Uber has chosen Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of travel booking website Expedia, to be its new chief executive, according to a source unauthorized to comment publicly.
Representatives for Uber, its board of directors and Expedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Khosrowshahi's reported appointment to the top job ends Uber's search for a CEO, which started when the company's controversial co-founder and former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured to resign June 20.
The search was a bumpy ride, with rumors of Kalanick angling for a return to the leadership role, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp reassuring employees that Kalanick wouldn't be coming back, and a lawsuit from Uber investor and board member Benchmark aiming to bar Kalanick from interfering with the hiring of a new CEO.
Candidates were reportedly wary of the position and reluctant to inherit the company's mounting list of problems, such as reports of a culture of sexism, a high-profile lawsuit from Waymo, driver dissatisfaction, and potentially more undiscovered problems. Promising candidates such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and departing GE chief Jeff Immelt had taken to Twitter in recent weeks to announce that they would not be taking the job.
And among Uber's investors, there were disagreements as to what kind of CEO Uber needed.
"They're trying to hire someone for two very different roles," said Bradley Tusk, an early investor in Uber who was not involved with the board's CEO search.
As a company that has more than 12,000 employees, a $70 billion valuation, and a looming expectation to have an initial public offering sooner rather than later, Uber needs a leader with vast management experience who can help the company correct its course and prepare for an IPO, Tusk said.
But if Uber wants to remain a disruptive force in the transportation industry a decade from now, Tusk said it needs a visionary CEO who isn't afraid of taking risks.
It's rare to find both those qualities in one person, Tusk said. Even some of the most successful technology companies don't have CEOs who can do it all.
Mark Zuckerberg may be considered a product visionary, but Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is widely credited for helping grow the company's moneymaking business. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were the co-founders of Google, but it was outsider Eric Schmidt who was brought on as CEO to grow the company's operations.
Until Kalanick resigned, some investors and management experts believed that appointing an experienced chief operating officer to work alongside the brash CEO would offer the balance Uber's executive leadership needed. But in lieu of that, business experts believe an experienced manager is the best bet.
"Uber is at an inflection point in its growth cycle," said Lynn Isabella, an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.
"A lot of start-ups get going on the energy of the founders, but now they have to really professionalize. They have to think about the systems and processes and the values they want to systemically infuse across thousands of people," Isabella said. "So it's not surprising that the search committee would turn to individuals with a track record of managing large organizations."
Khosrowshahi, an Iranian-American entrepreneur, appears to fall in the category of experienced managers, having been the CEO of the publicly traded Expedia since 2005. His hiring by Uber was first reported by The New York Times.
With a CEO at the helm, Uber can begin to pick up the pieces after a tumultuous year that saw an exodus of executives, accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, a lawsuit from Waymo alleging theft of trade secrets, and an investigation into the company's culture conducted by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, which yielded a report with 47 recommendations.
