Travis Kalanick Dumped His Entire Uber Stake A Year Ago. That Turned Out To Be A TERRIBLE Move.

ByBrian Warneron December 6, 2020inArticles›Billionaire News

Travis Kalanick is the co-founder and former CEO of Uber. You remember Uber, right? It’s that company that allows you to hail a car through an app to whisk you to and from bars, restaurants, one night stands, and airports. Remember bars, restaurants, one night stands, and airports?! Really hoping those come back in a major way in 2021.

Travis Kalanick was a controversial figure at Uber and in the business world at large. He resigned from Uber in June 2017 following a series of damning reports that detailed the company’s alleged unethical culture. Travis reportedly ignored rampant sexual harassment at the company for years. It didn’t help that just a few months before resigning, an Uber driver released a video in which Travis could be seen and heard berating the driver. He just generally came across as a massive douche bag who obviously would have sat back and done nothing while his employees were being harassed.

Travis was replaced as CEO by Dara Khosrowshahi in August 2017. Travis remained a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

Uber went public in May 2019. It ended its first day of trading at $41.57. Over the next few months Uber’s share price slowly slipped into the mid $20s.

In December 2019 it was revealed that Travis had resigned entirely from Uber, removing himself from the board and all other associations. At this point Travis also revealed that he had spent the last several weeks selling off basically his entire stake in Uber. He sold his shares in the range of $27 to $30 per share, generating proceeds of around $2.7 billion .

A few months into 2020, this share dump seemed like a genius move. As the world locked down due to COVID-19, Uber stock slipped to an all-time low of just under $14. Had Travis sold at that point, instead of getting $2.7 billion, he would have gotten around $1.3 billion.

So… nice work, Travis! Brilliant timing!

Actually, no.

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Uber has been on a tear since early November. The stock lit up practically overnight on November 3 after California citizens voted to pass a proposition that protected the company from being required to make all of its California drivers full-time employees, an unimaginably expensive concept. Uber, Lyft, Doordash and other similar companies spent a combined $200 million on a PR campaign to pass the prop. Here’s a chart of Uber stock over the last six months:

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As you can see on the far right of the above screenshot, as of this writing Uber shares are trading at an all-time high of $54.86.

At that price, had Travis never dumped, today he would be sitting on $5 billion .

In other words, in his haste to remove himself from the company he co-founded, Travis left $2.3 billion on the table.

And who knows how much higher Uber stock will go. I’m not a financial advisor by any means, but with a light at the end of the COVID tunnel, it seems like Uber’s prospects will continue to improve.

Sooo… sorry Travis! You’ll have to make-do with your current net worth of $3 billion.

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Travis Kalanick Sells $547 Million Of Uber Stock To Fund His Next Venture

ByAmy Lamareon November 19, 2019inArticles›Billionaire News

Well, that didn’t take long. It’s been just about two years since Travis Kalanick was forced out of the company he helped co-found: Uber. Now he’s sold an enormous chunk of Uber stock just as the ride-sharing company’s post-IPO lockup period ended. Kalanick sold 20.3 million shares for about $547 million on Friday, November 8, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lockup period is a 180-day restriction designed to reduce the volatility of shares in newly public companies.

Last week, Uber saw heavy selling that sent its share price spiraling downward for a 9% loss. The company is currently less valuable than it was in 2015 and some private investors are underwater on their investments. Share prices are down 36% since the IPO.

With the sale, Kalanick now has a 4.6% stake in Uber. That’s worth about $2.5 billion. He’s also still a member of the board of directors.

Travis Kalanick Dumped His Entire Uber Stake A Year Ago. That Turned Out To Be A TERRIBLE Move. - 3

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Back in 2017, the proverbial ‘Ishtar hit the fan for Kalanick and Uber. First, he was lambasted by the public for joining Donald Trump’s team of advisers. He dropped out of that committee a few weeks later. Then, a video surfaced of Kalanick viciously berating an Uber driver while he was a passenger in the car. The driver was frustrated over how the company pays its drivers. Kalanick unleashed on his driver saying, among other things:

“Some people don’t want to take responsibility for their ‘sh-t.’”

At the time, Kalanick’s outburst seemed to be the lowest point he and the company he ran could sink to. And then, a former Uber engineer named Susan Fowler published an impassioned blog post in which she accused the company over overt sexism. She was propositioned by her boss time and time again. She took it to H.R. and they told her that her boss was too important to discipline. #DeleteUber became a trending topic on social media. Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the growing number of allegations of sexual harassment.

After numerous scandals, the board of directors had enough and asked for his resignation. This marked the end of this chapter of Kalanick’s high-flying career. But now, with the infusion of $547 million into his bank accounts, it’s left people wondering just what Kalanick is up to next.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported an investment by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund into CloudKitchens. Guess who runs that company? Travis Kalanick. It is a delivery-only restaurant startup. This is a relatively new space for apps – these so-called kitchens are known as virtual restaurants or dark kitchens. Dark kitchens/virtual restaurants are kitchen-only concepts that process and produce orders for delivery. There are no tables, chairs, servers, hosts, or storefront. The food can only be ordered online or through a mobile app and is delivered to the customer.

What’s fascinating is that with this new venture, Kalanick is competing directly with his former company. UberEats has been scaling its business rapidly and getting into the dark kitchen space.

For a long time, Uber was the most valuable startup in the world. It has lost that title to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

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