Question

Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, declared that he envisions Uber going public in early 2019, that is, within 18 months of his appointment. What would he and Uber need to accomplish to make this a reality? List Uber’s current challenges in rank order, and provide recommendations to the new CEO of how to address them. Be specific.

Answer 1

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi confirmed on Thursday that the company's "target" is to go public in 2019. The move is a departure from his predecessor, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, who had tried to put off an IPO as long as possible.

"We have all of the disadvantages of being a public company, as far as the spotlight on us, without any of the advantages of being a public company," Khosrowshahi said on stage at the New York Times DealBook Conference in Manhattan.

"Travis and the whole board now agree that we should just go public," he added.

Uber currently has a valuation of $70 billion, which makes it the most highly valued startup in the world. The company has raised more than $10 billion in capital since its founding in 2009.

If you haven’t heard (maybe you’ve been toiling in Elon’s tunnels?), Uber has had a rough start to 2017. The Department of Justice has launched a criminal probe into the company’s use of “Greyball,” a system it used to identify regulatory officials and block them from booking rides. In January, it lost riders who objected to CEO Travis Kalanick’s (soon abandoned) seat on President Trump’s economic council.

In late February, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published an explosive blog post, accusing Uber of fostering a misogynistic corporate culture. A few days later, Google autonomous driving spinoff Waymo filed a lawsuit alleging Uber boosted its self-driving program by stealing Waymo's trade secrets.

And this week, Uber canned at least 20 employees following an internal probe into the harassment probe—with the results of an external probe to come next week. A half dozen high-level executives have left since February. Meanwhile, financial records show the company burning cash at eye-popping rates, while profitability remains elusive.

In a mess like this, it’s hard to know which problems everyone might soon forget and which could hurt the company's fortunes