Super (Un)Pumped: The Fall of Tech Bros
It’s no secret that Uber was a mess of toxic masculinity, intellectual property theft, and worst of all misogyny under the reign of co-founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. There is no doubt that Uber changed the landscape of modern transportation and logistics for better and worse. It is undeniable to say that Travis and his band of jam seshing — yeah, he actually uses the term jam sessions — bros changed the world, but at what cost?
Mike Isaac, a tech reporter for the New York Times focusing on Uber and the many other Silicon Valley giants, compiled a rigorous history of the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick in his best-selling book, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. In it he touches on Kalanick’s earlier ventures Scour and Red-Swoosh, both peer-to-peer file sharing networks — so it’s not exactly a surprise that his greatest success would once again rely on peer-to-peer relationships. But everything was different this time around — Uber would be far more successful . In an interview with The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, Isaac wonders whether or not Uber’s success was just sheer luck and good timing or whether it was due to Kalanick’s ruthless business practices. There is certainly some credence to both theories, but one holds a hell of a lot more water.
The thought that Kalanick was simply lucky — lucky that the rise of the smartphone, the ubiquity of the internet, and easily expandable back-end infrastructure with AWS — irks me. We’ve never wondered whether Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or any other founder for that matter was lucky. So why would anyone bother wondering if Kalanick was lucky? Well, simply because Kalanick fell farther than any of them ever did or have fallen. The list of founders above have varied public opinions, but none of them have had such a fall from grace as Isaac describes in Super Pumped. None of them have been super un-pumped, as Kalanick would say, or at least not without having a history-making comeback. But that is out of the question for Kalanick. So, that just leaves us with Kalanick’s ruthlessness.
Uber is on a lofty mission to “bring transportation — for everyone, everywhere.” This seems like a reasonable goal for a $50 billion+ tech behemoth, but that was not the case in 2009 when Garrett Camp and Kalanick set out to make hailing a cab in San Francisco a little bit easier. Upending the San Francisco cab industry was only the first of many volleys Uber would fire as it waged war against Big Taxi. Uber would need a fierce general if it was going to take down the establishment — and who better than Kalanick himself.
Uber operated outside the confines of the law, simply because the company predated any legislation controlling ride-sharing, but that didn’t stop local governments from trying to throw roadblocks up to please their donors from drivers’ unions and Big Taxi. This led Uber to develop their “Greyball” tool wherein they would mark city officials looking to reprimand Uber for their illegal entrance into new markets and serve them up a fake version of the app where it just appeared that their requested ride was repeatedly cancelled.
Uber’s battles weren’t only being waged against governments though. Kalanick was also at war with competitors across the globe like Lyft, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Ola. All of Kalanick’s battles were waged with his easily replenished warchest from private investment. A warchest that allowed Uber to have the cheapest (subsidized) rides around. Cheap rides and convenience led to Uber’s “hockey stick” growth — named such because the graph’s shape was akin to a hockey stick. Kalanick led Uber with a sense of ruthlessness unseen in modern business and truly believed that Uber was at war on a global scale, but living in a constant state of offense and paranoia meant Uber was rotten to the core.
Kalanick was winning over users, but he was losing the culture war. I’d go over the many issues within Uber under Kalanick’s reign, but Susan Fowler lived through hell and wrote a viral blog-post about it. Kalanick organized Uber as a meritocracy where “high performers” could do no wrong and a basically non-existent HR department let the bros run wild. Uber’s values under Kalanick read like a frat-bro handbook:
- Always Be Hustlin’
- Be An Owner, Not Renter
- Big Bold Bets
- Celebrate Cities
- Customer Obsession
- Inside Out
- Let Builders Build
- Make Magic
- Meritocracy & Toe-Stepping
- Optimistic Leadership
- Principled Confrontation
- Super Pumped
- Champions Mindset / Winning
- Be Yourself
Kalanick didn’t care how you won as long as you won, but it ended up costing him. Kalanick’s insatiable need to win led to his biggest loss. After relentless negative press during their year from hell Kalanick finally stepped down from his post (after a coup from a syndicate of investors) in July 2017.
Kalanick was the embodiment of tech bro, and he built a company that embraced the tech bro, but society has moved on. Long live technology, but down with the tech bro.
