A year before the investor lawsuits and federal investigations, Uber executives sat around a hotel conference room in San Francisco trying to convince Travis Kalanick that he was the problem with the company. They were armed with the results of a survey, and conclusions drawn from it were printed and hanging on the walls. About half the respondents had a positive impression of Uber and its convenient ride-hailing app, but if respondents knew anything about Kalanick, they had a negative view. The executives argued that riders and drivers thought the company was made up of “a bunch of greedy, self-centered jerks,” writes Bloomberg.
During this meeting, an executive received a call and she stepped out to take it. She then asked Kalanick to join them. There, they watched a video that had been posted online by Bloomberg of Kalanick in the back seat of an UberBlack on Super Bowl weekend, heatedly arguing over fares with a driver. He got up, called a board member, demanded a new PR strategy, and spent the next year starring as the villain who gets what he deserves in the most gripping startup drama since the dot-com bubble.
Bloomberg finally has that story, which started in a sense, with Donald Trump, when he imposed new border restrictions on people from seven Muslim countries. Among those who protested this executive order were people in the small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. They declared there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International airport. This meant there would be extra demand at the airport for Uber, and they could charge more, but there would be a backlash. They suspended surge pricing, but there was outrage nonetheless. This was stoked by Kalanick’s decision to join Trump’s business advisory council. The hits kept coming from there.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
