stop until they've exhausted literally every legal avenue possible. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a good portion of this isn't Uber's board trying to save the company from that legal battle - fire Kalanick, boot *Gurley, then license the tech from Waymo that was previously stolen.

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austenallred ◴[22 Jun 17 02:45 UTC] No.14609775[source]▶
Kalanick still had the majority. The board couldn't "plan" this without his consent.
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1. tw04 ◴[22 Jun 17 03:17 UTC] No.14609902[source]▶
They absolutely could plan it without his consent. Uber is still hemorrhaging money. They'd be lucky to make it through 2018 if those investors turned off the tap.
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2. FussyZeus ◴[22 Jun 17 13:41 UTC] No.14612136[source]▶
Exactly. If you haven't made a profit you don't control shit, you get exactly as much control as the moneypurses allow you have and NO more.
3. smallgovt ◴[22 Jun 17 21:04 UTC] No.14615352[source]▶
They absolutely could not put this plan into effect without his consent. Uber has plenty of sources for capital. The current board consists mainly of individuals who do not have funds to capitalize Uber anyways. Take a look at their funding history and you will realize that the lead in each round is a new investor.