Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped (p. 369) reports Travis Kalanick continuing to meddle in Uber’s business — including demanding documents and trying to influence decisions — even after he resigned. Isaac presents a letter from all fourteen members of the Executive Leadership Team (which was temporarily running Uber after Kalanick’s departure):
Dear Board of Directors:
In fulfilling our obligation to surface issues we feel are significant, we call your attention to three examples:
1. Travis recently reached out directly to an employee, first asking if he would talk to a reporter about an upcoming negative story related to the Fawzi Kamel incident (Kamel was the driver in the March video). Previously, Travis’ personal lawyer had also reached out to this employee on the same topic.
Travis also requested that the employee produce private, internal emails for him, and said that if he refused to send them he would exercise his right as a board member to get them directly from the Security team. The employee did not produce the emails and Travis subsequently asked the Security team to produce the emails. The Security team also declined to produce the emails and reported the incident to Salle, who subsequently advised the ELT that we should stand firm against any requests that may violate an employee’s right of privacy, and that a Director on their own cannot conduct independent investigations.
Travis also asked whether the employee had spoken with the Covington investigators about the issue in question. The employee was very troubled by this given the confidential nature of the Covington process and reported his concerns to the Legal team.
2. Travis recently called an ELT member to ask if he could count on their votes (the particular purpose/vote was not identified). Current and former employees have reached out to the ELT with similar reports. This has put the ELT in a difficult position, wondering what Travis might be up to and whether or not it is a cause for concern.
3. Travis continues to reach out to employees beyond the ELT for business purposes. Regardless of the intention of the outreach, it is disruptive to the daily work at Uber. There is also cause for concern in that the outreach often comes with a request to conceal the conversation from management.
With deep respect,
The ELT
Isaac reports that all fourteen ELT members said they would resign if Kalanick continued trying to regain power.