An Open Letter to the Uber Board and Investors

This is a great example of why you should make sure that your goals align with those of your investors.<p>Kapor Capital has a strong focus on social impact companies that benefit the disadvantaged.[1]<p>Travis is a phenomenal salesman and fundraiser. Travis convinced Kapor that, amongst other things, Uber was a platform for democratizing transportation, citing things like racism amongst taxi cabs to spin Uber as social good.<p>So now you have a company that isn&#x27;t actually what it pitched itself to be. For many investors, hyper-growth and skyrocketing valuation will wipe out other concerns around culture, impact, etc.<p>The Kapors are showing (awesomely, in my personal opinion) that they are serious about their social mission. They&#x27;re doing what they can to influence a portfolio company to live up to their expectations. Travis probably doesn&#x27;t like that—it sucks to be called out!—but that&#x27;s why you take investment based on aligned interests and not just awesome salesmanship.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kaporcapital.com&#x2F;who-we-are&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kaporcapital.com&#x2F;who-we-are&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m a former uber s&#x2F;w engineer. I&#x27;ve been with uber for nearly 2 yrs and most of the article content are valid. Employees voicing out genuine concerns will be met with severe rebuke. This will be swept under the carpet sooner or latter. For customers, the quality and experience of their ride is the only thing that will matter. This won&#x27;t even affect their business.

I would be exceedingly reluctant to work with an investor who writes an &quot;open letter&quot; to a company in a situation like this, and particularly when that letter calls out the CEO in a pretty gratuitous way (&quot;and we have both been contacted by senior leaders at Uber (though notably not by Travis, the CEO)&quot;). You&#x27;re supposed to be able to be open with investors and other advisors, so this is a deep breech of trust in a non-public company. I can&#x27;t see taking advice from and sharing confidential or sensitive information with someone who has done that to you in the past.<p>(The sad part is I agree Uber has a problem and needs to change; Susan Fowler&#x27;s blog post was remarkable.)

I&#x27;m sure this will be an unpopular opinion since most of us agree with what Mitch is saying and rightfully want change, but as a founder, this sort of behavior from an investor seems to be a giant breach of trust.<p>In early rounds, founders are looking for investors who will trust management to make decisions in the best interest of the company. EVEN if they don&#x27;t agree with those decisions, it&#x27;s expected that they&#x27;ll be a team player and provide support in whatever way possible.<p>I&#x27;m sure Mitch thinks what he&#x27;s doing is in the best interest of the company (and it probabily is!). But, he surely doesn&#x27;t have perfect information on what&#x27;s going on (only management has a full picture).

Made a throwaway name because I have an unpopular opinion.<p>We&#x27;ve likely read Susan Fowler&#x27;s blog post. If true, it&#x27;s awful behavior on the part of HR and management at Uber, and action should be taken.<p>But that&#x27;s the thing: a blog post does not establish truth. We&#x27;ve heard from only one side of the story. No one ever asks about the other side, or about whether we are being misled. We only talk about the bravery of the author and condemn the other side.<p>I think the saddest part of our collective behavior is how quickly we come with pitchforks to a witch trial. We must remember that justice is not decided on Twitter, or on blogs. Justice is not decided by the voice of the accuser.<p>Did you see evidence besides Susan Flower&#x27;s putting phrases in quotation marks? She mentions screenshots of improper behavior but provides none. What if tomorrow new evidence comes out that this whole thing was exaggerated or flat out wrong. How would it feel, to being so easily manipulated into drawing a conclusion, into retweeting a fiction, into writing an open letter?

What would an ideal way forward be for Uber? Recent incidents combined with a tainted past make public trust in Uber not the best.<p>Lot of people have suggest these problems stem from the culture. Culture of companies and people is similar to the culture of, say, bread. The starter really matters and sets the tone. I&#x27;d be interested in hearing from people who have seen a drastic change in culture at a big place or better yet, have been behind that change.<p>The other idea is it could just be a few rotten apples giving everyone a bad name. I don&#x27;t know the answer.

Maybe the claims made by Susan Fowler are accurate and honest, maybe they aren&#x27;t. This is why there are investigations. We want the truth, not a bunch of opinions which may or may not be credible.<p>The author seems to be claiming that Eric Holder is not suited to run such an investigation. Seems reasonable to me. Uber should find someone else.<p>My problem with the author is that it&#x27;s pretty apparent conclusions are being drawn without actual evidence.

This is a corporate crisis for Uber.<p>Right now, Uber is very clearly following the playbook that historically leads to dead companies.<p>It needs a truly credible response, not one that happens to use some celebrities they have on hand.

As an investor in Lyft, I&#x27;m sorry to say that I hope Uber doesn&#x27;t change anything they&#x27;re doing. The Uber management is the best thing that&#x27;s happened to my personal finances in a while.

Great sentiment, but I don&#x27;t suppose anyone had the brilliant idea of actually divesting their holdings in Uber, rather than just talk-talk-talking? Wanting them to change, and being in a positon to profit from the status quo, are kind of mutually-contradicting are they not?<p>Looking for any investor with enough integrity and conviction to send a stronger message... I know, dream on, plus who would buy anyone out at this ridiculous level of overvaluation?

While those actions (and inaction) at Uber are despicable, part of me thinks that this was inevitable. In order to break up an entrenched, crony industry like ride hailing, you end up taking on some of their characteristics. Getting a female cabbie is incredibly rare in big cities[1], and associating with male drivers all the time is bound to produce some chauvinistic behaviors.<p>I&#x27;m not excusing the behavior, but I think this definitely rubbed off on them. It&#x27;s an ends justify the means mentality, and it might not have been necessary under a different power structure. I suppose there&#x27;s a chance that Lyft could have done it right, but who knows how they would have handled the other PR battles. Hopefully a new crop of managers at Uber, eventually dealing with a much more diverse group of drivers, one that includes machines, will be much less chauvinistic.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;how-uber-helps-women-break-into-the-taxi-industry&#x2F;376127&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;how-ube...</a>

Does anyone know why Susan chose to &quot;blog&quot; instead of filing a law suit?

In reality how much people really care about the sexual harassment care?

It&#x27;s going to be interesting to me to see how this all affects Uber&#x27;s bottom line.<p>If they keep scaring away engineers and getting bad publicity, will be scare away customers too?<p>Or will the trail of engineers eventually catch up with the quality of the experience?

&gt; success must be measured in more than just returns.

IF lyft is behind all this, I&#x27;m impressed.

I&#x27;ve said it before and I&#x27;ll say it again:<p>Uber has started a revolution. I do not require them to survive it.

Wow, lotta founders showing their true colors in this thread re: contempt for their investors.

Bravo to Mitch and Freada Kapor for going out on a limb like this. Uber has been toxic for years and everyone has remained silent. Every PR crisis has been swept under the rug and nothing has apparently changed. Hopefully an investor speaking up in this way will finally prompt the board to treat the problems in Uber seriously and have a truly independent investigation done.

Silicon Valley for the past five years has been afflicted by Wall Street ethics. I&#x27;ve seen this first hand at a few SV companies. As a male, I&#x27;ve actually faced reverse harassment. Never worked at Uber, but I&#x27;m speaking of much larger SV companies. HR is useless.<p>Silicon Valley is no different than any other place in the World. Just because people think they are &quot;changing&quot; the world doesn&#x27;t mean ethics need to be on the line.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;technology&#x2F;11765609&#x2F;Start-up-culture-is-corrupting-our-youth-and-killing-real-entrepreneurship.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;technology&#x2F;11765609&#x2F;Start-up-cult...</a>

&gt; <i>So apparently the problem is not fully solved.</i><p>You are <i>completely</i> right.<p>The problem of poor, dirty, violent, urban-youth infested communities is not fully solved.

What do people here think about Susan&#x27;s way of doing things? While I think most of her behaviour is valid and I&#x27;m impressed by her professionalism, I think she starts too fast to report people, which costs her political power to achieve her goals and makes people in HR more pissed off than necessary. E.g., being hit on by colleagues is a common thing that happens to women. But some can deescalate it without much problems. She didn&#x27;t even try to deescalate it, just report it and be done with it.<p>It&#x27;s a minor thing compared to all that which happened to her and I&#x27;m mostly thinking about it in terms of own career strategy.

&quot;As investors, we certainly want to see Uber succeed, but success must be measured in more than just returns.&quot;<p>-- Sure, but Uber is already a mission-driven company whose success is inversely proportional to horrible things like DUI deaths -- statements like these impede their progress

As a male in my early twenties, working as a developer I&#x27;ve come to realize that it&#x27;s just better to not even try to engage in small talk and&#x2F;or non-work related conversations with female co-workers. I keep it dry and basic. Just last week I had a buddy who was on the phone with his brother and blurted &quot;Bro, she was amazing, then I left her house haha&quot; he was fired the next day because a co-worker overheard his conversation and felt uncomfortable.

An investor issues veiled threats while acting as if they&#x27;re owners or management. Who cares if you&#x27;re &quot;available to make suggestions&quot;, and what makes you think you&#x27;re entitled to work behind the scenes to change company culture?

I may be in the minority on this point of view, but maybe it&#x27;s in the interest of the board and investors to wait on the results of the independent investigation before commenting on the contents of the accusation. They could though make a statement in support of the investigation and employees however.

Fowler&#x27;s post shed light on Uber&#x27;s serious internal problems -- no doubt. But going public with a post like this erodes founder-investor trust. It&#x27;s across the line.<p>Publicly condemning the internal culture the post depicted would be reasonable, even helpful, but trying to &quot;expose&quot; Uber&#x27;s leadership for showmanship and posturing (&#x27;hiring&#x27; Holder who was ostensibly involved long-before the Fowler post) to mitigate the pr fallout is counterproductive. Don&#x27;t kick your founder when he&#x27;s down.