The thing about Travis.
“Der Gnade Heil ist dem Büßer beschieden,
Er geht einst ein in der Seligen Frieden.”
“The salvation of pardon is granted to the penitent,
He will one day walk in the peace of the blessed.”
The Pilgrims Chorus, from Tannhäuser, by R. Wagner.
Back in 2016, I started Kitsune Build with my best friend and my husband. We were super excited to be working together. We wanted to work on small-scale projects until something looked promising. We had a few challenges along the way. The most salient was the fact that I was the only one working full-time on the startup. The plan was that I would take care of operations, product, and design, but I ended up doing coding, market research, fundraising, and generally stretching myself thin. As I was trying to engage some investors and advisors, I stumbled over the same questions more than a few times: What’s your leadership style? Who do you identify with? Everybody wants to be a Jobs (even me). I wish I was a little more like Bill Campbell and Ed Catmull. So I would scramble for an answer that mixed these figures up into a likable founder smoothie of sorts.
In my heart of hearts, I knew the answer, and I feared they might guess it: I’m a Travis Kalanick type of leader. Albeit, less accomplished. I have a regulation problem — no, I have a champion’s mindset. I find it excruciatingly hard not to throw everything I have at what I’m doing, be it swimming, planting a garden or moving a project forward. I am intense and passionate. I inspire people without even trying. A fiercely loyal team always forms around me. I feed off of challenges. I revel in hard problems; I prefer them to small, boring problems. “No” sounds like an invitation, like the capote invites the bull to run towards the matador. I love to throw a great party. I love to show up to a good fight.
So in 2017, when he was getting dragged in every way possible, as I was struggling with my little, lonely, boring startup, my soul was getting dragged too. He was compared to Darth Vader. I was filled with dread. Maybe I am all that’s wrong with the world, and I should retire and go live inside a cave. And for six years, I kinda did.
It always bothered me that they tried to make him into a Darth Vader figure. In the place in the world with the most Ivy League grads per capita (this is a made up stat), where your barista probably has a PhD in Romantic Literature, this is the trite, uncultured metaphor that we are left with? The bad guy from Star Wars? It doesn’t make sense. Travis doesn’t even have children (that we know of). Darth Vader means literally “dark father”. I think I can do better.
In the most charitable accounts of his tenure at Uber, he is described as an Icarus sort of figure. Except Icarus is a nepo-baby (his father Daedalus is the inventor who devises the famous wings). I can see the theme of hubris, but Travis is not a trust funder, and he’s more of a general than a tinkerer anyway.
I see him closer to a Tannhäuser/Odysseus hero. Both Tannhäuser and Odysseus are torn between passion and purpose, lust and duty, physical and spiritual love. They are both seduced by a Venus-type figure (the actual Venus in the case of Tannhäuser, Calypso in the case of Odysseus) and they both journey their way towards redemption. Tannhäuser is one of my favorite operas, so this is a compelling story, at least to me. The themes of lustful desires and hedonism are clearly present in Travis’ journey. But there’s more to his story arch at Uber than the baller life.
I’ll entertain the myth of Faust for a second, if only because I am listening to the “Ave Signor” chorus from Boito’s Mefistofele as I write. Faust is a successful scholar, unhappy with his life, who makes a bargain with the Devil (Mephistopheles) so he can taste and enjoy worldly pleasure, power, and material gain. Just as our heroes Tannhäuser and Odysseus, he finds redemption, at the very last minute, but he also leaves a bit of devastation in his path. Again, there’s some points of connection to Travis: the thirst for a life of luxury, the helpful yet treacherous Mephisto figures. But there’s more to Travis and to Uber, because yes, he had a personal journey where he struggled with lust, power, and newfound fame. However, he also changed the world, for better, for good.
As I drink mate standing in the kitchen, it hits me. He is a Joan of Arc. It’s deliciously ironic that the most fitting archetype for him is that of a woman. Just like Joan, he was put at the helm of an army to fight an impossible war, against impossible enemies. It’s easy to think of Uber as a Goliath now, but at the beginning, they were clearly a David: the little guy against an opponent that has institutional and political power, deep pockets, and who is not afraid to play dirty. And once they were done with one city, they had to start again, from zero, at a new location, while trying to hold the territories already gained. Once he had done the hardest part, and once his face wasn’t so shiny anymore, he was conveniently, almost surgically, removed, and the power he wielded was reassigned handily. He was burned at the stake of public opinion for his immaturity, yes, but also for Victorian expectations of morality, and for the sins of us all.
The thing about Travis is, he is a fucking great CEO, probably the best of our generation. Are we really that mad that he was a meanie to taxis? Personally, I hate taxis. I hate taxis in Buenos Aires. I hate taxis in San Francisco. I hate taxis in São Paulo. I hate taxis in Bologna. I hate taxis in Toronto. You get the gist, I feel strongly about the subject. I’m not sure if I should write about the thousand times a taxi drove me around to make the meter go up. Or about the hundreds of times that a taxi driver touched my legs, or tried to grab me, or tried to follow me inside my home. Or about the time a taxi was driving me reaaaaally slowly and two men entered the car to rob me (I screamed my lungs out and they freaked out). Maybe I can write about the time I was about to take a taxi with a known driver, but a different taxi saw it as a slight, and so the second, unknown driver took a metallic pole out of his car and started hitting the first taxi, aiming at both the driver and me. We can all fake insanity, but taxis, as a whole, have always sucked, and in most places, they operate as a legally sanctioned cartel, where everybody wins except the passenger.
This was the dragon he was set to slay, and you know what? He did it. Pretty good for a sleazy party boy. You can scream that he is morally corrupt, but what does that even mean? I am a sinner. In my life, I have royally fucked up, more than once, so I’m not about to throw the first stone. Ethically, what was he supposed to do? “Guys, guys, listen. Apple changed the rules. They are a little mad at us. They gave us a stern talk. Stern, I tell you. So, I’m sorry, but we have to close shop. I know, I know, tell the investors we really appreciate them, and I’m sure you’ll all find a new job soon.” Or maybe it should have gone like this. “Guys, listen, City Hall is upset. They are used to the way things are. So maybe we should just get out of their grill. We are inconveniencing them too much, and we wouldn’t want that. Let’s fall back, we can fight another day.”
It’s so hypocritical, because we love our Ubers and Lyfts. We love that taxis have to be decent to try to compete. But we tore Travis down because he didn’t show up to a knife fight with chocolates and flowers. Are we really going to pretend that this was ever going to be a clean fight? Did any of the investors ever think that it was going to be easy, or straight, or fair? We love sending soldiers to fight exotic wars, but when they come back home a little bit broken, we turn our gaze and hide them away.
The thing about Travis is, he is doing great. He is running CloudKitchens, which is a super interesting company trying to do something really hard. Even though CK is super stealthy, it still attracts some, mostly negative press. I have so many questions. What part of your experience with Uber proved useful in running CK? What kind of technology, if any, are you using to optimize space? How does a CK differ from a traditional commercial kitchen? What is the ultimate vision for a CK world? I’m particularly intrigued about the logistics involved and about the process to choose the locations.
We might never know, though. Travis is very secretive these days. And why wouldn’t he be, after he was scorned and derided for clicks, attention, and money. Writing negative headlines about him or about anything that’s tangentially related to him, is sure to attract eyeballs. So we are left with his silence. We are left with a lot of silence, actually. In 2014 something started happening. Just as the criticism against TK started to intensify, a lot of the most open, interesting, insightful, voices started to leave the public sphere. These are successful, accomplished people who shared valuable experience freely online and made for incredibly valuable, educating conversations. These conversations elevated the discourse of the startup ecosystem and made us privy to the type of understanding that historically was exclusive to insiders. That door has slowly closed. In between canceling people, pointing fingers, and creating controversy just for the sake of vitriolic virality, we were left with derivative voices that have nothing original to share; and with extreme voices, left and right, that want to blow everything up, allegedly for conviction, but really, because building something is harder. The discourse has become, at times, simply stupid.
It’s so hypocritical, because the same mob that, from its moral high ground, chooses a person every week to steamroll over, thinks it’s funny to joke about people dying just because they are rich. So if you are part of this self-designated group of righteous peeps with souls so pristine and a conscience so clean. If you are one of those journalists writing incendiary headlines for beans, celebrity and a catered sandwich. If you think it’s fair game to attack and even assault a person just because you perceive them to be wealthier, or more privileged than you are. Yes, I’m talking to you. Your amusing crusade has lessened us all. It has made access harder and meaningful information scarcer. It has hurt real people, good people. It definitely has hurt and lessened me, and it eroded my confidence for years. I hope at some point in your life, you’ll realize that your principled, absolute views come from inexperience and from folly. Wisdom humbles us, because it’s from our mistakes that we learn the most. In the meantime, all I have to say is: fuck the pedestal you have felt so entitled to climb onto.
And fuck you.
- This week’s playlist starts with The Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhäuser. It’s my favorite piece of music, ever. If you’ve never listened to it before, I advise you to. I chose that particular version because of the slow, paced, dramatic build up until it climaxes. It’s a beautiful crescendo.
- Thanks to Maestro Carlos Vieu, who helped put this expressive playlist together. To his recommendations (Boito and Brahms) I added The Swan, from Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saënz (an exquisite song); and a Rachmaninoff concerto played by Evgeny Kissin (my favorite pianist.) I found myself listening to them a lot while writing this post.
- Tannhäuser, the opera, starts with a ballet representing an orgy, and ends with our hero’s walking stick (or sometimes the Pope’s staff) sprouting and blossoming out of nowhere. If a perception of dullness was keeping you away from opera, check it out. And if you can get your hands on the excellent movie “Meeting Venus”, check it out too.
