He's clearly smart, and he's clearly not devoid of conscience, as his resignation from President Trump's advisory council amid protests over the administration's failed travel ban indicated. Enter the technocratsĪs a practical matter, getting rid of Kalanick is difficult due to Uber's compliant board and his equity power over the company - like most founders in Silicon Valley, he's rigged his shares so that his vote counts for far more than everybody else's.īut Kalanick could, and I stress this, be a person of more complicated character than Uber's early narrative would indicate. But Lyft, stubbornly, isn't going away and can't seem to be spent out of existence.Ĭolumbia Business School professor Evan Rawley explained to me that this means the best Uber can hope for is to become the leader of an oligopoly - a troubling proposition, given Uber's lofty valuation, the need for investors to get a payout at some point, and the ongoing cost of being the biggest.
The result has been a near monopoly, but a costly one: Uber is losing vast amounts of money to retain its position and the dominant player in ride-hailing. In Kalanick's world, the losers don't get to play the game anymore. Or only invalidate the old industry in slow motion, giving everyone who can read the writing on the wall plenty of time to find something else to do.įor Kalanick, Uber is a zero-sum game: I win, you lose, game over. You take their business away, rather than demonstrating a benignly new and different way of doing something that can function alongside the old industry. The thing is, when you really and truly disrupt established industries, you make enemies. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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