卡兰尼克的悲剧告诉我们什么？

5月25日，优步总裁特拉维斯•卡兰尼克71岁的母亲在加州弗雷斯诺遭遇船只失事身亡（父亲也身受重伤）。第二天，众多媒体像之前紧盯优步新闻一样迅速扑上，都是这种标题：《悲剧！优步首席执行官卡兰尼克痛失母亲》，《优步老总特拉维斯•卡兰尼克母亲与丈夫划船同游时撞上加州海岸礁石，母亲身亡》，向来克制的《每日邮报》标题为《图片：船只失事，优步首席执行官母亲丧生》。（想来人们对硅谷各大公司所谓的按需经济创新没那么关注，真正关心的还是名人八卦。）

各家媒体的后续报道或多或少表达了震惊之情。“很显然这对卡兰尼克一家是可怕的悲剧，”卡拉•斯威舍在科技网站Recode上写道。“（邦尼•卡兰尼克）生前很为儿子自豪。”文字旁的照片里，卡兰尼克在肯德基德比市开心地站在父母中间。优步也发表了一篇饱含情感的声明：“昨晚特拉维斯和家人遭遇了一场难以言喻的悲剧。他的母亲在弗兰斯诺附近一场灾难性的船只事故中失去了生命，父亲也情况危急。当次悲痛时刻，我们的心与特兰尼克和家人同在，为他们最真挚地祈祷。”

惨剧发生后，卡兰尼克领导下的公司发表这样一篇声明，并用上“难以言喻”、“灾难性”，以及“悲痛”之类字眼没什么出奇。但评论界也一片沉痛之情，有些不同寻常。毕竟，评论人士一直喜欢批评卡兰尼克热衷竞争，我在《财富》杂志的同事亚当•拉辛斯基的评价也差不多，说他“野心勃勃”，“无情冷酷”。但最近评论界风向突转有些打脸。上周人们还在讨论全球估值最高的私人公司老总是不是烂到骨子里。（“我觉得我不是混蛋，”卡兰尼克告诉拉辛斯基。“我很确定。”）这周众人都在说他身为人子失去母亲的伤痛。

为什么人们意识到硅谷的大神也有凡人一面后会震惊？因为舆论里总是将硅谷创业家塑造为整日叫嚣颠覆和创新的传奇人物，捧到的高度远超普通公众人物。但创业家也有父母，也有儿女，也有自己的爱好，并没有宣传中那么简单。

举个例子，Facebook精明强悍的首席运营官雪莉•桑德伯格曾竞选政界职位，几乎是水到渠成，不曾想，她的丈夫——SurveyMonkey首席执行官戴夫•戈德伯格突然身亡。虽然后来桑德伯格努力营造从逆境中崛起的形象，但那次悲剧中难得看到她真实一面。平时总是作为硅谷飞速增长争议不断的创业公司高管，外界只能看到新闻稿层层粉饰的女性高管，突造变故那一刻，她才让世人看到真情流露的一面。而另一位硅谷创业者永远仰视的大佬——特斯拉汽车和SpaceX首席执行官埃隆•马斯克也类似，虽然离婚闹得沸沸扬扬，却也难得让这位眼光高远到探测火星的科技大牛难得接一回地气。（火箭大佬似乎能随意摆弄物理定律，面对婚姻法照样无计可施。）

如今优步已有12000名员工，签约司机无数，代表的创新概念已经远超富有争议的总裁本人。很快人们也会忘记这段插曲，追逐新的头条，当然卡兰尼克肯定忘不了。（实际上就在上周末，西班牙出租车司机集体罢工抗议优步，奥斯汀监管规则改动后优步服务在当地重新上线，关于优步存在性骚扰和性别歧视的详细报告发表前大笔投机资金紧锣密鼓运作。）但人们应当记住，在古希腊人眼里，变幻无常有时邪恶的神诋也会偶尔犯错，他们只是比普通人聪明一点，能力强大很多而已。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

On Friday the 71-year-old mother of Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, was killed in a boating accident near Fresno, Calif. (His father was seriously injured.) The following day, the press jumped on the story as rabidly as those about Uber that preceded it: “Tragedy strikes as Uber CEO Kalanick loses mother,” “Uber chief Travis Kalanick's mum dies when the boat she was riding with husband smashed into rock off California coast,” and from the ever-restrained Daily Mail, “Pictured: Boat wreckage where Uber CEO's mother died.” (The on-demand economy, come to think of it, is less about our insatiable need for Silicon Valley services than our need to read about them.)

There seemed to be a degree of shock to each report that followed the first. “It’s obviously a terrible tragedy for the Kalanick family,” wrote Kara Swisher at the tech site Recode. "[Bonnie Kalanick] was deeply proud of her son.” The words were accompanied by a photograph of the CEO happily sandwiched between his parents at this year's Kentucky Derby. Uber, for its part, release an equally emotional statement: "Last night Travis and his family suffered an unspeakable tragedy. His mother passed away in a devastating boating accident near Fresno and his father is in serious condition. Our thoughts and prayers are with Travis and his family in this heartbreaking time."

It is hardly a surprise that the company Kalanick leads would issue a statement with such forceful words as "unspeakable," "devastating," and "heartbreaking" in the wake of the event. But it is somewhat remarkable that the commentariat would do the same. After all, these are the critics who have lambasted the executive, and rightly so, for a competitive attitude that my Fortune colleague Adam Lashinsky described in the same breath as "audacious ambition" and "tone-deaf ruthlessness." The abrupt change in tone was enough to induce whiplash. Last week we were mulling whether the top executive at the world's most highly valued private company was rotten to the core. ("I don’t think I’m an asshole," he told Lashinsky. "I’m pretty sure I’m not.") This week we're reminded that he's someone's son.

Why are we shocked to learn that Silicon Valley's demigods are, in fact, human? The larger-than-life ideas of our wizards of disruption and enchantresses of innovation make it easy to elevate them beyond simple public-figure status. But they also have private parents, children, and hobbies that complicate that portrayal.

It seemed almost inevitable, for example, that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's bubbly yet steely chief operating officer, would campaign for political office before her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, suddenly died. Though Sandberg has since fashioned her adversity into another plank of her platform of empowerment, the incident itself was a rare glimpse of her humanity—a moment of authenticity amidst a highly orchestrated swirl of communication for a top executive at a fast-growing, oft-criticized California company. Even the messy divorce of Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, perennially the executive that other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs most look up to, was an unusually grounded moment for a towering technologist who has set his sights on Mars. (The Rocket Man may seemingly be able to bend the laws of physics to his will, but the laws of marriage, well, that's another story.)

With 12,000 employees and countless drivers Uber is now a concept that dwarfs its controversial chief executive. We will quickly move on to the next set of headlines and forget this fleeting interruption, even if Kalanick will not. (Indeed, over the weekend taxi drivers in Spain staged strikes against the company, Uber services resumed in Austin after a change in regulations, and speculation intensified ahead of the expected release of a report detailing allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company.) But it would do us well to remember that the ancient Greeks never believed their capricious, occasionally immoral gods to be infallible—just a little smarter and a lot more powerful.