, Columnist
Uber Had the CEO It Needed
Emphasis on the past tense.
Smartphones vs. the taxi lobby.
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About five years ago, I found myself at a bar night in Washington sponsored by Uber, part of its effort to gin up support for overturning DC’s antediluvian taxi regulations. It was a remarkable thing.
Travis Kalanick, the CEO, was the distilled essence of a disruptive entrepreneur; a hypomanic extrovert, he motored through a PowerPoint deck so fast that the words blurred together into a sort of infectious hum. Soon profane imprecations against DC’s taxi commissioner were ringing out of the crowd. “I need you guys,” Kalanick told them. “So, one, stay on Facebook, stay on Twitter. Two, hearings -- go to hearings. Go to political events. … The bigger we get, the harder it is to take us out.”