San Francisco June 22 (TNS): Venture capitalist Bill Gurley, whose firm Benchmark Capital was one of Uber’s earliest investors, is stepping down from the ride-hailing company’s board of directors.
He is being replaced on the board by Matt Cohler, who worked on Benchmark’s original investment in Uber. The change in Uber’s board seat was confirmed by Benchmark to USA TODAY.
Gurley was a supporter of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, but took part in the group of investors who pushed for Kalanick to resign earlier this week. Kalanick stepped down as CEO late Tuesday.
As recently as April, Gurley told USA TODAY he remained supportive of Uber’s controversial CEO as it continued its search for a chief operating officer. He said the COO search was an “ongoing process” — and that Kalanick maintained support from the company’s board of directors.
durley is the second board member to step down in the last week. TPG Capital’s David Bonderman was replaced by his partner David Trujillo after he made a sexist remark during an all-hands meeting at Uber.
During his career, Gurley has worked with Grubhub, OpenTable and Nextdoor. His successor Cohler, employee No. 7, worked for Facebook for nearly eight years, ultimately as vice president of product. Prior to Facebook, he was vice president and general manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the founding team.
