Investor Shervin Pishevar, a prolific Silicon Valley connector and friend of ousted Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Travis Kalanick, wrote a letter to his lawyers last week designed to inspire them. Pishevar requested to join a lawsuit in defense of Kalanick that was brought by the venture capital firm Benchmark, another Uber backer.
Take a look at the letter, which Pishevar published Wednesday, and you’ll see why we’re sharing it with you. Just read it.
Let us take this pause in this moment, when we find ourselves swimming in the crucible of one of the grandest business and moral battles of our generation, and find strength in each stroke of our proverbial digital pens, that we wrote with the indelible, eternal and permanent ink of righteousness. We write with the souls of thousands of lives saved, the lives of millions of jobs created liberating multitudes of drivers from the shackles of servitude to iniquitous taxi cartels of corrupt cabals that choked cities with their pollution of air and morals. We write with the spirit of Bonnie Kalanick, who raised her son with deep unconditional love and unfading faith in his ability to do good for the world. Whose tragic and untimely death was used against her son at his most vulnerable, unspeakable time of pain. They chose to strike at a moment of a devoted son’s retreat and leave of absence to mourn the absence of the inviolable love of his mother. In doing so, they joined the very corruption her son had devoted such fervent passion to fight. In her memory, we devote our actions to a just cause; to defend what is right and to protect the interest of not only shareholders but most importantly the far more important stakeholders of employees, drivers and customers whose lives have been forever altered by the abiding faith and fervent hard work of Travis Kalanick and the Uber team. Their allegiance was met by this unholy alliance of perfidious greed devolving rapidly into the audacity of vituperative unparalleled predatory rapacity.
Let us strike tomorrow with the full and fulsome courage of our convictions. Let our just cause give pause to those who would ever dream of ever emulating the shameful shenanigans of these sanctimonious hypocrites who fling filings and letters de haut en bas; when it is we who have the higher moral ground and our letters and filing will hail down upon their platforms, exposing them as bitterly barren barons of moral turpitude. And as the summer sets, let us be stewards of truth who in unison proclaim: fiat justitia ruat caelum.
-Shervin Pishevar
On Twitter, it’s been jokingly compared to “Game of Thrones” and “Henry V.” BuzzFeed Reporter Will Alden said he was compelled to share an old tweet of his: “To any VCs interested in content creation, may I recommend our industry’s version of The Lean Startup.” The link: “The Elements of Style.”