In recent Uber news, accused of tax offenses and suggestions of its business model posing criminal liabilities with respect to local law, the company’s business platform is met with resistance in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Uber had hoped to gain special legal status in the Canadian city, as it has in cities across the United States.
In a Globe and Mail opinion piece, Yves Boisvert asks, “Why would you get a tax break or special status in the name of innovation?” Boisvert then questions why a city would negotiate with a company that “shows obvious disregard for the law.”
These are valid questions posed at tech in general, but Silicon Valley venture capitalists and tech leaders are certainly not answering them well as they lash out via social media at Austin, Texas.
In May, the Lone Star State tech hub voted against a local referendum that would have allowed ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to forego the fingerprinting of drivers required of taxi companies.
Tech leaders might disagree with Austin’s decision. But some are going as far to say that the city will actually lose its status as a tech hub over Uber’s departure.
Such remarks, and the general back and forth between various tech leaders over Uber’s loss in Austin, read like excerpts on the cutting room floor of HBO’s Silicon Valley.
Here are some of the comments, included in a report by Sara Ashley O’Brien of WTVW of Evansville, Ind.:
- Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, tweeted that without Uber and Lyft, Austin is finished as a tech hub. “As years pass it gets increasingly implausible to be both a startup hub and not have U/L,” he said.
I will go out on a limb and say Austin has zero chance of being a serious startup hub without Uber and Lyft. (I am an investor in neither.)
— Paul Graham (@paulg) May 15, 2016
- Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Keith Rabois bash Austin on Twitter for working on solutions to fill the void Uber’s departure leaves and help employ its local drivers.
Inane government in Austin continues. https://t.co/ookT4drirL
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 19, 2016
Austin gracefully downshifts into a simpler, slower, more expensive, less convenient, more frustrating lifestyle. https://t.co/7pAsa0An46
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 17, 2016
- Arlo Gilbert, Austin resident and Televero chief executive officer, wants the world to know that despite the insults, Austin is still a city of innovation:
It speaks a lot to how Silicon Valley investors often see themselves -- [with this] elitist insular view,” said Gilbert, who authored his rebuttals to the prominent tech investors in a Medium post, It’s Raining Insults in Austin & I’m Sad.“Suggesting that Austin needs Uber & Lyft to become a tech hub? Here’s the thing that bugs me. Austin is already a tech hub. I haven’t seen a ranking list that doesn’t include Austin in the top 5 in many years,” he wrote.
Gilbert goes on to offer the following reasons why tech actually needs Austin:
- The city has an educated, technically sophisticated and affordable workforce.
- Facebook, Google, Apple and most other major tech companies have major offices in the city.
