Mike Isaac

A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. In June 2017, Travis Kalanick, the hard-charging CEO of Uber, was ousted in a boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley. In the tradition of Brad Stone's Everything Store and John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, award-winning investigative reporter Mike Isaac's Super Pumped delivers a gripping account of Uber's rapid rise, its pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company's toxic internal culture and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.

The Battle for Uber

Super Pumped

An enjoyable inside look at how a B2C behemoth was built, including with the corners cut and laws very bent if not broken, as well as the fall out from the board kicking out the founder, Travis Kalanick.

Fred Rivett

Aamna

Fast-paced. Well researched but has the quality of a narration that lacks input from key people who were in the room. This has a short shelf life so has anyone bought the movie rights yet? 

Oh and yeah, Uber has problems.

Jayme Cochrane

Silicon Valley exposé books are my guilty pleasure. Nowhere near as good as Bad Blood, but still full of ridiculous stories and notes.

Jeffrey Jose

Slow build up but never boring. The highly public unraveling happens more than half way into the book.

matej yangwao

** spoiler alert **
           Rocky start, carefree decision making and dangers of negligent leadership took it's tool. 
Cutting corners, tactical manouvering for 8yrs had it's own great sacrifice.


Founder's image os inherited by start-up.

≥A spreadsheet of 8 years’ worth of cutting corners, dodging lawsuits, and damning the consequences.

≥Business trends are like waves, and when one crashes and another rises, it is pertinent for the entrepreneur to take advantage.

≥When secrets have become the norm in an establishment, the public knows next to nothing and will react harshly if one word of ill report leaks about it.

≥Oversight and mismanagement can and will lead to the entrepreneur losing his business regardless of how much he has invested in it

≥The decision to oust Travis Kalanick as CEO was followed by a reduction in the shareholdings he had in the firm so as to further deplete his strength within the ranks.

≥When there are discrepancies and inappropriate behavior condoned in a firm, they will always find their way to the surface and it can spell ruin for the entrepreneur and the business as well.

≥To win a battle, requires little planning but to win the war takes a tactic so effective, it wins all battles that will follow.

a typical account of how a startup scaled. I found the early Uber policies stricken by Kalanick interesting, and aligned to his personality.

Xin Ma

Bouke van der Bijl

Reads like a thriller, or like plot of Succession. The crazy story of Uber. You won't really learn anything from this book, besides the fact that Kalanick is a manipulative asshole, but you will have a great time reading it.

Keven Wang

Katie Chua

started off compelling but then the writing began to start sounding like someone who is really over dramatic and bad at telling stories but won’t leave you alone at a party 

also, Uber sucks

Jeremy Anderberg

It's impossible to read this book and not be reminded of last year's superb Bad Blood, which told the story of Elizabeth Holmes and the now-defunct Theranos. Holmes and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick are remarkably similar in their egocentrism, their creation of a dysfunctional company culture, their delusion about their product and employees, and now, their Silicon Valley banishment.

The very real difference between the two stories? Theranos didn't have a real product, whereas Uber was basically printing cash for a handful of years, leading the company to be called the "unicorn of unicorns" (a startup valued at $1 billion).

Uber subversively wound its way into major cities (even internationally) breaking dozens of local regulations en route. But debut author and NYT tech reporter Mike Isaac, through hundreds of interviews, pulls back the curtain on the appallingly destructive and misogynistic bro culture that was lurking in the shadows. Kalanick is a bit like the Wizard of Oz — initially seen as a magical tech founder who could do no wrong, but is ultimately revealed as a troubled and deeply flawed leader.

In 2017, which Isaac calls one of the worst single years ever for a corporation, Uber was in the news a lot, mostly for ill. From the infamous Susan Fowler blog post, to Kalanick's involvement with President Trump's tech council, to the even more infamous video of Kalanick berating one of his own drivers, things couldn't have been much worse. The co-founder departed, decidedly not amicably, and now the company is trying to claw its way out of PR hell.

This is one of those books where the writing complements the story in such a way as to not be a hindrance. The focus is not on the words necessarily, but in how those words are carrying the crazy plot forward. Isaac finds this balance very well, as John Carreyrou did in Bad Blood.

Super Pumped is a page-turning and noteworthy book which adds to the growing library that exposes Silicon Valley’s not-so-glamorous underbelly, and one that will force readers to reconsider their use of not only Uber, but ride-sharing companies in general.

Sebastian Rodriguez

What could have been an extremely linear and pessimistic read, ended up shining a lot of insights and behind-the-scenes, of potentially one of the biggest start-ups in the latest decade. Loads of learning around leadership and execution.

Hidde

If you were ever curious whether the rumours about Uber's structural lack of moral standards were true, look no further. Isaac reports on the rise and fall of Uber's founder Travis Kalanick. He isn't as harsh on Kalanick as he could have, given the events that unfolded during his time as CEO. Super Pumped is an even handed look into the world of Sillicon Valley's VC-backed tech companies, and an excellent reminder that we should never ever trust tech bros.

Ilia Markov

Great book, reads like a thriller, but lifts the veil on what's going on inside the fabled companies of the Valley

Sarah Christine Gill

It's a great story and one that should be told but personally I thought the structure was all over the place and that meant it fell a bit flat for me. 

Super Pumped The Battle for Uber

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