Top of the Order:
Meet The (Possible) New Boss: The ongoing game of “Who’s Next?”, about who might be the next chief executive of Uber, has become almost as popular a contest as trying to figure out which team stands to challenge the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots for NFL supremacy this year.
By all accounts, it seems like Uber wants to hire an adult. And not just in terms of age, but also based on personality and business experience. The next CEO of Uber is not going to be some 32-year-old wearing jorts and a man bun who just sold a hit app to Facebook for somewhere between a billion and a bazillion dollars. If there is anything Uber doesn’t need, it is the second coming of former CEO Travis Kalanick taking the reins and driving the ride-sharing company into another freeway traffic-jam’s worth of scandals and controversy.
So, Uber’s next head honcho will probably be someone who is, well… “boring” might not be the top qualification for the CEO slot, but the words “steady” and “very steady” will probably be right up there. And that’s where Jeff Inmelt comes in.
Inmelt, who stepped down as CEO of General Electric on Aug. 1, doesn’t seem to want to take too much time off. According to various sources, including the Recode tech news site, Inmelt has emerged as the top candidate to become Uber’s new CEO. Several Uber board members, such as Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, are said to have settled on Inmelt as their top choice, and it could be just a few weeks before Uber makes the appointment official.
And what an appointment, and statement, hiring Inmelt would be.
Inmelt put in 35 years at GE, including his last 16 as the conglomerate’s CEO. In at least one way, Inmelt would be perfect for the Uber job: He has experience following up a company legend, as he took over for Jack Welch, who was probably more “GE” than any other company employee since Thomas Edison.
At Uber, Inmelt would be replacing company co-founder Travis Kalanick, who might as well have had “Uber” tattooed across his forehead. He set the company’s tone, and let there be no doubt, his shadow and presence still hang over Uber like the overcast skies that kept much of the Bay Area from seeing Tuesday’s solar eclipse.
Adding to that statement would be Inmelt’s age: 61. Kalanick was just 40 when he stepped aside this summer, and probably figured he had another five, 10 years of Uberness ahead of him. When a lot of people hit 60, they start looking at when they can draw down on their 401(k) accounts. Inmelt would be taking on a job that might be fit for a man 20 years his junior. It will be interesting to see if a guy who is more in the age group of someone whose retirement plans include playing 18 holes a day can adjust to an industry that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, and really got cranking within the last four years.
But GE was more than light bulbs. It was a TV network (NBC, which Inmelt sold), a financial-services business (most of which Inmelt sold), and an appliance maker (yes, Inmelt oversaw the sale of that, too). But, under Inmelt, GE recommitted itself to everything from airplane engines to software development, and medical devices to automotive technologies. Inmelt kept it steady, and kept it relevant, too.
And under Inmelt, GE was one of the last of the old breed of American industrial conglomerates. If he ends up joining Uber, Inmelt will definitely be with one of the new breeds of companies changing American business today. A company that, if it gets its act together, could be another GE a century from now.
Middle Innings:
Robots On The Run?: With autonomous cars getting more and more attention, the concept of applied autonomous capabilities to other technologies sounds pretty tempting. But, one area where autonomous tech might be too much to bear is in the market for weapons, and the robots that would use them. In fact, the thought of that is scary enough to have gotten Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other business leaders, to call upon the United Nations to support a ban on potential robotic weapons that can operate autonomously.
Bottom of the Lineup:
Go Fund How Much?: There’s probably no one more high profile on Twitter than President Donald Trump. A lot of people find Trump’s tweets entertaining, a lot of people ignore what the president says, and a lot of people wish Trump would just go away. One of those people is former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who has launched a GoFundMe campaign in hopes of raising $1 billion in order to buy Twitter for the sole purpose of banning President Trump from the social-media site. So far, Plame’s campaign has raised just under three grand.
Quote of the Day: “Taking your seat at the table doesn’t work so well, I thought, when no one wants you there.” — Former Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers investor Ellen Pao, in an excerpt from her upcoming memoir about her life and career in Silicon Valley.
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