Buccaneering digital disruptor or bullying maverick who cut
too many corners? History will deliver a fuller judgment on Travis Kalanick,
but 2017 was undoubtedly an annus
horribilis both for the Ubermensch
and the company he founded.
Allegations of endemic companywide sexual harassment got the
year off to a bad start. A video of Kalanick aggressively berating one of his
own drivers swiftly followed, as did a lawsuit from Google driverless car
sister company Waymo for trade-secret misappropriation.
Kalanick resigned in June, but the bad news kept coming.
Transport for London banned Uber for not running a "fit and proper"
service after a U.K. court already had ordered the company to give its drivers
proper workers' rights. In November, Uber revealed that 57 million passenger
records had been hacked 13 months earlier, and yet the company hadn't informed
anyone, leading to more legal problems. Along the way, the company lost more
than $1 billion two quarters running.
Yet there is no denying the extraordinary, permanent
transformation Kalanick and his on-demand car service have wrought on ground
transportation. Uber handles 10 million trips per day across 77 countries. It
claims 65,000 corporate clients for its Uber for Business service, which offers
travel manager-friendly features like policy controls and management
information.
Uber also has dealt a near-terminal blow to traditional
taxis, which accounted for only 7 percent of ground transportation business
expense claims in the third-quarter of 2017, according to expense management
provider Certify. Uber's market share was an astonishing 54 percent, although
that figure slipped a point in Q3, the first time that has happened. Rival
Lyft, meanwhile, shot up from 8 percent to 11 percent. Is it the first
indication that Uber's missteps are affecting its popularity?
This is Kalanick's third showing in BTN's Most Influential.
The last time Kalanick appeared, in 2015, he was followed alphabetically by
Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who then followed him into the Uber CEO hot seat
in August 2017. Khosrowshahi is battling to exorcise the bad while keeping the
good left behind by his predecessor. Kalanick—worth $5.1 billion, according to
Forbes—is battling lawsuits.