Mitch and Freada Kapor: "Uber is a seven-foot tall 12-year old"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2017

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Silicon Valley power couple and investors Mitch and Freda Kapor to talk about publicly challenging Uber, on Freada's pioneering work on workplace sexual harassment (6:30), on whether Uber can be fixed (9:45), their early days at Lotus (12:30), investing in startups (16:00), how they found Uber (18:45), how tech can fix itself (23:00), the evolution of hacking (27:30), the need for Internet "peace talks" (29:15), and the backlash from their Uber letter (32:15)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yo, technology.
0:02.0	What is it all about?
0:05.0	Uber has a toxic culture that is plagued by disrespect, exclusionary cliques,
0:12.0	lack of diversity, intolerance for bullying and harassment of every form.
0:17.0	These were the words from a very public letter written by two of Uber's earliest investors,
0:22.1	the husband and wife team of Mitch and Frida Kapoor.
0:25.2	And the letter really put an exclamation point on the series of crises that have rocked
0:29.4	what has become the company that everyone loves to hate.
0:32.9	And really, Uber should have seen it coming.
0:35.5	Frida started the first group on workplace sexual harassment way back in 1976.
0:40.5	And Mitch is a legendary investor.
0:42.2	He started Lotus, if you remember that.
0:44.3	And he's back loads of other companies that went on to do very big things.
0:47.4	Tech companies have similar problems to what Wall Street had in the 80s and 90s.
0:53.9	And so to think that it's special is just delusional.
1:00.7	So that's who I'm talking to today.
1:02.8	To get a sense from them of what's wrong with Silicon Valley
1:05.6	and what happens when you have a go at the world's largest private technology company.
1:11.3	But before we get to that, I just want to get a bit of context for the discussion because
1:17.5	I actually spoke with Mitch and Frida nearly two months ago back when we were just getting
1:23.0	this podcast set up and lining up interviews. So what happened this week? A few things. Travis
1:29.3	Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, he has taken a leave of absence. That was announced at the same
	...

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