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- But if I know one thing about Silicon Valley it’s this: It cannot break its addiction to pattern recognition. That ensures that Kalanick’s ouster will be about more than just Kalanick and more than just Uber for at least the next ten year cultural cycle. If Uber slowly Yahoos out, the story will be about the paramount value of culture in an organization. An asshole will have tanked a great company, simply by being an asshole. If a more boring, operational, responsible CEO saves Uber, the story will become that sometimes even “great founders” have to go.
Travis Kalanick will join the canon of people that future entrepreneurs are compared to -- favorably or unfavorably-- because Uber was the highest valued company of this era, and in Valley history. Only, unlike Bezos, Musk, Jobs, and Zuckerberg, the implicit lazy analysis in “Well, what about Travis Kalanick?” will be that of a cautionary tale.
I know you're supposed to say it "CAL-a-nick" but I've always enjoyed "Colonic".