Page 65 - Harvard Business Review (November-December, 2017)

FEATURE WHEN FOUNDERS GO TOO FAR

WHEN FOUNDERS

GO TOO FAR

SOME START-UP CEOS HAVE
TOO MUCH POWER. HERE’S
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
BY STEVE BLANK

W hen the directors of Uber ousted its CEO and cofounder,
Travis Kalanick, in June 2017, the move was paradoxically
both long overdue and somewhat unexpected. For

months Kalanick and the company had suffered a string
of scandals, any one of which might have undone a
typical chief executive. A female engineer had posted

a long public account of rampant sexual harassment
and the company’s “bro culture,” to which Uber’s
HR department had turned a blind eye. The company
had been caught ordering and canceling rides from
its competitor Lyft, poaching Lyft’s drivers, and using

software to surreptitiously track its own customers even

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW ARCHER

94 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017