【译文】How Uber Got Lost 为何Uber迷失方向？
This article is adapted from the book “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” by Mike Isaac, a reporter for The New York Times. The book will be published by W.W. Norton & Co. on Sept. 3.
“From the beginning,” the blog post began, “we’ve always been committed to connecting you with the safest rides on the road.”
“在最初”，故事这样开始，“我们永远致力于为你提供最安全的运送服务。”
It was April 2014, and Uber was announcing a new $1 charge on fares called the Safe Rides Fee. The start-up described the charge as necessary to fund “an industry-leading background check process, regular motor vehicle checks, driver safety education, development of safety features in the app, and insurance.”
在2014年4月，Uber宣布向每一笔交易增加一美元的开支作为“安全费”(Safe Rides Fee). Uber声称这些费用将用于建造业界领先的背景调查，车辆检查，驾驶员安全培训，手机应用的安全设置，以及保险费用。
But that was misleading. Uber’s margin on any given fare was mostly fixed, at around 20 to 25 percent, with the remainder going to the driver. According to employees who worked on the project, the Safe Rides Fee was devised primarily to add $1 of pure margin to each trip. Over time, court documents show, it brought in nearly half a billion dollars for the company, and after the money was collected, it was never earmarked specifically for improving safety.
但是这种声明是误导。Uber在每一笔费用上的收入都是大致固定的，在费用的20%-25%之间，其余的费用则支付给司机。根据从事安全驾驶项目的员工的发言，安全费的主要动机是为每次旅程赚取额外的1美元的收入。根据法律文档，安全费为公司带来了大约5亿美元的收入，而几乎从来没有人听说这些费用被用于增加安全性。
At the time, “driver safety education” consisted of little more than a short video course, and in-app safety features weren’t a priority until years later. The company was facing rising costs on insurance and background checks for drivers, but an eventual class-action lawsuit alleged that its marketing — which claimed “ industry leading” checks and “the safest” rides — was untrue. Uber settled for some $30 million, a fraction of what the fee earned the company in revenue.
所谓的“驾驶安全教育”仅仅包括一些短视频课程，而所谓内置于应用的安全功能直到若干年之后才得到重视。Uber正在面临不断攀升的保险费用和背景调查开支，但是他们所声称的业界领先的检查和最安全的搭乘体验都是虚假的。Uber将安全费带来的支付中的3000万美元作为了公司收入。
“We boosted our margins saying our rides were safer,” one former employee told me last year, as I was reporting a book about Uber. “It was obscene.” (Uber and its founder, Travis Kalanick, declined to comment for this article.)
“我们声称自己的搭乘体验更加安全，然后我们就赚到了更多的利润”，一位Uber的前员工告诉我，“这根本就是装腔作势”。Uber和他的创始人Travis Kalanick都拒绝对此发表意见。
That level of chutzpah is difficult to imagine from the chastened Uber of 2019. Two years since Mr. Kalanick’s ouster, and three months since a humdrum public offering, the company is in many ways a shadow of the juggernaut whose global presence once felt just shy of inevitable.
As a private start-up, Uber represented pure possibility — at its peak, a $69 billion wrecking ball threatening entities as vast as the taxi industry, mass transit networks and automotive giants, all at the same time. Mr. Kalanick built the company in his brutal and triumphant image, knocking through cement at company headquarters to install luminous glass-and-black stone staircases — an aesthetic he described as “Blade Runner meets Paris.” It was a start-up that not only booked Beyoncé to play a staff party — it paid her with $6 million in restricted stock that quickly surged in value.
对于一家私有的创业公司而言，Uber展示了惊人的可能性。在巅峰时期，这是一桩高达690亿美元的大生意，同时威胁了出租车行业、公共交通网络和汽车巨头。Kalanick先生用他冷酷而席卷一切的形象创建了这个公司，他敲击公司总部的水泥地，安装了发光的玻璃和黑色的楼梯；象征着它所声称的“当刀锋战士遇见巴黎”。这家公司不仅仅预定了Beyonce举行盛大的员工宴会，而且向他支付了价值600万美元，并且仍旧在不断升值中的股份。
The public Uber displays little of this braggadocio, and competitors and critics are moving in. Labor activists are pushing back against the lack of worker protections for drivers, and legislation could push up the driver minimum wage in cities like New York. The hype around Uber’s autonomous cars has died down, and until they arrive — if they ever do — the company will have a hard time reducing the costs it incurs paying drivers.
现在Uber很少在公共场合夸夸其谈，而它的竞争者们和批评者们正在积极活动。劳工主义者正在抗议Uber对驾驶员权益的忽视，并且推动立法以提高某些城市的驾驶员最低薪酬，比如纽约。对于Uber无人驾驶汽车的期待在它真正实现之间，都在不断下降；这家公司不得不经历一段艰难的时期，他们需要在增加对驾驶员的薪酬的同时减少公司的开支。
In August, Uber posted its largest-ever quarterly loss, about $5.2 billion, as its revenue growth hit a record low. In cities around the world, Uber faces well-financed competitors offering a substantially similar product. And its food delivery business — a bright spot that executives point to for growth prospects — is in danger of becoming another cash-suck. Uber and most of its basically indistinguishable competitors (it names 10 of them in a recent filing) are subsidizing customers’ meals in a bid for market share, with profitability a secondary concern.
在8月份，Uber发布了公司历史上最大的季度亏损，亏损额高达52亿美元，而它的毛收入增长也跌落到了历史最低值。在全世界的城市中，Uber都在面对一系列财政情况情况良好的竞争者发起的类似产品。而作为Uber最令人期待的增长点，它的食品配送业务也面临着成为资金黑洞的危险。Uber和不下于十家的竞争企业，正在为了顾客点餐市场的份额进行一场豪赌，在这场关于市场份额的竞争中，盈利暂时并不是竞争者的第一着眼点。
Investors are internalizing these challenges. Interest in shorting Uber stock has only grown since the I.P.O., according to share borrowing data from IHS Markit, with pessimists betting some $2 billion that the price of shares will continue to fall.
资本市场的投资者也已经被卷入到这场挑战之中。根据IHS Markit的股票借贷数据，自从I.P.O.以来，看空Uber的投资者不断增长，悲观者认为Uber的市值将继续下跌约20亿美元。
Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced Mr. Kalanick as chief executive two years ago this week, is under pressure to cut costs wherever possible — laying off hundreds of marketing employees and even replacing the helium-filled balloons workers traditionally get on their hiring anniversary with stickers. Deflation is in the air. At a recent companywide meeting, one employee asked if the engineering division would be next to face reductions, a bad sign for a tech company in which morale rests on the ability to recruit the world’s top coding talent. (Uber has instituted a hiring freeze for some specific teams in the United States.)
在两年前的这一周，Dara Khosrowshahi接替Kalanick成为了Uber的总裁，他始终处于尽可能削减开支的压力中。他已经解雇了数以百计的营销人员，甚至用贴纸代替了以往赠送给员工的周年庆礼物（氦气球）。紧缩的气氛弥漫在公司的气氛之中。在近期的一次全公司会议中，一位员工询问道是否研发部门是下一个裁员的对象。解雇工程师是科技公司的坏信号，因为招聘世界顶级编码人才的能力，是衡量科技公司竞争力的重要指标。事实上，Uber已经在美国的部分团队中冻结了招聘流程。
In combing through documents, interviewing opponents and talking to more than 200 current and former employees while researching my book, what came up again and again was this sense of a public-private divide — that Mr. Kalanick had built a start-up that thrived on venture investment, blitzkrieg expansion tactics and an ethically questionable aggressive streak, but that the playbook made little sense for a publicly traded entity.
结合公司文件和对超过200名前任和现任员工的访谈，对于工作和生活的矛盾被一而再再而三地提起。Kalanick 凭借风险投资、闪电战式的扩展策略、道德上可疑的激进措施，而成为一家蓬勃发展的初创企业；然而这些秘诀对于一家公开上市的实体并不有效。
Mr. Kalanick required an almost hypnotic level of obedience from his staff in order to build the company he wanted. For that, he needed workers who were more than employees — he needed true believers.
Kalanick需要一种近乎催眠式的服从，来使得公司成为他想要的模式。对于这个目标而言，他需要的不仅仅是雇员，而是真正对这种理念有信仰的人。
The cult of the founder
The most vaunted title in Silicon Valley is, has been, and ever will be “founder.” It’s less of a title than a statement. “I made this,” the founder proclaims. “I invented it out of nothing. I conjured it into being.”
硅谷最引以为豪的称呼，一直是，并且永远将会是，“创始人”。“创始人”不仅仅是一个称呼，更加是一种声明，“我做到了！我从无到有发明了这样东西，我把它变为了存在”。
If this sounds messianic, that’s because it is. Founder culture — or more accurately, founder worship — emerged as bedrock faith in Silicon Valley from several strains of quasi-religious philosophy. 1960s-era San Francisco embraced a sexual, chemical, hippie-led revolution inspired by dreams of liberated consciousness and utopian communities. This anti-establishment counterculture mixed surprisingly well with emerging ideas about the efficiency of individual greed and the gospel of creative destruction. Technologists began building services to uproot entrenched power structures and create new ways for society to function. Over the decades, the ethos informed the creation of ventures like Apple, Netscape, PayPal — and Uber.
如果这听起来很疯狂，没错，这是因为它本身就是疯狂的。创始人文化，或者更准确地说，创始人崇拜，从若干种准宗教文化中脱颖而出，成为了硅谷的基石理念。在解放意识和乌托邦社会的指引下，1960年代的旧金山迎来了一场关于性和化学药剂的嬉皮士革命。这种反建制的叛逆文化，令人惊讶地吻合了个人主义贪婪的效率和富有创造性的对传统社会的破坏。科技人员开始根除根深蒂固的权力结构，以创造社会运作的新方式。二十多年来，这种信条塑造了数不尽的的新企业，包括Apple,Netscape,Paypal以及Uber。
By 2009, when the company was founded, Silicon Valley saw a willingness to bend — and even break — the rules not as an unfortunate trait, but as a sign of a promising entrepreneur with a bright future. And people who knew Mr. Kalanick tended to remark on one thing: In every game he played, every race he entered, in anything where he was asked to compete against others, he sought nothing less than utter domination.
到2009年Uber公司创立的时候，硅谷见证着一种改变或者打破规则的强烈意愿；这种行为不仅不被视为一种不幸的行为，甚至被作为一个有着光明未来的富有前途的企业家的标志。熟悉Kalanick的人们都倾向于评论一件事：在任何一场他玩的游戏中，在任何一场他参与的竞赛中，在任何一件被要求于他人竞争的事情中，他都要求全面的统治。
Early on, the start-up was called UberCab — a high-end black-car service for “ballers.” But quickly, by 2011, Mr. Kalanick recognized a moonshot-sized opportunity for a global transportation company. As he saw things, realizing this vision would require playing a game that was already dirty. The standards for fair play in the transportation industry had been crossed years ago by what he viewed as a mass of corrupt politicians, all in the pocket of Big Taxi — a “cartel,” as he frequently called his giant, yellow-and-black adversary. They were bent on blocking any challengers to the multibillion-dollar market.
最初的时候，这家创业公司被称为UberCab，一家面向”ballers”的高端车辆租聘公司。但很快在2011年，Kalanick意识到了一个改变全球出行方式的一飞冲天的机会。在他看来，实现这样的愿景必须要浑水摸鱼，所谓公共交通行业的公平竞争标准，早就被一群腐败的政治家所把控，他们构成了Big Taxi这样的利益共同体。“黄黑色的敌人”，他频繁地如此称呼他的最大对手。他们极尽所能地阻碍任何人进入这个价值数十亿美元的市场。
That meant Mr. Kalanick had to recruit dedicated followers who were willing to do whatever it took to win.This worldview created conditions for which Uber is still paying a price today. To run local branches around the world, Mr. Kalanick hired lieutenants who thought like him: ruthless and confident the money would never run out. He spun stories of Uber’s eventual ubiquity, providing “transportation as reliable as running water.” (Never mind, employees whispered, that water infrastructure isn’t always reliable in much of the world.) It wasn’t unheard-of for a new hire to enter Uber’s headquarters having never managed any significant enterprise, and be sent out to take over a new city.Mr. Kalanick trusted his employees with significant power.
这种竞争状态意味着Kalanic必须招聘一群忠诚的追随者，他们愿意为了胜利不择手段。直到今天，Uber仍然在为这种世界观付出代价。为了在世界各地运营分支，Kalanick招聘了像他一样的管理者：无情而自信地追逐财富，哪怕这种财富永远也无法实现。他散播着Uber最终将会在世界上无所不在的故事，承诺提供“像自来水一样随处可得的交通服务”。（不要在意这个比喻，Uber的员工私下也会说，在某些地区自来水也并不是唾手可得的）。一个之前从来没有管理过任何一家重要公司的人员，会被任命为一个城市的Uber管理者，不要惊讶，这种例子在Uber的总部屡见不鲜。Kalanick通过他惊人的威信信任他的员工。
Each city’s general manager became a quasi-chief executive, given the autonomy to make major financial decisions. Empowering workers, Mr. Kalanick believed, was better than trying to micromanage every city. In many ways, the approach was smart: A Miami native would be better prepared to meld Uber to their own city than a transplant from San Francisco. But the drawbacks were costly. City bosses rarely had to check in with headquarters, and they began greenlighting seven-figure promotional campaigns based on little more than hunches and data from their personal spreadsheets.
每个城市的总经理会被赋予“准总裁”的权利，又做出重大利益决定的自主权。Kalanick相信给予他的员工更大的权力，会比穷尽细节地掌控每一座城市的业务来得更好。在很多方面，这种方法都是明智的：一个迈阿密的本地人更愿意将Uber融入自己的城市，而非从旧金山移植过来。但是这种策略的缺点也是代价高昂的，每个城市的Uber管理者很少向总部汇报情况，他们仅仅基于自己表格中的数据和预感，就对高达数百万美元的促销活动大开绿灯。
Other problems ranged from cultural — the New York office had a toxic bro culture that elicited harassment allegations and resignations — to legal. In Indonesia, Uber set up special “greenlight hubs” where drivers could quickly get inspections and other services, but the police threatened to shut them down over traffic concerns. Instead of moving the hubs, the local Uber managers decided to pay off the cops, with bribes of around 500,000 rupiah (about $30). They tended to take the money from petty cash, or forge receipts and submit them for reimbursement. The activity was the kind of corner cutting — and a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — that allowed Uber to grow at unimaginable velocity, but with breathtaking risk. The Department of Justice is investigating the matter, as well as other activity in Malaysia, China and India, according to financial filings.
其他的问题则遍布在文化和法律领域中。文化上，Uber的纽约办公室存在一种有害的兄弟文化，最终招来了关于性骚扰问题的指控和解雇。在印度尼西亚，Uber设立了特殊的绿灯中心，以方便司机快速获得检查和其他服务，警方出于交通安全的考虑要求，威胁关闭这些中心。然而当地的Uber经理并没有关闭这些中心，而是试图用50万卢布贿赂警察。他们从小额现金中获取钱财，并且通过伪造发票来骗取报销。一种打擦边球的行为，可能会违反《反海外腐败法》，但是它确实为Uber在海外难以想象的发展速度带来了方便，同时也风险惊人。根据财务报告，司法部正在调查此事以及马来西亚，中国和印度的其他活动。
‘I don’t want the F.T.C. calling me’
Ethics were not a hallmark of Uber’s first decade. Once, in a meeting with staff, Mr. Kalanick was presented with a delicious new secret weapon by a handful of engineers on “workation.” (A workation was an unofficial Uber tradition: Instead of taking time off to relax, employees would volunteer to spend a period working on any kind of project they wanted.) According to two people familiar with the matter, a group of employees pitched a prototype Uber feature that would repurpose certain parts of a driver’s smartphone — specifically, the accelerometer and gyroscope — to detect notifications that came from the app of Lyft, Uber’s biggest competitor.If Uber knew that a driver worked for its rival, Uber could market itself differently to the driver to entice them away.
道德并不是Uber前十年的标志。在一次员工会议上，Kalanick被展示了一项崭新的秘密武器，几名在“工作假期”中的Uber员工提出了一种新方案。（工作假期是Uber的一项非正式传统，处于假期中的员工并不是完全脱离工作，而是自愿分配一段时间工作于任何他感兴趣的项目）根据两位知情人士的消息，一组工程师正在向公司兜售某个技术原型，它使得Uber应用重新利用驾驶员智能手机中的陀螺仪和加速计，来判断驾驶员是否接收到来自他们最大竞争对手lyft的提醒。一旦UBER了解到驾驶员在为他们的对手工作，Uber可以通过不同方式向驾驶员推销自己以吸引他们。
In the meeting, the engineers described the project to managers, lawyers and Mr. Kalanick himself. The executives were excited but nervous. This could be a powerful new weapon in the war against Lyft. But detecting sounds in a driver’s car without permission was clearly invasive. After the presentation ended, Mr. Kalanick sat in silence. No one spoke.“O.K.,” he said, breaking the tension and nodding his approval. “I think this should be a thing.” He stood up and looked the engineers in the eye: “I don’t want the F.T.C. calling me about this, either.” Mr. Kalanick thanked everyone for coming, turned toward the door and dismissed the meeting.
在会议中，工程师向经理，律师和Kalanick描述了这个项目，管理层们兴奋而紧张，这将会是与lyft的市场大战中有力的新武器。但是在未经允许的情况下，检测驾驶员车辆中的声音显然是具有侵略性的。在展示结束的时候，Kalanick静静地坐着，没有人发言。“OK”，Kalanick的声音打破了静默，并且肯定了这项提案，“我觉得这件事能成”。他站起来，看着工程师们的眼睛说，“我不想联邦贸易委员会为此来找我麻烦”。Kalanick感谢了所有与会人员，关上了门，结束了这种会议。
The feature, which would have outraged privacy hawks were it to become public, was never implemented. Other executives at the company later acknowledged the impracticality of building it, given simpler methods of tracking Uber’s competitors.
这个特性一旦面世，将会惹怒在隐私问题上的“鹰派”，所幸它从来没有被真正实现。公司的其他高管此后被告知，相对于其他更简单的最终Uber竞争者的方法，这一方案显得不切实际，
Other poorly conceived ideas were put into practice, only to be cut loose after failing spectacularly. Take Uber’s ill-fated Xchange leasing program. At one point in Uber’s history, someone had the idea that there might be thousands of potential drivers who didn’t have enough collateral or credit history to secure a car loan. But Uber could overlook that and lease the cars anyway, requiring only that the lessee work off their obligation immediately by driving for Uber. The company began leasing to high-risk individuals with poor or nonexistent credit ratings.It worked — sort of. Growth surged as people who were never before eligible for loans suddenly had access to vehicles. Thousands of new drivers came onto the platform, and the managers in charge were given hefty rewards.
还有许多构思不佳的计划也被付诸实现，只是在失败之后才不得不缩减，比如Uber命运多舛的Xchange租赁计划。曾经在Uber的历史上，有人发现存在数以千计的潜在驾驶员，因为缺乏抵押物或者信用历史而无法获得车贷。但是Uber可以无视这个问题向他们租赁汽车，只需要承租人立即执行驾驶Uber的义务。公司开始向那些高风险的个人租借汽车，他们只有很差的信用记录，甚至根本没有信用记录。在某些方面，这个计划还是有成效的；许多之前无法申请贷款的人们突然发现了拥有汽车的新途径，数以千计的新司机涌入到平台当中，管理此事的经理也受到了丰厚的奖励。
But it was the ride-hailing equivalent of a subprime mortgage. And just like 2008, the negative consequences came soon after.Uber noticed that accidents and traffic infractions spiked after the company began the Xchange leasing program. They later figured out that many of the new drivers were the ones responsible. The managers had created a moral hazard, driving up insurance costs and potentially triggering a public relations and legal nightmare.Despite all the driver growth, Uber found it was losing more than $9,000 on each Xchange leasing deal, far above the initial estimated losses of $500 per car. Adding to the misery, many drivers found their credit even more damaged — all for a gig-economy job that returned less and less as the company garnished drivers’ wages.Such episodes help illustrate why many drivers, an essential constituency, have little love for Uber today. And that’s before the company begins trying to replace them with autonomous cars.
但是这是一次“汽车版”的次级贷危机。就像2008年一样，负面性的后果随机就来了。Uber注意到在开始XChange计划之后，车辆的事故率和违章行为节节攀升。他们随即意识到这些新司机需要为此负责。负责此事的经理已经导致了道德上的风险，保险费用的蹿升，甚至可能引起公共关系和法律上的噩梦。尽管为Uber工作的驾驶员数量上升，Uber发现在每一起Xchange的租赁中，公司都损失了超过9000美元，远远超过了之前每辆车500美元损失的估计。更糟糕的是，许多司机发现他们的信用变得更差了，这些都归咎于打零工获得的回报越来越低，而公司还在粉饰驾驶员的薪水。同类的桥段解释了为何驾驶员们在今天不再喜欢Uber；而这种反感在Uber开始用无人车替代这些驾驶员之前就已经爆发了。
16 murders
For any start-up in Silicon Valley, there is no stronger imperative than growth.It is the maxim by which every entrepreneur lives. From the moment a founder signs their first term sheet from investors, they’ve made a pledge to make the start-up grow, grow, grow. If your start-up isn’t growing, your start-up is dying.But there’s growth, there’s growth at all costs, and then there’s Uber’s version of growth at all costs.
对于硅谷的创业企业而言，没有必增长更迫切的事情了，这是每个企业家赖以生活的格言。从创始人签署第一个来自投资者的条款清单开始，他们就承诺让公司，增长，增长，再增长。如果你的初创公司不再增长，那么你的公司就正在死亡。但是增长会体现在公司的所有开支上，于是就有了Uber版本的开支失控。
By 2015, some company insiders believed Mr. Kalanick had an obsession with global expansion that crossed a line. He had tapped Ed Baker, a former Facebook executive, to increase South American ridership. In Brazil, Mr. Baker encouraged city managers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to amass as many riders and drivers as possible. To limit “friction,” Uber allowed riders to sign up without requiring them to provide identity beyond an email — easily faked — or a phone number. Most Brazilians used cash far more frequently than credit cards, which meant that after a long shift, a driver could be expected to be carrying a lot of money.Thieves and angry taxi cartels struck.
到2015年为止，一些公司的内部人士认为Kalanick对全球扩展的痴迷已经超过了底线。他任命Facebook的前高管Ed Baker前往南美扩张市场份额。在巴西，Baker鼓励圣保罗和里约热内卢的城市经理尽可能多地招募乘客和驾驶员。为了减少扩展期的摩擦，Uber允许乘客在不提供身份证的情况下，仅仅依靠电子邮件或者电话就能注册，而电子邮件本身是易于伪造的。大多数巴西人更习惯于使用现金，而非信用卡；这意味着在运营一段时间之后，司机身上一般会携带着大量的现金。
A person could access Uber with a bogus email, then play a version of “Uber roulette”: They’d hail a car, then cause mayhem. Vehicles were stolen and burned; drivers were assaulted, robbed and occasionally murdered. The company stuck with the low-friction sign-up system, even as violence increased.
小偷和愤怒的出租车司机都来了，他们可以通过一个虚假的邮件注册，然后来一个uber版本的轮盘赌。他们先招一辆uber，然后开始制造混乱。车辆被偷走和焚毁，司机被殴打、抢劫或者谋杀。尽管暴力案件的发生率不断上升，公司仍然在坚持低门槛的注册系统。
In 2016, Osvaldo Luis Modolo Filho, a 52-year-old driver in Brazil, was murdered by a teenage couple who ordered a ride using a fake name. After stabbing Mr. Filho repeatedly with a pair of blue-handled kitchen knives, the couple took off in his black S.U.V., leaving him to die in the middle of the street.Mr. Kalanick and other Uber executives were not totally indifferent to the dangers drivers faced in emerging markets. But they had major blind spots because of their fixation on growth, their belief in technological solutions, and a casual application of financial incentives that often inflamed existing cultural problems.
在2016年，52岁的巴西司机Osvaldo Luis Modolo Filho被一对使用假名的青年人所谋杀。在使用一把蓝色的厨房刀具反复刺Filho之后，他们劫持了Filho的黑色SUV，并且把Filho的尸体丢弃在街中间。Kalanick和Uber的高管们并不完全无视司机在新兴市场中所遇到的危险，但是他们对增长的关注，对技术方案的新人，对财务激励的随意使用，都使他们选择性地无视了这些风险的存在。
Mr. Kalanick was convinced that software made Uber cars inherently safer than traditional taxis, namely because rides were recorded and trackable by GPS. He held out faith that Uber could improve driver safety with code.The fixes didn’t come soon enough. Mr. Kalanick’s product team eventually improved identity verification and security in the app for Brazilian customers, after intense pressure from product and marketing leaders. But not before at least 16 drivers in Brazil were murdered.
Kalanick被告知程序软件使得Uber比传统意义上的出租车来得安全得多，因为所有的旅程都可以被GPS追踪和记录。他坚信Uber可以用代码来使司机更加安全，但是这些代码上的修正来得并不及时。Kalanick的产品团队最终完善了巴西乘客的身份识别系统和应用安全性，但是在此之前，不少于16名巴西的Uber司机已经被谋杀。
‘Now is our time to prove ourselves’
Take away Uber’s unbridled bellicosity, and what do you have left?A cash-burning enterprise with which investors are losing patience. A chief executive on a humility offensive, with the slogan “We do the right thing — period.” Stabs at new lines of business, like e-bikes and freight, with far-off promises that they will turn the company into a profitable “transportation platform.”
如果我们不看uber肆无忌惮的好战行为，uber还剩下什么？只剩下一个不断烧钱，并且失去投资者信任的企业。一位总在低调地进攻的总裁，抱着他的座右铭“我们做了一件正确的事情”，刺激一些前途难定的新业务，比如电子自行车和货车，和一个远在天边的承诺“uber将成为一个有利可图的交通平台”。
Meanwhile, the core business is increasingly commoditized, as customers realize that many imitators are perfectly capable of getting them from A to B.Mr. Kalanick deserves credit for creating a world-changing company, one that scaled vertiginously from a modest black car service in San Francisco to a global brand in hundreds of cities.
与此同时，uber的核心业务正在不断商业化，许多顾客意识到许多uber的模仿者也能够完美地把他们从A送到B。Kalanick值得为创造了一家改变世界的公司而受到赞誉，uber从旧金山一家不起眼的汽车接送公司出发，成为了一家遍布数百个城市的世界品牌。
Those who invested first saw staggering returns. One frequent customer, Oren Michels, cut Mr. Kalanick a check for $5,000 early on.By the end of 2017, the stake had multiplied in value some 3,300 times, worth more than $15 million.The issue, as a number of financial commentators have pointed out, is that the gains have been captured almost entirely by pre-I.P.O. investors in the private market. Anyone who bought shares of Uber on the day of its stock market debut is in the red. Mr. Khosrowshahi, the C.E.O., has indicated that the company could lose money through 2021.
那些最早的uber投资者已经收获了惊人的回报。我们的一位客户 Oren Michels在早年向Kalanick投资了5000美刀，而在2017年年底，股权的价值已经增长了3300倍，超过1500万美元。正如金融评论家所言，uber的价值已经完全被在IPO之前通过私人市场投资的投资者们所瓜分。任何在uber IPO时购买股份的投资者都无一例外地遭受了损失。 Khosrowshahi， Uber公司的CEO，预期亏损将会一直持续到2021年。
On the night of the I.P.O., at a party on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Mr. Khosrowshahi toasted his employees. They were holding Big Macs — a nod to the Uber Eats platform — and glasses of Champagne, and many of them were painfully aware that they personally owned a great deal of the declining stock. Mr. Khosrowshahi attempted to inspire the troops.“Now is our time to prove ourselves,” he said. “Five years from now, tech companies that come I.P.O. after us will stand on this very trading floor and see what we’ve accomplished.”Using an expletive, he added, “They’ll say ‘Holy crap. I want to be Uber.’”They might. The question is: which Uber?
在IPO的夜晚，在纽约证券交易所的宴会上，Khosrowshahi先生向他的员工们敬酒。他们手里拿着巨无霸（向Uber Eats业务致敬）和香槟，痛苦地意识到自己手里持有着大量正在霞姐的股份。Khosrowshahi试图激励自己的员工们，“现在是证明我们的时候。五年后的今天，在我们之后IPO的企业们会站在同一块交易所的大厅里们，见证我们的成就”。他继续咒骂道，“他们会说，‘哇靠，我们想成为uber!’”。也许他说得对，但是问题是，他们想成为的是怎样的uber.