super pumped

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Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, always be closing, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chris Urmson, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, data science, Didi Chuxing, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, family office, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hustle culture, impact investing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lolcat, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, off grid, peer-to-peer, pets.com, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, South China Sea, South of Market, San Francisco, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork, Y Combinator

lang=en. 54 found him near Ocean Beach: Anita Balakrishnan, “How Ryan Graves became Uber’s first CEO,” CNBC, May 14, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/14/profile-of-ubers-ryan-graves.html. 54 Graves’s Tumblr: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/. 54 One personal favorite: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/post/516416119/via-fuckyeahjay-z. 55 thirty new customers: Brian Lund, “From Dead-End Job to Uber Billionaire: Meet Ryan Graves,” DailyFinance, July 3, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140707042902/http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/uber-billionaire-ryan-graves/. 55 small, metallic statue of an ape-man: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/post/336093270/dpstyles-crunchie-closeup-aka-the-heisman-of. 56 Graves posted to his Facebook: Ryan Graves, “Into the Infinite Abyss of the Startup Adventure,” Facebook, February 14, 2010, https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=476991565402. 58 “Uber CEO ‘Super Pumped’ ”: Michael Arrington, “Uber CEO ‘Super Pumped’ about Being Replaced by Founder,” TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-about-being-replaced-by-founder/. 59 posed for an Instagram snapshot: Uber HQ (@sweenzor), Instagram Photo, September 18, 2013, https://www.instagram.com/p/eatIa-juEa/?taken-by=sweenzor. 59 hailed UberCab’s model: Leena Rao, “UberCab Takes the Hassle Out of Booking a Car Service,” TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/ubercab-takes-the-hassle-out-of-booking-a-car-service/. 59 one TechCrunch article by Arrington said: Michael Arrington, “What If UberCab Pulls an Airbnb?

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The audience read the list as Kalanick rattled them off aloud: Always Be Hustlin’ Be An Owner, Not Renter Big Bold Bets Celebrate Cities Customer Obsession Inside Out Let Builders Build Make Magic Meritocracy & Toe-Stepping Optimistic Leadership Principled Confrontation Super Pumped Champions Mindset / Winning Be Yourself Some of the employees in the audience were confused. “Is this a joke?” one twenty-seven-year-old whispered to a colleague sitting next to him. “Is this still part of the whole professor act?” The list read like Amazon’s corporate values run through a bro-speak translation engine. People in Kalanick’s world were not happy or sad, they were “super pumped” or “super unpumped.” Company brainstorming meetings were “jam sessions.” Half the company enjoyed Kalanick’s colorful vocabulary.

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Publisher's Notice Page numbers listed in the ebook correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text. SUPER PUMPED THE BATTLE FOR UBER MIKE ISAAC Copyright © 2019 by Mike Isaac All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W.

Unleashed by Anne Morriss, Frances Frei

"Susan Fowler" uber, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, Black Lives Matter, book value, Donald Trump, future of work, gamification, gig economy, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Greyball, Jeff Bezos, Netflix Prize, Network effects, performance metric, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, super pumped, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

It’s a model that reveals another foundational truth about leadership: some of your best people don’t always want you in the room. Culture gives you the confidence to exit. Do you have a culture problem? By June of 2017, the mandate to change the culture at Uber could not have been stronger. This was not lost on then-CEO Travis Kalanick. As reported by Mike Isaac in Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, while Kalanick was on leave, he drafted an email to the company that he never ended up sending.a The email was humbled and reflective, mirroring the version of Kalanick we had gotten to know earlier that spring. He opened with a sober take on Uber’s culture challenges: “Over the last seven years, our company has grown a lot—but it hasn’t grown up.”7 Kalanick took responsibility for the company’s cultural missteps, including its emphasis on growth at all costs and its transactional approach to stakeholder relationships.

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Nancy Hass, “And the Award for the Next HBO Goes To … ,” GQ, January 29, 2013, https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development. 6. McCord tells the complete story herself in her terrific book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility (USA: Silicon Guild, 2017). 7. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019), 265. 8. Anyone who cares about getting culture right should read Susan Fowler, Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber (New York: Viking, 2020). 9. Dara Khosrowshahi, “Uber’s New Cultural Norms,” LinkedIn (blog), November 7, 2017, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ubers-new-cultural-norms-dara-khosrowshahi/. 10.

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., 167, 168, 177 Scooby Snacks, 78 Scrub Daddy, 157 self-distraction, 6–8, 18–19 self-improvement, 20–21 self-trust, 56–57 severity, 61, 63, 64–65, 66, 67, 77 sexual harassment, 106 Shark Tank, 156–157 “sink or swim” approach, 109, 112 SMART goals, 79 Smith, Fred, 166 social media, 52 Southwest Airlines, 136–138, 161 standards-devotion matrix, 62–67, 70–87 standard setting, 78–80 Starbucks, 168 Stonewall, 110 strategic confusion, 135 strategic value stick, 145, 150, 151, 155 strategic wedge, 152–153, 154–156, 191 strategy, 12–14, 132, 135–163 changing, 162 communication of, 156–161 defined, 136–138 growth, 152–154 planning, 154–156 strategic trade-offs, 136–141 suppliers and, 144–148 value-based, 135–136 value creation and, 141–144 writing about, 158 Stripe, 14 Su, Lisa, 62 Sulla, 72, 73 Super Pumped (Isaac), 172–173 Super You, 139 suppliers, 144–148, 153–154 talent attracting diverse, 95–104 retaining, 120–122 task forces, 92 TaskRabbit, 5, 148–152, 161 Tatum, Lisa Skeete, 14 teams building, 54 diverse, 48–49 leadership of, 13 terminations, 84, 85–86 360-degree reviews, 117–119 “toe-stepping,” 178–179 Ton, Zeynep, 147–148 tough love, 62, 86–87 toxic employees, 123 Toyota, 153–154 Toyota Production System (TPS), 153–154 trade-offs, 136–141 Trader Joe’s, 44 trust, 12, 13, 31–58 attributes of, 34, 36 authenticity and, 34–37, 47–54, 57 diagnosing your own level of, 35–39 empathy and, 34–41, 51, 57 as foundation of leadership, 33–34 logic and, 41, 45–46, 51, 57 rebuilding, 1, 55–56 in yourself, 56–57 trust anchor, 35, 37 trust drivers, 34, 35 trust triangle, 34, 36–37 trust wobble, 35–39, 42–44 Twitter, 102 Uber, 31–32, 51, 54–56, 114, 172–174, 178–179 United States Army, 16–18 USAID, 43 US Soccer Federation (USSF), 121–122 ValMax.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

However, when Greyball became publicly known, Uber discontinued its use and the Department of Justice opened a criminal probe. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 73 Gurley, author interview. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 74 Kolhatkar, “At Uber, A New C.E.O. Shifts Gears.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 75 Isaac, Super Pumped, 279. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 76 Isaac, Super Pumped, 290–91. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 77 Jessica E. Lessin, Serena Saitto, and Amir Efrati, “At $45 Billion Price, SoftBank Talks Enflame Uber Tensions,” Information, Aug. 4, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 78 A spokesman for Kalanick denied the allegations in the suit, saying, “The lawsuit is completely without merit and riddled with lies and false allegations.”

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See Brad Stone, The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2017), 173–74. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 46 Pishevar, author interview. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 47 Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 193. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 48 Stone, Upstarts, 200–4. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 49 Matthew Lynley, “Hailo Raises $30.6 Million, Looks to Digitize New York’s Cabs,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 5, 2013. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 50 Gurley, author interview.

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BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 55 Sarah Lacy, “The Horrific Trickle Down of Asshole Culture: Why I’ve Just Deleted Uber from my Phone,” Pando, Oct. 22, 2014. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 56 Ben Smith, “Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists,” BuzzFeed, Nov. 17, 2014. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 57 Isaac, Super Pumped, 122–25. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 58 The super-voting rights left Kalanick with about 16 percent of the votes. His co-founders, seed investors, a few employees, and the Series A and B investors excluding Benchmark controlled another 59 percent. See pie chart in Alfred Lee, “Uber Voting Change Proposal Could Face More Hurdles,” Information, Oct. 2, 2017.

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination by Adam Lashinsky

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, always be closing, Amazon Web Services, asset light, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Benchmark Capital, business process, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, DARPA: Urban Challenge, Didi Chuxing, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, gig economy, Golden Gate Park, Google X / Alphabet X, hustle culture, independent contractor, information retrieval, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, new economy, pattern recognition, price mechanism, public intellectual, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, South of Market, San Francisco, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Jobs, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Tony Hsieh, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, young professional

As for Graves, he told the technology news site TechCrunch that he was “super pumped” Kalanick was joining Uber full time, a comment the snarky site mocked in its headline given Graves’s demotion. Despite his hurt feelings and subsequent feuds with Kalanick over his right to be called a founder, Graves stayed with Uber in senior positions, and on its board, for years. He also coined a phrase that’s central to the Uber culture. Years later Uber employees continued to say, without a whiff of irony, that they were “super pumped” about just about anything. On the day Kalanick became CEO, in October 2010, a man carrying a clipboard showed up at UberCab’s offices looking for Ryan Graves.

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win by Chris Kuenne, John Danner

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset light, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bob Noyce, business climate, business logic, call centre, cloud computing, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gordon Gekko, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, pattern recognition, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, sugar pill, super pumped, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, work culture , zero-sum game

The tool is a rating from 0 to 100, with truly exceptional performance earning above 100. “We are honest with ourselves and with each other,” Phillips says. “If you are not at one hundred, say, ninety, we are telling you it is fixable. If you are at an eighty, we are telling you to go.” Transparent. Quantitative. Unambiguous. “We had something our competitors did not—super-pumped-up employees.” Another Explorer, Mark Bonfigli, the founder of Dealer.com, applied this same kind of systems thinking to improve the human-touch elements of recruiting and culture in his company, allowing it to scale to more than a thousand employees and ultimately selling it to DealerTrack for over $1 billion.

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Bonfigli then realized his engaged and energetic sales and customer care teams could be a competitive weapon in the marketplace. He explains: “We did have a few inventions that were sort of cool and separated us, but the reality was some of our competitors had a more robust solution. We had something they did not have—happy, enthusiastic, inspired, and super-pumped-up employees who were smiling on the other end of the phone.” What started as a systematic way to ensure the health of his workforce turned into Dealer.com’s competitive advantage. As an Explorer, you are a magnet for like-minded problem solvers. You are clear, to the point of being blunt, in your communications and your expectations for your teams.

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmitt

active transport: walking or cycling, autonomous vehicles, car-free, congestion pricing, COVID-19, crossover SUV, desegregation, Donald Trump, Elaine Herzberg, gentrification, global pandemic, high-speed rail, invention of air conditioning, Lyft, megacity, move fast and break things, off-the-grid, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, wikimedia commons

Laura Bliss, “Former Uber Backup Driver: ‘We Saw This Coming,’” Citylab, March 27, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/. 13. Pete Bigelow, “NTSB Scrutinizes ‘Automation Complacency’ after Uber Crash,” Automotive News, December 11, 2019, https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/ntsb-scrutinizes-automation-complacency-after-uber-crash. 14. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: Norton, 2019), loc. 405 of 880, iBooks. 15. Paayal Zaveri, “Uber’s Revenue and Bookings Growth Slowed Slightly in the Second Quarter of 2018, Company Reports,” CNBC, August 15, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/uber-q2-2018-revenue-bookings-slow-slightly.html. 16.

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Dan Albert, telephone interview, October 22, 2019. 20. National Transportation Safety Board, “Preliminary Report Released for Crash Involving Pedestrian, Uber Technologies, Inc., Test Vehicle,” press release, May 24, 2018, https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.aspx. 21. Isaac, Super Pumped, loc. 403, iBooks. 22. Richard Lawler, “Uber Will Not Face Criminal Charges for Last Year’s Self-Driving Crash,” Engaget, March 5, 2019, https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/05/uber-autonomous-fatal-crash-criminal-charges/. 23. National Association of City Transportation Officials, “NTSB Finds Inadequate Safeguards in Place for Self-Driving Vehicle Testing across U.S.,” November 21, 2019, https://nacto.org/2019/11/21/ntsb-finds-inadequate-safeguards-in-place-for-self-driving-vehicle-testing/. 24.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, algorithmic management, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Babbage, ChatGPT, collective bargaining, colonial rule, commoditize, company town, computer age, computer vision, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, decarbonisation, deskilling, digital rights, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, gigafactory, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, independent contractor, industrial robot, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Journalism, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, OpenAI, precariat, profit motive, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Bankman-Fried, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, techlash, technological determinism, Ted Kaczynski, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working poor, workplace surveillance

London: Routledge, 2007. Hudson, Pat. The Genesis of Industrial Capital: A Study of West Riding Wool Textile Industry, c. 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hyman, Louis. Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary. New York: Viking, 2018. Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. New York: W. W. Norton, 2019. Jackson, George. The Bath Archives: A Further Selection from the Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson, from 1809 to 1816. 2 vols. London, 1873. Jones, Frederick L., ed. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

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De Blasio also proposed I conducted a phone interview with de Blasio while he was campaigning for president in 2019. The quotes are drawn from that interview. 12. “The old legislative controls” Randall, Before the Luddites, 237. 13. New York Times reporter Mike Isaac Mike Isaac’s excellent reporting on Uber can be found both in the New York Times and in his book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: Norton, 2019). 14. As Uber was introduced Uber’s behavior often caused protests, backlash, and even violent riots. See, for example, “Cab Drivers Protest Uber, Rideshare Apps in Mexico City,” AP, October 12, 2016. 15. why should we bother Randall, Before the Luddites, 237.

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever by Alex Kantrowitz

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, anti-bias training, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer vision, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, fulfillment center, gigafactory, Google Chrome, growth hacking, hive mind, income inequality, Infrastructure as a Service, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Jony Ive, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, new economy, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, super pumped, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, wealth creators, work culture , zero-sum game

Dow Jones & Company, October 25, 2018. https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-netflix-radical-transparency-and-blunt-firings-unsettle-the-ranks-1540497174?mod=hp_lead_pos4. Ideas at Tesla come from the top: Duhigg, Charles. “Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell.” Wired. Condé Nast, December 13, 2008. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory. Uber’s culture is famously troubled: Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. CHAPTER 1: INSIDE JEFF BEZOS’S CULTURE OF INVENTION Bezos drives Amazon’s inventive culture through fourteen leadership principles: “Leadership Principles.” Amazon.jobs. Accessed October 3, 2019. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

They seemed mostly bemused. Some companies try to instill a little bit of Silicon Valley culture by building miniature start-ups inside their old-company walls, hiring Millennials who fan out across the organization, wearing Converse sneakers and untucked shirts, running hackathons and teaching oldsters how to get “super pumped” and “mastermind some shit” in a “jam sesh,” as Uber founder Travis Kalanick once put it. Also, many companies are latching on to faddish Silicon Valley management methodologies, like Agile and Lean Startup, because they are convinced that these tech-spawned ideas will make them as nimble as start-ups.

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer

Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, FedEx blackjack story, global village, hiring and firing, job-hopping, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, late fees, loose coupling, loss aversion, out of africa, performance metric, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, super pumped, tech worker, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, work culture

Former Netflix vice president of engineering, Daniel Jacobson, worked at National Public Radio (NPR) for a decade in Washington, DC, before working at Netflix for a decade. He explained the benefits of the family ethos at NPR like this: I began at NPR in late 1999 as the first full-time software engineer hired online. When I got there, I was super-pumped. People who want to work at NPR believe in the mission and love the organization’s dedication to news and information. That shared purpose resulted in a culture that at times felt more like a family than a workplace. It was very appealing, and I developed a lot of close relationships at work. NPR had such a strong family culture that many people turned it into their real family.

Nothing But Net by Mark Mahaney

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Black Swan, Burning Man, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial engineering, gamification, gig economy, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), knowledge economy, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, medical malpractice, meme stock, Network effects, PageRank, pets.com, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, subscription business, super pumped, the rule of 72, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

This is the kind of evidence an individual investor should be looking for. The fourth logic test question is: Are there concrete steps that management can take to drive the company to profitability? I’m going to go back to Uber on this one. Mike Isaac, the technology reporter for the New York Times, wrote a book about Uber called Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. Isaac does a masterful job detailing the birth, the growth, and the controversy around Uber. One clear takeaway is that Uber under cofounder Travis Kalanick was a company run with a growth-at-all-costs mentality—or a growth-regardless-of-the-costs mentality. I’m not sure Uber could have initially succeeded without that type of mentality, given the entrenched and fiercely competitive interests it was taking on in local cities and in international markets.

Palace Coup: The Billionaire Brawl Over the Bankrupt Caesars Gaming Empire by Sujeet Indap, Max Frumes

Airbnb, Bear Stearns, Blythe Masters, book value, business cycle, Carl Icahn, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, data science, deal flow, Donald Trump, family office, fear of failure, financial engineering, fixed income, Jeffrey Epstein, junk bonds, lockdown, low interest rates, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, NetJets, power law, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Solow, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, super pumped, Travis Kalanick

He was charming, glib, and, by billionaire standards, down-to-earth. By 2006, he was married to the former Carolyn Pleva, a fashion designer, and had three sons. By all accounts he was happily married and adored his wife and children. “I married my trophy wife. I come home every day and smile. One of the secrets to my success is being super-pumped up every day,” Rowan once said. Rowan even bragged that there had been no divorces among Apollo partners. Rowan’s reputation for feeling secure and comfortable in his own skin proved to be another contrast with Harris. One Apollo partner put it this way: “Josh Harris wakes up in the morning thinking about Marc Rowan.

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, business logic, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Didi Chuxing, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Elon Musk, financial engineering, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greensill Capital, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, index fund, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plant based meat, post-oil, railway mania, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, supply chain finance, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, Zenefits, Zipcar

Thanks to Tripp Mickle for talking us through a new craft we all knew nothing about. Thanks to Bradley Hope for all his counsel on the publishing world and investigative reporting. Our text builds on strong works of others that chronicled Silicon Valley’s unicorn party. Thanks for the kind suggestions from Mike Isaac, whose Super Pumped shared many similar themes on the rise and ouster of Uber’s CEO. Reeves Wiedeman was a generous and decorous competitor, and his Billion Dollar Loser, also on WeWork, is well worth a read. Thanks to all our colleagues at other outlets whose work on WeWork helped inform this book, including Ellen Huet, Gillian Tan, Cory Weinberg, Meghan Morris, Steve Bertoni, Charles Duhigg, and Moe Tkacik.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

Megan Rose Dickey, “Lyft’s Rides Are So Social,” Business Insider, March 16, 2014; Travis Kalanick, Uber Policy White Paper, “Principled Innovation: Addressing the Regulatory Ambiguity,” April 12, 2013 (“compete”). 4. “Didi Chuxing’s Founder Cheng Wei,” Times of India, August 8, 2016. 5. Interview with Jean Liu. 6. Mike Isaacs, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), chapters 27–30; Farhad Manjoo, “Uber’s Lesson,” New York Times, June 21, 2017; Anita Balakrishnan, “Here’s the Full 13-Page Report of Recommendations for Uber,” CNBC, June 13, 2017. Chapter 40: Auto-Tech 1. Michael Sivak, “Younger Persons Are Still Less Likely to Have a Driver’s License Than in the 1980s,” January 6, 2020, https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/01/20200106-sivak.html. 2.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, David Graeber, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, George Floyd, George Gilder, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kitchen Debate, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shock, open borders, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Powell Memorandum, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, super pumped, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

For the origins of Uber and Airbnb specifically, see Brad Stone, The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley (London: Corgi, 2018); Leigh Gallagher, The Airbnb Story: How to Disrupt an Industry, Make Billions of Dollars . . . and Plenty of Enemies (London: Virgin Books, 2018); Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019). 23.The classic historical work on casual labor markets is Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (1971; London: Verso, 2013). For more recent works on the subject, see Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury, 2011); Alexandrea J.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

v The exposé was a coup for the paper, but owner Rupert Murdoch could hardly celebrate the scoop, as he was also one of the biggest investors in Theranos. vi Uber chronicler Mike Isaac writes that Camp was “smart, but he was no Steve Jobs”—a sign of how far the standards for Silicon Valley founder-genius had fallen since the days when world-class chemists and physicists led the start-ups. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W. W. Norton, 2019), 41. vii Named for Fairchild and Intel cofounder Gordon, Moore’s “law” predicts that the density of transistors within an integrated circuit will continue to increase exponentially, doubling every year or two and falling in price. viii This was ironic, considering that the professional certification system was supposed to keep future national-security assets like Snowden away from the politically corrupting influence of college life.