In the business world and by the public in general Silicon Valley is oft times seen as a kind of economic miracle. It has a dark side. Buckets of money are continually thrown into ventures to give them the façade of success. Financial data is hidden. And there are other misdeeds.
Uber
Uber, the ride-hailing company, was founded by Travis Kalanick and Gary Camp in 2009. Kalanick is a Leo (DOB August 6, 1976). He dropped out of UCLA and founded Scour, a search engine and file exchange service, with some buddies. A lawsuit was filed against the company for copyright infringement. Scour declared bankruptcy to protect itself from legal action. (Wikipedia, “Travis Kalanick”)
At Uber Drivers use their own vehicles and put wear and tear on them. They pay for fuel and maintenance. They do not receive health insurance. Drivers have passengers that vomit in cars. Pictures are submitted to Uber. Uber charges the passenger $200, gives the driver $150 and keeps $50. (Drive: A Memoir, by Jonathan Rigsby, p. 54, 2024)
Drivers have their own Uber app. It gives them a target (number of rides) to hit. If the target is reached, the driver is urged to keep going. (p. 58)
“Uber… is concerned with primarily recruiting new drivers.” “The immense amount of effort put into advertising the benefits of driving for the app, the touting of sign-on bonuses and flexible hours and ‘being your own boss’ are all there to hide the ugly little secret: turnover.” (p. 60) A 2017 study found 97% of drivers quit within a year. (Ibid)
Travis Kalanick
Kalanick hand-picked the board of directors and controlled them. He diluted a round of venture capital into the company. The stock given them was one tenth the worth of his own stock. Kalanick also engaged in industrial sabotage. He had a kill switch. When regulators went into company offices to investigate, the switch locked computers in those offices and changed the passwords. (Wikipedia)
Travis Kalanick was involved in a series of controversies before being forced to resign from Uber. He called a taxi ordering app designed to make rides safer for women “boober.” (Wikipedia)
The most important thing a CEO can do is to set a good and right tone. At Uber sexism and the “bro culture” permeated the company. There were hundreds of complaints about harassment and bullying. Uber had 6,000 sexual assault reports in two years. (BBC, “Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick steps down from board,” December 24, 2019) Kalanick allowed that culture to flourish until criticisms began to reach a crescendo.
In 2017 a video was published. In it Kalanick berated a driver. (Ibid)
When Kalanick left the company, he sold 90% of his stock. It was worth $2.5 billion.
Travis Kalanick Horoscope
Horoscope Analysis
Travis’ Moon is in the latter degrees of Sagittarius or early degrees of Capricorn. I prefer the former since Sagittarius is associated with travel. The time of birth is not known.
Mercury and Venus are bound together widely in an out of sign conjunction. Ordinarily, that might add charm and felicity to communication. However, both are square Jupiter.
The Mercury square indicates indiscretion while that of Venus suggests he “follows an easy life, too many love affairs.” (Parker, The Complete Astrologer, p. 142)
Black Moon Lilith, Chiron, the South Node and Jupiter are all in Taurus. Lilith, Chiron, and the South Node are closely bound. They receive hard aspects from Uranus and Saturn.
Saturn square Black Lilith “emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for… actions and their impact on others.” (Astromatrix) Lilith opposition Uranus brings the need to be wild and free. (Tom Jacobs Evolutionary Astrology, “Natal Lilith Aspects”)
With the badly aspected Lilith, the negative traits of Taurus are prevalent. “There is a voracious appetite for sex, money, food, and all the material pleasures of the world. When those desire are unfulfilled, the native is capable of extreme rage.” (Patricia Lantz, email to writer. Also see her article on Lilith at lovetoknow.com.)
Travis Kalanick’s Sun is conjoined with Saturn. Saturn is in the sign of its detriment. A Sun/Saturn conjunction is oft times an indicator of hard-won success. Here Kalanick, viewing his chart as a whole, with the aforementioned negative aspects in mind, was apparently arrogant, demanding, and bullying. Those are some of the negative traits of his Leo Sun. In fact, Kalanick’s corporate employees worked night and weekends without compensation.
NextDoor
I watched an episode of Shark Tank, the well-known television show, in which multimillionaires compete with each other to invest in small concerns. Nirav Tolia, one of the founders and CEO of NextDoor, was listed as a recurring Shark.
NextDoor was touted as “the world’s largest local social network” and has been “adopted by over 220,000 neighborhoods worldwide, including over 90% in the U.S.” (ABC, Shark Tank, “Norav Tolia: Shark Biography”)
I have been on NextDoor quite a number of times. I found it to be a website where people asked for the name of a reputable tradesman, sold or gave away household items, held discussions, and advertised their goods or services if they were a business.
Companies like NextDoor raise large sums of venture capital. Through December 2017 it raised $360 million. It was valued at $1.5 billion. (Wikipedia) On what was this valuation based? NextDoor produces nothing of value.
Tolia projected million in revenue for 2017 but a year later declined to discuss total revenue and profitability. In 2019 another $123 million was raised at a $2.1 billion valuation. (Ibid)
In 2021 NextDoor announced it would go public in a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. What does that mean? A reverse merger is the acquisition of a public company by a private one. It avoids the lengthy process of going public. A special purpose acquisition company is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange. It avoids the initial public offering process. That process has procedural and regulatory burdens. (Wikipedia)
Norav Toria was born in 1973 in Odessa, Texas. I cannot find the day and month of his birth. The internet is full of positive articles about him. As Taurean Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.” Journalists associate NextDoor with altruism and being humanitarian. In my opinion there is no such nexus.
Author’s Note: I love the United States, and it bothers me to see business in the country moving backward and employing robber baron type stratagems. Where money is involved in business, the companies must be subject to careful scrutiny.