12 min · 11 chaptersNarrated in your voice
What it's about
Mike Isaac chronicles the rise and near-collapse of Uber under founder Travis Kalanick, showing how a culture built on aggression, rule-breaking, and relentless growth produced a company valued at tens of billions while accumulating legal, ethical, and human wreckage. The book argues that the same traits that let Uber outmaneuver regulators and competitors also blinded its leadership to internal rot, and that Silicon Valley's tolerance for founder worship let the damage go unchecked for years before a boardroom revolt finally forced Kalanick out in 2017.
Reading plan
Pick a finish date and Genius lays out the days — the plan shows today's target and keeps you honest.
Read together
Start a circle and share the code — everyone sees everyone's honest place in the book. Accountability, not leaderboards.
Who it's for
- Tech workers who want to understand how startup culture can curdle into abuse - Investors and board members weighing founder control against accountability - General readers curious about the real story behind Uber's public scandals
What’s inside
- 1The Founder's Formation1 min
Kalanick's earlier failed startup, Scour, taught him that aggression and legal brinkmanship were survival skills, not liabilities, and this lesson shaped everything he built afterward.
- 2Blitzscaling Before It Had a Name1 min
Uber's strategy of entering cities illegally and fighting the resulting legal battles afterward worked because speed created facts on the ground that regulators struggled to reverse.
- 3Greyball and the Culture of Evasion1 min
Uber's use of the Greyball tool to systematically deceive regulators and law enforcement shows that evasion had become an engineered, institutionalized practice rather than an occasional necessity.
- 4The Susan Fowler Reckoning1 min
Susan Fowler's 2017 blog post exposing sexual harassment and retaliatory management at Uber succeeded in triggering accountability precisely because it was detailed, dated, and impossible to dismiss as vague grievance.
- 5Kalanick Unraveling1 min
A leaked video of Kalanick berating an Uber driver in 2017 mattered less for its content than for its timing, arriving amid a cascade of scandals that made the CEO himself look like the company's central liability.
- 6The Waymo Lawsuit and Stolen Trade Secrets1 min
The Waymo lawsuit over self-driving car technology revealed that Uber's willingness to break rules extended beyond regulatory gray zones into outright alleged theft of intellectual property from a competitor.
- 7The Boardroom Coup1 min
Kalanick's ouster in June 2017 happened not because employees or the public forced it, but because a small group of major investors decided his continued leadership had become a direct threat to their capital.
- 8Dara Khosrowshahi and the Cleanup1 min
Uber's choice of Dara Khosrowshahi as the successor CEO signaled the board's decision to prioritize stability and reputational repair over the aggressive growth-at-all-costs approach that had defined the company under Kalanick.
About Mike Isaac
Mike Isaac is a technology reporter for The New York Times who covered Uber closely during its most turbulent years, breaking news on internal scandals and leadership battles. Super Pumped, his first book, draws on interviews with company insiders, investors, and Kalanick himself.
