• Uber's spectacular meltdown in 2017, full of executive departures, is well-documented.
• Business Insider has the inside story of how and why several key people in former CEO Travis Kalanick's brain trust really left.
• Read the full story: THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and million-dollar exit packages

Rachel Whetstone's seemingly abrupt departure from Uber in April 2017 did not go unnoticed. 

Whetstone, after all, was the embattled ride-sharing company's head of policy and communications. And Uber was in the center of the worst storm of bad press anyone in the business could remember.

But while her exit caught outside observers by surprise, it didn't come completely out of the blue. 

Before Uber, Whetstone had served for years as head of public policy and communications at Google. Those years had made her rich, and when she arrived at the ride-hailing company, she wasn't under the spell of potential wealth, which drove other top players at Uber.

"That made her feel like she could speak truth to power with [then-Uber CEO] Travis," a former executive said. "She wasn’t part of the group of yes-men who would never disagree with him."

Over time, Whetstone had become disillusioned with Uber. In her role as a powerful woman in the company, she was someone who many troubled employees and other insiders felt comfortable venting to. As these people shared negative stories with her, Whetstone began to see Uber differently. She became angry.

She saw a company that needed to grow up, but that under CEO Travis Kalanick, wouldn't.

As Whetstone became increasingly frustrated with Uber, she developed a reputation with some as being difficult to work with, becoming easily upset. She would threatened to quit, but would then cool down and change her mind. Or Kalanick talked her down and encouraged her to stay. 

Kalanick indulged her at first, feeling she was a good resource for the company. But over time, he felt, she had become too much drama to deal with.

"She had this distaste for the company, starting with Travis," one person said, adding, "Rachel hated the company, but was there punishing the company for making her be there."

The time Kalanick accepted Whetstone's resignation

The situation came to a head after a damning article about Uber was published in the tech news site The Information.

The article described how a group of Uber executives — including Kalanick, his then girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth, and business head Emil Michael — visited a South Korean karaoke bar in 2014. That bar turned out to be more like an escort service, featuring women with numbers taped on them. 

Before Holzwarth talked to The Information, she reached out to Whetstone and told her that she had received a call from Michael. Holzwarth and Michael had been close friends when she dated Kalanick. Michael warned her that the press might start digging into the Korea incident. Holzwarth told Whetstone that she felt as if Michael was threatening her not to talk.

When the story came out, it included a reference to that phone call and portrayed Whetstone as being sympathetic to Holzwarth and asking her if anyone from Uber had expensed the night in the karaoke bar. The story also said that Whetstone had reported the call to the legal team, which turned the information over to Holder’s investigators, citing someone "with direct knowledge of the matter."

Kalanick was not pleased. As his head of PR, he felt Whetstone was supposed to be defending the company from stories like these, not be part of them.

Not only was Whetstone doing a poor job of defending the company, Kalanick's inner circle believed, she was riling other employees and stirring up gossip. Kalanick talked to her about these concerns. The subtext was alarming: the implication that she was somehow the source of the negative leaks to the press.

Such intimations were both insulting and potentially career-ruining. A PR person found to be leaking would almost definitely never work again.

In early April, Whetstone quit. The next day, she changed her mind and said she'd like to stay.

This time, however, Kalanick accepted her resignation. Over dinner, they amicably negotiated an exit package involving millions of dollars' worth of stock that vested over time and agreed on a face-saving explanation that kept Whetstone on as a consultant.

On April 11, her resignation was announced and Kalanick publicly praised her as she left, calling her "a force of nature, an extraordinary talent and an amazing player-coach who has built a first-class organization."

Click here to read the full BI PRIME article — THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and million-dollar exit packages

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• Uber's spectacular meltdown in 2017 rocked the world’s most valuable privately held tech startup and sparked a fight that broke Silicon Valley’s most sacred rules.
• As Uber’s senior leadership scrambled to address the crisis, fear, self-interest and conspiracy theories prevailed. 
• Business Insider has the real, never-before-told story about the departures of key Uber executives and the epic showdown between cofounder Travis Kalanick and early investor Bill Gurley.

Twenty-four hours before Travis Kalanick would make a snap decision that would ultimately force him out of his job, the Uber CEO was relaxing at a rented house in Malibu with several friends.

It was a Sunday afternoon and he was ready for a nap. But as his eyes began to close his phone buzzed.

"Have you seen this?" a friend asked, sending a link to a tweet by a former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler. She had written a blog post titled "Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber" recounting appalling allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation at the company Kalanick had cofounded.

Emil Michael, Kalanick's confidant and Uber's senior vice president of business, burst into the room, waving his phone. He had seen the post.

Kalanick didn't know who Susan Fowler was, but he knew this was a problem.

His life at Uber was about to unravel.

This is the story of how one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley — who had built-in protections and seemed untouchable — made a series of decisions that cost him his job and ravaged his reputation all within six months.

It's also a look inside an epic boardroom battle that broke Silicon Valley's sacred rules, with investors usurping power from the board to overthrow a visionary and revered, if problematic, founder.

And it's a tale of how backstabbing, greed, mistrust, and a crisis of conscience overwhelmed insiders at the world's most valuable tech startup, with friends and colleagues turning into enemies, all using their wits to move and countermove against one another.

"What we went through in 2017 — you probably have friends who have gotten divorced, and it's, like, the relationships are gone," one insider said.

Business Insider spoke with dozens of people in Uber at all levels over the course of six months to chronicle the chaotic period that ended Kalanick's reign. The stories they shared were corroborated by testimony, documents, and text messages.

The people we spoke with credited Kalanick's wits and tenacity for Uber's spectacular rise; but they also agreed that Kalanick's downfall was largely his own doing. His fast-moving, win-at-all-costs mentality created a corporate culture that has been written about ad nauseam.

What has not been written about is Kalanick's mindset and the circumstances that drove his actions during this fateful period. Who was advising him? Who betrayed him? And what was going through his mind?

One part of what drove Kalanick to the brink was simple: He was terrified of a hashtag.

If Donald Trump had never been elected, Kalanick might still be CEO

That hashtag #deleteuber was born after the 2016 US presidential election, a few weeks after Uber's Washington, DC, policy team suggested to the head of policy and communications, Rachel Whetstone, that Kalanick join President-elect Donald Trump's business-advisory board.

Whetstone, along with others at the company, believed it would be good for Uber to have a seat at the table. Kalanick agreed and became one of a dozen CEOs to join the council, alongside JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and General Motors' Mary Barra.

Whetstone and Kalanick have since said that was a colossal mistake.

At the time Uber was in a good place. It was operating in more than 425 cities in 72 countries, had 30 million monthly users, and was looking at ending the year with $6.6 billion in net revenues — more than double the previous year.

The company had also put some major legal and public-relations disasters behind it.

It had settled several lawsuits, including a case alleging that staffers had used a secret "God View" feature of its software to stalk a reporter and a $100 million lawsuit with drivers over their being classified as independent contractors.

Uber was also past a 2014 rape case in New Delhi, India, which resulted in Uber being banned from that city for a short time. The next year, the woman, who alleged she had been raped by an Uber driver, sued the company for $18 million. Uber hired an Indian law firm to investigate, and the company agreed to settle her case for $3 million.

"If you'd have asked me on December, 31, 2016, I'd have said, 'We're good. We've cleaned up. Everything's going to be fine,'" one former executive said.

The good feeling didn't last long. In January 2017, shortly after Trump had been sworn into office, the new US president signed an executive order barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and Uber got caught in the crossfire.

Protesters stormed Kennedy Airport, and in solidarity the New York taxi union went on strike. With no cabs available, Uber and Lyft — Uber's archrival in the ride-hailing market — were swamped with ride requests. Uber tweeted it was turning off "surge pricing" (the higher fees it charges during high-demand periods) to show that it wasn't profiteering. But the move backfired: The tweet looked to many like a promotional ploy as people remembered the CEO was on Trump's business council. And #deleteuber went viral.

Kalanick called Trump's travel ban "unjust," and 48 hours later, on February 2, he quit Trump's business council — the first CEO to do so — but it was too late.

By week's end, more than 200,000 people had deleted their Uber accounts, a loss of 5% of the company's market share. Worse, they were leaping from Uber to Lyft. That week, Lyft passed Uber in the App Store for the first time.

In a snap, Uber lost "millions of dollars — easily millions of dollars," one insider told Business Insider and multiple others confirmed.

Losing business to competitors was what Kalanick feared most, and he grew determined that #deleteuber would never happen again.

"That was the beginning," a former Uber exec said.

The hashtag returns

By mid-February, #deleteuber had slowed to a trickle and Uber's top executives were exhausted. Kalanick and Michael booked their trip to Malibu for what was supposed to be a weekend of rest and recovery.

Instead, Kalanick was reading Fowler's post describing a "Game of Thrones"-style culture within in his company, where managers stabbed one another in the back and sexism and sexual harassment ran rampant — and HR didn't seem to care.

The post had been up for only a few hours by the time Kalanick saw it, but it had already gone viral. People with millions of Twitter followers, including tech-industry bigwigs and mainstream celebrities, were publicly trashing Uber.

To Kalanick's horror the #deleteuber hashtag was trending again.

At the rented house, Kalanick and Michael leaped into crisis mode with Michael calling advisers for ideas on how to tame the situation and Kalanick consulting his executives.

Whetstone helped Kalanick craft a statement, and at 3 p.m. he tweeted a promise to investigate the allegations, vowing that any Uber employee who behaved the way Fowler described would be fired. The two men worked until 3 a.m. and then hopped on a flight back to Uber's headquarters, in San Francisco.

The next day, Monday morning, Kalanick huddled with a small team at the office to plot damage control. The room included board member Arianna Huffington, company president Jeff Jones, PR chief Whetstone, and head of HR Liane Hornsey.

They spitballed ideas about how to respond to the growing PR crisis, including sharing unflattering information about Fowler during her time at the company and commenting on her harasser (who had been fired months before Fowler wrote her post).

But they quickly shelved such tactics and focused on the promised investigation. Do it in-house or hire someone? Whetstone warned against bringing in an outsider as third-party investigations could easily snowball. But Kalanick, with #deleteuber on his mind, thought an internal investigation would make Uber look like it had something to hide. He wanted an outsider.

In that case, Whetstone suggested they hire former US Attorney General Eric Holder. He had already done some work for Uber since leaving the Obama administration. Kalanick liked the idea and asked his team to get Holder on board. He didn’t care how much it cost and wouldn't limit Holder's access.

"That decision was made in an instant," one person said. Within hours Holder had signed on.

Kalanick didn't realize it at the time, but he had just hired his executioner. As one former executive put it, "If you put anything under a microscope for long enough, you're going to find it moves."

A Google lawsuit and an Uber executive's $100 million demand

Three days later, on February 23, Waymo — the self-driving-car company spun off from Google — slapped Uber with a $2.6 billion lawsuit. The suit alleged that Google's former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, had stolen self-driving technology from his previous employer and brought it to Uber when Uber bought his autonomous-truck startup, Otto, in a deal worth $680 million. (Google had already sued Levandowski personally.)

Google rarely sues anyone. When asked why Waymo would sue Uber, one former Googler theorized that while Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are generous with their handpicked leaders (they had paid Levandowski $120 million, according to filings from the suit), they may take action if they feel betrayed.

The Waymo lawsuit unnerved Uber's board, especially Bill Gurley, whose firm, Benchmark, was Uber's largest venture-capital investor. Gurley is a Silicon Valley investing legend who has backed successful startups for decades and is known for condemning Silicon Valley’s excessive ways. Gurley had bet on Uber in 2011, when the company was two years old and had 25 employees. Benchmark's stake was now worth billions and accounted for most of his firm's returns. This lawsuit threatened those billions.

On top of that, Gurley felt duped by Kalanick, who had vouched for Levandowski. Kalanick had called Levandowski a "visionary" when he argued for the Otto acquisition at an April 2016 board meeting. Not everyone liked the idea. Michael, the company's head dealmaker, hated it. He thought the price was too high.

The concerns didn't make Kalanick change his mind, but he did take some protective steps. The full payout relied on the Otto team hitting a bunch of milestones. (Uber has paid Levandowski only $100,000 to date.)

Additionally, Uber's head lawyer, Salle Yoo, authorized an investigation into Levandowski and other Otto team members, to ensure they didn't bring over any Waymo technology. This was not an unusual preacquisition legal step, one person explained. Engineers sometimes have backup files on their computers or cloud accounts, perhaps unintentionally.

But the method she chose to conduct this investigation wound up burning everyone.

A member of Yoo’s team hired an outside law firm that, in turn, hired an investigator, a cybersecurity company called Stroz Friedberg. It completed its inquiry before the Otto deal closed, in August 2016, and issued a report concluding that Levandowski did possess Waymo's files — thousands of them — and that it had tried, somewhat inconclusively, to verify if he deleted them all.

Stroz Friedberg's findings should have been a major red flag, enough to kill the deal, one insider told us. But neither Kalanick nor Yoo ever read the report, nor did the board, before the Otto deal closed, several people told Business Insider.

Why they didn’t read it remains a contentious issue among those involved. The ignorance was by design, according to one person close to the situation. Stroz Friedberg's report was handled by an outside lawyer to prevent anyone at Uber from discovering confidential technology from Levandowski and using that information to make business decisions.

But the net result was that Gurley and the board didn't learn about the Stroz Friedberg report until it was unearthed, months later, as part of the Waymo trial. When Gurley finally read it, in May 2017, he was incensed. Kalanick, he thought, had misled him about the entire Otto acquisition. In a deposition, Gurley testified that not disclosing the report to the board “crossed a line of violating fraud and fiduciary duty."

Kalanick was hardly any happier with the situation, and he blamed Yoo.

Salle Yoo had joined Uber as its first in-house lawyer, in 2012, when the company was just a 90-person startup, and for most of their time together they had a good relationship. But as Uber grew bigger and more complex and her team swelled to 290 people, Kalanick felt that too many legal issues were falling through the cracks with serious consequences, including lawsuits.

To Yoo, Kalanick was the problem. She felt that she was kept out of the loop on matters that could affect the company’s legal risk. For instance, as part of this lawsuit, she testified that she wanted Uber to fire Levandowski long before it did and that she was excluded from critical discussions about the engineer that took place while she was on away on a trip.

This suit was a big reason that Kalanick and Yoo mutually decided that Yoo and Uber should part ways.

On her way out the door, she asked for a $100 million package, the repurchase of her shares.

Yoo thought it was only fair; she had seen male executives ask for huge exit packages and get them. She had spent her career at Uber encouraging women to lean in.

Kalanick had no intention of agreeing to that huge sum.

Her final package, worth tens of millions, amounted to less than two-thirds of her initial demand. But it contained a kicker: If Uber gave a better severance deal to another employee, the company had to come back to her and match the difference.

Yoo’s departure wouldn’t become official for months and she remained with the company until her exit was announced in September, after Uber had hired its new CEO. But Yoo had worked well with Gurley, and with her departure Kalanick lost his long-time head lawyer, who should have been a powerful ally.

Why Uber's head of communications Rachel Whetstone really quit

As Whetstone had warned, within weeks, Holder's investigation had started to sprawl. The board committee that Holder reported to — which included Gurley, Huffington, and David Bonderman, a founding partner of private-equity firm TPG — authorized a second law firm, Perkins Coie, to look into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and retaliation. Those were the original charges leveled by Fowler. The committee then tasked Holder with looking into Uber's corporate culture.

As Holder interviewed employees and combed through emails and chat records, morale inside the company went from low to "rock bottom," said one former executive: "People were confused, disappointed, angry."

Unhappy employees gossip — among themselves, with outsiders, and with journalists. Almost every day a new nightmare story about Kalanick and Uber was published.

There was a meltdown between Kalanick and an Uber driver, Fawzi Kamel, wherein the CEO was shown in a video scolding the man.

It leaked that a star Uber hire, Amit Singhal, had been fired from his former employer, Google, for failing to disclose a sexual-harassment allegation.

Vice president Ed Baker suddenly resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct at an Uber party.

The New York Times reported that the company used a software tool known as "Greyball" to hide Uber cars from not only angry taxi drivers but also, eventually, from regulators in cities around the world.

Jeff Jones, the one-time Target CMO who had joined as president less than a year earlier, resigned soon after the Greyball revelation. On his way out he dissed the company's "beliefs and approach to leadership."

Whatever Uber's other issues, it now had a serious PR problem, and its communications leaders couldn't — or didn't want to — get the situation under control, depending on who you ask.

But it was one story in particular that caused Kalanick's inner circle to turn on one another.

In late March, tech-industry news site The Information published a story about a group of Uber executives — including Kalanick, his then girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth, and Emil Michael — visiting a South Korean karaoke bar in 2014. That bar turned out to be more like an escort service, featuring women with numbers taped on them.

Before Holzwarth talked to The Information, she reached out to Whetstone and told her that she had received a call from Michael. They had been close friends when she dated Kalanick. Michael warned her that the press might start digging into the Korea incident. Holzwarth told Whetstone that she felt as if Michael was threatening her not to talk.

When the story came out, it included a reference to that phone call and portrayed Whetstone as being sympathetic to Holzwarth and asking her if anyone from Uber had expensed the night in the karaoke bar. The story also said that Whetstone had reported the call to the legal team, which turned the information over to Holder’s investigators, citing someone "with direct knowledge of the matter."

Kalanick was not pleased. As his head of PR, he felt Whetstone was supposed to be defending the company from stories like these, not be part of them.

Whetstone had already had a reputation inside the company as being difficult to work with, becoming easily upset, or even irrational. She routinely threatened to quit, but would then cool down and change her mind. Or Kalanick talked her down and encouraged her to stay.

Kalanick indulged her at first, feeling she was a good resource for the company. But over time, he felt, she had become too much drama to deal with.

Other people at Uber saw Whetstone differently. One employee described her as "intellectually honest." Whetstone was already rich from her years at Google and wasn't under the spell of potential wealth, which drove other top players at Uber. "That made her feel like she could speak truth to power with Travis," a former executive said. "She wasn’t part of the group of yes-men who would never disagree with him."

For her part, Whetstone had become disillusioned with Uber. In her role as a powerful woman in the company, she was someone who many troubled employees and other insiders felt comfortable venting to. As these people shared stories with her, Whetstone began to see Uber differently. She became angry.

She saw a company that needed to grow up, but that under Kalanick wouldn't.

Uber's defiance was baked in. It was Kalanick's greatest strength when Uber was small, but as Uber grew it became the company's greatest weakness, aided by a leadership posse who viewed new governance and controls as annoying, big-company bureaucracy.

"She had this distaste for the company, starting with Travis," one person felt, adding, "Rachel hated the company, but was there punishing the company for making her be there."

After Whetstone's name appeared in The Information story, the increasingly smaller circle close to Kalanick saw it as evidence that Uber's real problem was its PR team.

The company's culture wasn’t toxic, they reasoned, but it was perceived that way because of an endless stream of negative stories leaked to the press, while those who wrote about their positive experiences didn't get their due.

Not only was Whetstone doing a poor job of defending the company, they believed, she was riling other employees and stirring up gossip. Kalanick talked to her about these concerns. The subtext was alarming: the implication that she was somehow the source of the leaks.

Such intimations were both insulting and potentially career-ruining. A PR person found to be leaking would almost definitely never work again — even if leaking about a toxic culture would spark necessary changes and be considered the ethical thing to do.

Once again, in early April, Whetstone quit. The next day, as she had before, she changed her mind.

This time, however, Kalanick accepted her resignation. Over dinner, they amicably negotiated an exit package involving millions of dollars' worth of stock that vested over time and agreed on a face-saving explanation that kept Whetstone on as a consultant.

On April 11, her resignation was announced and Kalanick publicly praised her as she left, calling her "a force of nature, an extraordinary talent and an amazing player-coach who has built a first-class organization."

Tensions grow between Kalanick and Gurley

In the early days, when the company was tiny, Bill Gurley and Travis Kalanick worked closely together. Gurley particularly admired Kalanick’s recruiting talents, like the way he could charm big names into joining the company, including President Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe; VMware star engineer Thuan Pham; and Target CMO Jeff Jones.

But Gurley also saw Kalanick as a young and inexperienced CEO, a visionary perhaps, but one who needed guidance and didn't always listen to advice. In other words, the stereotypical startup founder.

Gurley pushed Kalanick to find a mentor. In 2015 he and Michael arranged for Kalanick to meet legendary CEO coach Bill Campbell, who had advised Steve Jobs and Google's Larry Page, among others. Kalanick was all in, but shortly after their first meeting, Campbell was diagnosed with cancer and stopped taking on new clients.

As the company had been without a CFO since 2015, Gurley pressed Kalanick to hire a new one, someone qualified to run a multibillion-dollar company, arguing this person could be like a mentor. A strong CFO creates internal controls that would detect "the red flags that allow the company to understand when there are problems," as one person described. Other execs — among them Salle Yoo — echoed Gurley's urging for a CFO, "year after year, month after month," one person described. The suggestion fell on deaf ears.

As Uber grew, Gurley and Kalanick began to disagree on a number of issues. Gurley was cautious. He wanted Kalanick to stop burning so much money, taper off the growth plans, and increase the bottom line.

Kalanick, meanwhile, began to see Gurley as a drama-filled drag, perpetually appearing on CNBC to whine about a possible tech bubble. He pushed communications with Gurley off to his wingman, Michael; it was a cold-shoulder strategy Kalanick had used with others, including Whetstone, when he felt he didn't need them anymore.

As the troubles of 2017 piled up — the Fowler uproar, Waymo, Uber's leasing business racking up $1 billion in losses (something a CFO might have prevented) — Gurley went from worried to frightened.

"Travis was a wild card," one person close to the situation said. "Something in him needs to break the rules, be a contrarian, even when it's against his own interest. The board felt they couldn’t trust him."

Gurley feared Uber was the next Zenefits or, worse, another Theranos, and if he didn't fix it immediately, Uber's value could plummet to zero.

One woman's email pushed Gurley over the edge

In late April, Gurley, who had been texting with Michael nearly every day to stay in the loop, abruptly stopped. His brief explanation was that their relationship had changed.

Gurley was by that time under siege himself, spending 80 hours a week on Uber, daily from 5 a.m. to midnight — board meetings, special sessions, paperwork, powwows with investors. The press was hounding him, too, so much so that in April he changed his phone number.

Gurley began telling his poker buddies that he was a wreck over Uber's culture and the growing number of lawsuits and government investigations that came as a result of issues like Greyball being revealed in the press. He had trouble sleeping. He gained weight. He took up yoga.

It wasn't just Gurley's own money that was on the line. His Benchmark partners, who all hold equal stakes in the firm's investments, were also concerned, as were Benchmark's limited liability partners — the groups who bankroll a venture-capital fund so that it can invest in startups like Uber. They were reading the negative news reports and freaking out about their money too.

And then there were other investment firms that had followed Gurley's lead and poured billions into Uber. The company had raised an unprecedented $15 billion by mid-2016.

Gurley, as a Valley investment legend, knew all of them, and they were calling him demanding he get Uber's culture under control and protect their hides.

That was easier said than done. Kalanick, like many tech founders, had ensured that as his company grew he maintained control. He didn’t have absolute power, but it was close. "It didn’t start that way and it never fully got there, but, almost in a Frankenstein way, there were these things levered on along the way," one person described.

For instance, Uber's early employees and early-stage investors had shares with super voting rights (that is, 10 votes for every share), but all later-stage investors and employees had no votes at all per share. Kalanick was one of the largest holders of super voting shares. Between a combination of bylaws and loyalties, Kalanick also controlled enough board seats to make it extremely hard for the board to fire him as CEO.

As Gurley pondered his options, he received an email that kicked him in the gut.

It was from Katrina Lake, CEO of the apparel-shopping service Stitch Fix, one of Benchmark's other highly successful portfolio companies.

Lake lambasted Gurley for not doing enough to fix Uber. She accused him of shirking his responsibility to make Silicon Valley a better place.

Gurley realized that Benchmark was in a lose-lose situation. The firm's reputation with other tech entrepreneurs would be hurt if he orchestrated a revolt against Kalanick. But it would also suffer if Benchmark appeared to do nothing.

He made a choice: Kalanick had to go, and if the board wouldn’t — or couldn’t — do it, he'd find another way.

The full Holder report: loaded with allegations

The spring of 2017 dealt Kalanick another painful blow. On May 27, his mother was killed in a boating accident and his father was badly injured.

Despite the infighting, all of Uber's board members and investors reached out to offer condolences.

Except one.

Kalanick heard nothing from Gurley, not even when he saw him for an in-person meeting. It was a bad sign.

A couple of days later, Levandowski, who had pled the Fifth Amendment in the Waymo trial and refused to defend Uber, was fired. 

The press was now publicly speculating about whether Kalanick would be fired, too.

Days after that, on June 6, the results of the Perkins Coie sexual-harassment investigation were revealed. The firm had looked into 215 claims of harassment and other bad behaviors.

Following the report, 20 people were fired, five of them over sexual-harassment allegations. The others were terminated for things like bullying coworkers and retaliating against those who had made complaints to HR.

Kalanick saw the results as a net win for Uber and told his employees so. Out of 15,000 people in the company, only a handful were bad apples and all of them were now gone. That, he pointed out, was a very low percentage, which showed that Uber was largely not a terrible place to work. And no sexual-harassment allegations were ever leveled at Kalanick himself.

Holder's report was presented to the board a few days later. It included a long list of complaints employees had lodged during the investigation into Uber's culture, many of them uncorroborated. The board agreed the full report would remain under lock and key, no copies made, to keep it from leaking to the press. The only way to read it was in law firm's office, under supervision.

Holder's report also contained a list of recommendations for changing the company's culture. First on the list was to reduce Kalanick's responsibilities by hiring a COO, something Kalanick had been trying to do for months anyway.

The second recommendation, however, was never publicly revealed.

"It was that Michael should leave the company," a person with knowledge of the matter told Business Insider.

On June 12, Uber announced Michael's departure. His name had been mentioned in some of Uber's scandals over the years  and in some of the bad press in 2017, like one involving a second lawsuit over that India rape case. That proved to be unfair, and Michael's name was dropped from the suit accordingly.

Still, according to one person, forcing him to resign was symbolic, a sign that Kalanick did not have an iron grip on the company anymore and couldn't protect his closest allies. The most trusted confidant in Kalanick's ever-smaller circle was now gone. There were very few executives left at Uber who still had Kalanick’s back.

On June 13, Uber told its employees and the public about Holder's recommendations for changing its culture. And, with the investigation completed, Kalanick announced he was taking a leave of absence to grieve.

And Gurley was ready to make his move.

Cornered in a Chicago hotel room

Despite going on leave, Kalanick didn't completely stop working. He was still trying to hire a COO.

On June 21, Kalanick held a meeting with a COO candidate and the conversation ran long. The candidate had to fly to Chicago, so Kalanick booked a ticket and flew with him, finishing the interview on the way.

While Kalanick was in his Chicago hotel room, Gurley's partners at Benchmark, Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, contacted Kalanick, wanting an immediate meeting. Kalanick told them he was in Chicago. They flew there, went to his hotel room, and handed him a letter.

It said that a group of investors were demanding Kalanick's resignation.

Normally, it is the board that fires a CEO, but Gurley, with the support of his partners, had gone around his fellow board members and enlisted some of Uber’s biggest early investors, among them Fidelity, Lowercase, Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital, all owners of super voting shares.

The letter gave Kalanick three hours to decide. If he refused to resign, the group would launch a PR campaign against him: more negative press, more #deleteuber.

Kalanick felt like he had no choice.

He negotiated for more time and talked to several people about his options. But he was also physically tired and, having just buried his mother, emotionally exhausted from grief. The famously combative CEO had finally run out of fight.

That evening Kalanick signed the letter. He was no longer the CEO of Uber, the company he loved, that had been his life for the better part of a decade.

Gurley also resigned from the board. He, too, was exhausted.

Gurley also knew that being involved in an investor revolt had burned some bridges with the rest of the board members. Kalanick, who was still a major shareholder, was still on the board, too.

Benchmark's Matt Cohler, who had been friends with Kalanick for years before the Chicago meeting, took Gurley's seat.

But the fight wasn't over.

Benchmark files an unprecedented lawsuit

The board now had the major task of hiring a new CEO.

Stories that Kalanick was hampering the search with the hope of getting himself reinstated began to appear in the press.

These reports angered and hurt Kalanick, who had not only been forced out of his job but felt he was doing everything he could as a board member to find a great replacement.

"Name one thing I did to block the CEO search?" he was heard saying to people.

A revolt was also brewing among the cabal of executives who were running the company now that there was no CEO and no COO.

On July 22, this 16-person management team sent a letter to Uber's board. In it they complained that Kalanick was interfering with their work and demanded relief. Not all of them agreed with the letter, one person said. Some even thought that Kalanick was just trying to be helpful in his own way. But it was signed by "the executive leadership team" representing all of them. This was the second letter the board received from complaining executives. The first one was signed by six of them just before Kalanick had taken his leave.

Benchmark was now convinced that Kalanick was plotting his return and had to be stopped.

On August 10, while Kalanick was on a flight to Seattle to interview Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi for Uber's CEO job, Benchmark filed a suit against him. It accused him of committing fraud over two board seats he controlled and argued that he should be kicked off Uber's board.

The suit shocked the Valley: A VC suing a founder after forcing him to resign was unheard of.

The press was once again feasting, and Kalanick felt duped. He thought by resigning as Benchmark had demanded, he would be avoiding more bad PR for himself and Uber.

Kalanick spent the day at his hotel talking to lawyers. He eventually called Khosrowshahi at 10:30 p.m. and Khosrowshahi agreed to a late-night meeting. It went well and Khosrowshahi decided to pursue the job.

But Kalanick was backing another candidate, former GE CEO Jeff Immelt. And Benchmark had its own candidate, Meg Whitman.

That meant things would get ugly, again.

Strong words in the boardroom

When the board met later, in August, to make its final CEO choice, Immelt quickly learned that he didn't have the votes to be appointed and bowed out.

The board was evenly split between Whitman and Khosrowshahi. They spent two grueling days locked in a room debating the two choices and taking anonymous straw votes.

At one point, the discussion turned to the Benchmark lawsuit and how Benchmark was so comfortable in Whitman's abilities that if the board voted for her, the firm would probably drop its suit against Kalanick.

That idea didn't go over well. Some board members pointed out that if such a damaging suit wasn't absolutely necessary, it should be dropped, and it definitely shouldn’t be used as leverage for the CEO vote. Kalanick argued to the board that this was proof that Benchmark’s tactics were nothing more than trying to bully people — not just him but the board as well.

Whether that clinched it for Khosrowshahi is a source of controversy among those with knowledge of the situation. But he soon picked up enough straw votes to win.

When the board cast an official on-the-record vote, everyone, even Benchmark, unanimously voted Khosrowshahi in. No one wanted to go on the record as opposing the new CEO from the get-go.

Still, hiring a new CEO wasn’t enough for Benchmark and the Uber executives and investors supporting it. Benchmark wanted changes to the stock structure and bylaws to ensure Kalanick could not undermine Khosrowshahi and orchestrate a comeback. As VCs, they had seen such shenanigans before.

"Ninety percent of ousted founders detest the new CEO and try to run them out," one person with knowledge of Benchmark’s thinking told Business Insider.

The deal that ended the feud

As he took over the reins of Uber, Khosrowshahi needed to put an end to the drama and dysfunction that had torn the company apart, and he quickly saw his chance.

Kalanick had been angling for months to take on new investment from Japanese tech giant Softbank, which, through its $100 billion Vision Fund, was pumping billions of dollars into hot startups and putting its enormous global power behind those companies.

Softbank had been investing in ride hailing all over the globe and wanted a piece of Uber. But it threatened to throw its weight behind Lyft if an Uber deal didn’t materialize — something Kalanick dreaded.

So Khosrowshahi brokered a compromise: As part of the Softbank investment Kalanick wanted, Benchmark would get the governance changes it sought.

In January, when Softbank closed on a 15% stake in Uber, the super voting shares were eliminated (every share now gets one vote) and four new seats were added to the board to dilute Kalanick's control.

A happyish ending for all

When you ask insiders what led to Travis Kalanick's downfall, there are a few things everyone agrees on.

Uber grew too quickly, from 6,700 employees in December 2016 to 15,000 by June 2017, and devolved into chaos before proper HR procedures and seasoned executives could be put in place.

Most blame Kalanick for this, saying he was more focused on world domination than seemingly mundane, operational details.

There are also a lot of wild conspiracy theories whispered around: an Uber competitor engaged in sabotage; leaks came as an inside hit job from those who supported Benchmark's desire to fully remove Kalanick; opposition research was dedicated to smearing specific Uber executives.

And the long-term fallout from the feud remains to be seen. Tensions are still high between many former Uber execs.

And it's unclear how the reputational consequences for Benchmark will shake out. By leading a coup against a founder, Benchmark broke a sacred Silicon Valley rule about how it treats the founders it backs, and set a dangerous precedent for other investors and boards.

Although Uber is rehabilitating its public image, it still needs to win in the cutthroat ride-hailing business and do it without a visionary, if problematic, founder at the helm.

Still, for now the storm has passed.

It's been a year since Susan Fowler's blog post and nine months since Kalanick resigned as CEO. Fowler has sold her story for a forthcoming book and movie.

Benchmark sold $900 million in shares to Softbank and got a commitment that Uber would go public by 2019, giving it a path to collect on its billions.

After Kalanick’s power was reduced, Benchmark agreed to drop its lawsuit against him.

Under Khosrowshahi, Uber settled the Waymo suit for $245 million, ending a source of much of the bad press and drama.

Whetstone is a vice president of communications at Facebook, and as influential as ever.

Gurley is talking to the press again, sleeping well, and happy.

Kalanick went from a jobless paper billionaire to an actual cash billionaire after he sold $1.4 billion worth of his shares to Softbank. He just announced he is setting up a charitable foundation and investment fund. He remains on Uber’s board and still has a huge stake in the company.

And he's now focused on life after Uber.

While he feels that 2017’s unrelenting bad PR unfairly villainized Uber, and that the company remains misunderstood, the gut-wrenching ride forced Kalanick to do a lot of reflecting.

"In 2013 Travis was hotheaded," one person described. "By 2017 he was a gentle, diplomatic giant compared to what he was. He's a growing, learning human being."

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• Uber's spectacular meltdown in 2017 pitted two legendary tech personalities against each other.
• Business Insider has the inside story of how Benchmark partner Bill Gurley, one of Uber's first backers, turned on CEO Travis Kalanick.
• The clash between the two individuals broke one of Silicon Valley's most sacred rules and it's stil unclear how the reputational consequences will shake out. 

• Read the full story: THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and million-dollar exit packages

Bill Gurley, the legendary Silicon Valley investor, had been through a lot of ups and downs during more than two decades in the tech business.

But in late April 2017, Gurley was a wreck. The partner at venture firm Benchmark had put on weight and was having trouble sleeping. He had taken up yoga. As he often lamented to his poker buddies there was one clear cause of his distress: Uber.

Gurley had backed the ride-hailing phenomenon early on and as Uber's business boomed and its value soared to a staggering $69 billion, the investment had seemed all but destined to become a career-defining highlight.

Now however, all that was in jeopardy as Uber suffered through an unrelenting storm of lawsuits and bad press. Among the most damaging was the blog post by Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer who described appalling allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation at Uber.

Much of the public criticism was aimed at Travis Kalanick, Uber's cofounder and controversial CEO, who had allowed these problems to fester on his watch.

Gurley was also increasingly coming to view Kalanick as the problem. And within a few months, he would do something practically unheard of in the insular business world of Silicon Valley and sue Kalanick.

One woman's email pushed Gurley over the edge

Gurley and Kalanick had bonded early on, but the pair increasingly butted heads as Uber's business, and its challenges, grew. 

Gurley saw Kalanick as a young and inexperienced CEO, a visionary perhaps, but one who needed guidance and didn't always listen to advice. Kalanick, meanwhile, viewed Gurley as a drama-filled drag, perpetually appearing on CNBC to whine about a possible tech bubble. 

As Gurley pondered his options, he received an email that kicked him in the gut.

It was from Katrina Lake, CEO of the apparel-shopping service Stitch Fix, one of Benchmark's other highly successful portfolio companies.

Lake lambasted Gurley for not doing enough to fix Uber. She accused him of shirking his responsibility to make Silicon Valley a better place.

Gurley realized that Benchmark was in a lose-lose situation. The firm's reputation with other tech entrepreneurs would be hurt if he orchestrated a revolt against Kalanick. But it would also suffer if Benchmark appeared to do nothing.

He made a choice: Kalanick had to go, and if the board wouldn’t — or couldn’t — do it, he'd find another way.

Over the course of the following several months, Gurley and Kalanick fought an epic boardroom battle that broke Silicon Valley's sacred rules, with investors usurping power from the board to overthrow a visionary and revered, if problematic, founder.

Click here to read the full BI PRIME article — THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multi-million-dollar exit packages

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• Groups of Uber employees in the UK went to see a new play in London about the downfall of Travis Kalanick.
• "Brilliant Jerks" re-creates key incidents in Kalanick's downfall.
• The play also tackled themes such as drug addiction and adoption.

On Wednesday night, several groups of Uber employees sat in a cavernous space underneath Waterloo station in London and watched "Brilliant Jerks," a play that re-creates the downfall of the Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick.

Of course, the crowdfunded play couldn't specifically name Kalanick or Uber for legal reasons. So it was about a nameless taxi app, and Kalanick became "Tyler Janowski."

Uber employees watched as actors re-created key events in Kalanick's downfall: There was the infamous trip to a karaoke escort bar in Seoul, South Korea. And there was the incident where female employees weren't given leather jackets but the male members of the team were.

The actors also portrayed the kind of workplace sexism that the former employee Susan Fowler described in her explosive blog post that contributed to Kalanick leaving the company he founded.

One actor played a female employee who likened the taxi company's code base to a cathedral, built by many people over time to become a giant, intricate work. But the actor playing her manager discounted her metaphor, instead heaping praise on a male employee who had a similar idea.

It could have been uncomfortable viewing for the Uber employees in the audience, and for some it appeared to be as they looked on awkwardly. But others laughed along with the jokes and seemed to enjoy the performance.

The play told three stories: the downfall of the CEO, the experience of a young woman who worked at the company, and an employee's difficult time working at the company.

But it also introduced new themes to the story. It grappled with subjects such as alcoholism, drug addiction, adoption, HIV, and homophobia. The cavalcade of issues became distracting after a while, but it helped to broaden the story beyond a focus on Uber.

"Brilliant Jerks" takes its name from a comment by Arianna Huffington, an Uber board member, who stepped in to help the company during its crisis last year.

"I made it very clear that we were going to abandon this cult of the top performer, which is often what excuses bad behavior,"Huffington told CNN in October. "So I called it from now on, no brilliant jerks will be allowed."

This isn't the first time employees of a large technology company have taken a trip to see a critical depiction of their employer.

In 2010, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took staff members to a screening of "The Social Network," a film that purportedly depicted the founding of Facebook. "To celebrate a period of intense activity at Facebook, we decided to go to the movies. We thought this particular movie might be amusing," a Facebook representative told Reuters at the time.

"Brilliant Jerks" is being performed at the Vault Festival in Waterloo until Sunday.

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When a tech company reaches a certain level of success, the names of the founders often become synonymous with the brand they create. At least, that's the case with founders who are the "face" of the company.

Still, we tend to forget that Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, and Bill Gates, didn't create Apple, Uber, and Microsoft alone. 

On the contrary, these companies might not exist in the same capacity if it weren't for the co-founders who fly under the radar because they chose to steer clear of the spotlight, or because the pressures brought on by the early years of a quickly-growing company pushed them away. Many of these same people have moved on to create even more multi-million dollar ideas, while others left for a life of philanthropy, or pursued another passion.

Here are the lesser known co-founders who helped create some of the biggest tech companies you definitely know:

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak (a.k.a. "Woz") doesn't really need an introduction, but for those who aren't well-versed in the history of Apple: Wozniak designed and built the first Apple computer, Apple 1.

He was working at Hewlett-Packard (HP) at the time, where he tried to share his computer design. When he was denied multiple times, Steve Jobs — who was working there for the summer — suggested the pair try to sell a fully-assembled version of the design to a third party. 

As Apple grew, Wozniak felt the emphasis on marketing hindered him as an engineer, and he left for good in 1985, but he's still the sole inventor on multiple Apple patents, including the "Microcomputer for use with video display."

The same year he left Apple, Wozniak finished earning his degree from UC Berkeley (under the fake name "Rocky Raccoon Clark") and founded a company that built the first programmable universal remote control.

Wozniak has since co-founded two more companies, multiple non-profits including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Silicon Valley Comic Con convention. He's also on multiple company boards, and remains on the official Apple employee list. He's also an Apple shareholder.

Apple co-founder Ronald Wayne

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed "Apple Computer" in 1976 alongside their administrative supervisor, Ronald Wayne, who was 42 at the time.

Wayne drew up the first logo and the partnership agreement that gave him 10% of the company, but only lasted for 12 days before deciding he couldn't keep up with the pace the company was going.

Wayne sold his shares for $800 — a decision he claims he doesn't regret. Today, he holds dozens of patents but not enough capital to profit from them, and sells gold, rare coins, and stamps from his home in Nevada.

Uber co-founder Garett Camp

Even after stepping down as the company's CEO, Travis Kalanick seems to personify Uber as a company — but Kalanick wasn't the one to come up with the original idea for Uber.

"Garrett [Camp] is the guy who invented that s--t," Kalanick once said at an early Uber event in San Francisco. "I just want to clap and hug him at the same time."

Camp described what we know as "ride-sharing" to Kalanick when they attended the 2008 LeWeb conference: He wanted to create a convenient luxury car service that didn't cost a thousand dollars to use. Kalanick was on board, and UberCab started later that year.

The initial prototype was created by Camp and two of his friends from graduate school. Kalanick was brought on as a "mega advisor," and wasn't even CEO until 2010 when he replaced then-CEO Ryan Graves.

Camp earned his first fortune when he sold the web-recommendation tool StumbleUpon to eBay in 2007; he still serves as chairman for both StumbleUpon and Uber. He's also an investor and creator of startup studio Expa, which helps new founders build their own products.

Camp doesn't seem to be involved with the day-to-day at activities at Uber, although he did publish this blog post in light of all of the negative attention that Uber was getting last year.

• Travis Kalanick will soon be CEO of a small real-estate startup.
• Through his new investment fund, he has acquired a real-estate startup called City Storage Systems and installed himself as CEO.
• The startup plans on buying distressed real estate and refurbishing those sites for digital businesses. It's small, with only 15 employees.

Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber, is wasting no time moving on to his next gig as chief executive.

On Tuesday he announced on Twitter that his investment fund 10100 (pronounced Ten One Hundred) was buying controlling interest in a real-estate startup, City Storage Systems, for $150 million. And that's not all: Kalanick is joining the company as CEO.

Kalanick is best known as the cofounder and former CEO of Uber, a job he was spectacularly pushed out of in June after Uber became embroiled in a series of scandals. Business Insider recently documented the inside story of how he was ousted.

Kalanick recently cashed out a portion of his Uber stake in a sale to the Japanese company SoftBank— enough to put $1.4 billion cash into his pocket. He wasted no time in setting up 10100 to oversee both his for-profit investments and his charitable philanthropic gifts.

CSS is 10100's first big investment, Kalanick said in a tweet.

CSS is a real-estate company looking to buy "distressed real estate particularly in the areas of parking, retail and industrial," as Kalanick describes it.

He says $10 trillion worth of this kind of real estate is available and ripe for redevelopment. CSS plans to "repurpose" such sites "for the digital era," he wrote. Kalanick offers the example of two CSS services to explain what he means: CloudKitchens, which provides services, including kitchens, for food-delivery startups; and CloudRetail, which is apparently doing similar things to support online retailers.

By the way, though 10100 sounds like some kind of an insider coding joke — Kalanick is a software engineer — it isn't. The name is a reference to the street address of his childhood home, according to someone familiar with the matter. It serves as a subtle homage to his mother, who was killed in a boating accident in June amid Kalanick's struggles at Uber.

The name is supposed to represent getting back to his roots as an early-stage startup guy. CSS is Kalanick's fourth startup. Besides Uber, the others all had at most a few dozen employees. The first one was Scour, a file-sharing company, similar to Napster, that was sued out of business. The second one was Red Swoosh, which sold to Akamai for $19 million.

CSS employs 15 people, and Kalanick says in his tweet that he's hiring.

SEE ALSO: THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packages

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• Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is becoming the CEO of City Storage Systems.
• The company takes disused spaces like car parks and abandoned shopping malls and helps businesses make use of them.
• The company has projects to create kitchens for food delivery and also warehouse space for online retail companies.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick announced on Tuesday that he had agreed to become the CEO of a small, relatively new US startup which aims to take abandoned and disused spaces and turn them into kitchens and retail locations.

Recode reports that City Storage Systems is working on multiple projects to transform underused spaces. It said that the company takes spaces such as parking lots and abandoned industrial units, and turns them into spaces that could work as food delivery kitchens or warehouse space for online retail companies.

The company isn't anywhere near as big as Uber. In fact, Kalanick said it's currently a 15-person team. The parent company doesn't have a website, either. If you Google its name, the first business you find is an Indian manufacturer of storage racks.

But one part of the company does have a website that explains how it works. CloudKitchens is the company's project to help restaurants build kitchens dedicated to food delivery.

It's the same concept as UK-headquartered food delivery company Deliveroo's Deliveroo Editions project, which uses temporary structures in car parks to house small kitchens that make delivery-only food.

The thinking behind CloudKitchens is that restaurants can use it to cheaply add food delivery to their business, or to scale up that side of the company away from their in-house kitchens.

Kalanick joining City Storage Systems means he'll now be partners with Uber, the company he founded and grew. Uber's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said on Twitter on Tuesday that its food delivery division UberEATS had partnered with CloudKitchens.

Kalanick set up a VC firm, bought a controlling stake, and became the company's CEO

The way that Kalanick ended up at City Storage Systems is pretty bizarre. On March 7, Kalanick announced that he was launching a new venture capital fund that would invest in job creation and companies that worked in real estate and e-commerce.

On Tuesday, Kalanick announced that he was investing $150 million (£106 million) into City Storage Systems and had acquired a controlling stake in it. In the same statement, he said he would become the startup's CEO.

Kalanick left Uber in June following months of controversy over alleged sexism, a looming legal fight with Google's self-driving car division Waymo, and an explosive blog post by former employee Susan Fowler in which she described a dysfunctional workplace culture.

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• A fatal accident involving a self-driving vehicle was inevitable, but Uber is not currently in a position to handle one.
• Last weekend's fatal, self-driving car crash could make cities less likely to trust the company and undermine Uber's claim that it's a platform rather than a transportation service.
• But it could also force Uber to improve the safety of its autonomous and human-driven vehicles.

A fatal accident involving a self-driving vehicle was inevitable, but no tech or auto company was in a worse position to handle one than Uber.

The company has spent the better part of the past year cleaning up the mess left by former CEO Travis Kalanick, who oversaw the company's meteoric rise and turned it in into a symbol for the ruthless, growth-at-all-costs attitude that has come to represent the dark side of Silicon Valley.

Now, Uber has the ignoble distinction of being possibly the first company to be involved in a fatal crash with a self-driving vehicle. Immediately after last Sunday's accident— in which a self-driving Volvo XC90 operated by Uber hit and killed a 49-year-old woman, Elaine Herzberg, in Tempe, Arizona — local police indicated that the accident probably wasn't Uber's fault.

The video of the accident raises doubts about Uber's self-driving tech

But a video released on Wednesday and showing the moments before the accident indicates otherwise. The video reveals that Herzberg likely wouldn't have been visible to the human eye long enough for the car's backup driver to intervene, but the sensors, radar, and LIDAR systems that detect objects near self-driving vehicles shouldn't have had the same problem.

"The sensors should have been able to detect her for several seconds before she was struck," Navigant senior research analyst Sam Abuelsamid told Business Insider. "The system did not seem to respond at all. That's a sign that Uber's system really does not work very well."

The video could end up shaping the reputation of the company's self-driving arm in the same way a February 2017 video of Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver defined its current business as careless and insensitive. Even if Uber can perfect its self-driving technology by mid-2019, when it hopes to launch an autonomous ride-hailing service, city governments might not trust the company enough to work with them.

"Cities might be less willing to work with Uber," Abuelsamid said. "They might be less willing to trust Uber to do the right thing and make sure that their vehicles are safe."

Uber won't be able to say it's just a platform anymore

The effects of the accident could extend beyond Uber's self-driving ambitions and undermine one of its fundamental claims: that it's a platform which connects drivers and passengers, rather than a transportation service. Defining itself as a platform decreases the company's liability for what happens to its customers, drivers, and the other vehicles they affect.

It will be much harder for Uber to make that argument now, according to attorney Neama Rahmani.

"This death was caused by either their operator or their manufacturer and now, this is going to make them not a technology company, but really a transportation company," he told Business Insider. "And they'll have to step up and pay out and accept responsibility for the conduct of their vehicle. There's no independent contractor driver to blame anymore."

While that redefinition won't help Uber's reputation or stock price in the short term, it could end up forcing the company to become more serious about safety, which could save the company in the long run.

"I think the positive thing that will come out of this is Uber is going to invest a lot more in the safety of its riders," Rahmani said.

That process would be painful, but it could end up being the reason the company doesn't become a victim of its recklessness.

SEE ALSO: Self-driving cars could face a 'huge setback' after the tragic death of a woman struck by an autonomous Uber

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NOW WATCH: There's a surprising twist at the end of the 'synchronized global growth' story

• Uber and Tesla have put self-driving front and center for their future businesses.
• After a self-driving Uber vehicle was involved in an Arizona fatality, the technology is being questioned.
• Uber and Tesla aren't about autonomous driving — and it's a distraction from their core businesses.

A self-driving Uber vehicle killed a woman in Arizona last week in the first case of an autonomous car being involved in a fatality. 

Much testing of self-driving technology has been put on hold while Uber and the authorities investigate the tragedy. And, discussion and debate about the future of autonomous driving has heated up. Some are calling for much higher government scrutiny and regulation of self-driving cars; Arizona has been singled out because with good year-round weather and excellent roads, along with a hands-off attitude toward testing, it's attracted many of the major players.

But others think that the genie has been released from the bottle. At an auto-finance conference in Las Vegas last week, Automotive News reported that General Motors President Dan Ammann said people will develop more confidence in driverless vehicles once the cars show what they can do.

GM is pushing hard, through its Cruise division, to get a fully autonomous, no-driver vehicle on the road in a ride-hailing framework in the next few years. If the company succeeds, it could take the lead in a business that could play to its strengths as a carmaker able to build fully integrated self-driving cars at scale.

Stakes that look much higher — but really aren't

But if GM fails, it still has its highly profitable legacy business to fall back on. For the likes of Uber and Tesla, the stakes have been presented as being much higher. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick saw autonomy as imperative, given Uber's driver costs. And Tesla has for several years with its Autopilot technology been attempting to avoid being left behind. CEO Elon Musk has taken a personal interest in the effort.

But the truth is that a revolution in autonomy won't ultimately affect Tesla's and Uber's business all that much. Unlike GM, Tesla has nothing in the way of a ride-sharing service ready to launch, and Uber's success hasn't been in getting drivers out from behind the wheel, but in putting more drivers in cars so that the company can continue to expand and grow, increasing the number of trips it provides, thereby maintaining its massive market-share lead over competitors like Lyft.

Fundamentals matter, even though Musk might want to change the Tesla story and Kalanick, before he was forced out of Uber as CEO, wanted to supercharge Uber's value by eliminating its biggest expense. Tesla is still almost entirely a company that makes electric cars. Uber is an app-enabled, low-friction alternative to taxis and livery cabs.

Both companies have achieved mighty valuations with those fundamental business propositions: Tesla's market cap is over $50 billion, while Uber's investors have pushed it to $50-$70 billion on paper, depending on how much of an impact you think Softbank's recent 20% stake lowered the value.

Neither may ultimately be worth that much (although Uber certainly looks like it has the chance to be the biggest Silicon Valley IPO since Facebook), and Tesla certainly appears overvalued based on its performance — or lack of it. The carmaker's Model 3 mass-market vehicle was launched last July with promises that Tesla would be building 5,000 per week by now. It would be lucky it if were building 1,000 — the company is mired in what Musk has called "production hell."

Not for nothing, Tesla hasn't really made any money in 14 years, has a balance sheet heavy with debt, and burned through over $3 billion in 2017.

Technologies that aren't mission-critical

Up against those challenges, Tesla's Autopilot tech is interesting but hardly mission-critical. Customers obviously can't use it if they can't get a Model 3 until 2019 0r 2020. Uber's self-driving roll-out in Pittsburgh in 2016 was spectacular, but since then, the vehicles have been in test-test-test mode while the startup has endured an epic management crisis and Kalanick's departure. Again, not exactly mission-critical.

What we're seeing here is something of a bandwagon effect for companies whose value is tied up less in execution than in storytelling. Electric cars were the cool, "disruptive" story that made Musk and Tesla investors rich from 2010 until now. Driverless cars that can be summoned using an iPhone, anywhere and anytime, suggested Uber on steroids. You think $70 billion is impressive? Just wait until we don't have to pay drivers anymore.

So Tesla and Uber jumped on that bandwagon with the technology clearly still in a pre-beta phase. They didn't do it because it was important to their respective businesses. They did it because it could keep the story fresh and exciting. 

But, you might ask, aren't GM and other traditional carmakers doing the same thing?

Well, sort of. The self-driving story has improved investor outlook in GM. But that's a Wall Street thing. GM wants to attack the autonomous opportunity because it has a realistic chance to be dominant, with the capacity to build millions of autonomous vehicles every year, around the world.

GM also thinks self-driving vehicles will be safer, and it ought to know. About 40,000 people die annually in the US alone in auto accidents. A percentage of those accidents involve GM cars and trucks. That's why Ammann doesn't think the Uber fatality in Arizona is the end of the road. Self-driving cars could be the biggest enhancement to safety GM has seen in its history.

When self-driving is a distraction

The bottom line is that while it might seem that a self-driving death and its aftermath is a threat to Uber's and Tesla's ambitions, it isn't. That's because their self-driving efforts don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Tesla dealt with an Autopilot-related fatality in 2016, but it didn't cause hundreds of thousands of Model 3 reservation-holders to cancel.

That raises a question, and it's an ethical one. If Uber and Tesla don't need self-driving tech to prosper, then why are they offering it — and testing it when it's clear that the bugs haven't been worked out? Kalanick's argument was that Uber needs it to survive as a business. Musk's is that safety is more important, in fact, than selling cars. 

Musk's point is stronger, but even so, Tesla's business at the moment has to be all about getting cars out of its factory, not about those cars driving themselves once they hit the road. So even though the inevitable tragedies that will be associated with the development of autonomous vehicles aren't going to affect Tesla's business in a major way, that doesn't mean Tesla should continue with the experiment. Likewise, Uber. 

In the end, it could be best to leave self-driving cars to the companies that have been dealing with human-driven cars for over a century.

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• Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick recently received a payout of $1.4 billion, making him cash rich.
• Kalanick has said he plans to set up a charitable foundation, but it's unclear what his philanthropic focus will be.
• Protecting and maximizing that much cash is complicated, requiring a team of financial advisers, attorneys, and accountants. 

Earlier this year, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick became an actual billionaire — with a check worth $1.4 billion to prove it.

While the definition of what it takes to be rich varies in the US, there's no denying Kalanick has officially joined the ranks of the richest people in the world. With the massive payout in hand, Kalanick now faces a new task: how to protect and maximize his newfound wealth.

It's not as simple as putting the money into a bank account. Financial planner Eric Roberge says there is such a thing as having "too much cash."

"While I don't expect the US to go economically belly up anytime soon, the fact is that FDIC insurance only guarantees that sums up to $250,000 are protected. Anything over that, and you could lose your money if something happens to your bank," Roberge said.

That means Kalanick needs a plan for his money sooner rather than later. Business Insider's Julie Bort reported that Kalanick plans on setting up a charitable foundation, though it's unclear what philanthropic causes he will focus on.

But first, Kalanick needs to hire a handful of advisers, preferably a "team of professionals which would at a minimum include an estate planning attorney, certified public accountant, and insurance professional," financial planner Aaron Hattenbach — who founded Rapport Financial— told Business Insider. That's in addition to a financial planner or investment adviser who would serve as his "quarterback," helping to coordinate across all of the advisers.

Once a team of professionals is in place, Hattenbach expects they "would have a conversation about the client's estate, desires, and goals." Together, they would work through separate complexities for the client, including "asset protection, insurance, charitable giving, wealth transfer, taxes, and investments," he said.

It's normal for today's billionaires to prioritize philanthropy and big ideas, such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' focus on space travel with his company Blue Origin. 

"As billionaires' wealth grows, so too does their sense of responsibility and their ambition. Stopping climate change, improving public education, alleviating poverty, eradicating malaria, finding a cure for Alzheimer's and so on,"wrote John Mathews, head of private wealth management and ultra high net worth at UBS.

Kalanick would have to be upfront with his advisers about his goals, so they can help establish an organization and find the proper routes to transfer and protect his money for charitable giving.

Tax planning will also come into play with such a large influx of cash. Hattenbach would delegate the estate planning attorney to "reduce and eliminate potential gift and estate taxes" by "utilizing revocable and irrevocable trusts, charitable trusts, and foundations." At this stage, the estate planner would also create an exhaustive inventory of all the client's assets, in case something happened to the client.

Not everything is different for a billionaire than an average client, however. Hattenbach said that his last move for any client would be to produce "a customized investment policy statement, a business plan for their investments."

Due to the large amount cash that Kalanick has just come into, it can take a while for all of the above actions to unfold. Hattenbach says that to get everything right, the process shouldn't be rushed and can take months.

In the mean time, Hattenbach generally recommends that clients maintain "purchasing power by investing in short term treasury bills, short term municipal bonds ... and other low risk investments that limit interest rate and credit risk."

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• Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the company's board is no longer fighting for control after he proposed a new structure last October.
• His proposals curtailed former CEO Travis Kalanick's voting power.
• He said fixing Uber's governance was his first job as CEO, and that he then moved onto company culture and strategy.
• Khosrowshahi commented that Uber would one day be profitable — just as the news broke that the company had turned a $2.5 billion profit.

Uber's divided board is divided no longer, according to chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

Speaking at the VivaTech event in Paris on Thursday afternoon, Khosrowshahi said one of his first actions when taking on the role of CEO was to fix the company's governance issues.

Khosrowshahi became chief executive in August 2017, replacing ousted CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick and taking the helm at an extremely troubled time for the company. Uber was under major fire for its treatment of drivers, its cavalier attitude to regulation, and its internal culture. Earlier that year, leaked video showed Kalanick getting into a heated argument with an Uber driver over wages.

To cap it all off, there was a lot of boardroom drama, with a bitter legal feud breaking out between one of Uber's investors, Benchmark, and Travis Kalanick. Another investor, Shervin Pishevar, waded into the fight. Even after Kalanick was replaced, he tried to maintain control of the company by appointing his own board members.

"When I first came in, the board was very divided in terms of control of the business and where the business was going," said Khosrowshahi. "We enacted governance reforms that included changing the voting strategy, getting rid of high vote shares etcetera so the board could be united."

In October, two months into Khosrowshahi's tenure, the board voted on changes that would reduce the clout of certain board members, particularly Kalanick.

"Now the board isn't thinking, 'Who is in control?', it's 'How can we move Uber forward?'" he said.

Khosrowshahi said fixing Uber's governance was his first task, retooling the firm's culture was his second, and coming up with the firm's strategy was third.

He said the management team crowdsourced Uber's new values from its employees to inform its new slogan: "We do the right thing. Period."

On strategy, he said the company thought about much more than cars. Earlier on Thursday, Uber announced it would open a research hub for flying taxis in Paris.

"It's no longer just about cars, we are about urban mobility and however you get around in a city," he said. "That includes cars, [carpooling service] UberPOOL, bikes now and, yes, also it's going to include flying cars we hope."

Khosrowshahi also touched on Uber's profitability, something that has eluded the company, apparently until now.

Recode reported that the firm turned a $2.5 billion profit, mostly thanks to the merger of its Russian and Southeast Asian businesses with local competitors. Without that, it would have still posted a loss.

"Of course Uber will be profitable, one day!" Khosrowshahi concluded at VivaTech. "It'd better be."

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• Uber went to court in London on Monday to try and win back its licence in the UK capital.
• It's trying to prove it's fundamentally changed as a company since former CEO Travis Kalanick was in charge.
• That's required apologies and some about-turns from UK executives who have worked at Uber since its bad-boy days of defying regulators.
• Kalanick was only mentioned once during seven-hour-long court proceedings on Monday, but the mistakes the company made under his leadership loomed large.

Travis Kalanick's name only came up once during seven hours of legal back-and-forth on Monday, but his presence loomed large in a stuffy London courtroom where Uber is fighting a major regulatory battle.

Uber is trying to win back its operator's licence in London, and its success rests on whether it makes a sufficiently convincing case that it's past the bad boy days of its former chief executive.

London transport regulator, TfL, revoked Uber's licence in September over concerns about the way the firm carried out medical checks on drivers online, its use of "Greyball" software to evade regulators, and its poor record of reporting serious incidents to the police, among other issues.

In court, Uber argued that it has fundamentally changed in the nine months since then, mostly thanks to new chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi. It also pointed to the departure of its top British exec Jo Bertram, and big internal policy changes to prioritise passenger safety as signs that it's turned over a new leaf.

Maintaining that line of argument involved some about-turns and awkward admissions from company staffers who took the witness stand.

In one instance, Uber sought to pin the blame on Bertram for several issues, such as the fact it misled TfL and the High Court about the way it accepts fares. Bertram, having left Uber shortly after the company lost its licence, will not appear in court.

Uber admitted that Bertram had given inaccurate information to TfL in 2014 when she said Uber handled bookings and fares directly. Uber repeated the same argument in a successful High Court battle. But in a later case over driver rights, Uber contradicted itself and said that drivers were actually initially responsible for accepting fares.

"It wouldn't be an unfair inference that in the past [Uber London] has tended to say whatever it thought might be most helpful in a particular circumstance," said TfL's lawyer Martin Chamberlain.

Tom Elvidge, general manager for Uber in the UK and Ireland, responded by suggesting that Bertram had not fully understood how Uber's systems worked. "The individuals involved... I think would have [had] an insufficient understanding of exactly how the system behaved," he said, in a visibly nervous showing in the witness box.

Uber's execs distanced themselves from a company culture created by Travis Kalanick — despite working under his leadership

Elvidge and another Uber UK executive, head of cities Fred Jones, sought to recast Uber's UK arm as a reformed company and one that had matured since Kalanick.

"I think the company had got to a place where perhaps it was easier to not always give as much information, and that absolutely got to a point where it had to change... It was really clear that the corporate culture that had been developed under the previous leadership needed to change," Elvidge said.

Chamberlain responded: "That's Travis Kalanick." He went on to explain that Kalanick had left Uber on a leave of absence last summer, and that Khosrowshahi was appointed as his successor last August.

He asked whether Kalanick was still involved with Uber, with Elvidge confirming that the former chief executive still had a seat on the board and remained a shareholder.

Chamberlain questioned whether it was possible that a culture that had developed under Kalanick over five years could credibly change in nine months. He also pointed out that several British staffers who had worked in that culture were still there, specifically Elvidge himself, Fred Jones, and European policy chief Andrew Byrne, among others.

"[It's] the same individuals running a company that nine months ago we accept is not 'fit and proper,'" Chamberlain said. Elvidge could only respond that he and others were "in different positions."

"While it is true I have been at Uber for nearly four years now, I do believe that the approach we’re taking, [the] changes we’ve mentioned... are fundamentally different," he said.

Another awkward admission came from Fred Jones, who apologised for the defensive way Uber first responded to TfL's licencing decision last September.

Jones had appeared on Sky News the day that TfL had decided not to renew Uber's licence, and accused TfL of "caving" to a small number of critics. In court, Jones said that response was "wrong, and I apologise unreservedly for it."

It's one of many apologies Uber is having to make as it tries to prove it's changed — and ultimately the company will have to convince chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot.

Arbuthnot won't necessarily be easy to persuade. In her opening remarks, she said she would be looking at "the people in charge" of Uber when it was considered not fit and proper to hold a London licence.

"If they were still around and about I'd feel rather uncomfortable," she said.

The hearing continues.

SEE ALSO: Uber begins the fight to keep its London license on Monday, and it's a battle that could define the company

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• Uber has won back its London license after a two-day court battle.
• But Uber isn't out of the woods: The license lasts only 15 months, and Uber has to meet conditions from London's regulator.
• Despite making a decision favorable to Uber, Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot was critical of the company.
• In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court she said Uber thought it was "above the law."
• Uber said it deserved to lose its license last year but argued it had made lots of changes in the past nine months.

Uber has won back its London license after a two-day court battle with the capital's regulator.

The win is a boost for the company's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Much of Uber's case rested on convincing the court that it was past the bad-boy days of its former CEO Travis Kalanick and ready to reform.

Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot granted Uber a 15-month license to operate on the condition that the firm undergoes an independently verified audit every six months.

Transport for London, the capital's regulator, will then decide whether to renew Uber's license again.

Uber has also agreed to several other conditions from TfL. These include reporting all serious safety complaints, training existing and new Uber drivers on car-sharing safety, and informing TfL of any major data breaches.

TfL had complained last year about the company's approach to reporting serious driver offenses. Its record on driver medical and safety checks, and the use of its secret "Greyball" software to dodge transport officials, also contributed to the decision.

"We are pleased with today's decision," an Uber spokesman said. "We will continue to work with TfL to address their concerns and earn their trust, while providing the best possible service for our customers."

Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said the court had "vindicated" TfL's original decision not to renew Uber's license in September. "Uber has been put on probation — their 15-month license has a clear set of conditions that TfL will thoroughly monitor and enforce," he said in a statement.

Judge: Uber 'thought they were above the law'

Despite Uber's victory, both TfL and Arbuthnot landed some solid punches.

At one point during the proceedings on Tuesday, Arbuthnot said she had the impression that Uber "thought they were above the law."

And TfL's interim head of licensing, Helen Chapman, described a tough relationship with Uber. "We've had five years of a very difficult relationship where Uber has felt that they haven't required regulation and being regulated in the same way as everyone else we regulate," she told the court on Tuesday.

She added that there were some serious cases in which Uber had not taken complaints about drivers seriously enough, though she didn't go into detail.

"Frankly some of the cases I've seen are quite appalling when they haven't taken any action," she said, adding that some "that have been raised are very disturbing."

Chapman added that while Uber had now reviewed complaints about drivers, "public safety has been compromised" in the meantime.

Uber said it fundamentally changed as a business since September

Uber maintained an apologetic tone throughout the two days, saying it probably deserved to lose its license because of the mistakes and corporate culture created under the previous CEO Kalanick.

Executives including the company's UK board chairwoman, Laurel Powers-Freeling; UK head of cities, Fred Jones; and UK and Ireland chief, Tom Elvidge, took the stand.

Those executives acknowledged that Uber had not been fully transparent with regulators and that the information it had provided them in the past had been inadequate and even misleading. But its lawyer Thomas de la Mare argued that Uber had made "wholesale change in the way that we conduct our business."

The firm pointed to its agreement with the Metropolitan Police to report serious crime, agreements with Uber's US parent firm to keep regulators in the loop about major product changes or issues, and the appointment of nonexecutive directors to its UK board.

SEE ALSO: Travis Kalanick's toxic leadership loomed large over Uber in a tense London court battle

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• Uber and Google have settled a high-profile legal battle over self-driving-car trade secrets.
• As part of the settlement, Waymo, the self-driving-car unit owned by Google's parent company, will receive $245 million of equity in Uber.
• The settlement comes days before Alphabet CEO Larry Page was scheduled to testify in open court.

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber and Waymo have settled their high-stakes legal battle over self-driving-car technology, with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo $245 million in equity.

On Friday morning, as the first week of testimony in the explosive trial was drawing to a close, the two companies announced a surprise settlement over allegations that Uber misappropriated trade secrets of Waymo, the self-driving-car unit owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.

Uber will pay Waymo a package that includes 0.34% of Uber equity pegged to a $72 billion valuation for the ride-hailing company, according to a person familiar with the settlement. That equals about $245 million.

In a statement posted online, Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said he wanted to "express regret for the actions" that led to the lawsuit.

"We agree that Uber's acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently," he wrote, referring to the self-driving-technology company Uber purchased in 2016.

Khosrowshahi also said Uber was committed to ensuring the self-driving-car hardware it develops "represents just our good work" and does not include any intellectual property from Waymo.

The closely watched trial, which started earlier this week, had already seen testimony from Travis Kalanick, the Uber CEO who was ousted last year.

At issue in the case was Uber's purchase of Otto, founded by Anthony Levandowski, a former senior engineering manager at Google who's an expert in self-driving cars. Waymo accused him of taking gigabytes of files from Google when he left the company — including schematics and designs for self-driving-car hardware — that Uber intended to use for its self-driving-car program.

The dispute led to explosive headlines over the past year about the accusations against Uber and sparked debate about the appropriateness of the Silicon Valley ethos of "move fast and break things" epitomized — though not coined — by the ride-hailing firm.

'Greed is good'

The drama and revelations leading up to the trial — a Hollywood-perfect storyline pitting two tech behemoths against each other — had created such a stir that William Alsup, the federal judge in San Francisco overseeing the case, had to reiterate that it was still, at its heart, a dispute over intellectual property.

"The central issues in this case remains whether or not Uber misappropriated Waymo's trade secrets, not whether Uber is an evil corporation," he said in one pretrial hearing.

The trial veered from the serious to the surreal, with a key moment coming when Kalanick took the stand.

Journalists had lined up hours in advance to hear his testimony, in which the former CEO was pressed on his confidential communications with Levandowski, including cryptic messages telling the Google employee to "burn the village." In the trial's surreal high-water mark, a clip of the legendary "greed is good" speech from the 1987 film "Wall Street" was played for the jury and the public.

Each side had 16 hours to present its case, starting with the plaintiff, Waymo, which was drawing toward the end of its argument.

The settlement means the court will not hear from several high-profile witnesses, including Larry Page, the CEO of Alphabet who founded Google, and Levandowski, who was expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Here are the announcements from Uber and Waymo:

The full blog post from Khosrowshahi:

"My job as Uber's CEO is to set the course for the future of the company: innovating and growing responsibly, as well as acknowledging and correcting mistakes of the past. In doing so, I want to express regret for the actions that have caused me to write this letter.

"To our friends at Alphabet: we are partners, you are an important investor in Uber, and we share a deep belief in the power of technology to change people's lives for the better. Of course, we are also competitors. And while we won't agree on everything going forward, we agree that Uber's acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently.

"To our employees, in particular the great and talented people of Uber's Advanced Technologies Group: I am inspired by your passion and commitment to bringing self-driving vehicles to life. Over the last year, you've been distracted from your mission. For that I am sorry.

"There is no question that self-driving technology is crucial to the future of transportation—a future in which Uber intends to play an important role. Through that lens, the acquisition of Otto made good business sense.

"But the prospect that a couple of Waymo employees may have inappropriately solicited others to join Otto, and that they may have potentially left with Google files in their possession, in retrospect, raised some hard questions.

"To be clear, while we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo's proprietary information in its self-driving technology, we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work.

"While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it, and it will inform our actions going forward. I've told Alphabet that the incredible people at Uber ATG are focused on ensuring that our development represents the very best of Uber's innovation and experience in self-driving technology.

"As we change the way we operate and put integrity at the core of every decision we make, we look forward to the great race to build the future. We believe that race should be fair — and one whose ultimate winners are people, cities and our environment."

Here's Waymo's statement, provided by a representative:

"We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo's intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software. We have always believed competition should be fueled by innovation in the labs and on the roads and we look forward to bringing fully self-driving cars to the world."

In a statement provided by a spokesperson, Travis Kalanick said that Uber would have won the overall case.

Kalanick's full statement:

“As Uber’s statement indicates, no trade secrets ever came to Uber. Our sole objective was to hire the most talented scientists and engineers to help lead the company and our cities to a driverless future. The evidence at trial overwhelmingly proved that, and had the trial proceeded to its conclusion, it is clear Uber would have prevailed,” he said.

“I remain proud of the critically important contributions Uber ATG has made to the company’s future, and I look forward to their inspired efforts becoming a reality on the roads in cities around the world.”

SEE ALSO: A complete guide to the weird and wacky tech-bro slang used by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

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• Uber and Waymo have settled their epic legal battle over self-driving car tech.
• It was like a Hollywood drama, often veering from the deadly serious to the ridiculous.
• Here are the craziest moments, from lawyers squabbling over Michael Douglas' performance in "Wall Street" to debate over a "pound of flesh."

Uber and Waymo have reached a settlement in their Hollywood-worthy legal battle over self-driving car technology.

Uber, accused of stealing trade secrets from Google sister company Alphabet, agreed to pay $245 million worth of equity on Friday — abruptly halting the proceedings that had been scheduled to go on for at least another week.

The stakes were high, with Waymo initially seeking as much as $1.8 billion in damages. But over the four days of the trial before the settlement, matters veered wildly from the serious to the surreal.

One moment, presiding judge William Alsup was outlining trade secret law to the jurors; the next, lawyers were bickering over whether they could show the legendary "greed is good" scene from the Michael Dogulas film "Wall Street" in court, or debating the philosophical nature of "cheat codes" with ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

The case revolved around Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer, later with Waymo, who left to form a self-driving car startup called Ottomotto that was subsequently acquired by Uber. Levandowski was accused of purloining Waymo's trade secrets, but the settlement meant he never had a chance to take the stand, where he had been expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In fact, the alleged trade secrets weren't even discussed all that much before the proceedings were halted. The majority of the case was held open to the public, with the focus more on allegations of conspiracy between Kalanick and Levandowski than the technical details of the LiDAR self-driving car sensors at issue in the case.

Here are nine of the weirdest and most unusual moments in the dramatic legal battle — along with some of the key points in the transcripts.

SEE ALSO: A complete guide to the weird and wacky tech-bro slang used by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

1. The judge slammed Uber and Waymo's lawyers for taking up too much room.

Judge Alsup, who presided over the case, is famous for his quips and take-no-prisoners approach, and this case was no different.

Within minutes of the trial beginning, he was chastising both sides' legal teams for taking up too much space — leaving little room for the public.

"This is unconscionable that the law firms would take up this much space," he chided.

2. Travis Kalanick wanted a "pound of flesh."

On Tuesday, Travis Kalanick first took the stand — and his use of unusual idioms and lingo came under heavy scrutiny.

One of the most cryptic was a note saying that he wanted a "pound of flesh" from the Otto team. And while he claimed not to remember saying it, he did admit he uses the Shakespearean phrase from time to time.

3. "Laser is the sauce."

Later in the day, a phrase came up that has spawned multiple memes: "Laser is the sauce."

Written on a whiteboard by Kalanick, the phrase perfectly encapsulated both the futuristic nature of the issues at stake, as well as the absurdity of much of the proceedings. 

It came up during the questioning of Kalanick by Waymo's lawyers. To those lawyers, it was yet another piece of evidence of the importance of lasers and lidar technology to Uber — that they are the "secret sauce" that underpins self-driving cars, and critical to their success. 

VERHOEVEN: And then under Item 3 on the board, read what it says.

KALANICK: "Laser is the sauce."

VERHOEVEN: So during this jam session, you discussed the fact that laser is the sauce; correct?

KALANICK: Yes. I think it was probably a description of our sesh, yes.

VERHOEVEN: And what that meant is that lasers are the sauce to make autonomous vehicles work; right?

KALANICK: It's close. I would say it's an important part of making autonomous work. It doesn't work without it.

 ...

VERHOEVEN: If you want to make an autonomous vehicle, you must have a viable way to get lasers at scale; isn't that true?

KALANICK: That is correct.

VERHOEVEN: And Uber didn't have that sauce prior to the Ottomotto acquisition, did it?

KALANICK: That's correct.

• Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company's $245 settlement with Waymo was "well worthwhile."
• The case put a "pretty significant question mark" over the work of Uber's employees, he said, and the firm wanted to put the case behind it.
• Khosrowshahi joined the company five months ago, and is trying to right the ship after a string of scandals.

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the embattled transportation firm's $245 million settlement with Waymo was "well worthwhile" in his first major public appearance since the case ended last week.

The technology executive, speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco, California, addressed the ugly legal battle over self-driving car technology and other subjects during a wide-ranging on-stage interview.

Since being appointed five months ago after previous CEO Travis Kalanick departed following a string of scandals, Khosrowshahi said one of his key priorities was "removing distractions."

"I think the Waymo settlement to some extent was a part of that. Hey, let's get this stuff away, let's start executing as a business, because I think as an execution machine we have good people and we have good products."

Waymo, a self-driving car company owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, had accused Uber of stealing purported trade secrets relating to autonomous vehicle technology. The trial and its run-up was an ugly affair, further battering Uber's self-image as it wrestled with the fallout from numerous scandals, including allegations of workplace sexism and a string of executive departures.

A week into the trial, Uber agreed to pay Waymo $245 million in equity to settle the case. It did not admit wrongdoing, though the chief executive in a statement expressed "regret" and said the events that led to the trial "should have been handled differently."

Speaking at Wednesday's conference, Khosrowshahi framed the settlement as a necessary step in Uber achieving closure and moving past historic mistakes. 

"It was a very, very significant distraction for the teams that were working on our autonomous technology, and I'd say it was not only a distraction but it was a personal affront," he said.

"These are scientists who have cars and transportation and autonomy in their blood, many of them have dedicated their entire professional career on this quest, and it's gone from ... a crazy dream to something that's going to get real."

He added: "I think that this was a distraction and it also put their really good work under a question mark, and a pretty significant question mark."

The $245 million settlement's role in putting the case behind Uber and "normalizing relationships with Alphabet, Google" made it "well worthwhile," he said.

The executive, who was previously CEO of Expedia, also talked more broadly about his efforts to right the ship at Uber: "It looked messy and it was messy."

SEE ALSO: The 9 most ridiculous moments from Uber’s $245 million legal battle with Waymo

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NOW WATCH: What would happen if America's Internet went down

• Uber bought half of the seats to the London premiere of "Brilliant Jerks," a play inspired by the car-ride startup.
• "Brilliant Jerks" is said to have been inspired in part by the infamous blog post by former Uber employee Susan J. Fowler, alleging a toxic and sexist culture at the company. Fowler's blog set off a chain of events ultimately leading to the resignation of Travis Kalanick as CEO.
• The ride-hailing app's social team booked the tickets, saying they regularly organize theater trips and that it would be "fun to see the production."

Uber booked more than half of the seats available for the London premiere of "Brilliant Jerks," a satirical play inspired by the car-ride startup's numerous scandals, and featuring a character similar to former CEO Travis Kalanick. 

The company purchased 50 of 90 available seats for the show's opening night at London's Vault theater, as originally reported by the Financial Times. 

The Financial Times reports that the play was inspired in part by the now-infamous blog post by Susan J. Fowler on Uber's toxic and sexist work culture, setting off a chain of events that ultimately led Kalanick to resign as chief executive of the company he cofounded. 

According to the Vault's website, "Brilliant Jerks tells the story of three people – a driver, a coder, and a CEO – working for one tech monolith, but living worlds apart." One of the lead characters of the play is Tyler Janowski, the former CEO of a fictional ride-hailing startup, who's trying “to figure out where it all went wrong."

In a statement to Business Insider, an Uber spokesperson says this is just a company bonding activity like any other:

"Our staff social team regularly organise nights out and activities from table tennis tournaments to theatre trips. After seeing shows like 'Wicked,' 'An American in Paris' and 'Romeo & Juliet' the social team thought it would be fun to see this new production - especially as the tickets were on a buy one get one free offer!"

SEE ALSO: Uber booked $2.2 billion in sales last quarter — but it still took a $1.1 billion loss

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NOW WATCH: Uber created a fake 'city' to test out its self-driving cars

Uber's embattled cofounder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick has found his next gig. 

Kalanick, who sat at the helm of the ride-hailing app until getting pushed on in June, announced a new venture capital fund on Wednesday called "10100."

The fund will be directly overseen by Kalanick and will focus on the theme of "large scale job creation," he said in a blog post. He noted that investments will be in both profit and non-profit projects.

It's a big announcement for Kalanick, whose casual management style and lingo have come to epitomize irreverence in Silicon Valley's startup culture. 

While Kalanick left Uber under a cloud of controversy, he nonetheless managed to build Uber into a $69 billion powerhouse, the world's largest privately held tech company. It's likely that 10100 is at least partially funded by the $1.4 billion Kalanick reportedly made selling part of his stake in Uber. 

Here's Kalanick's full statement:

Over the past few months I’ve started thinking about what’s next. I’ve begun making investments,  joining boards, working with entrepreneurs and non-profits. Today I’m announcing the creation of a fund called 10100 (pronounced ‘ten-one-hundred’), home to my passions, investments, ideas and big bets. It will be overseeing my for-profit investments as well as my non-profit work.

The overarching theme will be about large-scale job creation, with investments in real estate, commerce, and emerging innovation in China and India. Our non-profit efforts will initially focus on education and the future of cities.

For anyone who wants to get to work, email me at travis@10100fund.com

SEE ALSO: 40 of the biggest scandals in Uber's history

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Google's auto-complete features gives you a drop-down menu of suggestions based on the most popular queries related to whatever you're searching.

If you start searching for a story about a tech CEO, for example, Google auto-complete might show you that other users are searching about this person's marriage, kids, salary, and net worth. All of this processing happens in just milliseconds.

Google's algorithm usually takes your search habits into consideration, but if your browsing history is cleared and you're using an incognito window, you'll see auto-complete results that are pretty reflective of what the general population is curious about.

And so, we thought it would be fun to highlight the sorts of auto-complete results you'll get if you search for some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. This isn't at all scientific in any way, but here's what Google came up with nevertheless (in alphabetical order):

Angela Ahrendts, Apple SVP of retail

Most interesting search: Angela Ahrendts TEDx Talk. Ahrendts did a TEDx Talk, a short presentation by an engaging speaker invited by the nonprofit TED as part of a series of presentations, in which she talked about The Power of Human Energy. 

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder

Most interesting search: Bill Gates house. Xanadu 2.0, named after the fictional home in "Citizen Kane," is a $63 million mansion in Medina, Washington. Gates filled it with high-tech details like an underwater music system in his pool. 

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO

Most interesting search: email address and Uber email. People seem to be pretty keen to contact him; he's the only person on this list with "email address" in his autocomplete options, and has "Uber email" in there too. 

• Uber's spectacular meltdown in 2017, full of executive departures, is well-documented.
• Business Insider has the inside story of how and why several key people in former CEO Travis Kalanick's brain trust really left.
• Read the full story: THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and million-dollar exit packages

Rachel Whetstone's seemingly abrupt departure from Uber in April 2017 did not go unnoticed. 

Whetstone, after all, was the embattled ride-sharing company's head of policy and communications. And Uber was in the center of the worst storm of bad press anyone in the business could remember.

But while her exit caught outside observers by surprise, it didn't come completely out of the blue. 

Before Uber, Whetstone had served for years as head of public policy and communications at Google. Those years had made her rich, and when she arrived at the ride-hailing company, she wasn't under the spell of potential wealth, which drove other top players at Uber.

"That made her feel like she could speak truth to power with [then-Uber CEO] Travis," a former executive said. "She wasn’t part of the group of yes-men who would never disagree with him."

Over time, Whetstone had become disillusioned with Uber. In her role as a powerful woman in the company, she was someone who many troubled employees and other insiders felt comfortable venting to. As these people shared negative stories with her, Whetstone began to see Uber differently. She became angry.

She saw a company that needed to grow up, but that under CEO Travis Kalanick, wouldn't.

As Whetstone became increasingly frustrated with Uber, she developed a reputation with some as being difficult to work with, becoming easily upset. She would threatened to quit, but would then cool down and change her mind. Or Kalanick talked her down and encouraged her to stay. 

Kalanick indulged her at first, feeling she was a good resource for the company. But over time, he felt, she had become too much drama to deal with.

"She had this distaste for the company, starting with Travis," one person said, adding, "Rachel hated the company, but was there punishing the company for making her be there."

The time Kalanick accepted Whetstone's resignation

The situation came to a head after a damning article about Uber was published in the tech news site The Information.

The article described how a group of Uber executives — including Kalanick, his then girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth, and business head Emil Michael — visited a South Korean karaoke bar in 2014. That bar turned out to be more like an escort service, featuring women with numbers taped on them. 

Before Holzwarth talked to The Information, she reached out to Whetstone and told her that she had received a call from Michael. Holzwarth and Michael had been close friends when she dated Kalanick. Michael warned her that the press might start digging into the Korea incident. Holzwarth told Whetstone that she felt as if Michael was threatening her not to talk.

When the story came out, it included a reference to that phone call and portrayed Whetstone as being sympathetic to Holzwarth and asking her if anyone from Uber had expensed the night in the karaoke bar. The story also said that Whetstone had reported the call to the legal team, which turned the information over to Holder’s investigators, citing someone "with direct knowledge of the matter."

Kalanick was not pleased. As his head of PR, he felt Whetstone was supposed to be defending the company from stories like these, not be part of them.

Not only was Whetstone doing a poor job of defending the company, Kalanick's inner circle believed, she was riling other employees and stirring up gossip. Kalanick talked to her about these concerns. The subtext was alarming: the implication that she was somehow the source of the negative leaks to the press.

Such intimations were both insulting and potentially career-ruining. A PR person found to be leaking would almost definitely never work again.

In early April, Whetstone quit. The next day, she changed her mind and said she'd like to stay.

This time, however, Kalanick accepted her resignation. Over dinner, they amicably negotiated an exit package involving millions of dollars' worth of stock that vested over time and agreed on a face-saving explanation that kept Whetstone on as a consultant.

On April 11, her resignation was announced and Kalanick publicly praised her as she left, calling her "a force of nature, an extraordinary talent and an amazing player-coach who has built a first-class organization."

Click here to read the full BI PRIME article — THE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and million-dollar exit packages

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