SUPER PUMPED
The Rise & Fall of Uber's Bad Boy
At one of Uber’s now-infamous company retreats, a 5-day, 25-million dollar Las Vegas rager dubbed “X to the x”, CEO Travis Kalanick treated employees to a several hours long lecture on the Fourteen Core Values of the company. Clearly inspired by (not to say stolen from) the fourteen “core leadership principles” of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Kalanick’s riff on these principles included a series of bizarre new catch phrases that only made sense to Kalanick’s increasingly small circle of most trusted officers and managers: “Always Be Hustlin”, “Big Bold Bets”, “Meritocracy & Toe-Stepping”, and, of course, “Super Pumped”. To top off the strange event, which all Uber employees at the retreat were required to attend, Kalanick delivered his presentation costumed in a white lab coat and fake thick-rimmed glasses, dubbing himself “Professor Kalanick” for the duration of the evening.
A glimpse into this performance can be seen in the teaser trailer for Super Pumped, Showtime’s cinematic take on Uber’s rise to dominance and eventual near implosion at the hands of Kalanick and his cronies. But unlike HBO’s entirely fictional Silicon Valley, Super Pumped was directly inspired by a non-fiction book of the same name. The author of this exposé, Mike Isaac, was on the front lines during Uber’s heyday, and spoke directly with many current and former Uber employees who shared first-hand knowledge of the maddeningly toxic culture of overwork, aggression, and fear.
Isaac frames the “Professor Kalanick” episode as a clear turning point for many employees, a glaring indicator of when Kalanick’s drive and ambition began to veer into megalomania and obsession. Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes on the starring role of Kalanick, and from the short clips included in the teaser trailers we can already see he’s managed to capture the charming, yet anxious and tyrannical energy of the CEO of whom one venture capitalist said, “If he expects people to jump to the ceiling, they’ll actually do it. They’ll jump so high, they’ll smash through the roof with their heads.”
According to Isaac, a few smashed heads were more than worthy sacrifice for Kalanick to see his grand vision come to life.
As the trailers make clear, the show won’t limit itself to the company boardroom. Uber’s infamous company retreats will provide ample raunchy material to keep viewers glued to the screen, including such sordid scenes as two Uber employees getting their laptops stolen by prostitutes hired on the company dime. Pair this with high-powered performances by Uma Thurman as Ariana Huffington and Kyle Chandler as Bill Gurley, viewers will get an inside peek into how even those at the highest levels of government found ways to aid and abet a company whose desire to flout state and national laws for the sake of rapid expansion was not an accident, but rather a key feature built into the company’s super pumped mindset.
Viewers will have to wait until February 27th to see Gordon-Levitt expound on what it means to be “Super Pumped”. If the slogan sounds more appropriate for the wall of an undergraduate fraternity rather than a multinational corporation valued at ten billion dollars, it’s because irony, excess, youthful enthusiasm, and toxic bro culture are all indelible features of the silicon valley technology boom. In the case of Uber’s rise and Kalanick’s untimely fall, there’s enough real life material for at least a full season, with hardly a need for fictional embellishments.
