Read the complaint, it's pretty bad. Dude googles how to copy his work email from gmail, and also copies hot corporate documents to his private dropbox the day he quits for Uber. All the while emailing the Lyft founders saying "I still love you like brothers".
I try to avoid people and companies with poor ethics.
Why would Lyft agree to a confidential settlement? The bad publicity for Uber is more valuable than whatever money they can get from their former employee.
I just think it's unlikely this comes to trial simply because of the evidence. And if it doesn't go to trial, that means a settlement and I think these sorts of things are customarily confidential. IANAL.
I'd think a court would be OK with sealing any documents containing Lyft's confidential information, after establishing the accuracy of the documents' description.
The factual question is whether the defendant did in fact copy all that information as described, and there might be additional questions later about whether that information was passed to Uber, and if so, how that came to pass. If Lyft were to prevail and a jury was awarding damages, then it would be enough to know what sort of documents were taken to establish whether they were important commercial information or not, no?
Not just VanderZanden - notice they're also suing 'Does 1-10' which is lgal biolerplate for 'defendants we can't identify by name yet.' Uber executives or the firm itself could easily be named as co-defendants. I don't know how to assess the scope of the potential damages - while I don't think it would be fiscally catastrophic for Uber, it could get very very nasty.
The complaint alleges that a few days before resigning he made a to-do list (using his working computer naturally) that included "Backup Lyft Email and Contacts".
I try to avoid both unethical people and people who are dumb as rocks. I think this guy qualifies as both, if he actually did corporate espionage unencrypted over the corporation's own network.
I'm interest to know if Uber knew about this. I wouldn't hire people who take documents with them they stole in their previous company - who knows what they do once they leave.
My guess is that this ends with him fired from Ubert. Now that Lyft has presented the evidence, that may be the only way for Uber to avoid liability itself.
I think at this point, it's clear to me that Lyft is the one with poor ethics.
I would literally never have heard of Lyft without all of their accusations against Über. Über is trying to poach drivers; Über is getting our C-level guys to baldly incriminate themselves and then jump ship to Über; Über is stealing our cookies; waaaah waaah waaah Uber.
Honestly, I find it impossible to believe the Über team is both this B-movie-level evil, and stupid. It's really, really hard to believe that a COO of a successful startup wouldn't know how to copy documents that are on his OWN MACHINE (the private dropbox documents).
So, since Lyft obviously gets assloads of free publicity from all these accusations, and since I've never seen an actual court judgment against Über reported, I somewhat doubt that these are actually true, or at least not actually provable, since like others have said, if Lyft could successfully sue Über over any one of these things, the media would have even more of a field day than it's having now.
So okay. Über stole your drivers, your COO, shot your dog, made a mean face at you, whatever. Prove it in court. Until then I'm done with this bullshit. And I'll be happily using Über.
(The only thing that Über has really done that's unethical is be as brutally capitalist as they can, but I find that a difficult accusation to level against them since it's not like any other company is doing exactly the same thing. That's a systemic issue, not a local one.)
Edit: You know, if Lyft was running a black-hat PR campaign against Über, it'd be just like them to shill on HN. Thanks for the downvotes, Lyft.
> Honestly, I find it impossible to believe the Uber team is both this B-movie-level evil, and stupid. It's really, really hard to believe that a COO of a successful startup wouldn't know how to copy documents that are on his OWN MACHINE (the private dropbox documents).
> So, since Lyft obviously gets assloads of free publicity from all these accusations, and since I've never seen an actual court judgment against Uber reported, I somewhat doubt that these are actually true, or at least not actually provable, since like others have said, if Lyft could successfully sue Uber over any one of these things, the media would have even more of a field day than it's having now.
So just to clarify, you think Lyft is making these accusations up for the sake of getting publicity?
I admit it's far fetched, but to quote the Romans, who benefits?
Fabricating evidence seems a bit of a stretch, but hey, we're already believing that a COO can't copy files.
I'd say that the most likely explanation is a nice mix of malice and stupidity on both sides. Maybe Uber did do something wrong. Maybe Lyft blew it out of proportion and went to all the journalists they knew to get it out there. Maybe the whole thing is an elaborate triple ruse.
But seriously, are there any publicly available judgments about any of these yet? It's getting unbelievable without them.
Uber completely ignored Philadelphia's telling them that launching uberX there is illegal, then let their own drivers get their personal vehicles impounded in a game of chicken.
Yet Lyft has the poor ethics. Right.
Considering there is serious civil harm arising from making up a lawsuit, do you have any evidence that Lyft's allegations are false or do you just flap your gums because you like Uber more? It never ceases to amaze me how people in all considerations can pick a side and stick to it, ignoring all data that doesn't fit their narrative. You like Uber more, nobody is begrudging you that. Turning your preference into calling Lyft unethical and the rest of your comment is, quite honestly, stupid.
Lyft launched in Miami first, which is a market that Uber didn't enter because driving there without a taxi license was a criminal offense, not merely a fine. Uber has always launched in cities where they knew they could defend the first drivers on the road without long term consequences for those drivers. Lyft launched in Miami without regard to the long term consequences for those drivers that started riding with them. I don't think Uber entered Miami for months and only well after informing the city of Miami that they are going to enter the market if the city doesn't start enforcing their own laws. I don't know about you, but Lyft is no saint either and probably worse if they're willing to put drivers in a position where they end up with a criminal record.
Hey "throwaway", I explicitly pointed out that Uber is as bad as any other company. Where do you think your clothing comes from, a unicorn? No, they come from a child slave in an Indonesian sweatshop. There's no company in the world with good ethics.
That's a great attempt at a diversion, though. It's almost enough to make someone forget that in this country, the United States of America, the greatest and freest country on the face of the earth, all people, including and especially corporations, are INNOCENT until proven GUILTY. Lyft needs to do more than just allegate for me to believe them. So if you have any evidence that Lyft's allegations are TRUE, you can show me (and the court! I'm sure they'd love it) now or take a hike.
After seeing a lot of negative press on Uber and its questionable tactics, I'm wondering the following:
Is it necessary for Uber to be so cutthroat, sneaky, and brutal to survive in the space they've carved out for themselves, or is this just a reflection of the poor character of the management team?
Here's how things will go. Über will continue steamrolling the country and locking down the market and subduing drivers into subjugation, then they will start regulatory and policy capture by corrupting politicians to write rules that keep them in power with as little effort as possible.
The reason Über is trying to crush competition, is that it knows they are currently still vulnerable for real competition to enter. Once they have dominated all the major metropolitan centers, they will know that they dominate to a point that significantly disincentivizes entry by real competition.
I don't think this is true. I think that the ridesharing market will become split between many interchangeable ride-sharing services. Three main reasons: (1) the barriers to entry for this market are actually very low, (2) it's hard for even a dominant company to differentiate itself from the competition, and (3) it is easy for both drivers and consumers to use all ridesharing services, to optimize pricing and wait times.
> the barriers to entry for this market are actually very low
How so? First you have to line up enough drivers to make it worthwhile, and then get enough app downloads by consumers to make it worthwhile for drivers.
Both groups will inquire about your differentiating factor, and to sign up on either side you would have to promise higher payouts to the drivers or lower prices for consumers, both at expense of your margins, which limits the scale of your deployment.
> First you have to line up enough drivers to make it worthwhile, and then get enough app downloads by consumers to make it worthwhile for drivers.
You're assuming that drivers/consumers will be exclusively using your service.
Few drivers are going to drive exclusively for your service. The assumption is that your drivers will already be driving for Uber, Lyft, etc. and will sign up with your service just in order to marginally raise their expected number of rides per hour (hoping that your service might get them a ride when business is slow on Uber, etc.).
Similarly, few consumers are loyal to exclusively one service. They don't care about the difference between Uber and Lyft, they care about getting a cheap ride, quickly. They'll try Uber for a ride. Maybe Uber will be surge-priced. They'll try Lyft, which might not have any drivers on the road. They'll try your service.
I'd say that, while this almost sounds like a reasonable argument to put forward, it isn't probably going to work that way.
Case in point: Gett in NYC. They are running a $10 flat fare anywhere in Manhattan, and promising drivers double pay for three months already. That should undercut incumbents as well as cause drivers to flee, right? Why is Uber and Lyft totally winning NYC while Gett is not even operating at 1/10th the scale?
I think it's got to do with liquidity and reliability. Even if the driver has 10 apps running, the probability that the driver gets the first/most ping from the app with the best client liquidity is extremely high. As long as he's constantly engaged, there is no need for him to open another app. On the flip side, when you're small, your supply runs out quick. If clients opening the app constantly see that, they'll eventually not open your app and go to one with the most supply liquidity. There are strong network advantages in this game. Your paper mostly discounts that.
Right, I'm not saying that acquiring both is impossible, I'm just saying it's not free - someone has to recruit drivers, hopefully in more than one city, someone has then to recruit their first thousand of consumers, make them aware of the app, possibly expand by introducing a referral program and giving away the first ride (seems to be the incumbents' preferred technique, so it probably works).
Which tends to involve human costs, so for anything of scale this is not a low-barrier business to enter.
You can probably start a regional competitor fairly cheaply though, as examples of GrabTaxi, Gett or Yandex.Taxi show.
Not free: okay, sure. But the barriers aren't that high. Let's take a look at the capital expenses: setting up some re-targeted advertisements isn't very expensive at all, and giving away a thousand rides at an average ride-cost of, let's say, $25, is only a $25k expenditure.
To recruit drivers (maybe in more than one city) might be a little expensive, just in terms of a time cost. If you're paying recruiters, that might cost a month or two of salary for every city you're launching in. Alternatively, some of these employees might just take an equity share in your startup.
The last big part is the design of an app: this could take a handful of competent engineers perhaps one or two months. This might be your biggest expenditure (a team of 10 might cost you $100k/month), but it might also be possible to pay them (partially) with equity.
I would wager that you could start up a competitor regionally (or perhaps even in a small number of cities) for less than $1M, which is a modest amount in the current tech. climate (specifically w/r/t/ venture capital). Especially considering the potential returns, it seems likely that some entrepreneurs will go for this.
And concerning regional competitors: yes, certainly. And it only takes a couple of competitors in every major city to make it very difficult for Uber to hold on to a monopoly or majority market share... :-)
In a nutshell, constant confrontation with politicians, taxi medallion owners, its own drivers, and competitors make this a fairly cut-throat industry. Uber took up this battle. Would a nicer, gentler company succeed in this space? Hard to say, so far the data says no.
Lyft is that nicer, gentler company. That's their differentiator: "We're like Uber, but friendlier." Whether that can succeed in the marketplace will depend upon consumers like cutthroat & efficient over friendly & quirky. So far most of my friends prefer Uber, but then again, we're evil techies who are taking over SF with our laptops.
Lyft is US-only so far, so they haven't had a chance to run into European regulators, airport operators and cabbies. They also haven't entered combatant US markets like Las Vegas.
I try to distribute my spending equally, since a dominating player would be quick to raise the prices on consumers, but it's certainly hard to spend more money on Lyft unless you happen to live within one of their coverage markets and don't travel much.
Interesting, I was just in the USA and caught up with people my partner knows in SF (none techies mind you). All of them told me uber was old news, service was not as good, coverage not as good as Lyft.
I have no idea if it's true while over there but enough of them said it that I stopped using Uber while I was in SF and only used Lyft, and managed to convert my partner's parents to using Lyft as well.
Well I think for starters they haven't carved out a space for themselves. They were the first to a new space made possibly by recent advances in technology, but that's it. Furthermore as technology continues to march forward it's only going to become easier and easier for competitors to enter the same space.
So from that perspective yeah, yeah I guess they do have to be cut throat to survive. The service they provide is not far off from being commoditized. It's easy and cheap for competitors to step in and drive prices down. Will be very, very hard for Uber to secure their space. Honestly the only thing that will make it possible is the same time of legal protection that taxi companies have had.
> [I]t's only going to become easier and easier for competitors to enter the same space.
Not going to happen. Those "regulators" they decry so loudly? I'm sure they have plans to buy a few once they get big enough and use them to put barriers in place to put a stop to any competitors. Combine that with their size (and thus their ability to undercut any new competition), and I don't see anything but an Uber monopoly on the way.
They can also protect it through scale, since more drivers and users on the platform means better liquidity in the rider driver market, and a more pleasant seamless experience compared to a newcomer.
What's absurd about it? Being hired to oversee Uber's overseas markets, it's hard to see what personal incentive he would have had to take all that data with him.
It's even harder to see what incentive Uber would have to ask him to spy on his employer? Besides, I get the impression Uber is beating the pants off Lyft. What do they want from them?
Who knows why he did it. Maybe he had anxiety about getting rid of things. But it's worth mentioning that Lyft did not name Uber in the lawsuit, which they would certainly do if they had any belief Uber instigated it.
To beat them in the market of course - the same incentive as in any other case of industrial espionage, if such it turns out to be. Most businesses would like to know what their competitors are up to. You're assuming that Uber is beating the pants off Lyft through merit, and concluding from that that Uber has nothing to gain.
Who knows why he did it. Maybe he had anxiety about getting rid of things.
Spreadsheet nostalgia!? Defending against this litigation is likely to be very expensive and his personal reputation has taken a severe hit regardless of outcome. That's some weapons-grade OCD you're suggesting.
Lyft hasn't named Uber but has left open the possibility of naming additional defendants. They do mention VanderZanden's admission to a Lyft board member back in August that he was in talks with Uber (before the termination of his employment), so you can bet they'll be wanting to look at any emails he might have exchanged with Uber. It's very common for legal complaints to be amended following the discovery process.
Are you a conspiracy theorist generally or just when it comes to Uber?
Having anxiety about letting things go has nothing to do with a sense of nostalgia. It's about the power of feeling like you have access and information, about the anxiety of losing something from years of your email that you might someday want or need, about a sense of entitlement that if you write it, it's yours to keep. I'm just speculating, but I could go on and nowhere on my list is "nostalgia". I think it wouldn't be on your list either; maybe you just wanted to score a debate point with a false equivalency?
I'm not one for online debates so please, have the last word. But so far all I've seen is you making a baseless accusation. And yes, it is absurd. Tell me, at what point in the Uber interview process does the coercion and fraud happen? How exactly do you think it went down? And why do you think it's more likely that this was a conspiracy, instead of just a guy who liked having access to things and felt entitled?
I don't get any new information about Uber from this, but it's interesting to see Lyft pursue it. It's also interesting to see what appears to be several of the top people from Lyft choose to go over to Uber. This doesn't look good for Lyft.
Complaint paragraph 47 alleges that use of Evernote constitutes a breach of confidentiality and fiduciary duty, which is one of those things that strikes me as "legally pretty defensible" and "totally disastrous when juxtaposed with how knowledge workers actually work."
Edit: Actually, on re-reading, they appear to mean not "Evernote constitutes a breach" but "We accessed his Evernote and his state of mind, as recorded in it, constitutes a breach." (Eek.)
Every company that supports employees using their personal devices (phones, tablets, etc) as work devices should read the complaint carefully.
If it's the companies phone, they can request it be returned. VanderZanden was using his personal phone while at Lyft. When he left, he just sold it. The problem is that it puts Lyft in an awkward position: they are requesting he turn over his personal device so that they can analyze it to confirm no confidential information remains.
"VanderZanden provided no explanation as to why he sold his phone.... it's an odd thing for a high-net worth individual to do..."
I'd probably tell them to stuff it too, it's my phone.
Also, I find it interesting that the complaint is also against one to ten "unnamed defendants". I didn't know you could do that.
This is one of the reasons that decent sized startups should be giving important people a dedicated company-owned device if those people need access to sensitive company info from their phones.
In the recent past I've had to fight for this with a previous employer who thought it was acceptable to impose security restrictions on personal devices that are used to access company info. Many people just stopped accessing company info from their phones - they would prefer to be able to root / jailbreak their phones if they choose to.
Simple thought experiment: your competitor is caught red-handed doing the thing you are pondering, how do you think it will reflect on them?
Unnamed defendants are common in litigation in the early stages. It's easier to amend the details of the complaint than to join additional parties to it after the case has started moving so if you have an expectation of edintifying more defendants you might as well mention that from the outset - otherwise you're liable to get derailed in obtuse procedural litigation.
Android too, but android has mtm software like nine or touchdown that act as virtual devices for exchange access. If the exchange account is terminated, only the virtual device gets wiped.
If you read the details of the complaint, it gets interesting.
They claim he failed to return his computer, but if you read points 42 and 43, they first asked him on Aug 18th (6 calls and emails went unanswered) then actually retrieved it the next day. Really? If the guy is busy he may not have made it a priority.
Items 87-93 of the lawsuit are very interesting. They imply that VanderZanden convinced other Lyft employees to abandon ship to start a startup...but then they join Uber instead?
Item 27 is probably the first legal usage of "acqui-hire" ever.
> Non-compete clauses prevent you from competing and are largely unenforceable
Is this true? I'm not doubting, I'm just wondering why. I know a lot of people in the games industry who aren't allowed to work on mods for another company's game and are terrified to even do a little bit, so I always thought they were enforceable.
A lot of companies force you to sign an agreement that essentially hands over the rights to anything and everything you do while employed, even if you did it outside of work hours and on your own personal equipment. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how enforceable this type of agreement is, but as far as I'm aware it has yet to be tested in court.
Your friends probably don't do games on the side because of such an agreement. I couldn't even imagine the issues that might arise from an employee working on mods for a competitor's game, especially since for some games modding isn't explicitly supported by the developer and modders are forced to break EULA's (by reverse engineering) in order to make the mods in the first place.
Notably, acquisition, which is what happened to VanderZanden is one of the few cases non-compete is enforceable, meaning they either didn't bother imposing a non-compete upon acquisition or it was only for 1 year and he ran out his term.
> I know a lot of people in the games industry who aren't allowed to work on mods for another company's game and are terrified to even do a little bit, so I always thought they were enforceable.
This wouldn't toggle a non-compete action. The primary company might come after you for beach of confidentiality or for conflict of interest, but not non-compete.
Non-competes in California have to be VERY constrained to be enforceable. Generally they are very time limited (12 months at the longest). The biggest arenas where they do get enforced is for people who are involved at strategic planning levels (like this CTO). The non-compete timeframe allows their knowledge to decay/stagnate/become less relevant/become less damaging.
This is one of the few times they would be enforcable though. They work when you can bring the client list or future of the company with you to your new job.
Yeah, it's one thing for Jimmy John's to protect their company from sandwich assemblers stealing sandwich secrets, its another for a corporate officer to move to their main direct competitor.
At least have the common decency to spend a period as a government industry regulator in between.
Just a continuation of the uber-lyft saga of ethics and fair business practices ... ahahaah, sorry, I can't type that with a straight face. Seeing these crowd-sharing services eat each-other is both hilarious and sad. The underhanded tactics, the smearing, etc., just sad this is the state of affairs for companies that receive millions and millions in funding. I guess it'll be good for their legal department's bank statements, so that's somethin.
how did they trace the searches back to his computer?
Did they have some key logging software?
or if he was using HTTP it was easy to trace back to his local IP?
if he was searching w/ HTTPS is it true they probably couldn't trace the searches back to his computer? (assuming he cleared his history+cache)
Might be something so mundane as forgetting to clear his history on the company laptop (or they restored it - they mention computer forensics a few times).
If your browser does't encrypt your cookies, they sitting on the disk unencrypted at rest, easily read right of the filesystem. You could then use those cookies to gain access to the respective sites/services/accounts they're tied to.
wow this is ugly heavy duty stuff. I bet that data is more valuable then the settlement. Data like that on your competitor is priceless specially at this level of competition.
Me too. I despise how Lyft and Uber servers always take my request without offering stupid excuses why they can't come to where I'm at, unlike the cab companies. I hate that they never have a problem billing my credit card, unlike yellow taxis. And I especially dislike that I can usually get an estimate of my fare ahead of time, so that it's not in the driver's best interest to take me from SOMA to North Beach via Daly City - unlike the cabbies.
I'm sorry, but I just can't have this conversation non-sarcastically. Both companies offer _so_ much better service than their predecessors that I can't understand the desire to go back to the bad old days.
As someone who lives in a city that doesn't yet have either, it really frustrates me that they (but mostly Uber) keep pulling this shit, precisely because I'm stuck in the bad old days and I have tasted the new, but they're poisoning this well really severely right now.
Uber in particular is the most likely to make an entrance here (they're hosting driver registration right now, but the bylaw situation is murky at best) and I'm really worried that if they get shut out for some of the bullshit they pull it'll kill the regulatory framework for other entrants for a long time.
Yep. As much as commenters want to paint me as just anti-innovation, I really do want an end to the taxi monopoly. The difference is, I don't want a different taxi monopoly, and I do not like to support two robber-baron startups who essentially consider themselves not necessarily beyond the reach of the law, but simply more important than the law.
I try to avoid people and companies with poor ethics.