Travis Kalanick says only 1% of VCs are helpful — the rest just ‘do no harm’ at best

Travis Kalanick, the co-founder of Uber, has launched a fresh critique of the venture capital industry, claiming that only 1% of investors are genuinely helpful to founders. In a recent episode of David Senra's podcast, Kalanick argued that a "super high bar for a VC is 'do no harm'" — yet, based on his experience, only 10% of venture capitalists even meet that modest standard.

"It's hard. How the f* are they supposed to be helpful? … It's hard for them to participate because they just aren't in that deep," Kalanick said. He compared the founder of a company to a "chess master" who lives and breathes the business, while the typical VC is merely a "chess enthusiast" who drops in from time to time to check on the game's progress.

Kalanick's remarks are colored by his long and complicated history with the venture capital world. During his tenure at Uber, he raised roughly $15 billion in venture funding, making him a darling of the industry. However, his relationship soured dramatically in 2017 when a boardroom battle with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital led to his ouster as CEO. Kalanick made clear on the podcast that he is still bitter about that episode and advises founders not to raise money from Benchmark. His animosity, however, has not visibly damaged the firm — Benchmark raised another $2 billion across two new funds in June 2024.

Kalanick is now back in the fundraising game himself. His robotics company, Atoms, recently secured $1.7 billion in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz joining the company's board. Despite his general skepticism about VCs, Kalanick acknowledged that a tiny minority — "1%" by his estimate — are actually helpful. "But it's hard," he repeated, underscoring the inherent difficulty for outsiders to add real value to a startup's internal operations.