Uber President Steps Down After Six Months
Just when Uber thought things couldn’t get any worse…President Jeff Jones steps down after only 6 months of being with the company. This departure adds to a list of big names leaving the company recently, including President of Product and Growth Ed Baker, security researcher Charlie Miller, and engineering executive Amit Singhal. Jones departure is particularly alarming since he was specifically brought in to help get the house back in order and to rein in CEO Travis Kalanick. With internal turmoil at at an all-time high, the board doesn’t have many options (#pun) since Kalanick, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, controls most of the voting shares. (Source: Fortune)
LinkedIn Steps Closer to CRM
In a quiet move, LinkedIn has added a new subscription-based program to its Sales Navigator. This “enterprise” level offering will allow users to tap LinkedIn for customer leads for social selling. One example being that teams at the same company can pool/share their LinkedIn leads, making one shared list. PointDrive, the tool LinkedIn acquired last year to help salespeople share documents and presentations with clients, will also be integrated in the platform, along with CRM sync functionality to write back to whatever CRM database the user is utilizing. If you are interested in learning more about social selling, we have you covered with our book: How to Sell on LinkedIn. #Shamelessplug. (Source: TechCrunch)
Mobileye Joins Intel
Intel is buying Mobileye for about $15.3 billion as the race for self-driving car technology heats up. The Santa Clara-based chip giant said Monday that it will pay $63.54 a share in cash for the Jerusalem-based maker of camera systems for autonomous vehicles. That’s a 34 percent premium on the closing price of Mobileye shares Friday. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a message to employees that “this acquisition essentially merges the intelligent eyes of the autonomous car with the intelligent brain that actually drives the car.” Intel sees its role in the space as data-driven. “Our strategy is to make Intel the driving force of the data revolution across every technology and every industry,” Krazanich said in his letter to employees. (Source: SiliconBeat)
