Business Insider

Here are annotations to decode everything in Shervin Pishevar's epic Uber diatribe

Becky Peterson
Shervin Pishevar
Shervin Pishevar

(Uber investor Shervin Pishevar's letter is one for the books.Tech Crunch/Flickr)

It's not every day that the clubby world of venture capital engages in open warfare among investors.

Even less so when the feud involves a 250-word missive laced with fiery language, metaphors, and Latin edicts worthy of a Middle-earth battlefield speech, or a roof-shaking sermon ... or maybe just an indie-rock song.

But that's exactly what happened early Wednesday when Uber investor Shervin Pishevar sent out a remarkable statement blasting a faction of Uber's board of directors.

It's a heavy piece of writing, extrapolating on eight months of drama at the embattled ride-hailing company. Even readers intimately familiar with the saga may struggle to understand all of the letter.

That's why Business Insider created an annotated version of the letter, decoding some of the thorniest sections and providing all the necessary context and references.

Here is Shervin Pishevar's annotated letter:

Let us [1] take this pause in this moment [2], when we find ourselves swimming in the crucible [3] 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 [4], the lives of millions of jobs created [5] liberating multitudes of drivers from the shackles of servitude to iniquitous taxi cartels [6] of corrupt cabals [7] that choked cities with their pollution of air [8] and morals. We write with the spirit of Bonnie Kalanick [9], 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 [10]. They [11] chose to strike at a moment of a devoted son's retreat and leave of absence [12] 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 [13] 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 [14] of perfidious greed devolving rapidly into the audacity of vituperative unparalleled predatory rapacity [15].

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