If you live in SV, and are plugged into the startup scene, you’ve probably heard about the bad press about Uber, and its CEO — Travis Kalanick. This weekend, I finally decided to sit down and actually watch some videos about the guy and the company. What I found really surprised me.
Thesis: The image that Travis Kalanick has in the media is largely exaggerated and manipulated to paint him in a certain negative and immature light. He is actually probably the grittiest founder in SV today. Don’t believe me? Keep reading.
Caveat: I have never met Travis. All of the things I say are from primary sources I gathered from around the internet, some from Travis’ talks, and others from people’s writings. I’m expressing my own opinion, no one is paying me anything, and you should follow the links to do your own research.
Lets talk about some of the bad press. There’s a lot, but lets just look closely at one particular famous example:
“We call that Boob-er:” The four most awful things Travis Kalanick said in his GQ profile: http://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-c...
I’m pretty sure that you’ve all read this, and if you didn’t read the entire thing (who has the time to read anymore?) at least you saw the headline and just rolled your eyes: “Ugh. Another stupid thing that Travis said.”
Whats really interesting, is that, as far as I and Google Search can tell, there was no GQ profile on Travis. Yep. What there was instead, which the Pando blog references, is a post that Mickey Rapkin wrote called Uber Cab Confessions- which involved him doing the whole undercover reporting angle, signing up to be a UberX driver, and recounting some stories of drunken partiers n his back seat.
Check it yourself: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/...
What’s strange though, is that in between lines about his uncouth customers,
“Just for the record, I have been waiting in this brat’s driveway for fifteen minutes while he (I’m just guessing here) stared at himself in the mirror and (again, just guessing here) debated exactly how many rope bracelets still qualifies as casual”
Mickey Rapkin pens some authoritative reflections on the nature and personality of Uber CEO Travis —
Uber was co-founded by Travis Kalanick, a bro-y alpha nerd who’s been coding since he was in sixth grade … Not to make assumptions, but Kalanick probably wasn’t the first kid in his class to lose his virginity. But the way he talks now — which is large — he’s surely making up for lost time. When I tease him about his skyrocketing desirability, he deflects with a wisecrack about women on demand: “Yeah, we call that Boob-er.”
Wait, what? When did Mickey Rapkin, undercover UberX driver, interview Kalanick? I thought this was a post about voyeurism.
The craziest thing, though, about this so called “GQ profile”, is that if you do a Ctrl+F on both pages of the article, and look for the word “Kalanick” — it comes up precisely 6 times, and 5 of those are on the second page. There are 3 quotes from him, 1 mention and 1 photo caption. In depth profile indeed.
Now when Pando wrote about the GQ article, it called out a few of the quotes, like
“Anecdotally, though, there seemed to be something vaguely, well, douchey about the way people talked about Uber. Last summer, the company experimented with helicopter rides on demand to the Hamptons; it was a stunt, but one that seemed to speak volumes about its ambitions. “
but not
“At the same time, uberX is oddly egalitarian: It offers rides for the people, bythe people. What’s more democratic — and capitalistic — than giving a lift to a stranger for a small fee?” — which immediately followed on the next proceeding paragraph. Hmm.
Pando Daily’s favorite recap from the GQ article though, was the “boober” comment heard around the world.
When I tease him about his skyrocketing desirability, he deflects with a wisecrack about women on demand: “Yeah, we call that Boob-er.”
Overnight, it seemed like every major news outlet went to town on it:
- http://recode.net/2014/11/20/set...
- http://www.latimes.com/local/abc...
- http://www.smashcompany.com/busi...
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/bl...
- http://www.thebolditalic.com/art...
Don’t just blindly accept what i just told you. Fact-check it yourself: http://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-c...
So who exactly is Travis? Instead of relying on second hand journalism to tell us, why not go to the source?
Failcon is a conference designed to celebrate failure. Its an amazing place where speakers are open about their experiences. Travis gave a speech there in 2011 — ‘submitting [his] application for unluckiest entrepreneur of the year’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1182&v=2QrX5jsiico
If you watch this talk from beginning to end, you will realize that he had been fighting for his life (as an entrepreneur) for most of his life.
At his first company, Scour — a P2P file sharing app, he
- got a term sheet from media mogul Mike Ovitz, founder of CAA, former president of Disney, which had a no-shop clause, meaning he couldn’t take money from other people
- had the company run out of money — because Ovitz wanted the company to run out, so that he could get a larger piece of the company
- was sued by Ovitz the company for trying to raise from other people, and then publish the story on the WSJ — scaring off all possible investment
- sued again by 33 of the largest media companies in the world (a-la Napster) — for sharing entertainment media on the internet without paying
- filed for Ch 11 Bankruptcy to avoid paying the 250 billion suit
- had the company sold in court
In his second company — born from the ashes of the first — Red Swoosh, he had:
- his co-founder stab him in the back — and send a private email to Sony VC saying — we’re done, do you want to acquire me and the engineers?
- weathered dotcom bust. biggest competitor — Akamai — went from 5 billion market cap to 160 million.
- Sept 2, 2001 — ran out of money — had 6 engineers, worked 3 months without pay. also owed the IRS 100K in non-withheld income tax
- mid 2003 — had a deal with Microsoft — that ultimately was a low-ball — a 1.2M acquisition offer, that after all the loans 900k were paid off, left him with 300,000
- ran out of money, had a last minute rescue from Mark Cuban for 1M
- was at Davos, and had his only remaining engineer quit with a tweet
- pleaded engineering work from his engineer, from 10 pm onwards, Tuesdays and Thursdays
- ran out of money, had to do a 4-way deal with investors
- finally sold to Akamai for 23 M, 6 years after starting the company
So the road to entrepreneurship has been pretty rocky for Travis to say the least. During his period, he said, he became really good at negotiating from a “position of weakness” — and undoubtably also internalized the values of hustle and scrappiness.
I don’t want to dabble in conspiracy theories, but it is an interesting data point that many of the people he first clashed with, including Mike Ovitz, were from Hollywood’s media business. Ovitz lawsuit of Scour made it into the WSJ a few days, and nuked Scour’s fundraising.
However, what is apparent to me, is that the Travis Kalanick that you see on the stage at Techcrunch, making fun of himself:
“You know what, my comms team wishes that i took media training, have you seen some of the things I say?”
and at failcon, recounting his failures (“i was a failure pioneer”), is a rather different person then the bro-ish, arrogant, misogynistic Travis that you seem to hear so much about in the press these days.
tl;dr. Don’t believe everything you read in the news. Go find the sources yourself, and make your own judgement.
(Note: this was originally posted on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Whats-so-great-about-Travis-Kalanick/answer/Max-Song)
