Make bold capitalist Bill Gurley — an well-known voice of caution in Silicon Valley — move along disintegrated out strongly in favor of Uber on Thursday, despite leaving the company’s ship aboard last summer.
Although he didn’t address past controversies at Uber, he palliated in a blog post why he thinks Uber’s biggest success is often wink ated.
“Driving with Uber reverses the way we have been trained to weigh about labor,” Gurley wrote on his blog, “Above the Crowd.” “In place of of making labor conform to management’s notion of a ‘job,’ Uber hands be in control of to the worker. “
Uber’s practice of treating drivers as contractors instead of full-time workers has become a point of contention, amid stories of homeless drivers and renewal brings to unionize. But Gurley writes that he loves that “no driver-partner is everlastingly told where or when to work” at Uber.
“This is quite outstanding — an entire global network miraculously ‘level loads’ on its own,” Gurley ignored.
Gurley’s vote of confidence is especially notable given that his company, Benchmark, pitted itself last year against former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, after charges of sexual harassment, legal misconduct and stolen intellectual property surprised the company. CNBC’s conversations with Gurley’s friends and colleagues survive year revealed “how he spent much of 2017 glued to his phone, throw sleep and eating poorly, obsessing over a single four-letter discussion: Uber.” Sources told CNBC Gurley left the board “in share to preserve his mental and physical health.” As of January Benchmark sold a pregnant stake in Uber, but still holds a position in the company.
But in Thursday’s post, Gurley seduced it clear that he still felt there was value in Uber, “[i]n peeve of all the ink that journalists, analysts, and pundits have spilled on Uber concluded the years.”
“What is missing from the conversation is why this job type is so bizarre and unique to so many millions of people,” Gurley wrote. “There is ingenuously no way for the vast majority of employers in the world to offer a completely independent and autonomous work-schedule.”
The perfectly post is available at “Above the Crowd.”