New CEO intends to put his own stamp on Uber
Khosrowshahi says ‘culture went wrong’
Dara Khosrowshahi wants to make something clear: The new Uber will not look like the company he inherited.
Speaking publicly for the first time since he became Uber’s chief executive in August, Khosrowshahi painted a rosier vision of the future of his San Francisco company. His aim: To escape from the shadow cast over the ride-hailing giant after a series of scandals shook the company to its core and resulted in the eventual ousting of former chief executive and co-founder, Travis Kalanick.
“The culture went wrong, the governance went wrong, the board went in a very bad direction,” Khosrowshahi said in conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook conference on Thursday. “I think winning gives some excuses for bad behavior.”
Indeed, when Khosrowshahi stepped into the role in August, he had to deal with a series of scandals. Employee attrition was at a high, the company’s board of directors was rife with infighting, the company faced no fewer than five federal inquiries into its business practices. And, moreover, the brand and what Uber stood for was taking a beating. The #DeleteUber hashtag surged across social media earlier this year, re-
sulting in more than 500,000 deleted accounts.
Now, Khosrowshahi is trying to put his own imprimatur on the company in what he calls “Uber 2.0.”
He confirmed, for the first time publicly, that Uber is working on securing a multibilliondollar investment from SoftBank, the Japanese mega-conglomerate angling to get into the American ride-hailing market. He hinted at pulling back on Uber’s long-espoused strategy of spending enormous amounts of money in order to gain market share in certain areas.
Perhaps most important, he has embarked on an apology tour of sorts in cities and countries around the world, trying to repair the damage done by Kalanick
“The wrong, culture the went governance went wrong.” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
and his contentious, bare-knuckled approach to dealing with regulators in new markets.
“I think we were generally immature with how we deal and dealt with regulators,” Khosrowshahi said.
He spent the past few weeks traveling to London, where Uber is facing the threat of being banned, as well as Brazil, where Uber narrowly escaped being regulated as if it were more like a taxi service.
He has not eschewed the company’s history entirely. Khosrowshahi nodded to the passion it took for Kalanick to get Uber to the near $70 billion transportation behemoth it is today. Khosrowshahi said still talks regularly with Kalanick and that he would be crazy not to rely on Kalanick’s genius and tenacity to take the company forward.
But make no mistake: Uber is Khosrowshahi’s company now, not Travis Kalanick’s. And Khosrowshahi said he has made clear he needs some distance from the former CEO to do his job, and to do it well. That’s especially true if he wants to make good on his goal of taking the company public in 2019.
“I’ve got to put my stamp on the company,” he said. “We’re on our way.”