Thursday, June 09, 2016

Postponing Fulfillment

Uber, the ride-sharing company headquartered in San Francisco, won't become a public company soon, says founder Travis Kalanick.
“I say we are going to IPO as late as humanly possible. It’ll be one day before my employees and significant others come to my office with pitchforks and torches. We will IPO the day before that. Do you get it?”

For one thing, he said, employees at public companies wasted an inordinate amount of time checking on their money.

“If you can keep your employees from refreshing every 10 minutes to see what the stock price is, your company is going to be more geared towards the future and move faster,” Kalanick said.
At Costco in Redwood City I spotted a Porsche driven by an Uber employee. This employee appears to have plenty of money already, and an IPO would allow him to quit and do something else with his life.

Mr. Kalanick understands incentives: make them think you're the answer to their dreams, but postpone fulfilling their dreams "as late as humanly possible."

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