From left, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington speak onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt at Pier 48 on September 8, 2014 in San Francisco, California. TechCrunch/Flickr
Famously pugnacious Uber CEO Travis Kalanick almost sounded contrite during an onstage interview at Techcrunch‘s Disrupt conference earlier this week.
At one point, Michael Arrington, the founder of Techcrunch, asked Kalanick how he felt about being compared to Darth Vader. “I’m a Star Wars fan,” Kalanick replied, “but that’s a little intense.” He went on to describe the six years he spent in the startup trenches with his previous company, an enterprise software maker that he ultimately sold for millions, saying that success requires a certain amount pugnaciousness. “When you’re scrapping that hard, it requires you to be abnormally perfectionist, abnormally fierce.”
But that same spirit that serves an underdog so well becomes a liability when perceptions of a company change. A pit bull isn’t very sympathetic when it becomes the alpha. And these days, with its billion-dollar war chest and a presence in 200 cities, Uber looks like a top dog as it seeks to remake the way people hail cars and pay for rides. “You have to understand people look at you as the big guy now, not the scrappy guy,” Kalanick said. But, he acknowledged, that transition has been challenging for Uber to navigate. “You have to approach things differently. You have to communicate differently. And we’re not there yet.”
But if Kalanick’s goal is a kinder, gentler company, you wouldn’t know it from a new Uber-backed campaign to eviscerate the reputation of the traditional taxi industry. Unlike most other tech companies, Uber’s battle is unavoidably in the streets. For all Kalanick’s talk, Uber clearly doesn’t see playing nice as much of an option, especially with regulators once again circling. And it’s hard to see how “nice” would work anyway, if your goal is to turn the entire global transportation market upside-down.
Going Negative
I first became aware of Taxi Facts in a promoted tweet Friday morning (note to Twitter: hey, it worked!). “Is your cab safe?” reads one of the three tweets so far in the group’s feed. “Thanks to #BigTaxi, maybe not.”
On its site, the group paints the traditional taxi industry as a monopoly that uses its political clout to curb innovation, skirt safety standards, and take advantage of drivers. The latter two criticisms sound very familiar, because they’re the same charges the taxi industry levels at Uber.
Along with Uber, Taxi Facts is mostly backed by an assortment of tech industry advocacy groups, including the libertarian group TechFreedom and Texans for Economic Progress, which is chaired by Texas governor Rick Perry’s former communications director. The political bent of these allies may seem out of character in a Silicon Valley corporate culture that often aspires to the blandly apolitical. But Uber has stopped pretending its survival as a business doesn’t depend on mastering the political arena.
In announcing the hiring of former Obama campaign guru David Plouffe last month to head up public policy and strategy for Uber, Kalanick wrote: “We are in the middle of a political campaign and it turns out the candidate is Uber.” It was a talking point he reiterated on stage at Disrupt. Plouffe isn’t set to start at Uber until the end of the month, but candidate Uber’s campaign has clearly already begun, and it’s not afraid to go negative.
Push-Button Votes
Whether or not the taxi industry is the real impetus driving regulators’ anti-Uber stance, the company’s very real political battles are far from over. In a letter dated Monday, the California Public Utilities Commission—which regulates the state’s limousines and buses—sent Uber a letter warning the company that its new UberPool service likely violated state law. Riders using UberPool—which is currently available only in Uber’s home city of San Francisco—share the same car, but each pays a separate fare depending on where they’re going. The CPUC said this violates state regulations prohibiting “charter party carriers” from charging on an “individual-fare basis.”
In decidedly passive-aggressive language, the CPUC at the end of the letter warned Uber that unless it could convince state lawmakers to change the statute, it would have to act against UberPool. But as it has so often done in the past, Uber isn’t showing any sign that a warning from a regulator is enough to stop the company from doing exactly what it wants to do. “We welcome the opportunity to share with the CPUC the significant benefits of UberPool and how it really works,” Uber said in a statement to WIRED.
Keeping its cars rolling and new features and services rolling out has served Uber well in the past against California regulators. Both the city of San Francisco and the CPUC in the past have demanded Uber cease and desist operations, but the companies have kept going, and various compromises and accommodations—not always official—have been reached. In those victories, and the many it has achieved in other cities, Uber is spending a new kind of political capital. Traditional candidates bank on promises, charisma, and favor-trading to win votes. Uber’s constituents, by contrast, are its users, and they vote early and often, every time they open the app.
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