The New York Times stated that Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, has resigned, and Mr. Kalanick’s statement confirms that. Mr. Kalanick helped found Uber back in 2009, and he was also one of the pivotal people responsible for such a huge growth of this company. Uber is currently a true transportation giant which operates all over the world, but it seems like recent months managed to shake up Uber’s CEO enough to make him quit.
Uber’s investors asked for Mr. Kalanick to step down in a letter titled ‘Moving Uber Forward’, they asked for Uber’s CEO to step down immediately, and after he consulted with at least one Uber board member, and several discussions with some of the investors, Mr. Kalanick decided it’s time to step down. ‘I love Uber more than anything’, said the company’s, now former, CEO, while he also added that he’s stepping down so that Uber can go back to growing, and he quit mainly because investors asked him to do so it seems. Now, Uber’s board also released a statement in which they said that Mr. Kalanick always put the company first, and that his departure will give Uber ‘room to fully embrace the new chapter’. The company has been exposed to various, negative situations this year, including sexual harassment reports and also discrimination, and such situations managed to stir things up even further, and it is possible that had something to do with this whole situation as well.
On top of everything Uber has been faced with an intellectual property lawsuit from Waymo, which managed to attract a lot of press considering that Waymo is a business that is controlled by Google. Now, Mr. Kalanick’s resignation follows his statement that he will take an ‘indefinite leave of absence’ from the company, following the death of his mother. Some people would say that this resignation is not entirely unexpected, but it does come as a surprise following the aforementioned statement by Mr. Kalanick. It will be interesting to see what comes next for the company, as one of the people who helped create Uber is now out of the picture.