![]() ![]() English below.) "There is a question here How does a country allow its researchers to create such a game to criticize its own policy. And he listened to me.” Give it a listen.THE CAT AND THE COUP main sources credits Reviews GameemaG.ir (Persian version. And I cultivated that on purpose because I wanted to be someone who is able to be a counter voice there. Whether it was investors or other leaders, whatever, because we had a relationship that allowed for that. Michael said, “I would at least say this on a relative basis: I did more than anyone else in history of giving him feedback. Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Michael: “Did you push back on Travis enough? Or did he like having people who are sort of like-”Īnd he filled in the blank for me. Still, I think it’s as in-depth a public reflection as there has been from Kalanick’s camp since Kalanick resigned almost exactly five years ago. And for every scandal that we examined, there’s another that we left out. We could have dedicated a whole episode to the Susan Fowler saga, for instance. Given the many twists and turns of the Uber saga, there’s always more I wish that we’d dug into. Michael engaged with core questions about Uber’s existence: Was the independent contractor model an inescapable original sin? Should investors ever have given Uber so much money? Was the Saudi round that valued Uber at about $70 billion a fair benchmark by which to judge Uber’s current CEO? Together, we analyzed the Uber TV show, Super Pumped. But Michael also admitted that he’d never really figured out how to talk to the press. We talked about the media coverage of Uber past and present, what the press got right, and what it got wrong. But Michael also kicked himself for letting the merger with Lyft slip through his fingers. “When does the buck stop at Dara’s desk?” Michael asked us. Michael criticized current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s management of the company, today worth $44.2 billion - about a third less than when Michael helped the company raise at an approximately $70 billion valuation. But he also reminisced about how he and Gurley used to talk multiple times a day. Michael inveighed against Benchmark partner Bill Gurley’s crusade to push out Kalanick. Michael quipped about the “kill switch,” Uber’s tactic of locking down computers ahead of government raids: “I do think one of the bad things we did at Uber was naming things terribly.” ” It was a trip down memory lane that helped convince Michael to give his side of the story. ” The Guardian and other outlets reported on Uber’s influence campaign in Europe and the “ kill switch. We discussed the latest media Uber obsession - “ The Uber files. If anyone ever wants to leak it to me, you know where to find me. (In my mind, probably the biggest unreported information from the Kalanick era is the Holder report itself. Attorney General Eric Holder to recommend Michael’s dismissal. ![]() He talked about his infamous visit to a shady Korean karaoke bar that led former U.S. Whether you’re interested in the inside baseball behind Kalanick’s ouster, or if you want to learn from Uber’s mistakes, or you just want to hear how they raised so much money, you’re going to want to give this episode a listen. We covered a lot of ground in our hour and a half long conversation. While Michael isn’t Kalanick - who I would love to interview again someday - he was probably the second most important person at Uber during the period, understood the company and Kalanick intimately, and is a lot more willing to publicly reflect on what Uber got right and wrong than his old boss. It’s been five years since Kalanick and Michael acrimoniously departed the company they helped build into a juggernaut. Finally, he came on Dead Cat to talk to Tom Dotan and me. He raised about $15 billion for Uber during his nearly four years at the company. Michael was once Travis Kalanick’s top lieutenant. I finally convinced Emil Michael, a central player in the Uber saga, to give me an on-the-record interview. It’s a sequel of sorts to my interview with Bill Gurley that ran a few months after launching this newsletter and my conversation with Dara Khosrowshahi after that. ![]()
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