Winning the Proposition 22 campaign is of dire importance to Uber and Lyft, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. If the two companies are required to reclassify their drivers as employees in California, they'll lose hundreds of millions of dollars on an annual basis, says an analysis by Barclays. DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates have also indicated that reclassifying their workers could hurt their businesses. Expenditures in the public records obtained by CNET show the five companies have employed at least 19 firms to do consulting work to help them wage their Proposition 22 battle. At least five of the firms named in the documents have worked on campaigns for big tobacco, big oil and big chemical companies, including Philip Morris, Chevron and Monsanto.

it was among the WeWorkian class of companies that, for me, represented everything wrong about startup evolution through the 2010s. Raise a ton of money, lose a ton of money, and just obliterate the basic economics of an industry.