Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Author:Kara Swisher [Swisher, Kara]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10 The Uber Mensch

I never turned anyone into a pig.

Some people are pigs; I make them

Look like pigs.

—LOUISE GLÜCK, “CIRCE’S POWER”

In early spring 2017, I scored a reservation at Mourad, the latest swanky downtown San Francisco restaurant that catered to newly rich techies. Like most of these new places, Mourad managed to be both classy and louche, with lots of big vases full of big flowers propped on smooth surfaces of expensive stone. Naturally, it had one Michelin star for its “modern interpretation of a cuisine deeply rooted in the past,” in this case, Moroccan.

To be fair, it was a very good restaurant, run by Mourad Lahlou, a soulful chef who had also won the Iron Chef America competition in 2009. I arrived early and made my way to the bar. While I don’t consume alcohol much, I did enjoy Mourad’s candied harissa-spiced pecans and that’s where they were. It’s also where loudmouth moneybags were always skittering about, and that night one well-known investor buttonholed me at the bar.

“When are you going to stop?” he asked, with a vaguely threatening tone I was not even slightly scared of.

I knew he was referring to Recode’s increasingly critical coverage of Uber and its pugnacious CEO Travis Kalanick. Still, I decided to bait the investor, knowing full well that his Tesla Model X, Gulfstream upgrade, third home in an exclusive Montana ski club, and whatever else he needed to feel alive depended on my “stopping.”

“Stop? Stop what?” I asked, trying my best to be irritating by playing dumb.

“When are you going to stop attacking Travis?” the investor huffed, sticking a stubby finger in my face. It made him even less scary. Never, I thought, knowing something he didn’t. At that moment, Recode was prepping a truly horrific story about a top Uber executive who had obtained the medical files of a woman who had been raped during a ride in India. The company had gotten the medical files not at the victim’s request, but because it questioned whether she was telling the truth. Apparently, Kalanick didn’t interfere with, or even question, this despicable act. Many at the company were distraught over the egregious invasion of privacy, which seemed a bridge far too far in an endless series of crappy bridges crossed at Uber.

Me too. That’s why I wasn’t going to stop. I was going to hit as hard as I could, through fair reporting of Kalanick’s long running and increasingly terrible behavior as a CEO. I decided to tell this investor the truth: “I’ll stop when Travis stays down for good.” The investor acted surprised, although I suspect he wasn’t.

“So that’s your job?” he asked with palpable derision. “To speak truth to power?” I smiled, popped a delicious pecan in my mouth, and said nothing, since it was so overly dramatic and I knew I wasn’t going to persuade him of anything. When the truth stands between a man and his next $100 million, the truth is always going to be escorted off the premises.

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