Lyft picks up an “Angel of Death”

Thornton Mcenery

“Just a few short weeks ago, Uber was a true Alpha”, and the mere notion of a close competitor to the $70bn tech juggernaut was “laughable”, says Thornton Mcenery. Amazing what “rampant allegations of a toxic misogynistic corporate culture”, a short-fused CEO, and analyst anxieties about a “Ponzi scheme of ambition” can do. Uber’s most famous rival, Lyft, “clearly smelling blood in the water”, recently boosted its war chest with a $600m financing round valuing it at $7.5bn. “Those numbers are nice”, but what’s really important is who’s doing the backing. Lyft has partnered with KKR, the private equity firm co-founded by Henry Kravis, which was famed in the 1980s for its “Barbarians at the Gate” raids on big firms. “And don’t nobody kill off rivals like Henry f***ing Kravis.” Lyft has made mileage out of Uber’s troubles by stressing its credentials as a decent, ethical alternative “in the great ride-sharing start-up wars”. That it has managed to retain the “moral high ground” while taking investment from Wall Street’s “Angel of Death” is “truly astounding” – and a telling measure of Uber’s own reputational mismanagement.