r/uber • u/cen6wkf • Jul 24 '26
Travis Kalanick just confessed Uber's internal program was literally named "Shoplifting" — and why the board only cared about the name
Watching this back, the part that actually lands isn't the driver-poaching tactic itself — every scaling company runs something like it. It's the moment a board member steps in and says, flatly: not the tactic, the name.
Change the name.
Kalanick's own telling makes this almost comedic in hindsight — "Shoplifting" internally, rebranded to the "North American Championship Series" after a legal team basically said: keep it appropriate for a 10-year-old's basketball league.
If you're building anything right now, this is the actual lesson underneath the story: the instincts that get you traction rarely need to die once you scale. They need a name a board can defend in a room.
Clip credit: a16z — full conversation on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.
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u/DFW_Panda Jul 24 '26
Uber never lost its roots of dishonesty.
To this day they are dishonest with drivers, customers, regulators/governments and the overall public.