Shervin Pishevar

Shervin Pishevar’s central claim: Benchmark-led removal of Travis Kalanick was “the greatest value destruction since firing Steve Jobs at Apple.” His investigation, he says, found Bill Gurley “hired some private investigators, had weekly meetings about how do we get rid of Travis” starting January 2017 — before the Susan Fowler post — then Benchmark timed the resignation push to the week Kalanick’s mother died in a boating accident. “They pounced, which is just unbecoming.” These are Pishevar’s allegations, litigated but one-sided; take the venue into account.

The counterfactual he wants priced: had Travis and Emil Michael stayed, “Uber would be a trillion-dollar company by now” — Kalanick was on top of the 2017 AI paper and self-driving — versus Dara’s $175bn “great stabilizer” outcome. Pishevar says Benchmark invested $10m at a $50m pre-money valuation; using a hypothetical 10% stake, it could have had “$100bn to give to their LPs.” Instead, it moved against Travis six years in, when Pishevar says “if you had just waited four more years” the outcome would have been dramatically larger.

The deal itself is a masterclass in access: after losing the Series B to Andreessen, Pishevar told Kalanick “if anything happens in diligence, just know I’m 100,000% behind you” — two weeks later came the Algeria phone call and “can you meet me in Dublin tomorrow.” On Dublin cobblestones Kalanick revealed the real vision — replace car ownership, not compete with taxis — “you’re turning every car into an iPhone.” The TAM was trillions. Pishevar says Menlo’s term sheet was $20m at $290m, later mentions another $65m through a secondary, and separately says $26.5m became around $6.7bn.

The live litigation catalyst: Pishevar has spent “millions” on six 1782 discovery actions and says a judge ruled last year to force Fusion GPS to reveal who hired them to fabricate the London police report used against him in 2017 (London Police emailed the reporter “this is not our report”; Fast Company ran it anyway). Judgment pending on appeal: “once we find out who hired Fusion GPS, I think careers are going to fall.”

“Venture capital is dead” — the 2005–2015 meritocratic era gave way to carpetbaggers, political operatives, and PE coming downstream (he blames himself for bringing TPG into Uber’s Series C), culminating in the 2017–21/22 “drunken period” of $18bn into WeWork, which he passed on. His fix: tokenize and democratize VC so non-accredited “mom and pops” can buy the future Facebooks and SpaceXes — and he expects the Trump administration to open that door.

The frontier bet: quantum and AI “are going to merge, even at the chipset level.” He claims to have seen technologies “that are going to get us to a million qubits” versus Google Willow’s ~100 — “that’s the mind of God” — solving billion-year problems in hours. Consequence: “we’ll find cures to every known disease known to mankind within the next 10 years”; his advice — “don’t die in the next 20 years” and live 150+.

Tradeable scraps from the quickfire: SpaceX (bought at ~$6bn in 2014 via 137 Ventures) “will be a $1 trillion company”; his one fund pick today is Omid Malik’s 1789; most overhyped fund: Benchmark; Chris Sacca’s Lowercase turned his $25k into $4m ("$10m fund returned like $1.5bn"). On Chinese EVs: state-subsidized $115k cars survive even a 100% tariff at $30k — “they’re still going to be able to compete.”

🔗 Original source & video: Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245