Name: Uber’s New Board Member Thinks Its Problems Aren't Over
Uploaded: 2017-07-18
Duration: 4 min 15 s
Description: David Trujillo, partner at TPG, talks about the long road to Uber's repaired reputation.

I wanna touch on Uber because General Atlantic is an Uber investor, David you just joined the board. When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that Uber has had a terrible year but it hasn't hurt the business. But right now. Other company has no leadership, is it possible that you're maybe misunderstanding the latent effects of the problems the company's had? Yeah, I wouldn't say it hasn't hurt the business, obviously reputationally we've been in a tough spot. And I think if these issues aren't addressed, very serious ones, It risks actually impact in the financial performance of the company [ INAUDIBLE ] Aside from the CEO, what's the most pressing thing that has to happen? Well, look I think there's a couple of things, we obviously have a series of leadership issues to fill starting with the new CEO. And turning the page in terms of very related point, the toxic culture that folks are aware of These are serious issues we as a board are totally focused on it because we have to be. It's not only right to change some of the things that have been experienced at the company, but it's also practical. Do you think the company needs. A place that people are proud of, want to go work at, you know people want to stay at, tell their parents that they work at, their friends. And we have a ways to go, but we're focused on it. Did they need more house cleaning, because it just was really crazy to me that 1, 000 people wanted Travis to stay and signed this petition saying they liked the culture the way it was. Yeah, I'm not sure. I wouldn't read into that as having liked the culture the way it was or is. I think it's more Travis's force of nature and you have to give him a ton of credit for having built a business at this scale, growing at the rate it is. I've personally never seen anything like this before; I think very few of us have. Now naturally with that type of growth, you're going to run into issues. We've run into our series of issues and we need to address them. One more question on Uber to both of you, have you written down your stakes in the company? Again, I don't think we disclose that publically, but in our case, no. David? We also don't write it up, we don't necessarily market to where the The latest round may have gotten done. We have a pretty conservative approach to where we value you it. Got it. Totally consistent with that. All right, and so I also want to ask before we go to a couple quick audience questions. What are you doing with your other portfolio companies to prevent them from getting to this point? I mean Have you changed your mind on certain things like super shares or voting rights? The kind of thing that , maybe, delayed the problem here? Listen, I'll go first. I think that some of the issues that Uber has experienced, I think, are extreme. At least as relates to our portfolio. And I think that even if you look at super voting sometimes refounders have an outsight say. I think there are a number of founders and entrepreneurs that have proven and deserve to have an outsight say. And I think some of the public companies that you see like Google and Facebook and there are others, have proven to be really good stewards. Of investors capital and that has been rewarded for other shareholders. And they want to be able to say hey I'm not going to have an activist shareholder come in and force me to not grow as fast or invest where I want to grow. And I think that that can be a very good thing, and I think that there are select number of entrepeneurs who have proven that, and so even in some of our private companies We're open minded that, when COs say hey, we like the idea over the long term of having control, if they've proven they're great stewards of capital. And so I think we're open minded, to those situations. I don't think it's just the issues that occur, cuz a certain shareholder had more rights than other shareholders. And advice for other VCs, who are hoping to Prevent these kind of problems at portfolio companies. Any ideas? Well I would say that kind of starting at the earliest stages. Setting a culture is. If I look across our portfolio and see the companies that have accelerated growth, a lot of it is companies that were able to attract the right people, empower people in the right way, and drive a really good culture. And that started with the founders having a committment to that and that's something that we talked about really early. So, baking it in as early as possible is incredibly important. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Uber’s New Board Member Thinks Its Problems Aren't Over

David Trujillo, partner at TPG, talks about the long road to Uber's repaired reputation. 