Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and CEO (until 2017)
Various Uber drivers have attacked passengers. Representative examples: In March 2014, a Chicago passenger sued Uber after her driver locked the car and groped her. In June 2014, a Los Angeles driver kidnapped a woman who had passed out in his car.
In an internal crisis communication message that was accidentally made public, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick blamed the media for suggesting that Uber was liable for driver misconduct.
News site The Information in April 2017 reported that Uber built a program it called “Hell” to track how many Lyft drivers were available, where they were located, and whether they drove for Uber also. Uber then targeted these drivers with special promotions to encourage them to use Uber only.
By all indications, Uber collected data for “Hell” by connecting to Lyft’s servers in a manner prohibited by Lyft’s Terms of Service.
The Information reported that Uber then-CEO Travis Kalanick personally praised the Hell team, saying that they demonstrated Uber’s culture in their willingness to “hustle” in order to win.
In September 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported the FBI investigating Uber’s “Hell” practices.
Bloomberg reports that Hell was overseen by Joe Sullivan, Chief Security Officer of Uber, through a team formerly known as Competitive Intelligence.
See also the “Surfcam” program whereby Uber tracked data from Grab.
In a February 2017 lawsuit, Google alleged that Uber stole proprietary Google technology for autonomous cars. Google reported that Anthony Levandowski, an original member of Google’s self-driving car project, downloaded over 14,000 confidential files (9.7GB) pertaining to Google’s designs and testing, and used this information in Otto, a self-driving company that Uber later acquired. Complaint.
When Levandowski refused to testify or otherwise cooperate with litigation, invoking the Fifth Amendment to refuse to incriminate himself, Uber fired him.
Litigation brought by Benchmark Capital indicates that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick knew, before acquiring Otto, about the likelihood that Levandowski had Google materials. In particular, in March 2016, a month before Uber acquired Otto, Uber retained an investigator to assess whether Levandowski and others had Google materials. Benchmark Capital further alleges that Kalanick never shared this information with Uber investors.
Uber employees visited a South Korean escort bar.
When one member of the party later complained, Uber SVP of Business Emil Michael contacted Gabi Holzwarth (who had been dating Kalanick at the time) — asking that she tell anyone who asked that it was just karaoke. She refused, taking his request for a cover-up as impetus to discuss the incident publicly.
Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped (p. 305) reports that after Michael contacted Holzwarth, he alerted Uber SVP of Communications Rachel Whetstone who consulted with general counsel Salle Yoo and others — all hoping to conceal the situation so it wouldn’t leak.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick feuded with driver Fawzi Kamel (video) over changes at the company.
Kamel flagged Uber’s decision to cut prices and payments to drivers, complaining “I’m bankrupt because of you.” Kalanick replied that the driver was wrong to “blame everything in [his] life on somebody else” and “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit.”
Kalanick ended the trip by sarcastically wishing the driver good luck.
Kalanick later met with the driver again, reopened the debate, and ultimately made a payment to the driver from his own money.
When a GQ interviewer asked Uber then-CEO Travis Kalanick about the company’s rise making him increasingly desirable to women, he responded “Yeah, we call that Boob-er.”