When I asked New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac if, after writing his book about the rise and fall and shadiness of Uber's cofounder Travis Kalanick, he still uses Uber or Lyft, I thought he'd easily answer, "Yes," like most people who've become dependent on ride-hailing apps.
But he surprised me. While writing about the ride-hailing industry, he became more and more distrustful of what the companies (namely Uber) were doing with his information, he explained. "I understood the creepiness of the app," he told me at a coffee shop meeting before his book, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, came out Tuesday. Sources for his reporting over the years made it clear that the apps are capable of much more than just getting you a ride. So he only took cabs and buses for about two years while covering Uber and the industry.
"I think buses and public transit are the unsung heroes," Isaac said. He admitted that in the past few years, he's gotten lax and started using Lyft and Uber again. But, "Right now Uber is in a much better place than they were two years ago," he noted of the revamped company.
Super Pumped is available at bookstores now. It's been about two years since Kalanick was effectively ousted as CEO from his own company and replaced with current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — all of which Isaac describes in page-turning detail. The book isn't so much about Uber (although there are plenty of juicy anecdotes about Las Vegas blow-out parties, its Greyball app to block transportation officials from using Uber, and a long list of company values, including No. 12: "Super Pumped"); it's more about "the cult of the founder" and industry "disrupters," to use Silicon Valley parlance. "It's a cautionary tale for funders who want to build future companies," Isaac told me.
Travis Kalanick back in his Uber days.
Image: Maysun/picture alliance via Getty Images
In telling Uber's story, Kalanick's motivation to grow at any cost, and its hellish 2017 — not to be confused with "Hell," the piece of code Uber used to track Uber drivers also working for Lyft, but instead the endless string of PR disasters that started once President Trump was inaugurated — Isaac shows how the foundation of our current transportation landscape was built.?
Lyft and Uber are in such lockstep (one app adds a rider loyalty program, then the other does; one updates its carpool program, so does the other; one buys a bike-share company, the other buys a bike-share network) because of the industry roots Uber shaped.?
Uber started in 2010 with black cars for hire through an app, and then in 2012, launched its ubiquitous ride-sharing feature, UberX, with everyday people using their own cars to function like taxi drivers. The pivot from "Everyone's private driver" to a dude in a Toyota Prius picking you up was directly because of apps like Lyft and the now-dead Sidecar.?
Lyft, which started as Zimride with long-distance carpooling, embraced casual ride-sharing earlier in 2012. Another competitor was Sunil Paul's Sidecar, also all about peer-to-peer ride-sharing. In 2012 both apps were starting to take off. Uber wanted in on this, as Isaac wrote, "[Uber] was competing against every mode of transportation in existence."
The gig economy got its boost and true footing through UberX, which continually raised the stakes and egged on its main competitor, Lyft — as it still does to this day — to keep up.?
"[Lyft founders Logan Green and John Zimmer] weren't as ruthless," Isaac said. In the book, he lays out the tactics Kalanick would use to belittle Lyft, like tweeting #clone at its founders, putting up "Shave the 'Stache" billboards, and undermining Lyft's carpool launch. Uber (and Kalanick) bullied Lyft to the point where Lyft had to either roll up its sleeves or give up. When the #DeleteUber movement blew up in early 2017, Lyft seized the moment and donated $1 million to the ACLU. Two could play this game.
Though Lyft (which declined to comment on how the company is portrayed in Isaac's book) is perceived as the "good company," it still has driver pay and workplace issues, problematic funding sources, and is coming up against legislation in California to re-classify drivers as employees instead of independent contractors. It's still part of the ride-hailing industry, and part of the vicious cycle that brings more cars to the road and reduces ridership — and therefore funding — on public transit.?
Although Lyft has stuck to North America and avoided the often-violent fight to build ride-sharing in other countries like Brazil, India, and Mexico, where Uber drivers were assaulted and even killed, it's often had to fight as dirty as Uber did to enter new cities and bring its platform to more drivers and passengers — and now rental cars, bicycles, and scooters. "It highlights how tech parachutes in," Isaac said of the ride-hailing industry. But with Uber as the bigger company with a relentless history of competing at any cost, "it's going to take it on the chin," he explained.
Earlier this year, both Lyft and Uber went public. Both companies still haven't figured out how to be profitable. Uber might be bigger and still standing, but it's unclear if it's winning. Instead of guiding principles like "Always Be Hustlin'" and "Super Pumped," Uber's new core value is, "We do the right thing, period."
