Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245

Shervin Pishevar claims Bill Gurley hired private investigators and used Fusion GPS to orchestrate Travis Kalanick’s ouster from Uber in 2017.

• Gurley began weekly meetings with private investigators in January 2017 to remove Kalanick — months before the Susan Fowler blog post surfaced.
• Benchmark pushed Travis to go public early; when he stopped responding, Gurley launched a coordinated removal campaign.
• Pishevar’s investigation identified Fusion GPS — the firm behind the Trump-Russia dossier — as the source of a fabricated London police report used against him.
• Benchmark’s letter forcing Travis to resign was delivered at his hotel room the week his mother died in a boating accident.
• Pishevar sued Benchmark in Delaware, won protection of Travis’s three unappointed board seats, then was neutralized via the fabricated accusations two weeks later.
• Shervin’s Menlo Series B investment of $26.5M in Uber is worth ~$6.7B at today’s prices; he also bought secondary at 33 cents/share by selling all his Facebook stock.
• Pishevar believes Uber would be a trillion-dollar company today if Travis and Emil Michael had stayed, calling their removal the greatest value destruction since firing Steve Jobs.
• A judge ruled last year that Fusion GPS must disclose who hired them; Pishevar expects the final judgment to end careers.

2025-01-13 · Watch on YouTube