Archivo del Autor: Belen De Leon

A brief history of Uber’s bumpy road to an IPO

It’s been nine years since UberCab made its first appearance on the WordPress pages of this website. In the ensuing years, the startup has grown from an upstart looking to upend the taxi cab cartels, to a juggernaut that has its hands in every form of transportation and logistics service it can think of.

In the process, Uber has done some things that might give (and in fact has given) some shareholders pause.

From its first pitch deck to this historic public offering, TechCrunch has covered the über startup that has defined the post-financial-crisis era of consumer venture investing.

Here are some of the things that shouldn’t get swept into the dustbin of Uber’s history as the company makes its debut as a public company.

• In 2014 Uber used a tool called “God View” to track the movements of passengers and shared those details publicly.At the time, the company was worth a cool $18.2 billion, and was already on the road to success (an almost pre-ordained journey given the company’s investors and capitalization), but even then, it could not get out of the way of its darker impulses.

• A former executive of the company, Emil Michael, suggested that Uber should investigate journalists who were critical of the company and its business practices (including PandoDaily editor Sarah Lacy).

• From 2014 to 2016, the company used a software program codenamed “Hell” to illegally monitor the location and movement of Lyft drivers. It was a tactic that opened Uber up to a criminal investigation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• As it expanded internationally, Uber came under fire for lax hiring practices for its drivers. In India, the company was banned in New Delhi, after a convicted sex offender was arrested on suspicion of raping a female passenger.

• Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened an investigation into the company for gender discrimination around hiring and salaries for women at the company. Uber’s problems with harassment were famously documented by former employee Susan Fowler in a blog post that helped spur a reckoning for the tech sector.

• Uber has been forced to pay fines for its inability to keep passenger and driver information private. The company has agreed to 20 years of privacy audits and has paid a fine to settle a case that was opened by the Federal Trade Commission dating back to 2017.

• While Uber was not found to be criminally liable in the death of an Arizona pedestrian that was struck and killed by a self-driving car from the company’s fleet, it remains the only company with an autonomous vehicle involved in the death of a pedestrian.

• Beyond its problems with federal regulators, Uber has also had problems adhering to local laws. In Colorado, Uber was fined nearly $10 million for not adhering to the state’s requirements regarding background checks of its drivers.

• Uber was also sued by other companies. Notably, it was involved in a lengthy and messy trade secret dispute with Alphabet’s onetime self-driving car unit, Waymo. That was for picking up former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski and some know-how that the former Alphabet exec allegedly acquired improperly before heading out the door.

• Uber even had dueling lawsuits going between and among its executives and major shareholders. When Travis Kalanick was ousted by the Uber board, the decision reverberated through its boardroom. As part of that battle for control, Benchmark, an early investor in Uber sued the company’s founder and former chief executive,  Travis Kalanick for fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.

• Uber’s chief people officer, Liane Hornsey was forced to resign following a previously unreported investigation into her alleged systematic dismissals of racial discrimination complaints within Uber.

• Lawsuits against the company not only dealt with its treatment of gender and race issues, but also for accessibility problems with the ride-hailing service. The company was sued for allegedly violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Disabled Persons Act.

• The ride-hailing service also isn’t free from legal woes in international markets. Earlier this year, the company paid around $3 million to settle charges that Uber had violated local laws by operating in the country illegally.

• Finally, the company’s lax driver screening policies have led to multiple reports of assault by drivers of Uber passengers. Uber recently ended the policy of forcing those women to engage in mandatory arbitration proceedings to adjudicate those claims.

• Not even the drivers who form the core of Uber’s service are happy with the company. On the eve of its public offering, a strike in cities across the country brought their complaints squarely in front of the company’s executive team right before the public offering, which was set to make them millions.

Source: TechCrunch

Virgin Galactic is ‘coming home’ to Spaceport America in New Mexico

Aspiring space tourism outfit Virgin Galactic has just announced its readiness to shift its operations to New Mexico’s Spaceport America, from which the company’s first commercial flights will take off. “Virgin Galactic is coming home to New Mexico where together we will open space to change the world for good,” said Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson at a press event.

The plan isn’t exactly a surprise, since Virgin Galactic and New Mexico collaborated on the creation of the spaceport, which at present is the only thing of its kind in the world. But moving from a testing and R&D hangar to a place where actual customers will board the spaceships is a major milestone.

I talked with George Whitesides, VG’s CEO, about what the move really means and, of course, when it will actually happen.

“We’re fulfilling the commitment that we made years ago to bring an operational spaceline to the world’s first purpose-built spaceport,” he told me. “So what does that mean? One, the vehicles are moving, and all the stuff that goes along with operating those vehicles. And all the people that operate the vehicles, and the staff that are so-called customer-facing. And you’ll have all the relevant supply chain folks and core infrastructure folks who are associated with running a spaceline.”

Right now, that rather complicated list really only adds up to about a hundred employees — a large part of the workforce will remain in Mojave, where R&D and new vehicle engineering will continue to be based in the form of The Spaceship Company.

“As we move towards commercial services, we’re thinking more about what comes next, like hypersonic and point to point spaceflight,” Whitesides said.

That said, VG isn’t finished with its existing craft just yet. You can expect a couple more, depending on what the engineers think is necessary. But it’s not a “huge number.”

Moving to Spaceport America from its Mojave facilities is being undertaken now for several reasons, Whitesides explained. In the first place, the craft is pretty much ready to go.

“The last flight we did, we basically demonstrated a full commercial profile, including the interior of the vehicle,” he said. “Not only did we, you know, go up to space and come down, but because Beth was in the back — Beth Moses, our flight instructor — she was sort of our mock passenger. She got up a couple times and moved around, she was able to verify our cabin conditions. So we started thinking, maybe we’re at a place where we could move.”

The paperwork from the FAA and other authorities is in order. The spaceport has been ready for some time, too, at least the difficult parts like the runway, fuel infrastructure, communications equipment and so on. Right now it’s more like they need to pick the color for the carpet and buy the flatscreens and fridges for inside.

“But the people perspective is a key part of this,” Whitesides continued. “These people have families, they have kids. We always thought, wouldn’t it be nice to move over the summer, so they don’t have to leave in the middle of a school year? If we start now, our employees can more easily integrate into the community in New Mexico. So we said, actually let’s just do this right now. It’s a bold choice and a big deal but it’s the right thing to do.”

And what about the vehicles, VMS Eve and VSS Unity? How will they get there?

“That’s the great thing about an air launch system,” said Whitesides. “It’s the easiest part, in a way. Once all the other stuff is down there we’ll look deep into each other’s eyes, and say ‘are we ready?’ And then we put together the spaceship and go. It’s built to fly longer distances than that — so we’ll start the day with our base of operations in Mojave, and end the day with our base of operations in New Mexico.”

And a lovely base it will be. The spaceport, designed by Foster & Partners in the U.K., is a striking shape that rises out of the desert and should have all the facilities necessary to run a commercial spaceline — it’s probably the only place in the world that would work for that purpose, which makes sense as it was built for it.

“Because we’re horizontal take-off and landing, operationally on the ground side, it basically looks like an airport. The coolest-looking airport ever, but an airport,” Whitesides said. “It’s got a big beautiful runway — but you’ll notice that it’s got Earth to space comms links, this special antenna, and instead of a tower we have a mission control, and of course there’s the special ground tankage — oxidizer tanks and that kind of propulsion related infrastructure.”

The airspace surrounding the spaceport is also restricted all the way from the surface up to infinity, which helps when your flights span multiple air traffic levels. “And it’s already a mile up, so that’s an asset,” Whitesides observed. A mile closer to space — more a convenience than a necessity, but it’s a good start.

The actual moving operations should take place over the summer. The remaining test flights aren’t yet scheduled, but I’m sure that will soon change — and you’ll definitely hear about it when the first commercial flights are put on the books.

Source: TechCrunch