David was attending "Uberversity," the ride-hailing company's three-day orientation for new employees, when he was introduced to "the Uber way."

The trainers gave David, who asked not to be identified by his real name, and his cohort a scenario: Uber has learned that a rival company is launching an equivalent to UberPool (the company's carpooling service) in four weeks. It's impossible for Uber to beat them to market with a functional and reliable carpool service. Then the group was asked: What should the company do?

"The correct answer (and what they did) was: develop an incomplete solution and beat the competitor to market," David said. This was in keeping with one of the company's 14 core values: "always be hustlin'." Those who proposed taking more time to come up with a product rather than rushing to beat the competition to market were told, "that's not the 'Uber way.'"

The Uber way — a take-no-prisoners, win-at-any-cost mentality — has helped the company soar to market domination and a $70 billion valuation, but not without a cost. Uber's corporate culture has been blamed for a series of public relations disasters that have tainted its brand with customers, investors, and regulators.

Now the fallout from Uber's terrible month is having an impact on another group: the company's own former and current employees.

"People are looking to get out because they're just sick of working for that company," said a former Uber employee, who asked not to be identified. "A lot of them have told me that they're having a hard time finding something new."

At job interviews, the employee said, recruiters seem wary of Uber's "hustle-oriented" workplace. "They have to defend themselves and say, 'Oh, I'm not an a--hole.'"

The "a--hole" reputation stems directly from Uber's corporate values, former employees and others in the tech industry said. For many, company "values" are the kind of corporate speak that rarely interferes with one's day-to-day work environment. But at Uber, the emphasis on hustling, toe-stepping, and meritocracy took on a more sinister aspect in the workplace.

"Everyone used those values to excuse their bad behavior," the former Uber employee said.

The employee described the workplace as a "Hobbesian jungle" in which "you can never get ahead unless someone else dies."

Such hypercompetitive dysfunction has also been described by other former Uber employees, including Susan Fowler, the engineer whose blog post detailing sexual harassment and gender discrimination prompted Uber to launch an "urgent investigation" headed by former US Attorney General Eric Holder and attorney Tammy Albarran last month.

"In the background, there was a game-of-thrones political war raging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization," Fowler wrote. "It seemed like every manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's job."

In a statement responding to Fowler's post, Kalanick wrote: "What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in."

"We seek to make Uber a just workplace FOR EVERYONE and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber — and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired."

Keala Lusk, a former Uber software engineer, wrote on Medium that during her time at Uber she saw "malicious fights for power, interns repeatedly putting in over 100 hours a week but only getting paid for 40, discrimination against women, and prejudice against the transgender community."

Uber responded to Lusk's post in a statement, saying, "We take any and all allegations of this nature very seriously and have forwarded this to Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran to include in their investigation."

A company spokeswoman said the company was committed to reforming its workplace practices based on the recommendations of Holder and Albarran.

Not everyone enjoyed Uber's workplace environment. David left soon after Uberversity, preferring not to work at a company that prioritized "doing an unreliable solution just so that they are perceived as pioneers."

An Uber spokeswoman said Uberversity questions test how an employee would respond to real-world situations but stressed that there are no correct responses.

But those looking to move on now — and there are increasing numbers of them, according to a report by the Financial Times, though Uber disputes this — may face an uphill battle.

Leslie Miley, a Silicon Valley veteran who is on a leave from his position as director of engineering at Slack, said he absolutely took what he called Uber's "a--hole culture" into account in hiring decisions. Seeing Uber on a résumé does not stop him from interviewing a candidate, he said, but it does prompt him to ask "pointed questions" about how the person would handle workplace issues.

"To be perfectly honest, I don't want to work with someone who did well in that environment," he said. "If you did well in that environment upholding those values, I probably don't want to work with you."

Miley got a taste of Uber's culture when he interviewed there for a director-of-engineering role.

"When I questioned pointedly about their culture and my concerns, they doubled down on it," he said, telling him, "We do have an aggressive culture, we do step on people's toes, and we think that the best way to get performance out of people."

Miley withdrew his application before the final interview. "If you're telling me that you're going to justify being an a--hole because it helps people perform, I don't want to work there," he said.

Michael Solomon, a tech talent manager whose company 10x represents freelance software engineers, said whether Uber was a black mark on a résumé was a matter of debate after the series of controversies.

Solomon said he was working with a client on his profile and deciding which former contracts to highlight.

"There was a big debate about whether to include Uber," he said. "When we started the process, we were like, OK, let's do it. By the time the fourth [negative] story broke, I started to wonder about whether we should do it."

Though Solomon and his client are still discussing whether to admit to his gig at Uber, he said the attitude toward Uber had clearly shifted among the programmers he represented.

"If I put out an offering today that Uber was looking for a bunch of engineers, I think there would be some resistance," he said. "This is a moment when people are thinking long and hard about whether they want to be in that culture. I don't think it would be the same as if it were two weeks ago."

Jonathan Bernstein, the president of Bernstein Crisis Management, said Uber needed a total "paradigm shift" soon or it would end up on the wrong side of Silicon Valley's own Hobbesian jungle.

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

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has admitted he needs leadership help, after a string of incidents has tarnished Uber's trust with its employees, investors, and customers. 

Now he's looking to hire a COO to be a peer and partner in Uber's future.

"This morning I told the Uber team that we're actively looking for a Chief Operating Officer: a peer who can partner with me to write the next chapter in our journey," Kalanick said in a statement on Tuesday.

Kalanick announced the decision to employees at an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, as first reported by Recode. The Information earlier reported that the CEO was considering adding a second in command.

Kalanick's need for a No. 2 at the company comes after a series of cascading crises. In January, over 200,000 customers deleted Uber in one weekend as part of the #DeleteUber movement. Since then, the company has had to launch an internal investigation into its workplace culture after former engineer Susan Fowler published a tell-all blog post about the gender bias and sexual harassment she allegedly endured at the company. It's also been sued by its investor, Google, for alleged intellectual property theft and had details of a program designed to evade government authorities published in the last two weeks.

In Silicon Valley, it's become somewhat of a tradition to bring in a veteran executive when the founder/CEO is looking for leadership help. For Facebook, that figure was Sheryl Sandberg, the poised and polished counterpart to Mark Zuckerberg's jeans and hoodies leadership style. At Google, Eric Schmidt took over as CEO while Larry Page and Sergey Brin were growing the business. It remains to be seen who Uber will bring in, but some speculate that it's in Uber's best interest to bring in a woman from the outside to be the balance and partner that Kalanick says he needs. 

If you have details — or ideas — on who Travis Kalanick will or should hire for a COO, email the reporter at bcarson@businessinsider.com. 

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

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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is going to try to correct his increasingly erratic management style and rescue the nearly $70 billion value of his company by hiring a COO, Business Insider's Biz Carson reported Wednesday.

Carson says that Uber's precedent for this move is Facebook bringing in Sheryl Sandberg, a Google veteran, to be the adult in the room and get Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shape for a billion-dollar initial public offering in 2012.

Since then, bringing in a professional COO to get things on track when a Silicon Valley tech CEO's personality becomes a problem for investors who have sunk vast sums into a startup has been called "getting a Sheryl Sandberg." She was that good at making Facebook the juggernaut we know today.

So Kalanick and his probably very concerned board are looking for their Sandberg. But they may not need to look very far. Sandberg might not be aiming to leave Facebook, but you could argue that if it would mean saving Uber, for the good of Silicon Valley, she should.

Uber is Silicon Valley now, much as Facebook was Silicon Valley in the early 2010s. It was imperative Facebook stage a successful IPO in 2012, and it's increasingly important for Uber to provide investors with an exit at some point in the future. Kalanick doesn't want to take the company public, but he won't be able to keep it private forever — and after Snap's IPO, the tech sector can again see, as it did with Facebook, that the good-old IPO route can be lucrative.

Uber must survive

Beyond how Uber pays off investors, it's important that the company simply make it through any economic turbulence ahead. Facebook survived the financial crisis, as did Tesla. (It went public in 2010.) Uber is so valuable and has upheld investment enthusiasm in Silicon Valley for so long now that it needs to remain viable.

The company's and Kalanick's behavior has threatened that. Sure, Uber had a spectacular rollout of its self-driving technology in Pittsburgh, but it suffered an embarrassing retreat after its lawbreaking debut of the same tech in San Francisco. What's more, Uber has been accused of fostering a sexist, discriminatory culture, and last week it was revealed that Kalanick had lambasted a driver for complaining about price cuts.

It's time for this to stop and for Kalanick, at 40, to grow up. Sandberg has already proved that she can guide an immature young man into a leadership role and help create a company with a market cap of nearly $400 billion. She would have her work cut out for her — Zuckerberg was 23 when Facebook went public; Kalanick may be more set in his bad ways.

But then again, Sandberg, who's 47, wouldn't take any guff. "Lean In," Sandberg's best-selling book about women and their careers, means lean in— it's as much a philosophy of life as it is a way of advancing women's ambition.

She's also quite well off financially. Sandberg was rich when she joined Facebook, and she's much richer now. This would grant her a crucial level of independence with Uber. As a member of the Disney board, she has also seen one of the most polished CEOs, Bob Iger, in action. (In fact, she was once talked about as an Iger successor.)

OK, so Sandberg joining Uber is sort of a long shot.

Sandberg tragically lost her husband, Dave Goldberg, who died in 2015. She's among the top female leaders in tech — really, one of the top leaders, period. She has nothing to prove and certainly is entitled to live her life, having already helped to build two of the dominant companies in Silicon Valley.

Facebook and Uber are also very different operations. Google and Facebook at least had certain elements in common, which helped Sandberg maximize her contribution to creating a vibrant advertising business for Zuckerberg. And while Facebook was, early on, dorkily boyish, Uber is toxically fratty. But at a level, a business challenge is a business challenge, and both companies are undergirded by software and computer science. The core issue now for Uber is putting a responsible adult next to Kalanick — so much the better if the adult is an impressive and accomplished woman.

Besides, Uber needs her — and Silicon Valley urgently needs Uber to negotiate its latest crisis without having to take the extreme step of demanding that Kalanick, whose personality is fused with the company for better or worse, step down. It's about time someone with powerful organizational experience and a hugely successful IPO under her belt made Kalanick get his act together.

Sandberg, who at one time worked for former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, was once rumored to be interested in entering politics. But that was before Donald Trump won the presidential election and the GOP took over Washington. So Sandberg, whose politics are aligned with Hillary Clinton, has far less of an incentive to do that these days.

The obvious question is: Would she even consider leaving Facebook to rescue some of Silicon Valley's biggest investors? That would be a tough one for Sandberg to answer. And Zuckerberg would, I'm sure, be dead-set against losing her. But then again, she could also spend a year or so shaping up Uber and then return to Facebook.

Maybe she's looking for another challenge; maybe she isn't. But it shouldn't be hard for Uber to figure out who Kalanick's Sandberg, in a perfect world, would be.

SEE ALSO: CEO Travis Kalanick is officially looking for someone to help him run Uber

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NOW WATCH: The insanely successful life of Uber billionaire Travis Kalanick

Uber has tapped executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to lead its hunt for a new Chief Operating Officer, kicking off the ride-hailing company's effort to rehabilitate its bruised image after a string of controversies.

An Uber spokesperson told Business Insider that hiring the headhunting firm on Thursday was just the first step towards finding a COO, but that the company doesn't have a final timeline for when it hopes to make a decision on the right candidate.

The COO will work alongisde Kalanick, the company's brash cofounder who has steered Uber to become the world's most valuable tech startup, but has also become a magnet for criticism.

Some observers expect Uber to find someone from the outside to provide a different perspective within the company and to act as a counterbalance to Kalanick. An Uber spokesperson however would not clarify whether the company was looking internally for the role as well, and only said the company is looking for the best candidate.

The board will be involved in the search as well, Uber said.

A partner for the next chapter

Heidrick & Struggles is a well-known name in Silicon Valley when it comes to finding new leadership. In 2001, the firm helped Google bring in the "adult" help the company needed when it placed Eric Schmidt as CEO. More recently, Heidrick & Struggles helped with the search at Microsoft that lead to Satya Nadella being crowned CEO in 2014.

Now the firm will be working to hiring a COO for the $69 billion company after Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, admitted he needed leadership help. A string of incidents over the last month has tarnished Uber's trust with its employees, investors, and customers.

Many industry insiders say the problems are a reflection of the aggressive, growth-at-all-costs culture that Kalanick has fostered at Uber, as it competes with rival Lyft and with the established taxi industry in a fiercely competitive market.

Kalanick has said he's looking "a peer who can partner with me to write the next chapter in our journey," but has said little else about the job responsibilities of the position.

Kalanick's need for a No. 2 at the company comes after a series of cascading crises has rattled the ride-hailing giant. In January, over 200,000 customers deleted Uber in one weekend as part of the #DeleteUber movement. Since then, the company has had to launch an internal investigation into its workplace culture after former engineer Susan Fowler published a tell-all blog post about the gender bias and sexual harassment she allegedly endured at the company. It's also been sued by its investor, Google, for alleged intellectual property theft and had details of a program designed to evade government authorities published in the last two weeks.

SEE ALSO: CEO Travis Kalanick is officially looking for someone to help him run Uber

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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's time as the CEO of Uber should come to an end, according to one of the taxi-hailing giant's shareholders.

The 40-year-old entrepreneur, who cofounded Uber in 2009 and has been leading it from day one, is not the right person to lead the San Francisco firm towards a stock market listing, the Uber shareholder told The Financial Times.

"It is time for him to step back and continue to be innovator-in-chief and problem-solver-in-chief," said the anonymous investor, adding that it's also time to "let a grown-up be CEO."

The shareholder's comments were published in an in depth FT article titled: "Uber: the crisis inside the 'cult of Travis'".

One ex-Uber employee told the FT that the company has a "hostile culture" and that Uber's rapid expansion created "leadership vacuums." Uber employees often chose not to share certain bits of information with each other as part of an effort to get promoted, the former employee reportedly said.

Kalanick, who was playing ping pong with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week, has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons in recent weeks and a number of high-profile staff have left the company.

Uber has lost at least three senior executives in the last two weeks.

Gary Marcus, the much-celebrated hire that was in charge of Uber's AI Labs, announced this week that he is stepping down from his position at the company after a short four months.

Elsewhere, Ed Baker, the vice president of product, left to pursue a career in public service, while Amit Singhal, the vice president of engineering, left 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.

The staff departures came after a series of allegations — including claims of sexual harassment and sexism— were made against managers at Uber.

They also came after a video emerged of 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."

Read the full story on the FT here.

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One of Uber's biggest assets is about to face a stress test that will expose the extent of the damage the company has suffered after being shaken by a string of scandals.

Uber will distribute annual bonuses to employees next week — a ritual that many people inside and outside the company think could trigger an exodus of employees.

According to sources close to the company, numerous Uber employees have been biding their time in the wake of sexual harassment and other scandals, waiting to collect their bonus before jumping ship. 

Despite the scandals, Uber has said that it hasn't seen attrition above normal so far. That could change on bonus day. While it's normal for companies to see some employees depart after bonus time, this year's payout season is being especially closely watched given all that's happened.

"When I was there, I was very proud to work there," says one former Uber employee who remains in contact with colleagues at the company. "No one feels that way now." 

Uber declined to comment.

Flight risk

The potential talent drain comes after a blistering few weeks of bad press. In January, over 200,000 customers deleted Uber in one weekend as part of the #DeleteUber movement. Since then, the company has had to launch an internal investigation into its workplace culture after a former engineer published a tell-all blog post about the gender bias and sexual harassment she allegedly endured at the company.

Uber has also been sued by its investor, Google, for allegedly using stolen technology and had details of a program designed to deceive government authorities published in the last two weeks.

CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick, who has helped Uber become the world's most valuable startup, has also become a magnet for criticism because of the win-at-all-costs culture that many observers say he is responsible for. Earlier this week, Kalanick said he needed leadership help and the company recently retained an executive recruiting firm to find a chief operating officer to work alongside Kalanick.

Whether that will enough to quell the internal discontent remains to be seen.  But retaining employees and regaining their trust will be critical if Uber hopes to get past this challenging phase. 

Uber employees have come under pressure, even from other programmers and their families, for staying at the company that's launched an investigation into its "toxic culture."

The Financial Times first reported that there's been an uptick in résumés sent from Uber employees to recruiters — including one recruiter receiving more résumés in a week from Uber insiders than this person normally receives in a month. But Uber said at the time that it hasn't been a problem and the company "has not seen attrition rates above normal." 

Uber reigns as the most valuable tech startup in the world, with a $69 billion valuation in the private markets and highly-anticipated IPO somewhere down the road, but a stint at Uber is quickly losing its luster among Silicon Valley techies. 

The company recently wrapped up its performance reviews of employees. Now, as Uber prepares to reward its stars, it will be the employees who grade the company by staying loyal or moving on. 

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

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NOW WATCH: Uber drivers reveal 5 ways to get a better passenger rating

Five years ago, a company called UberCab made a splash in San Francisco by letting you hail a car with your smartphone. Since then, the company, now known as Uber, has spread like wildfire through the globe. Uber currently operates in 58 countries and is valued at over $60 billion.

But the road hasn't been easy.

While its valuation has continued to climb and it has attracted more and more investors, Uber has also fought rivals and regulators as it has transformed from a black-car service into a sprawling logistics company gunning for a future of self-driving cars. It has confronted threats from the taxi industry and even its own drivers. 

It has also waged war against Didi Chuxing, its rival in gaining ride-hailing dominance in China. After a prolonged and exorbitantly costly battle, however, Uber China is now surrendering to Didi in a $35 billion megamerger.

In 2017, Uber has weathered controversy after controversy: A #DeleteUber campaign that cost the company 200,000 customers in a single weekend. Allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination by multiple former employees. A bombshell report of drug use and groping at a company event. Uber's own investors speaking out, a lawsuit from Google, and Travis Kalanick himself caught on camera in a heated argument with an Uber driver.

After a stunning, two-week string of blows that has upended the world's most valuable startup, we look back at how the company got to where it is today. See the insane and successful journey of Uber and its CEO, Travis Kalanick, as it has moved from an idea to a worldwide phenomenon. 

SEE ALSO: CEO Travis Kalanick is officially looking for someone to help him run Uber

June 1998: Scour, a peer-to-peer search-engine startup that Kalanick had dropped out of UCLA to join, snags its first investment from former Disney president Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle from the VC and private equity firm The Yucaipa Companies.

Source: Business Insider

October 2000: Scour files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after being sued by several entertainment companies for around $250 billion.

Source: The New York Times

April 2007: Kalanick sells RedSwoosh, a networking-software company he'd founded in 2001, to Akamai for $23 million and becomes a millionaire. He says he started RedSwoosh as a “revenge business” to turn the 33 litigants who sued Scour into customers.

Source: Business Insider

Uber's president of ridesharing, Jeff Jones, is leaving the company after less than a year on the job. Recode first reported the shake-up on Sunday, and Uber has since confirmed the departure with Business Insider.

"We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best," the company said in a statement.

Jones' departure is not a direct result of the company's search for a new COO, one that could've outranked him, but because Uber was "not the situation he signed on for,"according to Recode. 

In an internal email obtained by Business Insider, though, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told employees that Jones "came to the tough decision that he doesn't see his future at Uber" after the company announced its intention to hire a new second-in-command. 

Since the beginning of the year, Uber has been hit with a blistering few weeks of bad press. In January, over 200,000 customers deleted Uber in one weekend as part of the #DeleteUber movement. Since then, the company has had to launch an internal investigation into its workplace culture after a former engineer published a tell-all blog post about the gender bias and sexual harassment she allegedly endured at the company.

Uber has also been sued by its investor, Google, for allegedly using stolen technology and had details of a program designed to deceive government authorities published in the last two weeks.

According to Recode, Jones departure is "directly" related to the number of scandals at the company. In a statement sent to Recode, Jones said he was leaving because "the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided [his] career are inconsistent with what [he] saw and experienced at Uber."

Kalanick pledged to find leadership help and hire a new No. 2 as the result of the scandals, although many speculated that Jones' initial role at the company was to be that right-hand man.

When the company announced his hire in August, Kalanick lauded the former Target exec's experience as CMO and was excited about what he would bring to the ride-hailing giant.

Jones' role as president meant he was in charge of all of Uber's operations, marketing, and customer support around the globe — a position that unseated Uber's first CEO Ryan Graves. 

Yet, Jones had a rough few months on the job, including a disastrous Q&A with drivers that did little more than stoke the flames of ire directed toward the company. 

The internal email says that Jones' operations will report to Kalanick in the interim. Jones' exit was also described as sudden and a surprise to the company, according to a source familiar with the matter.

His departure is the latest in a string of high profile leadership departures. Uber's head of AI, Gary Marcus, left to become a special advisor to the company in March. Former Twitter engineer Raffi Krikorian stepped down from his role as a senior director of engineer at Uber's Advanced Technologies Center in late February. Another key member of Uber's self-driving team, Charlie Miller, had left Uber to join Chinese rival Didi's self-driving car lab.

Uber's also had two executives resign as the company investigates sexual harassment and gender bias in its workplace. Amit Singhal was asked to resign as SVP of engineering by CEO Travis Kalanick after it was revealed he didn't inform Uber about previous allegations of sexual assault. Uber's VP of Product and Growth Ed Baker also resigned under mysterious circumstances.

Here's Kalanick's internal email in full:

Team,

I wanted to let you know that Jeff Jones has decided to resign from Uber.

Jeff joined Uber in October 2016 from being CMO at retailer Target. In 6 months, he made an important impact on the company—from his focus on being driver obsessed to delivering our first brand reputation study, which will help set our course in the coming months and year.

After we announced our intention to hire a COO, Jeff came to the tough decision that he doesn’t see his future at Uber. It is unfortunate that this was announced through the press but I thought it was important to send all of you an email before providing comment publicly.

Rachel, Pierre and Mac will continue to lead the Global Ops teams, reporting to me until we have signed a COO. Troy Stevenson, who leads CommOps, and Shalin Amin who leads brand design will report to Rachel Holt. Ab Gupta will report to Andrew MacDonald.

Thanks,

Travis

SEE ALSO: Uber employees are about to get their bonuses, and all eyes are on how many take the money and run

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Uber, the world's most valuable tech startup, will hold a rare conference call with the press on Tuesday to provide an update on its efforts to fix an internal culture that has been rocked by high-profile allegations of sexual harassment and to report on its search for a Chief Operating Officer.

The ride-hailing company is in the process of recruiting a second-in-command who can work alongside Travis Kalanick, the CEO who has turned Uber into one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies but who has also become a magnet for criticism because of the win-at-all-costs culture he has fostered. 

While the company says there are no big announcements on Tuesday's "interim strategy update," it will be the first look into Uber's actions since the company launched an investigation into its workplace and announced the decision to hire a No. 2 to aid its CEO, Travis Kalanick. 

Uber, which is valued at $69 billion by private investors, will also provide an overview of its business performance so far in 2017, the company said in a note announcing Tuesday's call.

On the call will be Arianna Huffington, an Uber board member who is helping the search for a COO and leading the subcommittee on the sexual harassment scandal; Liane Hornsey, Uber's head of HR; and Rachel Holt, who oversees US and Canada operations at Uber.

Uber's prepared remarks won't have any major bombshells, like a new COO announcement or Kalanick stepping aside (as some have rumored). Instead, the company plans to provide a strategy update and a look at the company's business, including plans to improve relations with its drivers.  

The company took a hit after more than 200,000 customers stopped using Uber as part of the #DeleteUber movement in January. The next month, it launched an internal investigation into its workplace after a former engineer wrote a blog post about the sexual harassment she faced at the company and then announced that it was looking to hire a COO. 

Business Insider will be covering the Uber call on Tuesday afternoon, so check back for the latest.

SEE ALSO: Uber's president Jeff Jones quits amid company turmoil

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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 CEO Travis Kalanick doesn't have to worry about his job safety, according to board member Arianna Huffington. 

Even as scandals pile up at the beleaguered ride-hailing company, Huffington insists that Kalanick is on solid footing from the board's perspective. 

In a rare conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Huffington said that outside speculation of removing Kalanick from the CEO job is purely hypothetical and there haven't been any discussions at the company about it. 

Removing Kalanick from the CEO seat "hasn't been addressed because it hasn't come up and we don't expect it to come up," Huffington said flatly. 

As multiple reporters asked about the fate of Kalanick as CEO of the world's most valuable tech startup, Huffington defended Kalanick repeatedly and said he's shown a willingness to be accountable for the problems inside his company and take initiative to turnaround his company.

"Almost week by week, I see him changing," Huffington said. 

Currently, the ride-hailing company is in the process of recruiting a second-in-command who can work alongside Kalanick, the CEO who has turned Uber into one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies but who has also become a magnet for criticism because of the win-at-all-costs culture he has fostered. 

That culture has been in the spotlight in recent weeks amid allegations of sexual harassment at the company, a lawsuit accusing Uber of using stolen technology and a video showing Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver.

Huffington said Kalanick is sincere that he wants the incoming COO to be a true partner with him. 

"Many of you have been asking what qualities we’re looking for in a COO," Huffington said in her introduction to the call. "In short, Uber needs a leader who has significant operational experience and who understands service-related businesses at a local and global scale; who can thrive in a hyper-growth company; and someone with the strength and smarts to work alongside a founder as a true partner."

Kalanick missed the call, she said, because he was too busy interviewing COO candidates to join.

SEE ALSO: Uber's president Jeff Jones quits amid company turmoil

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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

Today, programming software company Mashape announces a $18 million investment, led by famed Silicon Valley firm Andreesen Horowitz.

Andreessen Horowitz general partner Martin Casado, who cofounded networking startup Nicira before VMware gobbled it up in 2012 for $1.26 billion, will also join Mashape's board.

Today, Mashape is going strong, with 25 employees. And teams at companies like Amazon, Spotify, and Target are using Mashape's flagship Kong software to build their apps in more modern ways. Better yet, as of December 2016, Marietti says, Mashape is cash flow positive, after raising a relatively meager $8.1 million in venture funding over the years, not counting this round.

But before we go into what Mashape will do with this money, let's step back and look at how this company got here. It's a story of determination and dumb luck — even Casado says that one of the things he most admires about the Mashape founders is "the amount of sacrifice that they did" to get where they are today.

"You walk along a hard road as a company," says Mashape CEO Augusto Marietti.

Indeed, in a very real way, if it weren't for Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, the leaders of Silicon Valley's two most prominent startups, and a willingness to rough it out when they were broke, Mashape might not exist.

The Uber-Airbnb connection

It was 2009, and 18-year-olds Augusto Marietti and Marco Palladino had come from Milan to San Francisco's TechCrunch 50 conference with a demo of a website that could mash up data sources...and very little else.

An entrepreneur named Travis Kalanick (yes, the future Uber CEO) made the trip possible when he picked Marietti and Palladino from a crowd of 30 or so applicants to crash free of charge at his "Jampad"— his large San Francisco home, which doubled as a hangout and meeting spot for the local startup scene— for 10 days during the event.

"I don't know why he picked us, but he picked us," says Marietti.

The event didn't result in the funding they were looking for, but the Mashape team wasn't discouraged. Besides, they had made a powerful friend, which would come in handy later. They flew back and forth between Italy and San Francisco, hustling for funding.

At this point, they were teetering on broke. They ate rice and beans, took meetings at Starbucks, and shared the same bed in the cheap Airbnb rooms they found. Once, Marietti says, they ended up sleeping on benches in San Francisco's Dolores Park because they had nowhere else to stay. 

Still, they had another fortuitous encounter when their Airbnb fandom resulted in them crashing at Airbnb's headquarters — which at the time was really just 8 guys sharing a house in San Francisco. There, Marietti got to watch Airbnb cofounders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia at work, internalizing their focus on building communities. 

Chesky and Gebbia, too, acted as mentors for the young Mashape team. The biggest lesson Marietti learned from the Airbnb founders: A competitor can replicate your product's features. But if you have a dedicated community of users, well, that's "very, very hard to copy."

Turning point

The real turning point would come in April of 2010, when Mashape finally found a group of early YouTube employees who might be willing to make a small investment. Kalanick offered the Jampad's living room as a meeting spot, and even sat on Marietti's side of the table during negotiations.

When one group of investors said they might be interested, but they needed to sleep on a decision, Kalanick pushed Marietti into taking a more hard-line stance, telling Marietti that "if they leave, you're never going to see them again." 

Kalanick instead told the investors that they had five minutes to talk privately and make a decision, or else Mashape would walk away. A handshake deal was struck for a little over $100,000, and the Mashape team, which only had $2,000 in the bank at this point between then, was saved. 

"That saved us, literally," Marietti says. "We wouldn't be here without Travis."

It was hard enough in 2010, Marietti says. Nowadays, he says, there are more and more startups vying for attention, and he's not confident they could do it again. "I probably wouldn't survive if I had to do it now," Marietti says.

So what does Mashape do?

Mashape is riding the wave that programmers call "microservices," where you take one big, monolithic, complex piece of software and break it down into multiple simple little ones. Those little bits then talk to each other via a method called APIs, or application programming interfaces. 

With microservices, if you're trying to build a new website, mobile app, Amazon Alexa skill, or smart refrigerator, programmers can just build the vast majority of the software from the figurative Lego bricks they already have, rather than start over from scratch. It's an approach pioneered at companies like Amazon and PayPal.

Marietti describes this as a "shapeless" approach to software development, where the same code can be reused across platforms old and new. And he says that, as "elephants" among the Fortune 500 and their ilk start to accelerate their software strategies, they're turning to Kong to help them manage and secure their microservices architectures.

"They're the elephants going through a transition," says Marietti. "They have a very complex need."

That's why Marietti is raising the funding now, despite Mashape's recent turn towards profitability. He sees a big chance to build out Mashape's profile among big companies, positioning Kong as a big way to help them move into the future.

Bits into atoms

From the perspective of Andreessen Horowitz's Martin Casado, Mashape is playing into a bigger trend entirely. 

To go back to Travis Kalanick, much of Uber's strategy hinges on the usage of APIs: When you hail an Uber via Google Maps, that's Google's code "talking" to Uber via an API. Similarly, when you use an Amazon Echo to play a Spotify song, Alexa "asks" Spotify for the song via API.

Now, Casado says, there are APIs that let you do everything from send text messages, to reserving warehouse space, to sending snail mail via USPS. It's not just apps and services that are being affected; it's the physical world.

"Any service that exists, there's a way to programmatically control it," Casado says.

So as software just keeps on eating the world, Casado says, there's going to be even more demand for software like Mashape's Kong, which can help company manage this exploding world of APIs. And as it is, he says, Kong is already the most popular software of its type out there. And, true to the lessons, that Marietti learned from Airbnb's founders, Kong has a thriving community of thousands of open source developers using it in their own projects

"I think now is the time to be bold because now is the time to disrupt the infrastructure," says Casado.

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In 2014, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, his then girlfriend Gabi Holzwarth, and five Uber employees visited an escort-karaoke bar in Seoul — an outing that prompted a complaint to HR from an Uber female marketing executive who was a member of the party, The Information's Amir Efrati reports.

According to the report, women working at the bar wore numbered tags and sat in a circle, so that men — including one of Uber's "A Team" executives Emil Michael — could identify their favorites.

"Four male Uber managers picked women out of the group, calling out their numbers, and sat with them," the report said. The female Uber executive left, appearing "visibly upset," after the group headed downstairs to sing karaoke, The Information reports.

The recount is an especially bad look for Uber, which has come under fire in recent weeks for having a reckless culture.

The world's most valuable startup has been rocked in recent months by high-profile allegations of sexual harassment, some of which were outlined in a bombshell report from The New York Times about the company's internal culture.

In February, the company hired former US attorney general Eric Holder and his partner at his Covington & Burling law firm, Tammy Albarran, to conduct a review of the claims.

A representative at Uber sent this statement to Business Insider:

"This all happened about three years ago and was previously reported to human resources. In early March it was referred to Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran as part of their review."

You can read The Information's full report here (subscription required) >>

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Uber was already off to a bad start in 2017, but the year is getting worse by the day 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 Trump.

But that was just a prelude to Uber's no-good, very bad month. During the roughly 30-day period of mid-February to mid-March, 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 last month is as perfect an example as can be found. And it's still not clear how Uber will right its ship.

Here's everything that's happened to Uber in the last month:

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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.

Uber used to be staunchly against releasing its diversity numbers, but the ride-hailing giant has had a change of heart in the last month since the company has been rocked by an investigation into sexual harassment in its workplaces. 

On Tuesday, the company released its diversity numbers for the first time as part of its plan to rehab its company culture.

In short, Uber's diversity numbers are not great, but not the worst when compared to industry giants like Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft.

One glaring problem is the lack of women or underrepresented minorities in tech leadership positions. Nearly 89% of technical directors are male at Uber, and 75% are white.

"This report is a first step in showing that diversity and inclusion is a priority at Uber," said CEO Travis Kalanick in a statement. "I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers — and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency. And to make progress, it’s important we measure what matters.”

Breaking it down: How Uber compares

More than one-third of Uber's global workforce is women, but the percentage shrinks when it comes to women in technical roles and leadership positions at the company. Only 15% of its engineering workforce is women, a number on par with Twitter but below many tech companies. 

When it comes to race, Asians make up the majority of Uber's technical engineers, hiring a larger percentage than Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter. However, its leadership team is also the most white when compared with the same companies. 

When it comes to tech leadership specifically, Uber's managers are 75% white and 25% Asian.

"Our leadership is more homogeneous than the rest of our employees," Uber said in its report. "For example, no Black or Hispanic employees hold leadership positions in tech. This clearly has to change — a diversity of backgrounds and experience is important at every level."

As a result, Uber says it plans to commit $3 million over the next three years to support organizations that bring more women and minorities into tech. Uber employees will have a hand in saying which groups the company partners with, according to a blog post from its chief human resources officer, Liane Hornsey.

The company hasn't set any forward-looking goals of where it wants to get to in 2018, but Uber's workplace turnaround is still a work in progress. At the end of April, former attorney general Eric Holder will be releasing the results of his investigation into Uber's office culture, which the company has also pledged to make available to the public.

SEE ALSO: Uber's no-good, very bad month: The stunning string of blows that have upended the world's most valuable startup

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Saying Uber’s had a rough 2017 is like saying the Atlanta Falcons had a rough Super Bowl: It doesn’t quite capture the disaster.

After a social media campaign — affectionately called #deleteUber — led to more than 200,000 deletions of its app in January, the last month or so has brought a torrent of controversies for the ride-hailing company. There have been multiple allegations of sexual harassment from former employees, a lawsuit from Google, major executive departures, embarrassing leaked videos of CEO Travis Kalanick, unflattering reports of Kalanick’s alleged behavior, and self-driving car crashes, to name a few.

To try and rehab its image and internal culture, the company this week released its first-ever diversity report. And, as is sadly predictable, the results weren’t great: Uber admitted it’s lacking in black and Hispanic employees, particularly in leadership positions, and its internal figures show that the company is very much male-dominated.

But as this chart from Statista shows, that divide is as emblematic of the wider gender gap in tech as it is Uber’s own practices. Compared to giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, or Microsoft, Uber’s lack of women is entirely normal. To Uber’s credit, it has pledged to spend $3 million over the next three years to support more diversity in tech, and it is publically shaming itself, more or less, by releasing the figures at all. But like the rest of tech, it still has plenty of work to do to become less of a boys club.

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Uber has delayed releasing the findings for its internal investigation into sexual harassment until the end of May, according to an internal memo sent by board member Arianna Huffington.

In February, Susan Fowler, a female former engineer at Uber, said in a widely read blog post that managers and human resources officers at the company had not punished her manager after she reported his unwanted sexual advances, and even threatened her with a poor performance review.

Huffington sent the memo to employees on Thursday, and said the board subcomittee had granted a request for more time to complete the assessment and the investigation is being extended to "ensure that no stone is left unturned".

The memo states that the internal report is anticipated by the end of May. Huffington had originally said the investigation would be complete by the end of April.

The ride-hailing firm hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran, who are partners at the law firm Covington & Burling, to conduct a review of the claims as well as general questions about diversity and inclusion.

According to Recode, Holder has not had the opportunity to interview several key figures in the investigation, including top human resources executives. He plans to do so in the coming weeks.

Chief executive Travis Kalanick called the allegations by Fowler "abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in."

The company under wider reputational pressure. A list of high-level executives has quit the firm over the last few months, and a video of Kalanick berating an Uber driver leaked in February.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook once personally told Uber CEO Travis Kalanick that the Uber app violated Apple's privacy rules, and threatened to remove Uber from Apple's App Store, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The issue in the reported early-2015 meeting was that Uber had a system to identify iPhones after they had been wiped and the Uber app had been deleted — something Uber was doing to combat driver fraud in China.

Apple didn't like that, and believed it violated its privacy policy for the App Store. “So, I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” Cook reportedly told Kalanick. 

If Apple were to stop carrying the Uber app, the multi-billion dollar startup would lose access to millions of its most valuable customers. 

In fact, Uber went so far as to write software that ensured that anyone accessing Uber from Apple's headquarters would see a different version of the app without the bits of code that tracked iPhones after they had been wiped, a practice called "geofencing." 

But Apple engineers were able to spot that something wasn't right with the Uber app at Apple headquarters, and escalated the issue, which led to the meeting between Kalanick and Cook, according to the Times. 

Kalanick was reportedly "shaken" by the meeting with Cook, but the relationship between the two men and companies seems fine today. Cook and Kalanick were spotted mugging for the camera together at last year's Met Ball, for example, and the Uber app is still available on Apple's App Store. 

An Uber spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement:

“We absolutely do not track individual users or their location if they’ve deleted the app. As the New York Times story notes towards the very end, this is a typical way to prevent fraudsters from loading Uber onto a stolen phone, putting in a stolen credit card, taking an expensive ride and then wiping the phone—over and over again. Similar techniques are also used for detecting and blocking suspicious logins to protect our users' accounts. Being able to recognize known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users.”

The entire profile of Travis Kalanick by the New York Times' Mike Issac is absolutely worth a read. 

SEE ALSO: Waymo says Uber is involved in a 'cover up'

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For a long time, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick would only use his company's car service to get around. He would even moonlight as a driver once in awhile.

But ever since an incident occurred between he and an Uber driver in February, where their heated discussion about fare prices was filmed and posted on the internet for the world to see, Kalanick has since hired his own private driver, according to a New York Times' exposé on the Uber CEO.

After the video of his argument with an Uber driver went viral, Kalanick sent a memo to Uber employees apologizing for his behavior and vowing to get “leadership help.”

Here’s the full text of Kalanick’s memo, as shared by Uber’s 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

You can watch the original video of Kalanick's argument with an Uber driver here:

Despite the many recent scandals surrounding Uber lately, company board member Arianna Huffington said last month that Kalanick doesn't need to worry about his job safety. 

SEE ALSO: Apple CEO Tim Cook once personally threatened to kick Uber out of the App Store

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Uber is in crisis.

After the stunning debut of its fleet of driverless cars in Pittsburgh last year, CEO Travis Kalanick and his company have shifted into serial screw-up mode, culminating in Kalanick admitting, after chewing out a disgruntled driver in a video that went viral, that he needed personal and professional help.

As a onetime avid Uber user who now almost never uses the service, I can easily explain why Uber's crisis was preordained. It comes down to a simple two-syllable word.

Tipping.

Until I was told otherwise, I assumed Uber was baking a 20% tip into every ride. Then I learned that there were no Uber tips.

In short order, this made me question the entire company. (For the record, I also decided that because I mainly used Uber in New York City, it was much easier to simply raise my hand and hail a cab than fiddle with my phone for five minutes.)

In New York, Uber's antipathy to tipping may soon change. The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission is pressing for app-based ride-hailing services like Uber to add a tipping feature. A vote by the TLC board could come later this year.

Uber has opposed tipping based on the argument that eliminating it reduces "uncertainty" about the cost of a ride. But that's nonsensical. A tip in a cab is typically just math — usually your fare plus 20%. In the good old days, you could be precise by taking 10% of your fare and doubling it, or you could just give the driver a few bucks. It was the opposite of uncertain.

A lifetime of tipping

I lived in New York for 14 years before moving to Los Angeles for a decade and moving back in 2014. In all my New York years, I've taken countless cabs, and of late, they've become my main indulgence. I suppose I have failed to tip a few times, back when the taxi economy was all-cash and I couldn't tell the cabbie to wait for me to go into my apartment to shake loose some change from the couch cushions.

New York is a tipping town. If you don't want to tip, you live in Paris. Tipping in New York is assumed for pretty much all service industries, from cabs to bars to restaurants to moving companies. The idea that Uber would "disrupt" the taxi business in New York and other tipping-friendly US cities but not include a tipping feature is disturbing and tells you everything you need to know about the company's values.

I could go retro and tip my Uber driver in cash. But in New York and in other US cities, tipping has become a frictionless experience — you swipe your credit card in the cab and add a tip at the end of your journey. You can tip the driver in cash if that's your thing, but the point is that tipping in a taxi in major US cities is easy.

With Uber, tipping is a convoluted, political, and I would suggest even a moral undertaking. For decades, those who drive for a living have enjoyed a positive financial relationship with their customers. Tipping was part of the bargain. The tip could be above average, which in New York is 20% for exceptional service.

The trail of a crisis

I'm not saying taking a taxi in New York is always pleasant. Uber's pitch to its many, many users has always been that its product is superior — a high-end "black car" service replacing the beat-up yellow cab. That was what initially reeled me in.

This is what was good about Uber: Kalanick wanted to improve ride-hailing with technology and a better experience. But you can tell much about a company from its earliest expression of values, and in Uber's case, ditching the tipping was one of those 21st-century anxiety-erasing moves that work well for the people being served but undermine the psychology of the workers — in this case, Uber's drivers.

The user is paramount; the customer comes first. The customs of the drivers, be they professionals or part-timers, become antiquated folkways, a vestige of an earlier, grubbier time, even if in the days of assumed tipping a sort of beneficial circle of trust had been established between drivers and passengers.

Adding a tipping feature wouldn't make Uber's manifold problems vanish. It would, however, be a step in the right direction, even if it's long overdue.

Every company crisis leaves a trail, one that usually leads back to the beginning. The business world is rife with examples: BlackBerry clinging to its keyboards in a world of proliferating touchscreens. Railroads being outmaneuvered by automobiles and airplanes because they were in the railroad game, not the moving-people-around game. Fast-food firms pushing cheap calories at a time when health-consciousness is surging among consumers.

Uber's sin was to break the sacred bond between drivers and passenger, made real by the tip. If you think about it, we're not talking about much money here — two bucks on a $10 ride. But Uber thought tipping was onerous. And in truth, if you aren't used to it, tipping is sort of intimidating.

But so is New York. You get over it. Uber should have gotten over it from the very beginning.

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

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NOW WATCH: Uber finally released their diversity report — here's how it compares to Facebook and Google

Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, has had a difficult few months.

His company has been accused of systemic sexism, leading to an internal investigation. One of his lieutenants has been accused of stealing confidential data from former employer Google. He was caught on video aggressively berating an Uber driver after the driver complained about pay.

Now there's a new, bizarre minor scandal plaguing the embattled executive: Questions have been raised over claims that he was really once ranked number two in the world at "Wii Tennis," part of a game for the Nintendo Wii games console, as has been claimed.

Yes, really.

First, the claims: A short bio of Travis Kalanick that used to be on Uber's website said he has"managed to rack up the second highest Wii Tennis score in the world. Game, set, match." And it's been cited by investor Chris Sacca over the years, and reported by media outlets (including Business Insider) as evidence of Kalanick's "singular focus" that has led to Uber's success.

Here's what Sacca once said (emphasis ours):

"A few years ago, Uber was barely started, Travis was at my house up in the mountains over the holidays hanging out with me and my family, and he's pal-ing around with my dad. And my dad says, 'Hey, let's play a game of Wii Tennis (Nintendo Wii).' My dad had a Wii at home and considered himself a pretty good tennis player. He's like mildly athletic and has played in a few local tennis tournaments. So Travis is like, 'Alright.'

"Travis is barely awake yet. And they sit there and they start playing this Wii Tennis game and my dad is getting abused. He's losing handily to Travis... And Travis is like, in full 'Princess Bride' style, he says... 'I'm playing with my opposite hand.' And so he switches the controller to his other hand.

"They start the match again, and my dad doesn't score a single point. He is absolutely swinging away and he gets no points in, and half of Travis' serves are just aces. My dad is completely dejected. So this grin comes over Travis' face, and... he starts thumbing over on the controller to the settings page on the Wii and to where they have the global high score. And he says, 'I'm actually tied for second in the global rankings in Wii Tennis.' He was the second best player in the world in Wii Tennis."

However, there's a problem: There is no game for the Wii called "Wii Tennis."

The simplest solution here is also the least flattering: That Travis Kalanick simply lied, because the surreal anecdote contributed to his founder myth as a driven and relentless entrepreneur. But that doesn't work — because Sacca has specifically recalled playing "Wii Tennis" with the exec, and the exec showing him the global leaderboard. (The alternative here is that Sacca is also lying, but then this all gets too conspiratorial and ridiculous to consider.)

So what is "Wii Tennis"?

The obvious answer is that it refers to the tennis game included in "Wii Sports"— the game that came bundled with new Wii consoles. But there's a problem with that. There is no online leaderboard in "Wii Sports," according to Ars Technica's Kyle Orland, who literally wrote a book on how the Wii works.

Alternatively, it might refer to "Grand Slam Tennis," another Wii tennis game, an option that Motherboard discusses. "Grand Slam Tennis" did have an online leaderboard, making it possible. But the way Sacca tells the story, Kalanick roundly thrashed Sacca's dad at "Wii Tennis" while visiting the Sacca family home, and Sacca's dad already owned a Wii. This would require both Sacca's dad and Kalanick to have owned "Grand Slam Tennis"— when it's much more likely that they both had "Wii Sports" instead.

An article from Ars Technica goes into impressive detail about an alternative solution. This is that they were playing "Wii Sports"— but that Sacca became confused over what he saw. Without getting too deep into the technical nitty-gritty, Wii Sports did have an offline ranking system that assessed you based on your performance against AI opponents. It's possible that Kalanick hit 2399 out of 2400, the second-highest possible level, an extremely difficult thing to achieve. (It's not even clear if reaching 2400 is even possible.)

Kalanick then showed this to Sacca, the theory goes, who became somehow confused over quite what he saw. But even this doesn't make total sense, because according to Sacca, Kalanick played his dad and showed off the global ranking while visiting Sacca's house. Kalanick's level data wouldn't be accessible on anyone else's Wii (because it wasn't online), so it would mean he decided to take his Wii to his investor's house — a strange (though not impossible) thing to do.

In short: We don't yet know the truth of whether Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was the "second best player in the world in Wii Tennis"— but the claim is certainly an odd one.

Uber, disappointingly, declined to comment.

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