super pumped

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
by Mike Isaac
Published 2 Sep 2019

lang=en. 54 found him near Ocean Beach: Anita Balakrishnan, “How Ryan Graves became Uber’s first CEO,” CNBC, May 14, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/14/profile-of-ubers-ryan-graves.html. 54 Graves’s Tumblr: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/. 54 One personal favorite: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/post/516416119/via-fuckyeahjay-z. 55 thirty new customers: Brian Lund, “From Dead-End Job to Uber Billionaire: Meet Ryan Graves,” DailyFinance, July 3, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140707042902/http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/uber-billionaire-ryan-graves/. 55 small, metallic statue of an ape-man: ryangraves, Tumblr, http://ryangraves.tumblr.com/post/336093270/dpstyles-crunchie-closeup-aka-the-heisman-of. 56 Graves posted to his Facebook: Ryan Graves, “Into the Infinite Abyss of the Startup Adventure,” Facebook, February 14, 2010, https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=476991565402. 58 “Uber CEO ‘Super Pumped’ ”: Michael Arrington, “Uber CEO ‘Super Pumped’ about Being Replaced by Founder,” TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-about-being-replaced-by-founder/. 59 posed for an Instagram snapshot: Uber HQ (@sweenzor), Instagram Photo, September 18, 2013, https://www.instagram.com/p/eatIa-juEa/?taken-by=sweenzor. 59 hailed UberCab’s model: Leena Rao, “UberCab Takes the Hassle Out of Booking a Car Service,” TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/ubercab-takes-the-hassle-out-of-booking-a-car-service/. 59 one TechCrunch article by Arrington said: Michael Arrington, “What If UberCab Pulls an Airbnb?

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The audience read the list as Kalanick rattled them off aloud: Always Be Hustlin’ Be An Owner, Not Renter Big Bold Bets Celebrate Cities Customer Obsession Inside Out Let Builders Build Make Magic Meritocracy & Toe-Stepping Optimistic Leadership Principled Confrontation Super Pumped Champions Mindset / Winning Be Yourself Some of the employees in the audience were confused. “Is this a joke?” one twenty-seven-year-old whispered to a colleague sitting next to him. “Is this still part of the whole professor act?” The list read like Amazon’s corporate values run through a bro-speak translation engine. People in Kalanick’s world were not happy or sad, they were “super pumped” or “super unpumped.” Company brainstorming meetings were “jam sessions.” Half the company enjoyed Kalanick’s colorful vocabulary.

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Publisher's Notice Page numbers listed in the ebook correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text. SUPER PUMPED THE BATTLE FOR UBER MIKE ISAAC Copyright © 2019 by Mike Isaac All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W.

Unleashed
by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei
Published 1 Jun 2020

It’s a model that reveals another foundational truth about leadership: some of your best people don’t always want you in the room. Culture gives you the confidence to exit. Do you have a culture problem? By June of 2017, the mandate to change the culture at Uber could not have been stronger. This was not lost on then-CEO Travis Kalanick. As reported by Mike Isaac in Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, while Kalanick was on leave, he drafted an email to the company that he never ended up sending.a The email was humbled and reflective, mirroring the version of Kalanick we had gotten to know earlier that spring. He opened with a sober take on Uber’s culture challenges: “Over the last seven years, our company has grown a lot—but it hasn’t grown up.”7 Kalanick took responsibility for the company’s cultural missteps, including its emphasis on growth at all costs and its transactional approach to stakeholder relationships.

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Nancy Hass, “And the Award for the Next HBO Goes To … ,” GQ, January 29, 2013, https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development. 6. McCord tells the complete story herself in her terrific book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility (USA: Silicon Guild, 2017). 7. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019), 265. 8. Anyone who cares about getting culture right should read Susan Fowler, Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber (New York: Viking, 2020). 9. Dara Khosrowshahi, “Uber’s New Cultural Norms,” LinkedIn (blog), November 7, 2017, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ubers-new-cultural-norms-dara-khosrowshahi/. 10.

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“we,” 84 Laurent, Nicolo, 124 leaders “A,” 132 absence of, 131–132 cultural, 185, 190–192 expectations of, 62, 77–81 integrity of, 60–61 signs of self-distracted, 6–8 unapologetic, 24–25 underrepresented, 18–19 visibility of queer, 113 leadership See also empowerment leadership justice and, 60–61 new definition of, 4–5, 8–9 outward orientation of, 2, 4–5, 8–12 performance curve, 10, 133 standards-devotion matrix of, 62–67, 70–87 traditional models of, 1–2 trust as foundation of, 33–34 Leadership Agency, 98 leadership profile, 64–65 LGBT+ people, creating inclusive spaces for, 110–112 LinkedIn, 9 little red book, 159–160 logic, 34–37, 41, 45–46, 51, 57 love, 12, 13, 57, 59–87 devotion and, 72–73 from expectations to, 77–81 from neglect to, 81, 84 tough, 62, 86–87 loyalty, 60, 67, 77 Marcario, Rose, 42–43 Mariscal, Marguerite Zabar, 160 Maximus, Valerius (ValMax), 59–62, 71, 72 McCord, Patty, 168–169, 172 McMillon, Doug, 2 meetings, 40–41, 55 inclusive, 108–109, 112–114 Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Maximus), 59–61 mentoring, 78–79, 109 meritocracy, 68, 109, 178 #MeToo, 24 Microsoft, 116, 191–192 Mikitani, Hiroshi, 161 Miller, Jo, 102–103 mindfulness, 52 Mission Command, 16–18 Moltke, Helmuth von, 17 Moments of Truth (Carlzon), 159–160 Momofuku, 160 Morgan, Jen, 2 Nadella, Satya, 116, 191–192 Neeleman, David, 167 Neeley, Tsedal, 161 neglect, 63, 65, 66, 67, 81, 84 Netflix, 168–169, 172 network effects, 153 NFL, 103–104 Nohria, Nitin, 122–123 O’Brien, Deirdre, 113 OKR (objectives and key results) system, 79 One-Strike-and-You’re-Out You, 64 O’Reilly, Tim, 143, 144 organizational change, 90–91 See also change resistance to, 92–94 other people’s awesomeness (OPA), 23, 74 others abilities of, 7 believing in, 22 curiosity about, 6, 82 empowerment of, 4–5, 54, 71 helping, 82–83 importance of, 2, 4 learning from, 45 orientation toward, 15 performance of, 9–12 seeing potential of, 14–15, 22, 23 outside lives, 83–84, 100–101 Patagonia, 42–43 Pawsitive Dog, 75–76 pay gap, 121–122 PayPal, 9 performance reviews, 80, 116, 117–119 PFLAG, 112 positive reinforcement, 22–23, 73–76, 78 praise, 73–74, 78 presence, 29–30, 40–41, 131 pricing decisions, 141–143, 144 primate brain, 52 private bathrooms, 111 profitability, 142, 143 promotions process, 114–115, 116, 119, 121 pronouns, 111 Prophet, Tony, 107, 122 psychological safety, 47, 107 public bathrooms, 111 Queer Eye, 15, 18 queer identities, 110–112 queer people, creating inclusive spaces for, 110–112 QuikTrip, 147–148 quotas, 104 radical accountability, 175 See also radical responsibility radical responsibility, 10, 40, 123 See also radical accountability Rakuten, 161 Rapinoe, Megan, 121–122 reconciliation, 122–123 recruitment process, 95–104 redemption, 123 representation tax, 120–121 retainment, 120–122 Revere, Paul, 24 Riot Games, 124–126, 168, 179–182 Rodriguez-Pastor, Carlos (CRP), 67–70 Roizen, Heidi, 117–118 Romney, Mitt, 99 Rooney, Dan, 103 Rooney rule, 103–104 root cause analysis, 115 Roseboro, Angela, 125 safety, 105, 106, 107 Safe Zone Project, 112 Saint John, Bozoma, 2, 121 Salesforce, 107 Sandberg, Sheryl, 5, 126, 169 SAP, 2 Sasser, Earl, 94 Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), 159–160 Schein, Edgar H., 167, 168, 177 Scooby Snacks, 78 Scrub Daddy, 157 self-distraction, 6–8, 18–19 self-improvement, 20–21 self-trust, 56–57 severity, 61, 63, 64–65, 66, 67, 77 sexual harassment, 106 Shark Tank, 156–157 “sink or swim” approach, 109, 112 SMART goals, 79 Smith, Fred, 166 social media, 52 Southwest Airlines, 136–138, 161 standards-devotion matrix, 62–67, 70–87 standard setting, 78–80 Starbucks, 168 Stonewall, 110 strategic confusion, 135 strategic value stick, 145, 150, 151, 155 strategic wedge, 152–153, 154–156, 191 strategy, 12–14, 132, 135–163 changing, 162 communication of, 156–161 defined, 136–138 growth, 152–154 planning, 154–156 strategic trade-offs, 136–141 suppliers and, 144–148 value-based, 135–136 value creation and, 141–144 writing about, 158 Stripe, 14 Su, Lisa, 62 Sulla, 72, 73 Super Pumped (Isaac), 172–173 Super You, 139 suppliers, 144–148, 153–154 talent attracting diverse, 95–104 retaining, 120–122 task forces, 92 TaskRabbit, 5, 148–152, 161 Tatum, Lisa Skeete, 14 teams building, 54 diverse, 48–49 leadership of, 13 terminations, 84, 85–86 360-degree reviews, 117–119 “toe-stepping,” 178–179 Ton, Zeynep, 147–148 tough love, 62, 86–87 toxic employees, 123 Toyota, 153–154 Toyota Production System (TPS), 153–154 trade-offs, 136–141 Trader Joe’s, 44 trust, 12, 13, 31–58 attributes of, 34, 36 authenticity and, 34–37, 47–54, 57 diagnosing your own level of, 35–39 empathy and, 34–41, 51, 57 as foundation of leadership, 33–34 logic and, 41, 45–46, 51, 57 rebuilding, 1, 55–56 in yourself, 56–57 trust anchor, 35, 37 trust drivers, 34, 35 trust triangle, 34, 36–37 trust wobble, 35–39, 42–44 Twitter, 102 Uber, 31–32, 51, 54–56, 114, 172–174, 178–179 United States Army, 16–18 USAID, 43 US Soccer Federation (USSF), 121–122 ValMax.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 1 Feb 2022

However, when Greyball became publicly known, Uber discontinued its use and the Department of Justice opened a criminal probe. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 73 Gurley, author interview. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 74 Kolhatkar, “At Uber, A New C.E.O. Shifts Gears.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 75 Isaac, Super Pumped, 279. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 76 Isaac, Super Pumped, 290–91. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 77 Jessica E. Lessin, Serena Saitto, and Amir Efrati, “At $45 Billion Price, SoftBank Talks Enflame Uber Tensions,” Information, Aug. 4, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 78 A spokesman for Kalanick denied the allegations in the suit, saying, “The lawsuit is completely without merit and riddled with lies and false allegations.”

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See Brad Stone, The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2017), 173–74. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 46 Pishevar, author interview. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 47 Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 193. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 48 Stone, Upstarts, 200–4. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 49 Matthew Lynley, “Hailo Raises $30.6 Million, Looks to Digitize New York’s Cabs,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 5, 2013. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 50 Gurley, author interview.

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BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 55 Sarah Lacy, “The Horrific Trickle Down of Asshole Culture: Why I’ve Just Deleted Uber from my Phone,” Pando, Oct. 22, 2014. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 56 Ben Smith, “Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists,” BuzzFeed, Nov. 17, 2014. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 57 Isaac, Super Pumped, 122–25. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 58 The super-voting rights left Kalanick with about 16 percent of the votes. His co-founders, seed investors, a few employees, and the Series A and B investors excluding Benchmark controlled another 59 percent. See pie chart in Alfred Lee, “Uber Voting Change Proposal Could Face More Hurdles,” Information, Oct. 2, 2017.

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination
by Adam Lashinsky
Published 31 Mar 2017

As for Graves, he told the technology news site TechCrunch that he was “super pumped” Kalanick was joining Uber full time, a comment the snarky site mocked in its headline given Graves’s demotion. Despite his hurt feelings and subsequent feuds with Kalanick over his right to be called a founder, Graves stayed with Uber in senior positions, and on its board, for years. He also coined a phrase that’s central to the Uber culture. Years later Uber employees continued to say, without a whiff of irony, that they were “super pumped” about just about anything. On the day Kalanick became CEO, in October 2010, a man carrying a clipboard showed up at UberCab’s offices looking for Ryan Graves.

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win
by Chris Kuenne and John Danner
Published 5 Jun 2017

The tool is a rating from 0 to 100, with truly exceptional performance earning above 100. “We are honest with ourselves and with each other,” Phillips says. “If you are not at one hundred, say, ninety, we are telling you it is fixable. If you are at an eighty, we are telling you to go.” Transparent. Quantitative. Unambiguous. “We had something our competitors did not—super-pumped-up employees.” Another Explorer, Mark Bonfigli, the founder of Dealer.com, applied this same kind of systems thinking to improve the human-touch elements of recruiting and culture in his company, allowing it to scale to more than a thousand employees and ultimately selling it to DealerTrack for over $1 billion.

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Bonfigli then realized his engaged and energetic sales and customer care teams could be a competitive weapon in the marketplace. He explains: “We did have a few inventions that were sort of cool and separated us, but the reality was some of our competitors had a more robust solution. We had something they did not have—happy, enthusiastic, inspired, and super-pumped-up employees who were smiling on the other end of the phone.” What started as a systematic way to ensure the health of his workforce turned into Dealer.com’s competitive advantage. As an Explorer, you are a magnet for like-minded problem solvers. You are clear, to the point of being blunt, in your communications and your expectations for your teams.

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
by Angie Schmitt
Published 26 Aug 2020

Laura Bliss, “Former Uber Backup Driver: ‘We Saw This Coming,’” Citylab, March 27, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/. 13. Pete Bigelow, “NTSB Scrutinizes ‘Automation Complacency’ after Uber Crash,” Automotive News, December 11, 2019, https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/ntsb-scrutinizes-automation-complacency-after-uber-crash. 14. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: Norton, 2019), loc. 405 of 880, iBooks. 15. Paayal Zaveri, “Uber’s Revenue and Bookings Growth Slowed Slightly in the Second Quarter of 2018, Company Reports,” CNBC, August 15, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/uber-q2-2018-revenue-bookings-slow-slightly.html. 16.

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Dan Albert, telephone interview, October 22, 2019. 20. National Transportation Safety Board, “Preliminary Report Released for Crash Involving Pedestrian, Uber Technologies, Inc., Test Vehicle,” press release, May 24, 2018, https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180524.aspx. 21. Isaac, Super Pumped, loc. 403, iBooks. 22. Richard Lawler, “Uber Will Not Face Criminal Charges for Last Year’s Self-Driving Crash,” Engaget, March 5, 2019, https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/05/uber-autonomous-fatal-crash-criminal-charges/. 23. National Association of City Transportation Officials, “NTSB Finds Inadequate Safeguards in Place for Self-Driving Vehicle Testing across U.S.,” November 21, 2019, https://nacto.org/2019/11/21/ntsb-finds-inadequate-safeguards-in-place-for-self-driving-vehicle-testing/. 24.

Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley
by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans
Published 25 Apr 2023

Despite Tony’s alarming behavior at Winter Camp, attending the film festival had offered what appeared to be a brief return to normalcy in Tony’s life just days before he officiated the wedding. That year for Sundance, Zappos partnered with a digital content company called HitRecord, which was co-founded by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the actor who would go on to play Uber founder Travis Kalanick in a Showtime special called Super Pumped, based on the book of the same name by New York Times journalist Mike Isaac. Together, they aired ten mini-documentaries at Sundance, each representing one of Zappos’s ten core values. Tony spent time with Joseph at the festival, as well as with singer Paula Abdul, whom he had met just a few weeks prior.

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See also ketamine Spinnaker Software Stanford University Starbucks Star Trek Star Trek: The Experience Start with Why (Sinek) Stealing Fire (Kotler and Wheal) St. Louis Rams stock market crash of 2000 StockX Stone, Brad Strauss, Neil StyleTread suicides Summit conference Sundance Film Festival Super Pumped (TV show) SV Angel Swartz, Aaron Swinmurn, Nick Swisher, Kara Taiwan Taler, Jen Tamber, Pritpal Tame Impala Tanzania TAO nightclub “Taylor, Anthony” (pseudonym) Teach for America TechCrunch Tedrow, Jillian TED Talks “Teeth” (poem by Tony) Tellme Networks Telluride, Colorado 10X scheme Terra Linda High School Tesla SUVs Theil, Peter Thoreen, Vivian Three Investigators, The (Arthur) TomorrowWorld Tony Hsieh Award “Tony Hsieh Speaks” “TOOMUCHTODONESS” (poem by Tony) Towne Terrace apartments Triumph of the City (Glaeser) Troy, Ms.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
by Brian Merchant
Published 25 Sep 2023

London: Routledge, 2007. Hudson, Pat. The Genesis of Industrial Capital: A Study of West Riding Wool Textile Industry, c. 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hyman, Louis. Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary. New York: Viking, 2018. Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. New York: W. W. Norton, 2019. Jackson, George. The Bath Archives: A Further Selection from the Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson, from 1809 to 1816. 2 vols. London, 1873. Jones, Frederick L., ed. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

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De Blasio also proposed I conducted a phone interview with de Blasio while he was campaigning for president in 2019. The quotes are drawn from that interview. 12. “The old legislative controls” Randall, Before the Luddites, 237. 13. New York Times reporter Mike Isaac Mike Isaac’s excellent reporting on Uber can be found both in the New York Times and in his book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: Norton, 2019). 14. As Uber was introduced Uber’s behavior often caused protests, backlash, and even violent riots. See, for example, “Cab Drivers Protest Uber, Rideshare Apps in Mexico City,” AP, October 12, 2016. 15. why should we bother Randall, Before the Luddites, 237.

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever
by Alex Kantrowitz
Published 6 Apr 2020

Dow Jones & Company, October 25, 2018. https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-netflix-radical-transparency-and-blunt-firings-unsettle-the-ranks-1540497174?mod=hp_lead_pos4. Ideas at Tesla come from the top: Duhigg, Charles. “Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell.” Wired. Condé Nast, December 13, 2008. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory. Uber’s culture is famously troubled: Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. CHAPTER 1: INSIDE JEFF BEZOS’S CULTURE OF INVENTION Bezos drives Amazon’s inventive culture through fourteen leadership principles: “Leadership Principles.” Amazon.jobs. Accessed October 3, 2019. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles.

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism
by Wendy Liu
Published 22 Mar 2020

Public transit consultant Jarrett Walker explains it in a blog post called “The Dangers of Elite Projection”, published July 31, 2017, at https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html. 13 See, for instance, Uber’s introduction of its opaque “Safe Rides Fee” on every trip, which brought in nearly half a billion dollars of extra revenue for the company that was never specifically set aside for safety measures, as Mike Isaac reports in his book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W. W. Norton, 2019). 14 See, for instance, “Tech Giants Amass a Lobbying Army for an Epic Washington Battle” by Cecilia Kang and Kenneth P. Vogel for the New York Times, published June 5, 2019 at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/us/politics/amazon-apple-facebook-google-lobbying.html. 15 For an overview of the history of financialisation, see Grace Blakeley’s book Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation (Repeater, 2019). 16 See “The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials” by Annie Lowrey, published August 26, 2019 at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/millennials-are-screwed-recession/596728/. 17 As reported by the real estate firm Compass for Q3 of 2019.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
by Dan Lyons
Published 22 Oct 2018

They seemed mostly bemused. Some companies try to instill a little bit of Silicon Valley culture by building miniature start-ups inside their old-company walls, hiring Millennials who fan out across the organization, wearing Converse sneakers and untucked shirts, running hackathons and teaching oldsters how to get “super pumped” and “mastermind some shit” in a “jam sesh,” as Uber founder Travis Kalanick once put it. Also, many companies are latching on to faddish Silicon Valley management methodologies, like Agile and Lean Startup, because they are convinced that these tech-spawned ideas will make them as nimble as start-ups.

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts
by Mark Mahaney
Published 9 Nov 2021

This is the kind of evidence an individual investor should be looking for. The fourth logic test question is: Are there concrete steps that management can take to drive the company to profitability? I’m going to go back to Uber on this one. Mike Isaac, the technology reporter for the New York Times, wrote a book about Uber called Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. Isaac does a masterful job detailing the birth, the growth, and the controversy around Uber. One clear takeaway is that Uber under cofounder Travis Kalanick was a company run with a growth-at-all-costs mentality—or a growth-regardless-of-the-costs mentality. I’m not sure Uber could have initially succeeded without that type of mentality, given the entrenched and fiercely competitive interests it was taking on in local cities and in international markets.

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
Published 7 Sep 2020

Former Netflix vice president of engineering, Daniel Jacobson, worked at National Public Radio (NPR) for a decade in Washington, DC, before working at Netflix for a decade. He explained the benefits of the family ethos at NPR like this: I began at NPR in late 1999 as the first full-time software engineer hired online. When I got there, I was super-pumped. People who want to work at NPR believe in the mission and love the organization’s dedication to news and information. That shared purpose resulted in a culture that at times felt more like a family than a workplace. It was very appealing, and I developed a lot of close relationships at work. NPR had such a strong family culture that many people turned it into their real family.

Palace Coup: The Billionaire Brawl Over the Bankrupt Caesars Gaming Empire
by Sujeet Indap and Max Frumes
Published 16 Mar 2021

He was charming, glib, and, by billionaire standards, down-to-earth. By 2006, he was married to the former Carolyn Pleva, a fashion designer, and had three sons. By all accounts he was happily married and adored his wife and children. “I married my trophy wife. I come home every day and smile. One of the secrets to my success is being super-pumped up every day,” Rowan once said. Rowan even bragged that there had been no divorces among Apollo partners. Rowan’s reputation for feeling secure and comfortable in his own skin proved to be another contrast with Harris. One Apollo partner put it this way: “Josh Harris wakes up in the morning thinking about Marc Rowan.

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion
by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
Published 19 Jul 2021

Thanks to Tripp Mickle for talking us through a new craft we all knew nothing about. Thanks to Bradley Hope for all his counsel on the publishing world and investigative reporting. Our text builds on strong works of others that chronicled Silicon Valley’s unicorn party. Thanks for the kind suggestions from Mike Isaac, whose Super Pumped shared many similar themes on the rise and ouster of Uber’s CEO. Reeves Wiedeman was a generous and decorous competitor, and his Billion Dollar Loser, also on WeWork, is well worth a read. Thanks to all our colleagues at other outlets whose work on WeWork helped inform this book, including Ellen Huet, Gillian Tan, Cory Weinberg, Meghan Morris, Steve Bertoni, Charles Duhigg, and Moe Tkacik.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
by Daniel Yergin
Published 14 Sep 2020

Megan Rose Dickey, “Lyft’s Rides Are So Social,” Business Insider, March 16, 2014; Travis Kalanick, Uber Policy White Paper, “Principled Innovation: Addressing the Regulatory Ambiguity,” April 12, 2013 (“compete”). 4. “Didi Chuxing’s Founder Cheng Wei,” Times of India, August 8, 2016. 5. Interview with Jean Liu. 6. Mike Isaacs, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), chapters 27–30; Farhad Manjoo, “Uber’s Lesson,” New York Times, June 21, 2017; Anita Balakrishnan, “Here’s the Full 13-Page Report of Recommendations for Uber,” CNBC, June 13, 2017. Chapter 40: Auto-Tech 1. Michael Sivak, “Younger Persons Are Still Less Likely to Have a Driver’s License Than in the 1980s,” January 6, 2020, https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/01/20200106-sivak.html. 2.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle
Published 14 Oct 2022

For the origins of Uber and Airbnb specifically, see Brad Stone, The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley (London: Corgi, 2018); Leigh Gallagher, The Airbnb Story: How to Disrupt an Industry, Make Billions of Dollars . . . and Plenty of Enemies (London: Virgin Books, 2018); Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019). 23.The classic historical work on casual labor markets is Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (1971; London: Verso, 2013). For more recent works on the subject, see Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury, 2011); Alexandrea J.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
by Malcolm Harris
Published 14 Feb 2023

v The exposé was a coup for the paper, but owner Rupert Murdoch could hardly celebrate the scoop, as he was also one of the biggest investors in Theranos. vi Uber chronicler Mike Isaac writes that Camp was “smart, but he was no Steve Jobs”—a sign of how far the standards for Silicon Valley founder-genius had fallen since the days when world-class chemists and physicists led the start-ups. Mike Isaac, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W. W. Norton, 2019), 41. vii Named for Fairchild and Intel cofounder Gordon, Moore’s “law” predicts that the density of transistors within an integrated circuit will continue to increase exponentially, doubling every year or two and falling in price. viii This was ironic, considering that the professional certification system was supposed to keep future national-security assets like Snowden away from the politically corrupting influence of college life.