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Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are joining Trump's economic advisory team

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick, the chief executives of Tesla and Uber, are joining US President-elect Donald Trump's new economic advisory board.

The two tech-transportation executives have been named as members of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, it was announced on Wednesday, alongside PepsiCo chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi.

Launched in early December, the forum will provide economic advice and will "be called upon to meet with the president frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the president implements his plan to bring back jobs and Make America Great Again," the initial announcement said.

It is being headed up by the CEO of Blackstone, Steve Schwarzman.

The American technology industry was overwhelmingly opposed to Trump before the election, with particular concerns around his anti-immigration rhetoric — Silicon Valley is heavily reliant on immigrant workers. But following Trump's shock election victory, the industry is tentatively exploring how it can work with Trump.

Top-tier tech executives were scheduled to meet with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday, with attendees including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google's parent company, Alphabet, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

During the election, Musk, who in addition to the electric-car company Tesla is CEO of the aerospace firm SpaceX, supported Hillary Clinton and was critical of Trump, saying, "I think a bit strongly that [he] is probably not the right guy" to be president. Kalanick, the CEO of the ride-hailing company Uber, has also joked about the Republican president-elect, saying in 2015: "Oh my god, Donald Trump's gonna win. I'm going to move to China if Donald Trump wins." 

Musk, Kalanick, and PepsiCo's Nooyi will be joining General Motors CEO Mary Barra, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and others on the team.

Travis Kalanick

Here's the previous list of members, not including the newest three:

  • Stephen Schwarzman (forum chairman), chairman, CEO, and cofounder of Blackstone
  • Paul Atkins, CEO of Patomak Global Partners, former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission
  • Mary Barra, chairwoman and CEO, General Motors
  • Toby Cosgrove, CEO, Cleveland Clinic
  • Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
  • Larry Fink, chairman and CEO, BlackRock
  • Bob Iger, chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company
  • Rich Lesser, president and CEO, Boston Consulting Group
  • Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
  • Jim McNerney, former chairman, president, and CEO of Boeing
  • Adebayo "Bayo" Ogunlesi, chairman and managing partner, Global Infrastructure Partners
  • Ginni Rometty, chairwoman, president, and CEO of IBM
  • Kevin Warsh, Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in economics at the Hoover Institute, former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  • Mark Weinberger, global chairman and CEO, EY
  • Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO, General Electric
  • Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize winner, vice chairman of IHS Markit

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NOW WATCH: Here’s the $5.3 million mansion the Obamas will live in after the White House


Uber did everything right in Pittsburgh with its self-driving cars — but is doing everything wrong in San Francisco (TSLA)

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San Francisco Uber self-driving

The arrival of a fleet of self-driving Uber vehicles in Pittsburgh earlier this year was the biggest transportation story of 2016.

Just like that, Uber went from being a replacement for taxis in big cities to offering a compelling vision of how autonomous cars would navigate their most difficult environment: the unpredictable urban landscape.

You could almost hear the auto industry's collective jaw drop.

Rather than build on that radically uplifting success, however, Uber has reverted to its old, tried-and-true way of advancing its business: playing chicken with the regulations and laws of cities, states, and even entire countries.

The company rolled out a more advanced iteration of its Pittsburgh self-driving cars in San Francisco this week. Unlike the Ford Fusions we saw on the streets of Steeltown, which had elaborate self-driving rigs strapped to their roofs, the San Francisco XC90 SUVs are the result of collaboration with Volvo to more fully integrate Uber's self-driving tech with the vehicle.

This is an important evolution because it can be difficult to get autonomous technologies to work as a bolt-on; what succeeds with one type of vehicle may not with another.

But Uber didn't follow the rules of the California DMV and obtain a permit to test the self-driving vehicles on California's roads. The company claimed that the vehicles weren't fully autonomous, but that doesn't jibe with what we observed in Pittsburgh, where the fleet operated in full self-driving mode much of the time.

uber self-driving car

Perfection in Pittsburgh

Uber really managed its Pittsburgh rollout to perfection, establishing a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and lending valuable Silicon Valley support to an old-economy metropolis that has been aggressively rebranding itself as an East Coast tech center.

Contrast that with this fallback to Uber's well-worn, luck-pushing approach to expanding its business, now in its own backyard: move fast and break things, to borrow the adage from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Of course, in this case, the things that could broken go beyond state laws; they could include other cars, not to mention people.

In doing this, Uber has also placed Volvo in an awkward position. The California DMV has issued self-driving testing permits to numerous automakers, large and small, including Volkswagen, General Motors and its Cruise autonomous-driving unit, Honda, Ford, Tesla, and Google. But not to Volvo.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick speaks to students during an interaction at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Mumbai, India, January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Volvo didn't immediately comment or clarify of its role in the California DMV's demand that Uber cease testing its technology in the state.

Uber's self-driving debut in Pittsburgh was an encouraging sign that the startup, now valued north of $60 billion, was starting to mature. Almost overnight, it became a leader in a vision of the future that united the two main threads in the developing "transportation of tomorrow" narrative: ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles.

By making this advance, Uber leapfrogged Tesla, whose focus on electric cars makes it part of the last exciting story in transportation tech. Yes, Tesla has its own Autopilot system. But it lacks Uber's vast user scale and hasn't yet revealed its own functional play in the shared-mobility space.

In San Francisco, we see the old, childish Uber on vivid display. CEO Travis Kalanick is a zero-sum, win-at-all-costs, end-justifies-the-means businessman. In Pittsburgh, we got a glimpse of a vision that could rival Tesla CEO Elon Musk's. In the Bay Area, we now see the reversion to form.

Taking ownership of the self-driving story

Implicitly, the tech industry has taken on the stewardship of our self-driving future. Tesla, Google, and Uber are the key companies. Each has a different take on how autonomous cars will operate and how we'll relate to them. Pointedly, Tesla and Google, both established firms, are playing by the rules. Uber, the upstart, isn't.

The traditional auto industry isn't standing idle. All the major carmakers are exploring their own autonomous technologies, but all are also being scrupulous about testing their tech in the wild, preferring to gradually improve existing advanced cruise-control systems.

The tech industry will point to this as evidence of the traditional auto industry's irrelevance: its fixation on something as trivial as safety is so 20th century. But in the world's capitals of automaking, the engineers who built vehicles are well aware of how much damage they can do because they routinely crash 2-ton machines moving at high speed into walls.

But what are the laws of physics in the face of Uber's ambitions? It's unfortunate that the lessons of Pittsburgh didn't carry over to San Francisco.

SEE ALSO: Human drivers could be soon be illegal in America

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NOW WATCH: We took a ride in Uber’s new self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco — here's what it was like

Uber lost $800 million in the third quarter

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Travis Kalanick

Uber has notched yet another quarter of staggering losses.

That's according to a new story out from The Information's Amir Efrati, who reports that the ride-hailing company lost more than $800 million in the third quarter of this year. Those losses, which follow a reported $1.27 billion in the first half of the year, put Uber on track to lose $2.8 billion in 2016, according to The Information's calculation.

While the millions in losses look bad on the surface for Uber — which was most recently valued at $68 billion — those losses are growing more slowly than they used to.

The Information reports that in Q3, Uber's losses increased only 25% from a year ago. That's a slowdown from 35% in the second quarter vs. a year ago. 

The slower-growing losses are likely the result of it selling Uber China to Didi Chuxing for $35 billion in August. Uber was waging an expensive and protracted battle in China, losing $1 billion a year trying to beat its local rival. 

The Information dives deeper into Uber's finances and how it's faring against competitors in both the US and abroad, so head over to their website for more. 

SEE ALSO: Uber lost a whopping $1.27 billion in the first half of 2016

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RANKED: The biggest car stories of 2016

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Ford Super Duty

The year 2016 might have been the most lively and interesting I've ever experienced and I've been covering the auto industry for over a decade. 

From General Motors to Uber and Tesla to Donald Trump, the stories came fast and furious.

It was hard, at times, to keep up. 

But we pulled it off. Here are the ten biggest car stories of 2016:

SEE ALSO: Tesla's biggest moments of 2016

10. The booming US auto market.

In 2015, US auto sales set a new record when 17.5 million new cars and trucks rolled off dealer lots. The industry had decisively recovered from the dark days of the financial crisis, a period when the sales pace fell at one point below 10 million, an apocalyptic situation. 

The numbers aren't in yet for 2016, but the sales pace has been as strong as it was in 2015. Still, though, there's been much discussion and debate in the industry about whether the market has plateaued at a "historically high level," as Ford CEO mark Fields has put it. Regardless, 2016 could see the 2015 sales record broken.

This is a boom, no doubt about it. It's also a profitable boom, as automakers in the US sell a lot of pickup trucks and SUVs, amid relatively low gas prices. 



9. Risky new trends in auto lending.

With a booming sales market comes booming credit: the vast majority of new vehicles are financed. 

In the past, loans were structured to run five years before the car or truck was paid off. But after the financial crisis, some lenders got aggressive about capturing subprime borrowers, people with damaged credit who still needed a vehicle.

Lenders also began to stretch out loan terms in order to create an appealing monthly payment number and enabled a borrower to get into a more expensive car or truck. 

However, this now means that some borrowers will be "underwater" or in a negative-equity position with their car loan. This has raised some alarms about lending practices. In 2017, the lending story is likely to get more intense, as the plateaued market compels automakers to maintain their slice of the sales pie.



8. Fiat Chrysler ends passenger-car production in the US.

Because profits are so much higher for pickups and SUVs — and because that's what US consumer want to buy — automakers are shifting their production mix to favor those vehicles. 

FCA took the plunge in 2016 to end all passenger car production in the US, moving it to Mexico to free up factory capacity to build more trucks.

FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne has been bold in his statements about this decision and the underlying market trend. He has said that a structural shift is happening and that passenger cars will never come back in the US, even if gas prices spike.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Uber is doing everything wrong with its self-driving cars in San Francisco

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick speaks to students during an interaction at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Mumbai, India, January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By rolling out a small fleet of self-driving vehicles in San Francisco without first getting a permit from the California DMV, Uber reverted to an old habit and played chicken with regulators.

It lost decisively on Wednesday when California yanked the registrations on the vehicles, forcing Uber to pull them off the road.

Rather than simply concede defeat on this one and do what every other automaker testing or planning to test autonomous technologies in California has done in applying for a permit and ponying up the pro forma $150 fee, Uber declared that it would seek a legislative solution. 

"Uber suggested Wednesday it would try to shape future regulation instead of filing the paperwork,"Bloomberg's Eric Newcomer reported

"'We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules,'" Newcomer added, citing an Uber statement that was also provided to Business Insider.

That's an astonishing move by the company. First flout the law, then when the law comes back at you hard, declare that you intend to change it rather than abide by it. And double-down by implying that the rules everyone else is peacefully abiding by aren't workable.

The contrast between how badly Uber botched the rollout of its California fleet could not be more vivid with how it triumphantly — and legally— introduced its advance self-driving systems in Pittsburgh earlier this year. To make matters worse, the startup, valued at over $60 billion, drew its automaking partner, Volvo, into the mess.

The autonomous vehicles in San Francisco were Volvo XC90 SUVs, while the cars in Pittsburgh were Ford Fusion sedans.

"Volvo's roll in this project is to provide engineering collaboration and support on the vehicles," a Volvo spokesperson told Business Insider.

"Uber is conducting the test and is responsible for where the pilots take place. As a result, we do not have any insight into Uber's interaction with state agencies or the requirements to run pilots where they've chosen."

Uber volvo xc90

Silicon Valley has for a long time pushed its luck with cherished legalities. Microsoft ran afoul of antitrust laws, and more recently, Facebook has been anything but conscientious when it comes to the privacy of its users. 

But Uber has taken matters to a new level. The ins-and-outs of who owns a status update and how much user data can be shared with marketers is one thing; putting thousands of pounds of metal on the road and letting it drive itself is another.

Uber has developed a compelling ride-hailing platform and with its Pittsburgh experiment, the company has changed how we think about our autonomous transportation future, almost overnight. But CEO Travis Kalanick's startup also deals, more than any other gamechanger, in the world of things.

Those things can hit 100 mph without breaking a sweat and when they collide with each other, the results can be fatal for anyone inside. Anyone outside barely stands a change. It's simple physics.

That's exactly why there are laws around what cars can and can't do. Self-driving is a brave new world, so lawmakers and regulators are playing catch-up. Uber clearly doesn't like this. 

But we wouldn't allow a 16-year-old behind the wheel without first demanding some testing and training. Computers might ultimately be able to drive better than people, but until the early results are in, the pioneers in this important area should play scrupulously by the rules.

SEE ALSO: Uber did everything right in Pittsburgh with its self-driving cars — but is doing everything wrong in San Francisco

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We took a ride in Uber’s new self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco — here's what it was like

How Uber embarrassed Volvo in California

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Uber self-driving Volvo SUV

Like a sullen child who has been told that if he doesn't play by the rules, he'll have to sit out of the game, Uber has petulantly packed up its toys and left its own backyard playground of San Francisco.

After the California DMV yanked the registrations on a small fleet of self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs when Uber refused to file for a $150 self-driving permit, the company loaded its vehicles on a flatbed semi and reportedly set the GPS for Arizona, where the governor has said Uber is welcome to test out its cars free and clear of the laws of the Golden State.

This is appalling behavior from a reckless startup that got everything right in Pittsburgh when it rolled out its self-driving program earlier this year.

In San Francisco, CEO Travis Kalanick is doing everything wrong.

In Pittsburgh, Uber strapped its complicated self-driving rig to the roof of Ford Fusions. Because the experiment had initially been teased by announcing a partnership with Volvo, an obvious early question was, "Where are the Swedish self-diving SUVs?"

It was an important question because for self-driving tech to work properly, it needs to be integrated with the vehicle. Volvo was going to use its XC90 platform — Business Insider's Car of the Year winner for 2015 — to support Uber's tech. With Volvo staging an impressive resurgence under the ownership of China's Geely, the co-branding opportunity was pure gold.

Until Uber turned it to lead.

über travis kalanick

Volvo has thus far been quite diplomatic about the dustup.

"Volvo's roll in this project is to provide engineering collaboration and support on the vehicles," a Volvo spokesperson told Business Insider. "Uber is conducting the test and is responsible for where the pilots take place. As a result, we do not have any insight into Uber's interaction with state agencies or the requirements to run pilots where they've chosen."

But let's be honest: Uber put a bunch of unpermitted Volvo-badged vehicles on the road in California — the nation's largest and most important auto market — then played chicken with the DMV until the DMV dropped the hammer. No automaker would do this, and no automaker has; the car companies that are testing autonomous vehicles in California have all complied with the requirement to obtain a permit.

Uber has a history of doing whatever it wants to do, flouting laws and civic norms in the interest of advancing its immense business. 

Volvo, on the other hand, has a brand that's built on safety. For decades, people bought Volvos because the carmaker's vehicles could save your life. Over the past two years, Volvo has taken the lead doing what is considered to be the new frontier for safety, packing its vehicles with sensors and systems to avoid ever getting into an accident.

Volvo City SafetyClearly, unleashing self-driving SUVs with Uber branding was both a risk and an opportunity for Volvo. The opportunity was that Volvo would leap to the forefront of the autonomous revolution, with its vehicles operating in real time and tapping into the world's premier ride-sharing customer base. The risk was that something horrible would happen — but that was a risk Volvo was willing to take.

The horrible thing that did happen wasn't what Volvo expected. Nobody was injured or killed. But Uber showed itself to be a toxically self-interested partner, willing to taint its own reputation while simultaneously embarrassing Volvo.

The takeaway from this is that Uber is tone-deaf. Because it's big, it thinks it can do as it pleases and force governments to play catch-up. 

Volvo is anything but tone-deaf. Its deal with Uber, once promising, has become a liability. I wouldn't be surprised if Volvo has built its last self-driving XC90 for Kalanick.

SEE ALSO: Uber is doing everything wrong with its self-driving cars in San Francisco

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Uber to pay $20 million to FTC to settle claims that it exaggerated how much drivers would make

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Travis Kalanick

Uber will pay $20 million and alter various business practices in order to settle claims brought by the FTC that the ride-hailing company mislead drivers on how much they would make driving for Uber. 

The FTC said Uber had "inflated" its hourly drivers' earnings in online advertisements to attract drivers to its platform. "However, once Drivers have begun to receive their paychecks, Drivers have discovered their actual earnings were substantially less than Uber claimed,"the FTC complaint says

For example, Uber advertised on Craigslist that drivers in Minneapolis could make $18 per hour and Boston drivers could make as much as $25 an hour. In both cases, fewer than 10% of Uber drivers in that city ever made the advertised hourly rate.

Uber FTC complaintThe FTC also claimed that Uber's vehicle solutions program, which helped drivers find vehicles to lease or own, advertised the "best financing options available." Yet, drivers who leased through the platform received worse rates than customers with the same credit score would typically obtain.

The FTC started investigating Uber in 2015 and announced its settlement on Thursday. In addition to paying $20 million, the company is barred from misrepresenting drivers' earnings and financing and lease terms for its vehicle leasing terms.

“Many consumers sign up to drive for Uber, but they shouldn’t be taken for a ride about their earnings potential or the cost of financing a car through Uber,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “This settlement will put millions of dollars back in Uber drivers’ pockets.”

While Uber is still advertising earnings in advertisements, the company has a team of economists making sure the numbers best reflect average driver earnings.

"We’re pleased to have reached an agreement with the FTC," Uber said in a statement. "We’ve made many improvements to the driver experience over the last year and will continue to focus on ensuring that Uber is the best option for anyone looking to earn money on their own schedule.”

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NOW WATCH: Watch this Uber driver go through 236 consecutive green lights in NYC without stopping

'I do not accept him as my leader' — Uber CTO's explosive anti-Trump email reveals growing internal tensions

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thuan pham uber

Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the chief technology officer of Uber rattled off an explosive email meant for a small group of employees that quickly spread like wildfire within the company, Business Insider has learned.

In the message, CTO Thuan Pham blasted Trump as a "deplorable person" and called his election a huge step backward — even comparing it to the rise of ruthless dictators such as Mao Zedong in China and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after the Vietnam War.

The email was being circulated internally among employees again in the past week, as Uber has come under fire for its link to the Trump administration. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was recently named as one of 19 executives who will advise President Trump on economic issues, joining Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Disney CEO Bob Iger.

The visceral reaction by a top executive at one of the world's most valuable private companies reflects Silicon Valley's ongoing struggle to come to terms with a president who is deeply unpopular within the industry. Even Uber, whose outspoken CEO and aggressive business tactics have long courted controversy, appears to be divided by a crisis of conscience within the ranks as some employees weigh the costs of being perceived as a pro-Trump shop.

Uber's ties to the Trump administration made headlines on Friday after protesters barricaded the doors of its San Francisco headquarters to denounce Uber's "collaboration" with Trump.

At the weekly Uber all-hands meeting on Tuesday, Kalanick addressed the Trump issue and the blowback it had created for the company. Kalanick pushed back against the criticisms, explaining that he was joining many other business leaders on Trump's council looking to create job opportunities and to improve urban mobility:

"The CEO of Disney, the CEO of IBM, the CEO of GM, the CEO of Uber, the CEO of Tesla, and maybe 15 other companies you've heard of ... We have a party — our political party is called the Urban Mobility Party. The shorthand is UMP. We're a coalition party; we'll partner with anyone in the world as long they're about making transportation in cities better, creating job opportunities, making it easier to get around, getting pollution out of the air and traffic off the streets. And so that's what this is about. It's about the leaders we have to work with around the world, not just here in the United States but everywhere. And being optimistic — asking can we make urban mobility better? But does it [the board/protests] make great headlines? Of course."

Still, employees are "pissed" that they are being connected to Trump, whose comments about immigrants and women have upset many people, one insider at the company said.

"Uber takes great pride in their diversity, and being connected to Trump paints a bad image about us," the person said. While Kalanick's association with Trump is an affront to some employees, for many others the worry is that the company is now viewed as being aligned with Trump — a reputation they believe is unjustified and does not reflect the opinions of employees and executives.

'I am embarrassed'

Uber protest

On Friday, when protesters chained themselves to Uber's front door, the company emailed its employees advising them to work from home but pointedly avoided commenting on the fact that Uber was being targeted because of its connection to Trump, calling it "an election-related, anti-Uber protest."

Uber responded publicly to the protest, saying it was looking forward to working with the new administration as it did the Obama administration: "As a company we're committed to working with government on issues that affect riders, drivers and the cities where we operate. Just as we worked with the Obama Administration, we'll work with the Trump Administration, too."

One employee who supported the national protests against Trump remains upset that the company is being viewed as pro-Trump and targeted as well. "I am embarrassed that my CEO's actions have caused people outside the company to view me as collaborating with this unreasonable administration," the employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because employees are not authorized to speak to the press. "I am not in a position to leave my job, but I'll be watchful for signs of direct collaboration."

Kalanick has yet to meet Trump, according to the company, despite being named to the president's 19-member Strategic and Policy Forum. When Trump held a summit with tech leaders in December, Kalanick kept his travel plans to go to India. Some view his appointment to the economic advisory council as a necessary step for the business.

"I think Uber is full of nonideological pragmatic capitalists who realize that autonomous vehicles will have enormous regulatory hurdles to overcome (some legitimate, some nostalgic)," a former employee said. "As such, working with Trump's administration is about securing the future and making sure that stupid laws aren't passed. Put another way, there's a lot of stupid and ignorant rules that can be put in place by crony protectionists, and Travis's involvement is a hedge against that possible outcome."

'I will not even utter the name of this deplorable person'

The company's ties to Trump remain an ongoing conversation. One employee said the subject had come up often in conversations with leaders, as it did again in Tuesday's all-hands meeting.

"Most people I know at work are deeply disturbed by what's going on with the US government, myself included," another employee said. "I'm proud of our company's efforts to support marriage equality and reduce racial discrimination. I believe that we'll do the right thing [with] the Trump administration as well. As much as we can anyway."

Despite the outward appearance of working with the administration on economic efforts, it's clear that there is still a shadow of the election hanging over the company.

Pham's missive, which was sent sometime after the November election to an internal Uber email list for LGBTQ employees that's estimated to have "hundreds" of subscribers, continues to circulate. It was also shared in an internal chat room. Though the note is proof that the company wasn't all in Trump's corner, one source at the company felt it was still inappropriate for an executive to spout off political beliefs.

"He is probably one of the most loved employees, and this was a lapse of judgment," the source said. "If you read up on Thuan, he is a refugee from Vietnam, so a lot of the rhetoric really hits home for him."

While Kalanick might have to keep close ties with the administration for the good of the company, Pham's email — and his pledge to never even utter Trump's name — is an example of a company's internal struggle to come to terms with this administration. Here is the message, which seems to have been in response to a previous email:

Likewise, I could hardly sleep at night. I am still shocked and numbed from the absolutely illogical outcomes of this election. When the election outcome certifies the dumbing down of America, the racist, divisive and hateful attitudes, the politics of obstruction and destruction, our country has taken a huge step backward that might take decades to course correct (especially when it comes to the make up of the Supreme Court justices and the issues that will come before them).

It is absolutely illogical and insane to believe that we can solve the hardest diplomatic, policy, and societal problems by putting in charge a person who doesn't know much about any such thing. How can we sleep peaceful at night for the next 4 years knowing that the biggest societal problems rests on his lack of intellectual curiosity, judgment and temperament? It is indeed terrifying! This is an emperor with no clothe [sic], and things will get very ugly before his reign is over.

We can weep at this momentary loss, but we cannot allow ourselves to wallow in misery for long. We need to call up our inner resolve to get back up and keep fighting for a better world. The fight will be hard and long, but we just have to do it. In two years, all the people who were conned into voting for this person will see the harm he will have done and there will be an opening to move the Senate toward the blue side to check his power. And then we'll have to work hard to make sure the next president in 4 years will be a Democrat and wins in a landslide.

Unless this ignoramus triggers a nuclear holocaust that wipes out civilization as we know it, the long arc of history will continue to bend toward more social justice and equality and a better lives [sic] for people around the world. We are already living in a far more tolerant and inclusive world today than 50 years ago, than 100 years ago, etc... And the quality of life and comfort for an average person today already far exceeds the Kings and Queens just a few centuries ago (we have telephone, electricity, modern medicines, car & plane transportation, etc.). But we all need to keep charging forward to create and fight for the future that we want, technologically and socially.

Occasionally, the world takes a step backward with such things as world wars, Mao Tse-dong, Khmer Rouge, Darfur, W. Bush and his wars, etc., and now this. But I am optimistic that the world will correct itself, even if [sic] takes another catastrophe for American [sic] to usher in the next Obama as our president. In the mean time, for the next four years, I will not even utter the name of this deplorable person because I do not accept him as my leader. I will instead do everything I can to help defeat him and his destructive agenda over the next few years.

Time to put on our Champion's Mindset and pick ourselves off the floor. There is much work that we can do to help make this world a better place, through what we do here at work and in our society.

/Thuan

SEE ALSO: Meet the power players who really run Uber

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NOW WATCH: Uber is shutting down its self-driving cars in San Francisco — here’s what it was like to ride in one


Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says he'll talk to Trump about the immigration 'ban' on Friday

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travis kalanick uber

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, whose ties to Donald Trump have made the company a target of criticism, said on Saturday that he will talk to the US President about the recent immigration order. 

Noting that Trump's order suspending immigration to the US from seven countries for 90 days will have "broad implications" on thousands of Uber drivers, Kalanick outlined steps the company would take to help affected drivers financially, including compensating "pro bono" any drivers who can't return home and work for the next three months. Kalanick promised more details of the financial assistance in the coming days. 

Kalanick said that about a dozen Uber employees who are legal US residents will be affected if they travel outside the country (he didn't specify if any are currently traveling), a situation that other tech companies like Google are also facing

And he promised to bring the issue up with Trump directly on Friday, when the Trump business advisory council that Kalanick is part of will meet:

"While every government has their own immigration controls, allowing people from all around the world to come here and make America their home has largely been the U.S.’s policy since its founding. That means this ban will impact many innocent people—an issue that I will raise this coming Friday when I go to Washington for President Trump’s first business advisory group meeting." 

Kalanick also defended his role on Trump's business council, saying that he believes it's always better to have a "seat at the table" in order to be able to speak up and engage about policies that affect cities around the world and their residents.

Kalanick is among 19 executives including the CEOs of the Walt Disney Co and Pespico that are on the Trump business council. But the Uber CEO's role has become a lightning rod inside the company and outside. Protesters chained themselves to the front door of the company's headquarters earlier this month, and many employees have told Business Insider that they are upset by the companies ties to the Trump administration. As Business Insider reported this week, Uber's CTO even sent an internal email blasting the President (though that email was in response to Trump's victory and not related to Kalanick's role on the business advisory group).

Here is Kalanick's full email to employees, which he reposted on his Facebook page on Saturday:

This afternoon I sent the email below to Uber employees:

Team,

Yesterday President Trump signed an executive order suspending entry of citizens from seven countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—to the United States for at least the next 90 days.

Our People Ops team has already reached out to the dozen or so employees who we know are affected: for example, those who live and work in the U.S., are legal residents but not naturalized citizens will not be able to get back into the country if they are traveling outside of the U.S. now or anytime in the next 90 days. Anyone who believes that this order could impact them should contact immigration@uber.com immediately.

This order has far broader implications as it also affects thousands of drivers who use Uber and come from the listed countries, many of whom take long breaks to go back home to see their extended family. These drivers currently outside of the U.S. will not be able to get back into the country for 90 days. That means they will not be able to earn a living and support their families—and of course they will be separated from their loved ones during that time.

We are working out a process to identify these drivers and compensate them pro bono during the next three months to help mitigate some of the financial stress and complications with supporting their families and putting food on the table. We will have more details on this in the coming days.

While every government has their own immigration controls, allowing people from all around the world to come here and make America their home has largely been the U.S.’s policy since its founding. That means this ban will impact many innocent people—an issue that I will raise this coming Friday when I go to Washington for President Trump’s first business advisory group meeting.

Ever since Uber’s founding we’ve had to work with governments and politicians of all political persuasions across hundreds of cities and dozens of countries. Though we share common ground with many of them, we have had areas of disagreement with each of them. In some cases we’ve had to stand and fight to make progress, other times we’ve been able to effect change from within through persuasion and argument.

But whatever the city or country—from the U.S. and Mexico to China and Malaysia—we’ve taken the view that in order to serve cities you need to give their citizens a voice, a seat at the table. We partner around the world optimistically in the belief that by speaking up and engaging we can make a difference. Our experience is that not doing so shortchanges cities and the people who live in them. This is why I agreed in early December to join President Trump’s economic advisory group along with Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla), Mary Barra (Chairwoman/CEO of General Motors), Indra Nooyi (Chairwoman/CEO of Pepsi), Ginni Rometty (Chairwoman/CEO of IBM), Bob Iger (Chairman/CEO of Disney), Jack Welch (former Chairman of GE) and a dozen other business leaders.

I understand that many people internally and externally may not agree with that decision, and that’s OK. It's the magic of living in America that people are free to disagree. But whatever your view please know that I’ve always believed in principled confrontation and just change; and have never shied away (maybe to my detriment) from fighting for what’s right.

Thanks, 

Travis Kalanick

SEE ALSO: 'I do not accept him as my leader' — Uber CTO's explosive anti-Trump email reveals growing internal tensions

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Uber's CEO and Trump apparently had a disastrous phone call

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travis kalanick

You're either with the Trump administration or you're against it.

After Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's call with President Donald Trump on Thursday and decision to quit his business-advisory council, the sentiment within the White House, according to Mike Allen of Axios, is, "If you want to cut off your access to the White House, f--- you."

That quote came to Allen from "some in Trump's inner circle," he reported. (Allen is deeply sourced within the Trump administration.)

Kalanick told Uber staff in a memo Thursday that he wouldn't attend Trump's closed-door council meeting on Friday and had quit the council after pressure from employees, drivers, and the public.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick wrote in the memo, which was obtained by Business Insider.

To be clear, Kalanick likely wasn't literally told "f--- you" during his call with Trump. But that's apparently how the White House feels about Kalanick's decision to distance himself and Uber from the administration after Trump signed an executive order last Friday temporarily barring citizens from seven predominately Muslim countries from entering the US.

SEE ALSO: How tech titans responded to Trump's immigration ban

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NOW WATCH: Here’s how the top Silicon Valley companies are responding to Trump’s immigration ban

Uber engineer responds to sexism scandal: 'This is everyone's problem'

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Travis Kalanick

A sexism scandal has rocked Uber for the past two days after a former engineer published a lengthy blog post about her year working at Uber.

In her reflections, the former engineer, Susan Fowler, said she was sexually harassed by her manager, ignored by the company's human-resources department, and threatened by her manager for even reporting the allegations. Uber's CEO was swift to pledge an urgent investigation and reportedly issued a teary apology to his employees.

Now a female engineer still working at the company has spoken out as well — not to negate Fowler's claims but to describe the scope of the issue.

"I think this is disgusting and appalling and horrifying and yet I am not surprised at all,"Aimee Lucido wrote in a personal blog. "In fact, I'm most surprised at how surprised everyone else seems to be."

Lucido said a large part of her didn't want to go into work, knowing Fowler's claims were just the tip of the iceberg. Yet, her post went on to say it was not just Uber that needed work.

"This is everyone's problem," she said.

Lucido pointed to a survey called "Elephant in the Valley" that found that 60% of women in Silicon Valley reported unwanted sexual advances, with 65% of those women saying the advances came from a superior.

"If people only take from this the fact that Uber's HR department needs work, and the managers are assholes, and Uber needs to release its diversity statistics, then we are missing the point," Lucido said.

Instead, Lucido asks people to continue to spread Fowler's story and listen to their colleagues. If they see something, she said, they should say something.

"Without a doubt, this is a bad situation, and Uber has a lot to clean up," Lucido said. "But this was a problem last week, and no matter how much we shouted about it, no one was listening. As you’re sitting there, reading this post, thanking your lucky stars that your company isn't like this, remember that the contents of Susan's post were surprising specifically because Uber employees didn't think that it was a problem."

SEE ALSO: Uber CEO launches 'urgent investigation' and sends company-wide memo after former engineer alleges sexual harassment

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NOW WATCH: Watch this Uber driver go through 236 consecutive green lights in NYC without stopping

Uber investors blast company for failure to change: 'We have hit a dead end'

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Uber investors Mitch and Freada Kapor want to change two things: Uber's toxic workplace, and the silence of Uber's backers when it comes to the "inexcusable behavior" of the company's leadership.

A former engineer's claims of sexism at Uber have rocked the company for days, leading to a teary apology from its CEO, Travis Kalanick. However, the claims were apparently only the tip of a much deeper problem inside the company's culture.

A bombshell report from The New York Times on Wednesday said a manager had been fired for groping women's breasts, employees had done cocaine in the bathrooms during company retreats, and a director had yelled gay slurs during meetings.

In an open letter to Uber's investors and board, the Kapors said Uber has ignored the behind-the-scenes work that some of its investors have tried to do for years to change the company culture. Freada led a workshop at Uber on unconscious bias in 2015, she said. They've both been contacted by multiple senior officials at Uber — although never by Kalanick himself, the Kapors said.

The Kapors, who invested early in Uber, are known in Silicon Valley for both their investing prowess as well as their passion about and engagement with issues of diversity in the tech industry. They created the Kapor Center to help increase access to STEM education and bring more diverse entrepreneurs into the tech ecosystem.

"We are speaking up now because we are disappointed and frustrated; we feel we have hit a dead end in trying to influence the company quietly from the inside," the Kapors wrote.

Specifically, the investors take issue with who Uber has chosen to lead what it calls an "independent" investigation into the former engineer's claims of sexism. Those people include former Attorney General Eric Holder, who has worked on Uber's behalf to advocate the company's concerns; Arianna Huffington, who is on the board of the company; and Uber's chief human resources officer, who reports to the executive team.

"We are disappointed to see that Uber has selected a team of insiders to investigate its destructive culture and make recommendations for change," the Kapors wrote. "To us, this decision is yet another example of Uber's continued unwillingness to be open, transparent, and direct."

Holder and his law partner Tammy Albarran said in a statement: "We intend to be thorough, impartial and objective, and we are conducting this review with the highest degree of integrity and professionalism."

The Kapors said they are fearful that Uber would be able to "manage its way past this crisis and then go back to business as usual." They had tried to involve the company in diversity projects run by Kapor Capital but failed, they said. The Kapors said that because their work inside the company has failed to bring about change, they are hoping public pressure might turn the company around.

"We are speaking out publicly, because we believe Uber's investors and board will rightly be judged by their action or inaction," the Kapors wrote. "We hope our actions will help hold Uber leadership accountable, since it seems all other mechanisms have failed."

SEE ALSO: Cocaine and groping — bombshell report on Uber's work environment makes it sound awful and full of bros

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NOW WATCH: We took a ride in Uber’s new self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco — here's what it was like

Travis Kalanick is Uber's biggest asset, and now its biggest liability

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Travis Kalanick Uber CEO

Uber would not exist without Travis Kalanick. 

He wasn't the one to come up with the idea for it or even its first CEO. But there's no doubt that Kalanick was the one to take the company from a seed of an idea for a car service and to craft it into the most valuable private technology "startup"— if you can even call it that — that it is today. 

Often, that meant springing into battle against whatever stood in the company's way, whether it was the "a**hole named taxi," as Kalanick once referred to his foes in the taxi industry, or the city regulators that have tried to block his business at every turn. 

Kalanick's aggression, dedication, and scrappiness built Uber. But now those same traits threaten to tear it down.

In the last week alone, Uber was the subject of a former engineer's high-profile allegations of sexual harassment and a subsequent New York Times investigation detailing a litany of ugly behavior. The company was publicly rebuked by one of its most famous investors, and then accused of using stolen technology, and sued, by another big investor. 

That's a bad week for any company, but for Uber the string of challenges has exposed a dangerous reality that threatens to derail the $69 billion company's path to an IPO: The company no longer enjoys the benefit of the doubt from many of its customers, the media or the general public.

Given the fractured state of the company's reputation, this could well be the tipping point

A big reason for that is because of the reputation it's earned over the years under Kalanick's leadership, and some observers now believe any resolution to Uber's current crisis will have to involve a change with the 40-year-old Kalanick.  

"If I were on the board, I would find a way to get rid of him," said Michael Barnett, a business and management professor at Rutgers University. That may not be a realistic scenario in the eyes of many industry insiders, but it's clear that the company has to make some kind of change if it wants to regain the credibility it needs for the business to continue to thrive.

A compounding crisis

This isn't the first time Uber's faced a string of corporate public relations disasters, but it's the first time it's brought the company to a tipping point. 

Twice in the last month the company has had to update the automated messages it sends users when they delete their accounts, appending special entreaties asking for forgiveness. The first was during the #DeleteUber movement when more than 200,000 people deleted their accounts in a weekend — an uptick so dramatic that Uber had to build an entirely new system to handle it. This past week, Uber had to update the message again to tell users just how badly it was hurting in wake of the accusations of a sexist work culture at the company.

For a company to be in a crisis the situation needs to fit three criteria, according to NYU professor Irving Schenkler, who specializes in corporate reputation:

  1. It has to be occupying senior management to the detriment of the rest of the business.
  2. It may have financial implications for the company.
  3. It may affect the company's reputation in the eyes of important stakeholders. 

Uber has checked off all three boxes — more than once. 

The current season of crises kicked off in December when Uber brashly opted to put its self-driving cars on San Francisco streets without the proper permits and was forced to back down by California regulators.

The showdown with the California DMV represented the first to dent Uber's carefully rebuilt image that centered around "celebrating" the cities it operates in. The #DeleteUber campaign — an unexpected and viral backlash to Kalanick's involvement with the Trump administration — further bruised customer trust of the company and showed that the backlash could actually take a toll on the business.

Now, the sexism scandal is internally affecting all levels of the organization as the company tries to rebuild trust with its own employees. It also lost the public support of some of its earliest investors. In a public blog post, Mitch and Freada Kapor, early investors in the company, publicly shamed Uber for allowing a "toxic" culture in the workplace and questioned whether Uber's pledged investigation into the incidents was actually independent enough.  

travis kalanick arianna huffington

Then Google, another one of its investors, sued Uber for intellectual property theft and patent violations over its self-driving cars. 

It fits into a pattern Schenkler has seen during company turmoil. "Companies with reputational risks or vulnerabilities will often encounter heightened scrutiny and compounding problems when a crisis surfaces," he told Business Insider.

"Uber's cascade of accusations reminds me of the sequence in Orson Wells' film, The Lady from Shanghai, where toward the send, at every turn, Wells' character sees his reflection in an unending set of mirrors," Schenkler said.

"The heightened glare directed at the company and the CEO may well augur a change in the C-Suite. Given the fractured state of the company's reputation, this could well be the tipping point, and an opportunity to head off consumer departures in favor of competitor."

Big moves, or a big axe

Uber is now facing a reputational crisis the likes of which it hasn't seen since 2014. Back then, Uber could manage its way out of it with less harm to the business. 

That was the year of the infamous interview with GQ where Kalanick called the service "boob-er" since it helped attract women, and a French office ran an ad campaign to pair riders with "hot chick drivers." During the same period, Uber was  investigated for privacy violations after it used the service's controversial "God View" feature to track the whereabouts of a BuzzFeed reporter and an Uber exec suggested digging up dirt on critical journalists. On the business side, a leaked playbook showed just how far the company had gone to sabotage Lyft. Meanwhile, hundreds of angry drivers protested in the streets against the company's treatment. 

None of these ordeals slowed Uber as its business and valuation continued to expand at a breathtaking pace.

But Uber is not the only game in town anymore, with Lyft's rival ride-hailing service now a viable substitute for Uber customers, says Barnett. 

"People will start to switch over. Once they go over to Lyft, there’s no good reason for them to come back to Uber," he said.

Barnett compared it to Walmart trying to right its workers pay issues after Target came along. Companies can get away with it when they're the only option, but not when there's a comparable service.

Uber protest

That's why the trust deficit Uber has built-up over the years is especially problematic.

When news broke on Friday that someone was attempting to run a smear campaign against the Uber engineer who wrote the tell-all about sex harassment, Uber had to issue a statement to say it wasn't behind it. Many people had jumped to the conclusion that big bad Uber was at it again.

And while Uber has vowed to start an investigation into the allegations of a systemic problem of sexism in the company, it is already facing an uphill battle when it comes to public trust. Its investor, Freada and Mitch Kapor, specifically questioned the authenticity of the investigation and whether Uber will be able to "manage its way past this crisis and then go back to business as usual."

"He's definitely working from a hole, Barnett, the Rutgers professor, said of Kalanick. "He doesn't have capital to burn."

Fingers in the business

Many of Uber's controversial decisions, from joining the Trump advisory board to creating the culture of the company, have come directly from the top. And the company's "bro culture" that Kalanick personified is very hard to disassociate from him.

There's certainly precedent for a CEO taking the fall for a scandal at the company. Volkswagen, BP, and Wells Fargo are a few Schenkler can name off the top of his head.

Inside Silicon Valley though, it's tougher to dismiss the value of a founder-CEO like Kalanick. He has the soul of the business in him and Uber was crafted in his form. Uber was not the first company to try to build a transportation network on demand. It was thanks to Kalanick though that Uber got it right. 

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People close to Kalanick say he has softened. In interviews, he's more light-hearted than aggressive, diplomatic rather than name-calling. On a recent Saturday night, he was found working late in the Uber office and going out to dinner with employees on a whim.

Still, the board may have no choice but to demand more change from Kalanick. 

Uber's tidal wave of scandal is at the point where Uber's board members have a fiduciary duty to address this because it's affecting the business. Consumers are deleting the app and the bad PR could make it could make it tougher for Uber to recruit talent, one Silicon Valley venture capitalist told Business Insider.

"I think the board is going to say 'Look, you [Kalanick] need to fix this and you're going to need to evolve'," this venture capitalist said. "The current situation is not stable. Unless there is ownership of what's gone wrong here, a publicly articulated pathway to change, this will hang around for a while."

He's definitely working from a hole. He doesn't have capital to burn

Schenkler points to Nike as an example of a company that had become emblematic of a problem only to turn it around and become a leader in the field. The apparel company used to be the global symbol of abusive labor practices, but has executed one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history to become a leader in corporate social responsibility. And it only did that through a thorough audit of its factories and a continued commitment to publishing its social responsibility reports, nearly a decade after the scandal first broke.

Kalanick's decision earlier this month to quit the Trump business council showed that he is capable of putting ego aside and making big moves when necessary. 

But now Uber needs another hit as big as that to fix the workplace issues that could stem its growth. The question remains whether Kalanick can make a big enough personal statement to convince the world that the company has changed, or whether an exit by Kalanick to a different role within Uber is the statement the company needs to send to win back customers, drivers, investors, and its own employees.

"Is he still believable in this role or does he have to go to make these big statements?" Barnett asks.  "Since there are other services now that can do what Uber does and people have the ability to chose, they do need to make a bold statement."

SEE ALSO: Uber captures everything great and terrible about Silicon Valley

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Why Uber probably never will reform itself

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Travis KalanickIf there is a single quality that defines Uber, it’s that it is somewhat sociopathic by design: An antipathy toward norms is built into the car-hailing company’s business model.

Algorithms determine surge pricing, which often causes prices to spiral precisely when people need them most, like during snowstorms—unless the company opts to turn the surge off.

While operating in a regulated industry, Uber has often sought to enter markets without getting the necessary permission, leading to litigation and legislative skirmishes.

It doesn’t want to recognize its drivers as employees.

Last month, Uber generated outrage—and inspired the #deleteuber hashtag—when drivers accepted fares at John F. Kennedy International Airport as taxi drivers went on a short strike over President Trump’s travel ban. In the aftermath of that incident, CEO Travis Kalanick pulled out of Trump’s executive advisory council.

Now Uber is managing another crisis of its own making. Over the weekend Susan J. Fowler, a former Uber engineer, detailed her horrifically sexist treatment at the hands of colleagues and the company’s human resources department.

Fowler wrote that she was on the receiving end of sexually inappropriate emails on her first day at work and that the human resources department was indifferent to the complaints that she and other female colleagues lodged. CEO Travis Kalanick quickly vowed to address the problems and engaged former Attorney General Eric Holder to lead an investigation.

For consumer-facing brands, stumbles that violate basic societal norms, or even merely leave the company on the wrong side of the zeitgeist, can be dangerous. Chipotle has yet to claw back the customers who left after its food-poisoning issues. Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank had to take out full-page ads to clarify his recent supportive comments about President Trump.

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But it’s far less likely that Uber’s latest self-imposed black eye will affect its business or cause the company to alter its behavior all that much. While some Uber customers loudly canceled their accounts after the refugee-ban kerfuffle, the company isn’t likely to suffer much as a result of the latest revelations. That’s not because Uber users are particularly craven or morally obtuse but because of the nature of the business that Uber has carved out.

We tend to think of Uber as a classic disruptor, slugging it out against dozens of competitors. But its signal success is really something else: The company is now close to a utility. Of course, in any market there are oodles of mobility providers—taxis, ride-sharing and car-hailing apps, shuttle bus service, limo companies, and public bus, train, and ferry systems. But in many markets, Uber, which was the first app out of the gate, is incredibly easy to use, and offers blanket coverage, has carved out a ubiquitous presence.

Uber has become integrated into people’s lives to a remarkable degree. You use it for work instead of taxis. You use it for personal convenience to get around when the car is in the shop, to get your elderly parents to their medical appointments, to pick up the kids from soccer practice when no one else is available. High-school and college students use Uber as a safe, sober ride.

At my kid’s suburban high school, finicky teens use UberEats to order in lunch when they find the cafeteria fare monotonous.

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Like your electricity or cable service or water, Uber is always there—accessible at the touch of a screen. Of course, no Silicon Valley company aspires to be like Con Edison or Time Warner Cable or the Metro-North Railroad. These are rightly seen as bureaucratic, old-line, stodgy, and ripe for disruption. But while people may not like these utilities—many people loathe their cable company, in fact—they are very slow to throw them over for alternative providers. (Assuming those alternative providers exist.)

If you sour on Chipotle, you can easily find another lunch next door or across the street. (In the town where I live, a Qdoba, a reasonably close substitute, is a few blocks away from the Chipotle.) If you want to boycott Under Amour, Nike makes perfectly good wicking T-shirts. But with utilities, it’s not so easy to switch or to replicate the service without significant costs or friction.

In some instances, like with electricity, consumers literally don’t have a choice. Replacing your cable company means scheduling appointments, waiting for service members, and having to learn a new channel lineup. If you want to stop using Uber, you’d have to download Lyft if you were so inclined and set up new accounts on all your devices and those of your family. And in many places you’d then have to settle for less comprehensive service. Those may not be huge barriers, but they are significant barriers nonetheless.

Lyft

So when the utility does something that annoys consumers—jacks up prices, fails to deliver service, responds lethargically to service requests, or generally acts like a jerk—consumers make an instant calculation that the cost of not using it or finding an alternative outweighs the moral and psychological harm of continuing to use the service.

None of this is to say that Uber will always be impervious to the wages of corporate jerkdom. Its initial moves in response to Fowler’s letter are, at least on their face, encouraging. What’s more, Uber has shown signs of greater sensitivity to its public image in recent months. But we shouldn’t expect these latest revelations to turn Uber into a sensitive workplace or a pioneer in promoting and empowering female engineers. And we shouldn’t expect consumers to punish the company as a result.

For now, because Uber for so many people is synonymous with ride-hailing and has become a utility, it seems to be Teflon-coated. Uber’s occasional bout of bad publicity won’t be an obstacle to Uber raising money or going public should it choose to do so. Utilities have remarkably durable business models.

Of course, there is one significant difference between utilities like cable, electric, and water companies and Uber. The utilities are profitable.

SEE ALSO: Travis Kalanick is Uber's biggest asset, and now its biggest liability

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Dashcam video shows Uber's CEO in heated argument with driver over prices

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Uber's very bad year is continuing as more evidence of a toxic work environment, starting at the top, comes to light.

A new video published by Bloomberg's Eric Newcomer shows Uber's CEO fighting with an Uber driver over falling fares in February.

In the video — recorded by the driver, Fawzi Kamel — CEO Travis Kalanick sits in the back between two women on Super Bowl Sunday. 

"I make sure every year is a hard year," Kalanick said in the video. "That's kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it's easy, I'm not pushing hard enough."

That competitive spirit becomes even more apparent as the video progresses. As Kalanick is prepared to exit, Kamel brings up the Uber Black business and accuses Kalanick of lowering fares again. Kamel says he's been driving since 2011 and the rates have dropped from $20 to just $2.75 a mile. (Kamel's $20 claim couldn't be verified. In 2012, the rate was at $4.90 per mile. It's currently $3.75 a mile for Uber black drivers.)

"Bulls---," Kalanick replied. 

Kalanick tried to explain that Uber launched cheaper models due to increased competition. The driver then told Kalanick that the company had cost him $90,000, and now he was bankrupt.

That's when Kalanick lost his temper:

"You know what? Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own s---. They blame everything in their life on somebody else.

"Good luck!" Kalanick said before leaving the car.

Uber did not immediately respond to request for comment on the video.

Read more at Bloomberg »

SEE ALSO: Travis Kalanick is Uber's biggest asset, and now its biggest liability

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NOW WATCH: Here’s how the top Silicon Valley companies are responding to Trump’s immigration ban


Uber CEO Travis Kalanick apologizes for treating a driver 'disrespectfully': 'I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up'

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In a memo to Uber employees posted to the company's blog, CEO Travis Kalanick has apologized for his behavior in a leaked video showing him fighting with an Uber driver over falling fares in February.

"My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away," Kalanick writes. "This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it."

In the dashcam video, Kalanick gets into a heated discussion with Uber driver Fawzi Kamel over the price of fares on the app, with the CEO ultimately telling him that "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own s---. They blame everything in their life on somebody else."

Here's the full text of Kalanick's memo, as shared by the company to its blog:

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video where I treated an Uber driver disrespectfully. To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away.

It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.

I want to profoundly apologize to Fawzi, as well as the driver and rider community, and to the Uber team.

—Travis

Uber's very bad year is continuing as more evidence of a toxic work environment, starting at the top, comes to light.

SEE ALSO: Dashcam video shows Uber's CEO in heated argument with driver over prices

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Uber drivers are growing angrier over price cuts

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick dashcam video driver argument

DETROIT (AP) — The face-off between Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and driver Fawzi Kamel illustrated a conflict between Uber, with its effort to grow by cutting prices to beat competitors, and drivers who have seen their pay reduced.

The video of the argument — caught on dashcam and now viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube — includes yelling and profanity, and ends with a combative Kalanick dismissing an agitated Fawzi's claims that sharp reductions in fares forced the driver into bankruptcy.

Harry Campbell, who drives for Uber in California, says driver pay has gone down while Uber's corporate valuation has grown to over $60 billion. "I think a lot of drivers feel that Uber always looked out for themselves first and foremost and relegated drivers to a second tier," he says.

"What we're looking at in that video is 21st-century mobility technology and 19th-century labor relations," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The video exchange comes after a month of trouble for the ride-hailing behemoth including sexual harassment allegations from a female engineer, a lawsuit alleging technology theft, and a social media campaign encouraging riders to delete Uber's app over claims that the company tried to capitalize when New York taxi drivers protested against President Trump's immigration order.

Uber's rivals claim that drivers have been defecting since Uber's problems started piling up. Business experts expect more defections among Uber's 400,000 drivers, and even some riders, after the Kalanick video, despite his public apology. Some rivals boast of better pay for drivers, and some allow tips through their apps, unlike Uber. Still, drivers say they get more business with Uber because of its greater size and reach.

Uber New York Protest

In the dashcam video obtained by Bloomberg News, Kalanick and Kamel are seen discussing Uber's business model. The driver for Uber's luxury service, Uber Black, argues that Kalanick is lowering fares, costing him money.

Kalanick denied that Black fares had been cut, but conceded that prices were reduced for Uber's general service, UberX, due to competition. "Otherwise you go out of business," he says.

The 40-year-old CEO begins shouting as Kamel claims again the Uber Black prices were reduced. Kamel claims to have lost $97,000. "I'm bankrupt because of you."

"Bull----!" Kalanick shouted. "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own s---. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck," he says, slamming the door.

Campbell, the California driver, says most drivers aren't surprised by Kalanick's behavior. "We always knew that the CEO was pretty ruthless when it comes to drivers."

Campbell, like a number of drivers, works for both Uber and its biggest rival, Lyft. He won't stop driving for Uber, but may shift more business to Lyft.

Lyft said its ridership and driver applications have grown significantly since the first of the year, while Fasten, a smaller ride-hailing competitor in Boston and Austin, Texas, said its business has boomed since the "Delete Uber" campaign started in late January. Fasten said its ridership rose 25 percent in Boston the first week of the campaign. New riders are up 10 percent.

Amelia Serafine, a Ph.D candidate in Chicago, says she had been driving for both Uber and Lyft for about a year before deleting her Uber driver app in February after the sexual harassment allegations became public.

She was tempted to return to Uber for money to supplement her university stipend but decided against it when the Kalanick video surfaced.

"The people (drivers) that I talk to already think that Uber treats them like garbage," Serafine said. "That's why the driver confronted the CEO."

Uber Driver Protest

Shaiken, the University of California professor, says Uber is squeezing its drivers on prices, refusing to recognize them as employees and dictating terms such as pricing without their input.

Uber declined comment on the controversies but points to a survey showing that 73 percent of its drivers don't want to be employees. More than 60 percent drive fewer than 10 hours per week, the company says.

Uber says on its website that drivers are paid based on distance and time it takes to transport someone. In Los Angeles, for instance, that's 15 cents per minute and 90 cents per mile during off-peak times. There's also a $1.65 booking fee. A 9-mile trip from West Hollywood to Downtown would cost $15. Uber says it takes roughly one-quarter of a fare.

Lyft would not answer specific questions about the same Los Angeles trip. The company says it takes 20 to 25 percent of the fare. Each company also has incentives for drivers to carry more passengers.

Uber says drivers make around $19 per hour in the top 20 U.S. markets. But experts say the take is much lower when gasoline, insurance and the cost of a car including interest on loans are figured in.

Fasten CEO Kirill Evdakov says Fasten charges drivers a 99-cent flat fee per ride.

Lyft pays better in Chicago and allows tipping through its app, but Uber gets a driver more business, Serafine said. Most drivers will pick Lyft over Uber given the choice, she says. Uber recently allowed tipping, but it has to be done in cash.

SEE ALSO: Dashcam video shows Uber's CEO in heated argument with driver over prices

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The Uber exec and board member who oversaw the HR department has been strangely absent during Uber's biggest crisis

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ryan graves, uber, sv100 2015

As a sexism scandal rocks Uber, its CEO Travis Kalanick has been on the defensive, holding all-hands meetings with the company and sitting down with the women in its engineering group to hear their complaints. 

Yet there's one person at the center of it all who has remained conspicuously missing: Uber's first CEO, current board member, and its head of operations, Ryan Graves. 

Graves has apparently "vanished from the office, hasn't been seen or heard from in days," one Uber insider told Business Insider. Other people inside Uber confirmed that Graves hasn't displayed the leadership they would have expected during such a challenging period, but note that he has resurfaced in the office briefly in the last few days after much time away.

It's a marked absence given that the human resources department reported to Graves directly, not Kalanick, until a couple of months ago. Uber and its HR department are under fire, after a former Uber engineer alleged that it ignored employees' sexual harassment claims. 

Now that the company is facing an investigation into possible systemic problems of sexual harassment at the company, Graves' absence is leading some inside and outside the company to believe he's the one about to take the fall — with or without cause.

"I wouldn't be surprised," said a former employee who worked closely with Graves, noting that ousting him would be a largely "ceremonial" move in response to the mounting pressure.

Graves did not respond to requests for comment. An Uber spokesperson declined to comment on Graves' recent whereabouts or this story.

Superpumped

Graves is a well-liked figure within Uber and has been central to the ride-hailing company's rapid transformation into a $69 billion powerhouse during the past seven years.

Ryan Graves Travis KalanickAfter serving a brief stint as Uber's first CEO from 2010 to 2011, Graves handed the reins to Kalanick and eventually assumed the role of Uber's president and VP of operations. That meant overseeing Uber's "People Operations" team, which was led by Renee Atwood. 

The ex Uber employee said that Graves, a former business development intern at Foursquare who attended GE's management training program, did not have the experience for such an important role at a growing company with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

The allegations by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler do not provide exact dates and names, and Graves' involvement in handling the various incidents she alleges is also unclear.

But one person close to Uber's executive team said he had a bad feeling about Graves' future at the company when he realized that Graves was the one who was technically in charge of the department during the alleged incidents.

Aside from his job responsibilities, Graves served as an important counter-balance to the aggressive, win-at-all-costs mentality personified by Kalanick. People who know and have worked with Graves say that his attitude and outlook improved Uber's culture since he was "Mr. Nice Guy."

His trademark expression of "sumperpumpedness" is even one of Uber's 14 cultural values.

So Graves' relative silence during the current crisis has not gone unnoticed by Uber employees. 

"They need that kind of steady-hand leadership at a time like this," said another former Uber employee, in reference to Graves' absence.

A decreasing role

While Graves technically oversaw the HR department, some people close to the company say placing the blame on his shoulders might not be as simple seems. For starters, Graves is both a board member and a large shareholder, making him harder to get rid of.

Moreover, while the department did report to him, he didn't keep the direct head of HR in a corner. Atwood, who was head of Uber's HR department, reported to Graves, but she also had a direct line to Kalanick. As part of Uber's "A-Team," the elite inner circle of Kalanick's star executives, Atwood sat in on regular meetings with the CEO and was responsible for alerting him to any problems that might become a liability. 

Atwood left Uber in August 2016. She did not return a request for comment.

Graves also transitioned to a new "resident builder and entrepreneur" role in August 2016, although he retained oversight of the people operations team, and even served as interim head of HR until the company hired Liane Hornsey in January.

Multiple people told Business Insider that Graves' decreased role in the company began in August. While Graves has not been seen around the office as much recently, it pre-dated the sexual harassment scandal, one person said. Others noted that Graves takes "a lot of vacations," and thought he might have been out of the office due to pre-planned time away.

Whatever the case, the optics of such an absence aren't good for someone who formerly oversaw the department that's now under fire. 

Graves' only public comment about the sexual harassment allegations has been a retweet of Kalanick's statement on the matter. His social media feed during the past few weeks have been vacation pictures and tweets about climate change.

On Friday, Graves was reported to be connected to another controversy around a special tool called "Greyball" that allowed it to secretly deceive authorities. The New York Times, which uncovered the tool, said Graves was aware of the program that Uber used to evade authorities who might be trying to block the ride-hailing service from operating.

With pressure mounting on the company, many observers believe Uber has no choice but to make a bold statement that shows it's changing its ways. A change at the top would be the biggest statement Uber could make, but some people close to the company believe Kalanick is too valuable to sacrifice. While many people think ousting Graves won't actually solve anything, he's an easy target.

"They definitely have a real crisis," one former employee said. "Getting rid of Graves wouldn't address the core issues."

SEE ALSO: Dashcam video shows Uber's CEO in heated argument with driver over prices

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Uber's unraveling: The stunning, 2 week string of blows that has upended the world's most valuable startup

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Uber New York Protest

Uber was already off to a bad start in 2017, but the year is getting worse by the day, if not the hour, for the $69 billion ride-hailing company. 

In January, Uber lost more than 200,000 customers in a single weekend after the #DeleteUber movement led to a fury of account deletions by customers upset about its ties to President Donald Trump. 

But that was just the beginning of Uber's no-good, very-bad month. Since then the company has been pummeled by a seemingly never-ending barrage of bad news, with a new crisis almost every day.

If business schools need a new case study for a company in a PR disaster, Uber's past two weeks are as perfect an example as can be found. And it's still not clear how Uber will get past this test.

Here's everything that's happened to Uber over the last 14 days:

 

SEE ALSO: Travis Kalanick is Uber's biggest asset, and now its biggest liability

Sunday February 19: The beginning

Susan Fowler starts it all with her reflections on "one very, very strange year at Uber." Fowler, a former engineer at the company, alleged in a blog post that she was sexually harassed at Uber and experienced gender bias during her time at the company. She claimed that one manager propositioned her and asked for sex, but her complaints to HR were dismissed because the manager was a high performer. She said Uber continued to ignore her complaints to HR, and then her manager threatened to fire her for reporting things to HR.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick immediately pledges to look into Fowler's investigations, and hires former US Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the investigation. Kalanick responded within hours of publication to say Fowler's account was "abhorrent & against everything we believe in." Uber hires Eric Holder, former US attorney general, to lead an independent investigation into it.



Wednesday February 22: Cocaine and groping

The New York Times publishes a bombshell report that suggests Fowler's claims were not isolated. Employees did cocaine during a company retreat and a manager had to be fired after groping multiple women, according to the report. Former employees said they'd notified Uber's leadership, including Kalanick and CTO Thuan Pham, of the workplace harassment.



Thursday February 23: Investor betrayal and accusations of stolen technology

Uber investors, Freada and Mitch Kapor, blasted the company for failing to change. In an open letter to Uber's investors and board, the Kapors said Uber has ignored the behind-the-scenes work that some of its investors have tried to do for years to change the company culture. "We are speaking up now because we are disappointed and frustrated; we feel we have hit a dead end in trying to influence the company quietly from the inside," the Kapors wrote.

Google, another Uber investor, sued the company for intellectual property theft. In an explosive lawsuit, the Google self-driving-car group, now known as Waymo, accused Uber of using stolen technology to advance its own autonomous-car development. The suit, filed in the US District Court in San Francisco, claimed that a team of ex-Google engineers stole the company's design for the lidar laser sensor that allows self-driving cars to map the environment around them.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Disgruntled Uber employees are reportedly talking to recruiters and rival firms

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travis kalanick uber ceo

Disgruntled Uber employees are signing up with recruitment agencies and talking to rival firms as they look to exit the company, according to the Financial Times.

The apparent uptick in the number of people exploring an exit comes after a series of allegations — including claims of sexual harassment and sexism— were made against managers at the company.

It also comes after a video emerged of CEO Travis Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver who complained about low pay. After the video was published, Kalanick issued a statement saying he "must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up."

"I have seen quite a few people who have been looking to leave Uber," a recruiter who reportedly used to work at Uber told the FT. "One of the main reasons is lack of faith in senior leadership."

The same recruiter reported receiving more CVs from Uber employees last week than in the whole previous month.

Walking away from Uber, a company now valued at roughly $70 billion (£57 billion), is a big decision to make, as it may mean sacrificing lucrative stock options that could end up being worth millions of dollars if Uber went public or were acquired.

Guillaume Champagne, the president at SCGC Executive Search, told the FT that it had been "incredibly difficult" to hire from Uber because employees didn't want to "leave their stock options on the table." Champagne added that Uber would have had to become "an awful place" if workers were leaving.

Uber lost two senior executives last week. Ed Baker, the vice president of product, left the company on Friday to pursue a career in public service, while Amit Singhal, the vice president of engineering, left on Monday after Recode told the taxi-hailing giant that he had failed to disclose he left his former employer Google amid a dispute over a sexual-harassment allegation when he joined Uber.

An Uber representative told Business Insider, "We have not seen attrition rates above normal."

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