Just about a week after it was announced that Travis Kalanick, co-founder and CEO of Uber Technologies Inc., was taking a leave of absence from the ride-sharing giant, the New York Times has reported that the embattled leader has officially stepped down from his role as chief executive.
The NYT reports that Uber’s investors—more specifically, five of the company’s most significant backers—wrote a letter titled “Moving Uber Forward”; it recommended that Kalanick step aside as CEO immediately, and after hours of discussion, he apparently agreed with the decision. Kalanick, however, will remain on Uber’s board of directors.
“I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Mr. Kalanick said in a statement.
One of the five investors included venture capital firm Benchmark, and one of its partners, Bill Gurley, is on the company’s board.
There will be many pages in the history books devoted to @travisk - very few entrepreneurs have had such a lasting impact on the world.
— Bill Gurley (@bgurley) June 21, 2017
In addition to Benchmark, the investors include Fidelity Investments, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, and Menlo Ventures, notes the NYT. These firms own over a quarter of Uber’s stock, and they have about 40% of the company’s voting power, since the kind of stock they hold allows them “with an outsize number of votes.” These investors have also been with Uber right from the beginning.
What’s next for Uber remains a mystery, as now a good handful of top level management positions remain unfilled. The list includes chief executive, chief operating officer, general counsel, senior vice president of engineering, chief marketing officer, and board chair.
The resignation of Travis Kalanick shows how serious Uber’s investors took the recent scandals, and how worried they were about the threat to Uber as a business. Valued at a reported $70 billion, Uber is one of the most highly-valued start-up companies in the world. Despite that title and the incredible amount of funding it has managed to raise, no shareholder wants to see their investment lose value.
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