00:00:00
You come to Uber, you're going to work
00:00:01
your ass off. And if you're not
00:00:03
performing, we're going to let you know.
00:00:04
>> But do you ever worry that they might
00:00:05
not be able to deal with the truth?
00:00:07
>> Then they can leave because the most
00:00:09
important skill in life is the skill of
00:00:11
working hard. And when you see the top
00:00:13
athletes, Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, of
00:00:15
course they're talented. But the thing
00:00:17
that's different about them is they work
00:00:20
their asses off. And that's a learned
00:00:22
skill. That's not something you're born
00:00:23
with. You may be smarter, more talented,
00:00:26
etc. But I'm not going to let anyone out
00:00:28
me. with that mentality. When you joined
00:00:30
Uber, it was losing 3 billion per year.
00:00:32
Now it generates 8.5 billion in free
00:00:34
cash flow every year. But it seems that
00:00:36
you were forged in such a way that you
00:00:38
were going to be relentless.
00:00:39
>> Yeah. And it really started with being
00:00:41
born in Iran with the Islamic Revolution
00:00:43
in 1978. We were not safe there. And I
00:00:46
remember at one point we had these
00:00:48
revolutionary guards come into the
00:00:49
backyard and bullets went through our
00:00:51
living room. So my family came to the US
00:00:54
to rebuild their lives.
00:00:55
>> You were 8 9 years old.
00:00:57
>> Yeah. And it really destroyed my dad.
00:01:00
Sorry me.
00:01:04
It's tough for me to talk about it.
00:01:07
It's okay.
00:01:11
All right, let me try again. Seeing that
00:01:13
has put me on a road where I just wanted
00:01:15
to make my family proud. So I studied
00:01:18
bioelect electrical engineering and then
00:01:19
my first job was investment banking and
00:01:21
I got to see the process of big
00:01:23
companies being built and then I had the
00:01:25
opportunity to take over Expedia
00:01:26
>> and in your 12 years as CEO Expedia
00:01:28
sales increased from 2.1 billion to 8.8
00:01:31
8 billion and you were the highest paid
00:01:33
CEO of a US tech company
00:01:34
>> and I left it all behind to get over
00:01:36
>> and I want to get into practical company
00:01:38
building how you would get that company
00:01:39
to work hard and create a culture of
00:01:41
continuous improvement and all that
00:01:43
stuff but there's alien that's arrived
00:01:44
amongst us which is AI now driving I
00:01:47
think is one of the biggest employees in
00:01:48
the world like as a profession
00:01:50
>> I mean we've got 9 and a half million
00:01:51
drivers and couriers on our platform
00:01:53
>> those drivers careers that you have will
00:01:55
be out of work being honest about the
00:01:57
situation what do the 9 million people
00:02:03
Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you.
00:02:05
We're approaching a significant
00:02:07
subscriber milestone on this show, and
00:02:08
roughly 69% of you that listen and love
00:02:11
this show haven't yet subscribed for
00:02:13
whatever reason. If there was ever a
00:02:15
time for you to do us a favor, if we've
00:02:16
ever done anything for you, given you
00:02:18
value in any way, it is simply hitting
00:02:20
that subscribe button. And it means so
00:02:22
much to myself, but also to my team, cuz
00:02:24
when we hit these milestones, we go away
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as a team and celebrate. And it's the
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thing, the simple, free, easy thing you
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can do to help make this show a little
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bit better every single week. So, that's
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a favor I would ask you. And um if you
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do hit the subscribe button, I won't let
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you down. And we'll continue to find
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small ways to make this whole production
00:02:40
better. Thank you so much for being part
00:02:42
of this journey. Means the world. And uh
00:02:44
yeah, let's do this.
00:02:49
Darren, you lead one of the most
00:02:53
consequential, interesting, talked about
00:02:55
companies of my generation. It's worth
00:02:59
hundreds of billions of dollars last
00:03:01
time I checked and it's a it's a company
00:03:03
that I use every single day.
00:03:04
>> Thank you.
00:03:05
>> I've looked through your story. You were
00:03:07
the CEO of Expedia.
00:03:09
>> Mhm. at one point.
00:03:10
>> You're currently the CEO of Uber and
00:03:12
you've turned that company from a a
00:03:14
lossmaking company to a highly
00:03:16
profitable company and one that has
00:03:18
continued to be successful through such
00:03:20
a great time of transition. I
00:03:24
your story starts in a very interesting
00:03:26
way
00:03:28
>> and I was you know when I start doing
00:03:29
the research for guests sometimes I I I
00:03:31
think I come in with some kind of
00:03:32
presumption that I grew up in
00:03:33
California, you went to Stanford etc.
00:03:35
>> But that is not the case. Can you take
00:03:37
me to that earliest context so I can
00:03:39
understand
00:03:42
how and why you are the way that you
00:03:44
are?
00:03:45
>> Uh quite the quite the starting
00:03:47
questions but but but I'll try. I I
00:03:49
think that for me the events that shaped
00:03:54
my life and maybe a part of who I am
00:03:58
really started with my being born in
00:04:00
Iran and Iran at the time was
00:04:02
modernizing becoming a modern society
00:04:05
and my family built a pretty big
00:04:09
industrial company that that everyone
00:04:12
was quite proud of in Iran. We lost all
00:04:15
of that with the revolution in 1978
00:04:20
and my family had to come to the US to
00:04:25
rebuild their lives.
00:04:27
>> You had to come to the US.
00:04:28
>> We were not safe there. One of my uncles
00:04:32
actually was um a cabinet member of the
00:04:35
Shaw who had just been toppled. And at
00:04:38
one point, we had uh uh these
00:04:41
revolutionary guards come into the
00:04:44
backyard. They were actually going after
00:04:46
our neighbor's house. Uh and one of
00:04:48
their guns went off and bullets went
00:04:51
through our living room. Uh shattered
00:04:53
the glass in the living room. And at
00:04:54
that point, my mom's like, "We're not
00:04:56
safe being here." So, we had to come to
00:04:59
the US. And I do think that event to
00:05:02
some extent has shaped not just me but
00:05:04
my family in that the rebuilding of our
00:05:08
lives um of our uh economic lives to
00:05:13
some extent where we're all trying to
00:05:15
rebuild what we lost in Iran. Do
00:05:17
>> you look back on that and and can you
00:05:19
identify any sort of fingerprints that
00:05:21
were left on you from that time that
00:05:22
have defined you in a business capacity?
00:05:25
I think at my core I never feel safe,
00:05:28
you know, when the the experience of
00:05:30
losing everything and and for the kids I
00:05:32
I tell you it was fine for the kids, but
00:05:36
seeing my parents lose everything and
00:05:37
and it really destroyed my dad. You
00:05:39
know, it really
00:05:41
his losing his value to the world as he
00:05:45
saw it um really hurt his inner being.
00:05:52
And I do think to some extent seeing
00:05:54
that has put me on a road where I want
00:05:58
to rebuild. I want to make my family
00:06:00
proud. But at the same time I never that
00:06:04
feeling of having the floor, you know,
00:06:06
the rug pulled out of you of building
00:06:09
everything. That's a feeling that never
00:06:12
leaves you. I think I think Americans
00:06:15
underestimate
00:06:17
what this place represents in its
00:06:20
ideals, right? which is if you build
00:06:21
something it's yours. There's a rule of
00:06:23
law can't be taken away from you. That
00:06:25
is not true for the majority of the
00:06:26
population of the world. And so I think
00:06:30
for me there's a drive to build and at
00:06:35
the same time never ever ever taking
00:06:37
anything for granted, never being
00:06:39
satisfied because the minute you take
00:06:42
things for granted then that rug can be
00:06:43
pulled out from under you. on your
00:06:45
father. There was a moment where he a
00:06:47
couple of years, I think six years,
00:06:48
where he got trapped in Iran and wasn't
00:06:50
granted an exit visa.
00:06:52
>> Yes.
00:06:53
>> And I imagine at that time your mother
00:06:54
was raising you alone here in New York
00:06:56
City.
00:06:57
>> Yeah. In Terry Town, New York, 45
00:06:58
minutes north of New York City, but she
00:07:01
she went from a life of never having to
00:07:04
work to she had to become a salesperson
00:07:07
to make some money and she did it all
00:07:09
herself and she really stepped up. So I
00:07:12
think it shaped us. It was difficult in
00:07:14
some ways. I I miss my dad. I remember
00:07:16
when he left, he was like a giant
00:07:18
compared to me. And then when he came
00:07:20
back, it was my sophomore year at
00:07:23
college and he still saw me as a kid.
00:07:26
And so he wanted to drive me to uh to
00:07:29
college and and he did. And then he's
00:07:31
like he wanted to hang out. I'm like,
00:07:33
"Dad, can you get out of here? I want to
00:07:35
hang out with my kids." I was with my
00:07:36
friends. I was excited to go back to
00:07:38
school. And it was just it it was sad
00:07:41
seeing the change, you know, of a man
00:07:44
who had gotten older. Uh his time in
00:07:46
Iran was really tough on him. He had a
00:07:48
heart attack on the plane coming back.
00:07:50
So he was a diminished person to some
00:07:52
extent. Um but
00:07:55
it was great that I had many many years
00:07:56
with him, you know, since then.
00:07:58
>> When he was away, when he was trapped
00:08:00
around and wasn't able to exit,
00:08:03
>> your mother Lily
00:08:04
>> Yes.
00:08:05
referenced how you didn't mention him
00:08:07
much, but when he returned, you broke
00:08:11
down in tears.
00:08:23
>> Leah, no, don't be.
00:08:27
He was a very stoic man.
00:08:33
It's okay.
00:08:39
Sorry. He
00:08:41
passed away a couple years ago, so it's
00:08:43
tough for me to talk about it.
00:08:46
It's okay.
00:08:57
All right, let me try again. He was a
00:08:58
very stoked man. Um, so he kept it all
00:09:04
inside
00:09:06
and we were taught to do the same thing.
00:09:09
Uh, but we wrote letters together and
00:09:10
they're beautiful letters. He wrote
00:09:12
poetry. So I communicated with him in
00:09:14
Iran. But there's
00:09:18
um expression of feelings and kind of uh
00:09:23
frustration uh
00:09:26
were not something that my family did.
00:09:28
you know, you just dealt with a
00:09:29
situation. And so, yeah, I I think I
00:09:32
suffer from uh over stoism and then
00:09:34
breaking down every once in a while, as
00:09:36
you just saw.
00:09:39
>> It's a a familiar story of the the men
00:09:42
that I've interviewed that grew up with
00:09:45
that kind of sort of emotional composure
00:09:47
enforced and um modeled to them.
00:09:50
>> Yeah. I don't know if it was enforced
00:09:51
like it wasn't actually. Yeah. like we
00:09:54
were very loving family but my father
00:09:57
was very humble. Um he did not believe
00:10:00
that just because you're in a position
00:10:01
of power you should kind of project that
00:10:03
power you should communicate that to
00:10:05
everyone and there was a stoicism inside
00:10:07
my family which is don't complain you
00:10:10
know um so they it was it was a weird
00:10:13
combination of stoicism and love at the
00:10:15
same time.
00:10:17
>> How does um cuz I'm not a father yet.
00:10:19
>> Yes.
00:10:20
>> But I I'm approaching that.
00:10:22
Congratulations. Almost.
00:10:23
>> Yeah. Almost. Yeah. I've just proposed
00:10:25
to my fiance and we're, you know, we're
00:10:26
in the process now of, you know,
00:10:28
bringing children into the world
00:10:30
hopefully. And it's one of the things I
00:10:31
think a lot about, which is how do I
00:10:33
stop my own stoicism,
00:10:36
passing on to my children.
00:10:39
>> First of all, fatherhood, parenthood is
00:10:42
is so humbling. You have such a picture
00:10:47
in your mind as to how you're going to
00:10:48
raise your family, what your kids are
00:10:50
going to be like. And they just become
00:10:53
their own people and it's such a
00:10:56
beautiful process to see. And at first
00:10:58
there's this alarm. Oh my god, I'm
00:11:01
losing control. You know, I've I've done
00:11:03
everything. You've planned everything.
00:11:04
This is how I'm going to raise kids. But
00:11:06
then real life gets in the way. It is
00:11:08
absolutely exhausting. So, you probably
00:11:12
execute on 80% of your plan and you're
00:11:14
20% imperfect because you are exhausted
00:11:16
and you're working and you got a career.
00:11:18
Uh, or often some people do. And at some
00:11:22
point, you see these kids kind of move
00:11:25
off into this completely unexpected
00:11:28
territory. And there's a point for me it
00:11:30
was like I I'm a bit of a control freak.
00:11:33
So, I'm like, this is not good. They're
00:11:34
kind of doing their own thing. But then
00:11:36
you you step back and you're like this
00:11:38
is it's absolutely gorgeous what's
00:11:40
happening. So the advice that I would
00:11:42
just give in terms of being a parent is
00:11:44
just spend the time with the kids. You
00:11:46
know it is that is the magic is not what
00:11:49
you do um or or the particular tactics
00:11:53
but it's the investment in them and the
00:11:55
time spent with them and the rest you
00:11:58
know you can't control but what you can
00:11:59
control is kind of that connection. H I
00:12:02
um speaking of children, I went back and
00:12:05
looked through lots of different photos
00:12:07
of where you lived and where you grew up
00:12:08
to try and get a picture of your world
00:12:10
in an early context and all these photos
00:12:11
look incredibly incredible. I think that
00:12:14
was your fifth birthday.
00:12:15
>> Oh wow. I had hair back then.
00:12:18
>> You had a lot of hair.
00:12:19
>> My mom loved to dress us up in like
00:12:21
little doll outfits.
00:12:22
>> I can tell another one you lord. Look at
00:12:26
that. I'm definitely not going to do
00:12:28
that to my kids. age four in London.
00:12:31
Another photo of you.
00:12:33
>> You and your cousins there. Another
00:12:35
photo.
00:12:35
>> Family was everywhere for us.
00:12:37
>> And again, another one with a a
00:12:39
beautiful haircut there.
00:12:41
>> It was a great childhood. It was
00:12:43
amazing.
00:12:43
>> I spoke to your mom,
00:12:46
Lily.
00:12:46
>> I hope uh well, how it go.
00:12:49
We'll see. She said, I'll play the audio
00:12:52
file just so people can hear it. when he
00:12:55
was very little, he told me that he
00:12:58
wants to do something important in the
00:13:01
world and he said becoming wealthy is
00:13:05
not his priority but making a change is
00:13:10
>> I can't say I remember that conversation
00:13:14
but the
00:13:17
one of my early experiences that really
00:13:20
imprinted on me was we went to visit one
00:13:23
of my dad's It's factories, family
00:13:25
factories. And my dad was in charge of
00:13:26
designing factories, building them,
00:13:27
operating them. And the respect
00:13:32
that that population, the factory had
00:13:36
for him and the visit and how excited
00:13:38
they were that his family was visiting
00:13:40
was just really cool. And and the way
00:13:42
that he treated he knew everyone's name.
00:13:45
He treated them with such respect. It
00:13:47
just it really imprinted on me. There
00:13:49
was this care. It wasn't the boss is
00:13:52
coming and there's fear. And so for me
00:13:56
like that ability to build a life where
00:14:01
you have impact on a lot of people but
00:14:03
it's it's positive kind of building
00:14:05
impact. You have the broad respect of of
00:14:09
these folks. It really imprinted on me.
00:14:10
So I w I always wanted you know when we
00:14:13
came to the states
00:14:15
making money was important. I don't want
00:14:17
to kind of BS and say like, oh, I didn't
00:14:19
care about it because we lost
00:14:21
everything. And so my first job was
00:14:23
like, invest in banking. What's the goal
00:14:25
of investment banking? Have fun, but
00:14:28
make money, right? And so that was a
00:14:31
priority for me. But then as I matured
00:14:33
in life, as I knew I had safety in terms
00:14:36
of, okay, yes, I know I can do that. I
00:14:38
can make money. I can provide for my
00:14:40
family. I can support my mom and dad.
00:14:43
Then
00:14:44
building kind of an enterprise, having
00:14:46
that feeling that I saw with my father,
00:14:49
that connection with his team uh was
00:14:52
something that became really important
00:14:53
to me.
00:14:55
>> When you came to New York, you were 8, 9
00:14:57
years old.
00:14:58
>> 9 years old. Yes.
00:14:59
>> If I'd asked you at 9 years old, when
00:15:00
you arrived to New York, what you wanted
00:15:01
to do when you're older, what would you
00:15:02
have said?
00:15:03
>> I have no idea. I want to make my dad
00:15:06
proud.
00:15:07
That was it. I wasn't kind of motivated
00:15:10
for specific target at all. I just
00:15:13
wanted to make my family proud.
00:15:15
>> Why I want to make my dad proud?
00:15:19
He's always been an important figure in
00:15:21
uh in my life, you know, that there's
00:15:24
this um and and I think part of it is
00:15:27
that I never got to know him that well
00:15:30
as an individual, you know, cuz he was
00:15:33
obviously when I was younger, he was
00:15:35
working all the time. So, he would show
00:15:37
up once in a while for dinner, etc. We
00:15:39
always had family dinners together and
00:15:41
then he went away and then I worked. So,
00:15:44
I never really got to know the person
00:15:47
that he was, but I don't know there
00:15:50
there's kind of this sense of duty.
00:15:51
There's there's a hope that,
00:15:54
you know, he's he's somewhere or maybe
00:15:57
he's not someplace. But that making my
00:15:59
father proud has always been a strong
00:16:01
current undercurrent in my life.
00:16:04
>> So, you're 9 years old, you've arrived
00:16:05
in New York City. Um, you do end up
00:16:08
going off to college sometime later.
00:16:09
>> Yes.
00:16:10
>> I went to Brown University, studied
00:16:12
engineering there. How do you think
00:16:13
about that choice at that time and how
00:16:16
determinant that was of your trajectory
00:16:17
in your life? That decision to go to
00:16:18
that university and study that subject.
00:16:21
>> My father always said, "You can do
00:16:23
anything in your life as long as either
00:16:25
you're a doctor or an engineer." And I
00:16:27
picked engineering. I just loved the
00:16:30
problemolving aspect of engineering and
00:16:33
all the layers of equations etc. and
00:16:36
those equations being able to represent
00:16:38
something in real life and then
00:16:39
magically that something in real life
00:16:42
following what it should theoretically
00:16:44
like the problem solving aspect of
00:16:46
engineering fascinated me. I absolutely
00:16:48
loved it. Uh and I think it serves me to
00:16:51
this day.
00:16:52
>> Engineers make good CEOs.
00:16:54
>> Great CEOs. If you step back,
00:16:58
companies are just machines, right?
00:16:59
They're they're machines that are run by
00:17:01
people and over a period of time you
00:17:05
actually try to automate some of the
00:17:07
stuff that the people do and then you
00:17:09
send the people off to do new stuff that
00:17:11
can't be automated like we are
00:17:13
rulesbased like it's it's an organism
00:17:15
and it's a machine at the same time and
00:17:18
to some extent the job of the the the
00:17:20
CEO is engineering how do I set up the
00:17:24
company to achieve the goals that you
00:17:27
know I set for shareholders set for my
00:17:30
board sets sets for it. It's a giant
00:17:32
engineering problem and and to me that's
00:17:33
like fascinating the putting together
00:17:36
the pieces to get to what you perceive
00:17:39
to be the goal and one of the really
00:17:41
important things is you got to pick the
00:17:42
right goals.
00:17:43
>> Mhm.
00:17:43
>> Um that is one giant problem solving
00:17:46
engineering challenge and it's one of
00:17:47
the most fascinating parts of my job.
00:17:49
>> I want to get into that the the
00:17:51
practical company building how you
00:17:53
organize um an organization to be a well
00:17:56
functioning machine setting goals and
00:17:57
all that stuff. Um after after college
00:18:00
you go into investment banking for a
00:18:02
period of time.
00:18:02
>> Yeah I worked there for eight years in
00:18:05
risk arbitrage to begin with and then
00:18:08
mergers and acquisition advisory work as
00:18:10
well.
00:18:11
>> And that experience I I was reading
00:18:13
taught you about betting on people.
00:18:14
>> Yes.
00:18:15
>> Versus other what do you mean by betting
00:18:16
on people and why is that important?
00:18:18
>> It was uh it was actually a lesson that
00:18:20
I learned from Herbert Allen who was
00:18:23
running Allen and Company at the time.
00:18:24
It it was the the uh the Allen's uh
00:18:27
family started the company. And he
00:18:30
always told me and and at the time I
00:18:32
didn't really listen to him. He he
00:18:33
always said, "Do
00:18:36
always bet on people. Companies go.
00:18:38
There are good companies, bad companies,
00:18:39
but great people stay great all the
00:18:42
time." And one of the things that made
00:18:45
Allan and Company was really special.
00:18:47
You know, investment banking can be a
00:18:49
doggy talk sport, but Allan and company
00:18:53
really cultivated relationships with
00:18:56
people whom they perceived to be great
00:18:59
both in terms of potential and in terms
00:19:01
of character. And of all the investment
00:19:04
banks, that loyalty, that making a bet
00:19:06
on a person and then staying with them
00:19:09
through their whole careers is a pattern
00:19:13
of how that place works. Uh, and it's
00:19:16
definitely something that that I learned
00:19:17
there.
00:19:17
>> What is it about one's character that
00:19:19
makes them qualify as a great person?
00:19:21
>> You look for success, honor, loyalty,
00:19:24
people who will tell you what they're
00:19:26
going to do, whether it's good or bad,
00:19:28
and then follow through on their
00:19:29
promises.
00:19:30
>> Hard work. I'm surprised that wasn't
00:19:32
mentioned as
00:19:33
>> well. That comes with success. Okay.
00:19:34
Right. Talent and hard work. You put it
00:19:36
those two together.
00:19:36
>> And why did you leave Allen in company?
00:19:39
>> I left Allen because I met Barry Diller.
00:19:41
Uh, he was a client of mine. We got to
00:19:45
meet in a big kind of
00:19:49
deal uh unfriendly uh hostile tender
00:19:52
offer for Paramount at the time. It's
00:19:55
that there's another one happening I
00:19:56
guess for Paramount uh now as we speak.
00:19:59
And he was the one person I thought I
00:20:01
was going to be Allen Lifer. I thought I
00:20:02
was going to be there forever. My older
00:20:04
brother Cave is an Allen Lifer. He has
00:20:07
it's the only job he's had in his life.
00:20:09
But Barry was the one person who I
00:20:13
thought, you know, if I get a chance to
00:20:14
work for this person, I'm I'm I'm going
00:20:16
to jump at it. And I did.
00:20:17
>> Why? Why Barry?
00:20:19
>> He He's spectacular. I mean, he was
00:20:21
spectacular. He is spectacular. A doer,
00:20:24
you know. He he I I met him in a
00:20:27
circumstance where he lost. It was it
00:20:29
was this giant hostile tender offer.
00:20:31
Bids going back and forth between uh the
00:20:34
the winner Viacom and and Barry.
00:20:37
Ultimately, Barry stepped away and we
00:20:41
were planning an announcement, you know,
00:20:44
and you can imagine all these like fancy
00:20:46
PR people
00:20:48
sitting around a table. How do we
00:20:50
present a loss as a win, right?
00:20:52
>> So, he bid for a company. He didn't get
00:20:54
it.
00:20:54
>> He didn't get it and and he walked away.
00:20:56
He didn't get it cuz he walked away,
00:20:57
which in hindsight was a was a mistake.
00:20:59
He could have paid more. Uh and then in
00:21:01
the release where he walked away, uh I
00:21:04
think the release was they won, we lost.
00:21:07
next. And he was a constant motion
00:21:10
machine like day one, we lost, next,
00:21:14
what's next? Let's go. And that's the
00:21:16
kind of person I wanted to work for.
00:21:18
>> In business, losing is part of the game.
00:21:21
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. But then calling
00:21:24
it out, you know, not bullshitting, not
00:21:27
like, oh, we tried our best and the
00:21:29
circumstances. They won, we lost. Next,
00:21:32
it's okay.
00:21:33
>> Does it matter how you lose?
00:21:35
>> Absolutely it does. that absolutely it
00:21:37
does it it's and and I find companies
00:21:40
guilty of two things like one is
00:21:43
ignoring losses like papering over
00:21:45
losses etc right and then sometimes
00:21:48
being obsessive about the loss you know
00:21:51
inspecting it what happened let's do a
00:21:54
summary let's meet what went wrong etc
00:21:58
and and you know for me it's somewhere
00:22:00
in the middle which is recognize why you
00:22:02
lost recognize that you lost say it
00:22:05
because it's important to say it,
00:22:07
analyze it, but then move on. Like,
00:22:10
let's move on. And the next time you
00:22:13
hope to
00:22:16
have learned some kind of judgment to
00:22:17
avoid that kind of a loss, but it
00:22:20
doesn't mean you're going to avoid
00:22:21
losing at all. Like, if you're not
00:22:22
taking shots, you're not missing. You're
00:22:24
you're not losing. So, for me, it's
00:22:27
constantly moving and taking your shots,
00:22:30
losing, learning next, losing, learning
00:22:32
next. That constant motion is what I
00:22:34
want to see. Um that constant motion and
00:22:36
learning is what excites me.
00:22:40
>> This is business advice but also life
00:22:41
advice generally because a lot of people
00:22:43
um who I meet who come up to me and ask
00:22:44
me questions about things often ask
00:22:46
questions that sound a lot like what you
00:22:47
just said. It's dealing with rejection,
00:22:50
dealing with taking an L, and how that L
00:22:52
then stays with them sometimes for a
00:22:54
decade, sometimes for 15 years, and and
00:22:57
holds them back, hurts their confidence,
00:22:59
means that they don't take it any more
00:23:00
shots, and this can cause a sort of a
00:23:03
downward confidence spiral.
00:23:05
>> Totally. And and listen, I'm I'm talking
00:23:07
a big game, but I would tell you in my
00:23:09
personal life, I can't deal with
00:23:11
rejection. I have a really hard time
00:23:13
dealing with rejection. Professional
00:23:15
life, no problem whatsoever. So it's
00:23:17
like in the end we're all humans after
00:23:19
all.
00:23:19
>> You have a a difficulty dealing with
00:23:21
rejection in your personal
00:23:22
>> very much. Yeah.
00:23:23
>> What kind of rejection?
00:23:25
>> Any kind of rejection conflict like it's
00:23:26
it's something that has been uh that I
00:23:29
fought my whole life which is because I
00:23:33
was one of the younger cousins because I
00:23:35
was a youngest brother. I just kind of
00:23:37
didn't have rights.
00:23:39
So I was I went with the flow. And going
00:23:43
with the flow means you're going with
00:23:45
the current etc. I didn't cause trouble
00:23:47
and that has followed me in my personal
00:23:52
life. In my professional life, I don't
00:23:53
have as much trouble there. I guess my
00:23:55
professional life to some extent is a
00:23:56
mask because I get to be aggressive. I
00:24:00
get to lose, etc. It's something that
00:24:02
Sid, my wife, has really helped me with,
00:24:05
but it is something in my personal life
00:24:08
that generally I'm conflict avoidant.
00:24:10
>> You're conflict avoidant in your
00:24:11
personal life. Interesting.
00:24:12
>> Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Hm. That's not
00:24:14
good in a relationship.
00:24:16
>> No. No. That's why that's why Sid's
00:24:18
helping me out. I'm much better now. I'm
00:24:20
much better. But it's
00:24:21
>> it's when I take those issues on, I have
00:24:26
to fight myself.
00:24:28
>> There's some core, you know, if if you
00:24:30
and I were having an issue. Yeah.
00:24:31
>> And I was sitting down with you and
00:24:32
saying, "Hey, I'm not I'm not happy
00:24:34
about X or Y." I can feel there's a core
00:24:37
of me saying, "Just let it go." But
00:24:40
that's how resentment builds and that's
00:24:43
how relationships um over a long period
00:24:46
of time start moving the wrong way. So
00:24:48
it is something that is at my core but I
00:24:51
actively fight uh and I'm getting better
00:24:53
at it but I'm still on a learning
00:24:54
journey there. I'll tell you that
00:24:56
>> eventually you go on to becoming the CEO
00:24:58
of Expedia after um there was a couple
00:25:01
of CEOs that came before you but you
00:25:03
became the third and
00:25:04
>> took that company on. Very different job
00:25:06
going from investment banking to being a
00:25:08
CEO.
00:25:09
>> Yeah. Yeah. Now there there was a
00:25:10
journey there because I went from
00:25:12
banking to running deals and I knew that
00:25:16
I knew that I I liked how companies
00:25:19
worked. The thing that I liked about
00:25:20
investment banking was that I got to see
00:25:23
a lot there. I got to see really smart
00:25:26
people, really cool companies build, but
00:25:31
I couldn't go along with that journey. I
00:25:33
was jealous of the journey that these
00:25:34
CEOs were were moving on. So then when
00:25:38
M&A was a bridge to work at a company
00:25:41
and build uh the company, I moved from
00:25:43
M&A to CFO, chief financial officer
00:25:46
because that's uh that's that's to some
00:25:49
extent finance, but it's also being the
00:25:52
CEO's partner and helping the CEO build.
00:25:54
So I I always knew the direction that I
00:25:56
want to go in, which is hey, at some
00:25:57
point I want to actually be an operator.
00:26:00
And then I had the opportunity to take
00:26:02
over Expedia. the CEO at the time, Eric
00:26:05
Blashford, kind of said, "Yeah, big
00:26:06
company thing, not for me." So, he
00:26:08
resigned. And honestly, Barry didn't
00:26:12
have an alternative. Who
00:26:14
>> was the owner of Barry was the CEO and
00:26:18
chairman of IA, which was a parent
00:26:20
company of what became Expedia, I
00:26:23
travel. The head of IC Travel resigned.
00:26:26
I raised my hand. I said, "Maybe I could
00:26:29
do it." Barry was desperate. He had no
00:26:31
one else. So he promoted me to be CEO of
00:26:33
IA travel and IC travel was going
00:26:36
through some difficult times. So we spun
00:26:38
it off as at at Expedia. So that's when
00:26:41
I became the CEO of Expedia, the public
00:26:43
company and I moved to the Netherlands
00:26:46
of of uh Seattle.
00:26:48
>> In your job just before you took on that
00:26:49
role as CEO, you were buying businesses.
00:26:53
So M&As, mergers and acquisitions, you
00:26:54
were buying companies. Yes.
00:26:56
>> What are some of the companies that you
00:26:57
bought?
00:26:58
>> Oh, we bought a lot of companies. Uh we
00:26:59
bought ticket master. Uh we bought
00:27:01
match.com
00:27:03
uh bought Expedia Hotels.com and and it
00:27:06
was all about the theme that Barry and I
00:27:09
were uh fascinated with was the movement
00:27:12
of commerce online. You know, it was it
00:27:15
was during that uh time. It was the late
00:27:17
late 90s, early 2000. And and we saw it
00:27:21
happening with our very own eyes really
00:27:23
with home shopping, right? It was it's a
00:27:26
flat screen. It was a television and you
00:27:28
were offering products and people were
00:27:30
calling up buying those products
00:27:32
electronically
00:27:33
and just the medium changed. The medium
00:27:35
changed from a TV screen to an internet
00:27:38
screen and instead of calling you could
00:27:40
use uh HTTP
00:27:43
uh and so while the medium changed we
00:27:46
kind of saw this opportunity to take
00:27:48
advantage of the of the change of
00:27:51
platform. So match.com essentially in
00:27:53
the olden days you know you had online
00:27:55
dating but you would call a number and
00:27:58
you'd be like my name is Da and I'm 6'2
00:28:01
and this you describe yourself and you
00:28:03
hear other kind of uh recordings and you
00:28:07
would get matched up based on someone
00:28:08
who seemed nice
00:28:10
>> and all of that just moved online. That
00:28:12
was what Batch.com was. Same thing with
00:28:14
Ticket Master. You know in the olden
00:28:16
days you would go to a Tower of Records.
00:28:18
Have you ever been to a Tower of
00:28:19
Records? You're too Yeah. So there were
00:28:20
these things called record stores and
00:28:23
they also had a desk where they would
00:28:25
sell concert tickets. So you would
00:28:27
either call for a concert ticket or you
00:28:29
would physically go and buy one.
00:28:31
Amazing. And there were lines, Tower
00:28:33
Record lines. What's that?
00:28:34
>> And all of that exactly moved online.
00:28:38
And same thing with travel, right? You
00:28:40
would call a travel agent and so all of
00:28:42
there was this movement of retail and
00:28:44
phone commerce to online commerce. And
00:28:47
we identified the early players to make
00:28:51
that shift and personals, ticketing,
00:28:55
travel were the ones that we went with
00:28:57
went for because at the time Amazon was
00:29:00
doing everything else like physical
00:29:02
fulfillment. So what we were going for
00:29:04
were essentially electronic transactions
00:29:08
that did not require physical
00:29:09
fulfillment and that was travel because
00:29:13
you know it's a virtual good ticketing
00:29:15
uh match.com which which was personal.
00:29:17
So there was a pattern around the
00:29:19
madness so to speak but we went out and
00:29:21
bought all these companies. It was a
00:29:22
really great time.
00:29:23
>> I've got two questions that emerge
00:29:24
there. One one is again I'm really
00:29:26
interested to understand how you would
00:29:28
look for talent or how what how you
00:29:30
think about what a great company is. Are
00:29:32
there like we we looking at the company
00:29:34
culture? Were we looking at the
00:29:35
founders? Was there something else? Was
00:29:36
it the profitability? And the other one
00:29:37
is just really intrigued as to what this
00:29:41
period of your life and thereafter
00:29:42
taught you about how to spot opportunity
00:29:45
and transition cuz that is a
00:29:46
transitional moment of technology. And I
00:29:50
think there is a certain pattern
00:29:52
recognition one can develop as to like
00:29:54
know what to bet on in these moments of
00:29:56
transition where there's huge
00:29:56
skepticism. The internet's going to be
00:29:58
anything. It's a so two questions. One
00:30:00
is like how do you spot great companies
00:30:01
and then the second is like patterns in
00:30:03
transition.
00:30:03
>> So they're I'd say that they're related
00:30:05
which is um we would spot great
00:30:07
companies
00:30:09
just by observing who is taking the lead
00:30:11
in these transitions. You know these
00:30:13
transitions are difficult. You can't
00:30:15
predict exactly where things are going,
00:30:17
how quickly they're going, how much
00:30:18
should you invest, what's a return, what
00:30:21
uh what the what the market how large is
00:30:23
the market going to be. But there were
00:30:26
companies that were emerging as the
00:30:28
leaders and we would just I just
00:30:31
identify the leaders and call call these
00:30:33
folks up and say I want to come in and
00:30:34
talk to you. Like that was that was it.
00:30:36
And to some extent it's a
00:30:38
self-reinforcing cycle which is yes the
00:30:42
great management teams and the great
00:30:44
founders were the ones who were able to
00:30:47
identify the opportunity and hit that
00:30:49
opportunity faster than anyone else
00:30:51
recognize that opportunity and execute
00:30:53
on that opportunity faster than anyone
00:30:54
else. So to some extent the companies
00:30:57
who were in the lead of course had the
00:31:01
best management teams and had the best
00:31:02
founding teams. And when those two
00:31:04
things matched, that was when we jumped.
00:31:07
And then the the last thing I would tell
00:31:08
you in terms of these pattern uh
00:31:10
recognitions is that
00:31:14
we never completed a successful deal
00:31:17
because we got the company cheap. We
00:31:20
actually overpaid for every single great
00:31:24
company that we bought, but we overpaid
00:31:26
based on what the market thought at the
00:31:28
time,
00:31:29
>> not what the reality turned out to be.
00:31:32
So I do think one of the kind of pieces
00:31:34
of pattern recognition with me is just
00:31:37
humans
00:31:39
think about
00:31:41
success and transitions in a linear way
00:31:44
because time is linear.
00:31:46
>> Would you someone that doesn't just they
00:31:48
think of it going like this?
00:31:49
>> Yeah. You know it's it's the everything
00:31:51
kind of moves this way, right? Your your
00:31:53
schedule is relatively linear, right?
00:31:56
It's you sleep seven hours a day. Like
00:31:58
your life is a linear life. But company
00:32:02
and company success and company
00:32:04
momentum, especially with new
00:32:06
technologies where if there's a
00:32:08
technology that's truly better than the
00:32:10
other technology within the virtual
00:32:12
world, there's absolutely no friction
00:32:13
holding it back, the these companies
00:32:17
move in an exponential way in terms of
00:32:19
their growth and ultimately in terms of
00:32:21
their value. So whereas most people kind
00:32:25
of see things they they when they
00:32:26
project out to the to the future they
00:32:28
see this what actually happens is this
00:32:31
and that's where the opportunity is.
00:32:33
It's the it's the spread between the
00:32:35
hockey stick and kind of the straight
00:32:37
line.
00:32:37
>> Mhm.
00:32:38
>> Uh and it's very difficult for people to
00:32:40
process that. And so that was, you know,
00:32:44
those were the companies that we
00:32:45
identified that hockey stick. And online
00:32:47
travel was a hockey stick, personals was
00:32:49
a hockey stick, ticketing was a hockey
00:32:51
stick.
00:32:52
>> I heard about the is it Jeans paradox?
00:32:55
>> Yes.
00:32:55
>> Which I think kind of sort of overlaps
00:32:58
with what you're saying there. When
00:32:59
things become easier, faster, cheaper,
00:33:01
people do them not incrementally more,
00:33:03
but ex like exceptionally more often. I
00:33:06
mean that that's the definition of Uber
00:33:07
and we can get to that at some point was
00:33:10
uh originally it was built as a black
00:33:14
cab service so to speak a black car
00:33:15
service.
00:33:16
>> Can you tell me that's that where it
00:33:17
came from? Because a lot of people
00:33:18
history has now moved forward that
00:33:20
people have forgotten the story of how
00:33:21
it came to be.
00:33:22
>> Now to some extent it was it well to a
00:33:24
large extent it was that the founding
00:33:25
was was before me but it was um uh
00:33:28
Garrett Camp who was one of the founders
00:33:30
had this idea uh and I think it was born
00:33:33
in Paris. It was like a snowy day in
00:33:35
Paris and they couldn't find a black car
00:33:37
and it was a bunch of young young tech
00:33:39
guys and like how cool would it be to
00:33:40
like pick up my phone and call a black
00:33:43
car and that was the the core idea which
00:33:46
is hey you can use your phone to call a
00:33:48
black car he brought on uh Travis
00:33:51
Kalanick Travis was the operator and and
00:33:54
the founder and to to your point and
00:33:58
Jeban's paradox to some extent people
00:33:59
thought well what's the size of the
00:34:01
black car market place and it was a
00:34:03
couple billion dollars or what's the
00:34:05
size of the taxi industry and it was uh
00:34:08
more than a couple of billion dollars.
00:34:10
But what they didn't see at the time was
00:34:12
that as you improve the con if you
00:34:16
radically make something either more
00:34:18
convenient or cheaper, the market
00:34:22
expands beyond how you calculate it. So
00:34:25
the Uber size and scale now is way
00:34:28
beyond the original marketplace of black
00:34:30
cars and or taxis. It it's the company
00:34:33
the company today is a result of Jeban's
00:34:36
paradox
00:34:37
>> timing.
00:34:38
We often um we often don't think much
00:34:40
about the luck of timing. Luck is an
00:34:43
interesting word to use, but how
00:34:44
important timing is and other sort of
00:34:46
foundational factors are in enabling a
00:34:48
company like Uber to exist. When you
00:34:51
think about the timing of Uber, what are
00:34:53
the sort of the foundations that made it
00:34:55
possible?
00:34:56
>> Well, it was it was a mobile revolution.
00:34:58
It was um mobile data technology, the
00:35:01
iPhone coming together. In the early
00:35:03
days, one of the geniuses of Tra of
00:35:06
Travis was he would hire these market
00:35:08
managers who would be GMs of new cities
00:35:11
that they would expand into. and they
00:35:13
would literally go to the city with a
00:35:15
bag full of iPhones and give away
00:35:18
iPhones to black car drivers to get them
00:35:21
to come on Uber because at the time a
00:35:23
lot of them didn't have you know they
00:35:25
they didn't have smartphones so to
00:35:27
speak. So the onset of the of the
00:35:30
smartphone was that kind of that
00:35:33
beautiful magic of timing coming
00:35:35
together and then aggressiveness of that
00:35:37
founding team to understand that there's
00:35:40
a pattern here and I'm going to
00:35:42
replicate that pattern all the world and
00:35:44
raise as much capital as I have to to
00:35:47
get there faster than anyone else. That
00:35:49
was the magic. But it was, you know,
00:35:50
again, it's, yes, there's luck in there,
00:35:53
but if that founding team hadn't been as
00:35:56
aggressive in, you know, blit scaling,
00:35:59
which is a term that folks used, uh, all
00:36:02
around the world, company wouldn't be
00:36:04
what it is today.
00:36:05
>> Your transition out of investment
00:36:06
banking into Expedia, CFO, then CEO. You
00:36:10
know, listen, there's a stereotype in
00:36:11
business that um investment bankers and
00:36:14
CFOs don't necessarily make the best
00:36:15
CEOs because of
00:36:17
>> they might stereotypically
00:36:20
>> over financialize
00:36:21
>> over financial maybe be less riskaverse,
00:36:23
maybe be less, you know, those kinds of
00:36:25
things. And when I spoke to Barry, he
00:36:28
did say the following. I'll just play it
00:36:30
for you because it's uh better coming
00:36:32
from him. H
00:36:33
>> he was not an actual leader uh because
00:36:36
he had uh his career up until then has
00:36:41
had been on the financial side of
00:36:43
things. So he really had not yet had the
00:36:47
experience or opportunity to manage
00:36:49
people. That came in a difficult way to
00:36:52
him and he mastered it. It didn't take
00:36:55
him all that long. He mastered how to
00:36:57
become a leader and he mastered how to
00:36:59
take ultimate responsibility for a
00:37:01
company.
00:37:03
>> Yeah, it was um growing up under Barry
00:37:06
was was and and by the way I I wouldn't
00:37:07
be where I am today without not him as a
00:37:10
mentor because he's not like a mentoring
00:37:11
kind of guy but him as my leader
00:37:14
learning from him. But I say that the
00:37:16
experience that really really shaped me
00:37:19
uh as it relates to Expedia was I did
00:37:22
come in as more of a financial leader.
00:37:25
our
00:37:26
leadership at Expedia.com failed. I
00:37:29
hired a I had to fire the first uh
00:37:32
person. I hired a second person.
00:37:35
Complete disaster. And so I was 0 for
00:37:37
two in terms of hiring for our largest
00:37:40
business. This business was 50% of our
00:37:42
profits and I was 0 for two in uh in
00:37:44
hiring. And so I went to Barry and the
00:37:46
board and I said, 'Well,
00:37:49
if I miss hiring the third person to run
00:37:52
the biggest parts of our business, then
00:37:53
you should fire me. Barry quickly
00:37:55
agreed, yes, of course we will. So I
00:37:57
said, obviously, I don't understand
00:37:59
enough about the job to find the right
00:38:02
person. So I think I've got to take the
00:38:05
job myself for 6 months to a year to
00:38:08
understand what what is it that the job
00:38:10
entails for me to then go and and find
00:38:13
that person. And so for what turned out
00:38:18
to be I think it was five or six years I
00:38:21
ran both the holding company Expedia
00:38:22
Inc. which is a public company and I ran
00:38:25
Expedia.com. I was president of the
00:38:27
largest part of the company. That
00:38:29
experience taught me my operating
00:38:31
troughs. That experience actually taught
00:38:33
me how is it that you operate a company?
00:38:36
How is it that you run something? And
00:38:38
that's a very different skill set from
00:38:40
capital allocation and you know all the
00:38:42
financial uh wizardry that people embark
00:38:45
on. That's important. But the what I
00:38:48
discovered was operating a company,
00:38:51
leading a company, organizing it,
00:38:53
operating it, setting up the goals,
00:38:56
getting the right team together. That's
00:38:58
the part of the job that I loved. So it
00:39:01
it it took me a while to get there. Like
00:39:04
my whole life, my whole early career was
00:39:06
in this financial sector. which I
00:39:08
enjoyed, but I didn't find my true love,
00:39:13
which is operations and running
00:39:15
companies and running a technology
00:39:16
company until way, way later in my
00:39:19
career. Uh, and I think to some extent
00:39:22
now I've got both. I've got that
00:39:25
financial part cuz it has to work. But
00:39:27
the operations and the leadership part
00:39:29
of the business is something that that I
00:39:31
love.
00:39:32
And watching Barry take responsibility,
00:39:36
take shots, go against the grain, um, as
00:39:40
aggressively as he consistently did, I
00:39:42
think has made me a much better operator
00:39:44
than what the counterfactual would be if
00:39:46
I had another boss.
00:39:48
>> Three months into that role, the head of
00:39:49
HR told you that you were scaring
00:39:51
people.
00:39:53
>> I've forgotten about that.
00:39:56
>> I think that was my job. Yeah.
00:40:00
What's the context there?
00:40:01
>> You know the context was that
00:40:04
I first of all turnarounds in technology
00:40:07
are really hard. Uh we were talking
00:40:09
about the momentum thing where momentum
00:40:11
is positive. In the technology sector if
00:40:15
momentum turns negative it is remarkably
00:40:19
difficult to turn it around. You know
00:40:22
Yahoo is hanging on but it was the great
00:40:26
company and you see where it is now.
00:40:28
It's brutal when you get it wrong. And
00:40:32
it always takes longer than you think.
00:40:34
And it goes to, you know, what I was
00:40:36
talking about linear versus exponential.
00:40:38
Just like the curves up are exponential,
00:40:41
curves down are exponential as well. The
00:40:43
first couple of years look bad, but
00:40:46
they're not that bad.
00:40:47
>> But you know in your mind that 10 years
00:40:50
from now, it's going to be a [ __ ]
00:40:52
disaster. Mhm.
00:40:54
>> So what I saw with Expedia was a
00:40:57
technology company
00:40:59
whose technology engine was broken.
00:41:02
Codebase was old, had not been
00:41:05
reinvested in. Technology leadership was
00:41:08
coasting.
00:41:09
And that really alarmed me. And one of
00:41:13
the things that I learned from Barry in
00:41:15
terms of leadership is
00:41:18
that when you know a bell is rung, when
00:41:20
when you when you see something, when
00:41:22
you see a pattern, you have to act. You
00:41:25
can't wait for a second. So in my mind,
00:41:28
once I figured out, oh my god, this
00:41:30
really is a turnaround. This isn't like
00:41:32
a company that I've got to tune. this
00:41:34
company if I don't move and move hard
00:41:38
and fast is is going to start on that
00:41:40
exponential decay curve. I had to move
00:41:43
quickly and at that point and and I am
00:41:47
one of the skills that I learned from
00:41:49
Barry is transparency. It's like
00:41:51
whenever he wanted to understand an
00:41:53
issue he wanted to go to the source. He
00:41:55
didn't want a summary and it didn't
00:41:58
matter where that source was. Is it a
00:42:00
junior analyst or a president? He wanted
00:42:03
to hear from the source because what he
00:42:05
didn't want to lose is lose the fidelity
00:42:08
of the issue. You know, when there's an
00:42:10
issue here and then it goes through the
00:42:12
analyst and the associate and the vice
00:42:14
president and an SVP and whatever, by
00:42:16
the time it's summarized for you as the
00:42:18
CEO, it's just it's lost everything. And
00:42:22
usually their levels are like, "Hey, do
00:42:24
we really want to tell them that? Why
00:42:26
don't we phrase it this way, etc." So
00:42:28
your whole life as a CEO is kind of a
00:42:33
it's a version of the world that your
00:42:36
team wants you to see. And if you got a
00:42:38
good team, usually it has more to do
00:42:41
with reality than not, but you are
00:42:44
subject to your team and the information
00:42:46
flow that that gets to you. And so Barry
00:42:49
always wanted to go to the source. He
00:42:50
would just cut through levels, cut
00:42:52
through levels, get to
00:42:55
the core of the idea, and then once he
00:42:58
did, he would move and he would move
00:42:59
fast. And for me, I've kind of I have
00:43:05
held on to that, but I've also turned it
00:43:07
the other way, which is
00:43:09
one of the ways in which I can depend on
00:43:12
getting the real [ __ ] from you is my
00:43:15
being honest with you, right? and and
00:43:18
human beings are good [ __ ] you
00:43:21
know, kind kind of meter so so to speak.
00:43:23
And and when you're the CEO and you're
00:43:26
talking to your staff and you're giving
00:43:28
all the, you know, the business talk and
00:43:31
we're doing this, but the last quarter
00:43:33
we had some certain challenges and this
00:43:35
and that, they see you bullshitting them
00:43:38
and so why the hell should they tell you
00:43:40
the truth, right? if their if their boss
00:43:42
isn't telling them the good stuff, why
00:43:45
should they give the good stuff back to
00:43:46
the boss? So, for me, it it was almost
00:43:50
like a self-defense mechanism that as a
00:43:52
boss, I'm going to tell you what's going
00:43:53
on because that's the only way I can
00:43:56
drag the hard truths back from you. Cuz
00:43:59
otherwise, you're going to filter
00:44:00
yourself. You're gonna be like, I don't
00:44:01
want Dart to know this happened.
00:44:04
>> But do you ever worry that they might
00:44:05
not be able to deal with the truth?
00:44:07
>> Then they can leave. And and I think
00:44:10
that that's so I think that's what my
00:44:12
head of HR was saying. I was scaring the
00:44:14
[ __ ] out of people cuz I'm like we have
00:44:15
a real problem here and we've got to
00:44:17
come together and and I think that that
00:44:21
you know there's a I was a good
00:44:24
decision-m framework for me is um if I
00:44:26
make a mistake where do I want to make
00:44:28
the mistake on? Right? And so if I want
00:44:32
to if I'm going to heir with my company,
00:44:35
I'm going to heir in telling the truth
00:44:38
and potentially scaring someone away.
00:44:40
I'll take that because if that person
00:44:42
doesn't want to face the truth, if he or
00:44:44
she's not up for the fight, then they
00:44:47
should go someplace else. They can have
00:44:48
a good time. I'm sure they can have a
00:44:50
good career, etc. So for me as a leader,
00:44:53
I've always always believed in
00:44:55
transparency partially because then I
00:44:57
think you attract the right people.
00:44:59
>> Mhm. and uh partially because then I'm
00:45:02
gonna get the good information so to act
00:45:04
on. Usually the failures I see with CEOs
00:45:09
aren't because they made the wrong
00:45:10
decisions. It's because they were
00:45:12
getting the wrong data that led to the
00:45:13
wrong decisions. So it's incredibly
00:45:15
important as a leader of any
00:45:17
organization for you to build the
00:45:21
channels and build the kind of culture
00:45:23
that surfaces problems to you quickly.
00:45:25
And then for me too, you always have to
00:45:28
have your random direct channels. You
00:45:30
know, the the again, if you think about
00:45:33
organizations as organisms,
00:45:36
they have their own incentives. And so
00:45:38
my staff's incentive is to control the
00:45:42
the the information that gets to me, not
00:45:44
because they're bad people. It's just
00:45:46
their job because I can get overwhelmed.
00:45:48
Who do I meet with? What's my schedule?
00:45:50
You know, is this person worthy of
00:45:52
meeting the CEO? And for me, my fight is
00:45:55
I just set up a bunch of random [ __ ]
00:45:57
I'll meet with, you know, engineers four
00:46:00
levels down consistently because usually
00:46:03
they've got the kind of personality
00:46:04
where they don't give a [ __ ] They'll
00:46:05
tell me anything and everything and they
00:46:07
like putting the CEO down. That's great.
00:46:10
>> They like putting the CEO down.
00:46:12
>> It's, you know, engineers often, you
00:46:14
know, don't like authority and code is
00:46:16
like the biggest authority buster. It's
00:46:18
like the truth truth. Uh, so I find a
00:46:21
lot of engineers have a personality
00:46:22
which is, yeah, I'm gonna tell you what
00:46:24
it's like. Like I'm, you know, they they
00:46:26
they their value is in something else,
00:46:29
but often they don't. There's a kind of
00:46:30
a disrespect for authority that I love.
00:46:32
>> I found in my companies that there's
00:46:34
sometimes like a 24year-old young girl
00:46:37
who will just tell me the truth.
00:46:38
>> Yeah.
00:46:38
>> And she's the one you want to hang out
00:46:41
with.
00:46:42
>> She's the one I always go and ask for an
00:46:43
opinion.
00:46:44
>> Absolutely. And so that that's you've
00:46:46
got to have your your own channels, but
00:46:48
the way to the way to get transparency
00:46:50
from your team is first first you've got
00:46:53
to give it to them.
00:46:54
>> Was the culture hardworking when you
00:46:56
arrived? Could you use the word coasting
00:46:57
to describe some of the team when you
00:46:58
arrived at Expedia?
00:47:00
>> Medium. I think the company had been
00:47:02
successful for a long time and uh had
00:47:05
coasted on that success to some extent.
00:47:08
So I needed to turn over the team turn
00:47:10
over like the entire team very very
00:47:11
quickly and get some hungry people in
00:47:13
there. the entire team.
00:47:14
>> Almost the entire team. Yeah. Yeah. It
00:47:16
was uh it was rough going for a while,
00:47:18
but then you have kind of
00:47:20
missionoriented people who are trying to
00:47:21
prove themselves. Um and it's part of
00:47:24
the renewal that every company has to go
00:47:26
through and we turned it around. It was
00:47:28
it was tough going, but we really turned
00:47:29
around and that was when I kind of I
00:47:32
learned, hey, my my love is running
00:47:34
[ __ ] It's great. It's the best part of
00:47:36
my job.
00:47:37
>> How did you get that company to work
00:47:38
hard? Because there's so many people
00:47:40
listening right now that are in a
00:47:41
company that might have been successful,
00:47:43
might be two decades in
00:47:45
>> and this is an ultimate question in like
00:47:47
executive management. How do you turn
00:47:48
around the culture of a big or even even
00:47:51
200 people?
00:47:53
>> It's very difficult. Um and sometimes
00:47:55
the shortcut is just change of people
00:47:57
like it's very easy to say oh you have
00:47:59
values this and that. So it's it's
00:48:02
finding the people who you believe will
00:48:05
line up with your cultural mechanisms or
00:48:08
how you work or your values
00:48:11
and then embodying those values and
00:48:15
those mechanisms as examples and then
00:48:18
making sure that your team embodies
00:48:19
those values and imbuss down the down
00:48:22
the organization. So part of working
00:48:24
hard is like, you know, sending emails
00:48:26
to the team on a Saturday and if I don't
00:48:28
get a response on Saturday, sending them
00:48:30
an email on Sunday with a question mark.
00:48:32
What's going on? You know, I think at
00:48:34
Expedia in hindsight,
00:48:37
we we worked intensely and and and we
00:48:39
went hard, but but not as hard as I like
00:48:42
because Expedia was we were selling
00:48:45
vacations, right? It was it was the the
00:48:48
product that we were selling was about
00:48:50
turning yourself off. And so we did talk
00:48:53
about work life balance. Uh and in
00:48:57
hindsight
00:48:59
at Uber, I don't, you know, you come to
00:49:02
Uber, you're going to work your ass off.
00:49:04
We're going to be really demanding. If
00:49:06
you're not performing,
00:49:09
we're going to let you know, and if you
00:49:12
don't fix it, we're going to push you
00:49:13
out. But while it will be incredibly
00:49:16
hard,
00:49:18
you will have real agency at the
00:49:20
company. We're a big company, but
00:49:22
individuals can make a big difference.
00:49:24
And it's a company that's making a
00:49:25
difference in the world. You're going to
00:49:27
learn so much. And while you will have
00:49:31
worked hard, you're going to have a
00:49:32
great time. But this is don't come here
00:49:35
if you want to coast. And I'm very clear
00:49:37
about that. And I should have been more
00:49:39
clear at Expedia, but we were selling
00:49:40
vacations, so I couldn't be quite that
00:49:42
clear.
00:49:44
>> New year always has a strange energy to
00:49:46
it because people start talking about
00:49:48
their goals, fresh starts, and new
00:49:49
habits. But the reality is that most
00:49:51
people carry the same ideas they had
00:49:53
last year into the new year. I'm guilty
00:49:55
of that, too. And they still don't end
00:49:56
up doing anything with them. And I get
00:49:58
why. Starting something new, especially
00:50:00
if it's a business or a project, is
00:50:01
overwhelming. Before you start, you're
00:50:03
looking for the perfect moment and to be
00:50:04
the perfect version of yourself. When
00:50:06
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00:50:08
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00:50:46
In your 12 years as CEO, Expedia stock
00:50:48
rose 550%.
00:50:51
And sales increased 400% from 2.1
00:50:55
billion to 8.8 billion. And you were the
00:50:58
highest paid CEO of a US tech company
00:51:00
with a pay of 94.1 million.
00:51:03
>> I left it all behind to go to Uber.
00:51:05
>> You left it all behind. There was a big
00:51:06
options packet that I never vested, but
00:51:08
it's all good.
00:51:09
>> It was a great run.
00:51:11
>> I'm so I'm so intrigued about this point
00:51:13
of hard work because I think 10 years
00:51:14
ago saying what you just said was very
00:51:16
taboo.
00:51:17
>> Yes.
00:51:18
>> It feels to be more invoked.
00:51:20
>> We're freed now. YES.
00:51:21
>> YOU'RE FREED NOW.
00:51:22
>> YES. YES, INDEED. It's it I've I've
00:51:25
gotten um you know, sometimes people ask
00:51:28
you the question, uh what advice would
00:51:30
you give to young people? And to me, the
00:51:33
most important skill in life is a skill
00:51:36
of working hard. And it's not a skill
00:51:38
you can't just like decide you're going
00:51:40
to do it. And I think way too many many
00:51:43
people, you know, focus on should be
00:51:45
should should you be a computer
00:51:47
programmer or a doctor or study the
00:51:50
liberal arts now that anyone can vibe
00:51:52
code? Just learn to work hard. And it
00:51:55
is, you know, the the when you see the
00:51:57
top athletes,
00:51:59
of course, they're talented and, you
00:52:02
know, their talent level is world
00:52:04
levels, but the thing that changes that
00:52:06
that's different about the elite
00:52:08
athletes than the non- elite athletes,
00:52:10
and I'm talking elite, is they work
00:52:13
their asses off. They're disciplined.
00:52:15
They're structured. They're relentless.
00:52:18
You know, look at Ronaldo, look at
00:52:20
Michael Jordan, etc. That's the same
00:52:23
thing is true in all of life. It's true
00:52:25
in business. It's true in personal life.
00:52:27
And so for me
00:52:29
with my kids, I just want to teach them
00:52:32
how to work hard. And and for me, like
00:52:34
growing up, I as a banker, as an
00:52:37
executive, I'm not going to let anyone
00:52:40
out me. And if that's true, then they
00:52:43
may be smarter, more talented, etc. But
00:52:46
I'm not going to let anyone outwork me.
00:52:48
And I think that that's a huge advantage
00:52:50
that you have. over a period of time
00:52:51
that advantage compounds and I want them
00:52:54
our company like I want Uber to be an
00:52:55
incredibly hardworking company
00:52:57
>> comes at a cost though working hard
00:52:59
>> yes it it comes at a trade-off and and
00:53:01
we we believe in flexibility so people
00:53:05
confuse kind of lack of flexibility to
00:53:07
working hard you can work hard and at
00:53:10
the same time you can have flexibility
00:53:11
so if you want to have dinner with your
00:53:13
family and I'm I'm religious about
00:53:15
having dinners with my family when I'm
00:53:16
in town you know 6:00 to 8 uh absolutely
00:53:19
spend that I'm with my family, but at,
00:53:22
you know, 9:30 p.m. I'm checking emails.
00:53:24
>> Mhm.
00:53:24
>> Right. When I wake up at 5:30 and a.m.
00:53:27
I'm checking emails. So, of course,
00:53:28
there are trade-offs. And, you know,
00:53:30
life is about trade-offs.
00:53:32
>> I think one of the most important things
00:53:33
I've learned from interviewing CEOs and
00:53:35
generally we've gone through a
00:53:36
transition of COVID and remote work and
00:53:37
then come back into like everyone's in
00:53:39
the office again is actually the most
00:53:41
important thing is what you just said,
00:53:42
which is being honest with people so
00:53:43
that they can make decisions for
00:53:45
themselves in their lives. I think the
00:53:46
the thing that one might describe as
00:53:48
toxic is when you say something
00:53:51
publicly, but then when they arrive,
00:53:52
it's a completely different deal. But
00:53:54
what you're doing is you're being honest
00:53:56
and you're therefore allowing people to
00:53:57
make decisions for themselves in their
00:53:58
own lives.
00:53:59
>> And I'm allowing them to be honest back
00:54:00
to me.
00:54:01
>> Yeah. And you're a that's a that's a
00:54:03
company culture that someone like me
00:54:04
would be attracted to.
00:54:05
>> Absolutely.
00:54:05
>> But there's lots of people listening
00:54:06
that couldn't think of anything worse.
00:54:07
>> And that's okay.
00:54:08
>> Yes. Yeah.
00:54:09
>> There are plenty of companies that they
00:54:10
could find or plenty of causes that they
00:54:12
can find. It's fine. You said learn to
00:54:14
work hard. Learn
00:54:17
>> it's a it's a skill.
00:54:19
>> Really?
00:54:19
>> Yes. Of course it is because you you've
00:54:22
got to the idea of just staying focused
00:54:25
on something, not being discouraged by
00:54:27
failing, trying over and over again and
00:54:30
just working harder than others. It's
00:54:32
not something you can turn on and off. I
00:54:34
see it in people all the time. There's
00:54:36
just like this grim determination. like
00:54:39
we uh at Uber that there's actually
00:54:41
saying it's it's it's inside one of our
00:54:43
values. Embrace the grind, you know,
00:54:46
embrace it. That's
00:54:49
that's a learned skill. That's not
00:54:50
something you're born with. Maybe maybe
00:54:52
there's an element that you're born
00:54:53
with.
00:54:53
>> Have you ever seen someone who isn't a
00:54:55
hard worker become a really hard worker,
00:54:58
an exceptionally hard worker?
00:54:59
>> Ah, that's a good question. No, no one
00:55:02
doesn't occur to me. Have you?
00:55:05
>> No. I I heard I think it might have been
00:55:08
maybe Brian Chesky Airbnb or Elon say
00:55:11
that he's never seen someone who wasn't
00:55:13
a hard worker become a really hard
00:55:15
worker.
00:55:16
>> That's interesting.
00:55:16
>> And this is why
00:55:17
>> I'm trying to come up with someone
00:55:20
failing so far.
00:55:21
>> And maybe I might posit that it's
00:55:23
somewhat to do with you know these
00:55:26
photos that you have in front of you,
00:55:27
your childhood, your early context which
00:55:30
you didn't choose. I also working hard
00:55:31
here. But yeah,
00:55:32
>> but that you were forged in such a way
00:55:35
that you were going to be
00:55:36
>> ruthless. So relentless is the word I
00:55:38
meant.
00:55:39
>> Yeah. I I mean ruthless to myself.
00:55:41
>> Mhm.
00:55:41
>> Relentless. Relentless is right. You
00:55:43
know, I think I think at one point Jeff
00:55:45
Bezos was going to call Amazon
00:55:46
relentless. That was uh he was thinking
00:55:49
about that being the name of the
00:55:50
company,
00:55:50
>> right? It's it's just and and that is
00:55:54
when I see successful technology
00:55:56
companies and especially technology
00:55:57
companies there is this relentlessness
00:56:00
about them like at Uber we have lots of
00:56:02
different groups that are trying to do
00:56:04
different things but each and every team
00:56:08
is built and targeted on optimizing and
00:56:12
improving their own particular function.
00:56:15
There isn't a piece of the company that
00:56:17
is not improving every single day. And
00:56:19
if they're not improving fast enough,
00:56:21
someone else is going to take their
00:56:23
place and going to improve it. So as a
00:56:24
as an organism, every part of the
00:56:27
company, whether it's a payments team in
00:56:30
terms of new payments types or uh
00:56:32
payment success or the fraud team or the
00:56:36
mobile app team in terms of conversions,
00:56:38
etc. Every team is set up in and
00:56:41
organized for and gold on improving
00:56:44
everything that they do. So the whole
00:56:46
company in small ways is constantly
00:56:49
improving never ever stopping and it is
00:56:52
that relentless nature of business and
00:56:54
and the minute and it's not good enough
00:56:56
to get better. We have to get better
00:56:59
faster than our competitors because our
00:57:01
competitors are all getting better as
00:57:02
well. So it's it's basically like who
00:57:05
can adapt faster to either the reality
00:57:08
of the market as it is today or the
00:57:11
prediction of the market as you see it
00:57:12
tomorrow. And it's the speed of change
00:57:15
and it's identification of the
00:57:17
opportunity. Those are the two factors I
00:57:19
think that are most important. Um, and
00:57:22
the speed of change, you know, if you
00:57:24
can work fast, you're kind of
00:57:25
accelerating time. You know, every one
00:57:29
shot that you take, I can take two
00:57:31
shots. I've got more time than you do.
00:57:32
And then, of course, there's identifying
00:57:34
the opportunity, going after it. Those
00:57:36
are the two things you really have to
00:57:37
get right. If you're taking two shots,
00:57:39
not only you going to get two data
00:57:41
points of information, but you're also
00:57:43
increasing your probability of having a
00:57:44
successful shot by like 100%.
00:57:46
>> Shots on goal. Just shots on goal.
00:57:48
>> How do you create a culture of
00:57:49
continuous improvement? Because
00:57:51
successful companies, as you kind of
00:57:52
highlighted earlier, they become
00:57:53
complacent with their victories and they
00:57:55
like to take some time off and celebrate
00:57:57
and
00:57:57
>> you know, we high five and then and then
00:57:59
we chill and then actually the studies
00:58:00
show they did this big meta analysis
00:58:02
where they looked at successful
00:58:03
companies and they showed that they
00:58:04
become risk adverse.
00:58:06
>> Totally. because they lost a version.
00:58:08
They have something to lose now. So just
00:58:10
protect.
00:58:11
>> I think the good news to some extent
00:58:13
with Uber is that we've always been a
00:58:15
company that has had a chip on its
00:58:17
shoulder. You know, the company had a
00:58:19
chip on it shoulder when it was founded
00:58:21
and had to like fight taxi unions for
00:58:23
its very existence. Uh and then the
00:58:26
disaster happened with Travis leaving
00:58:29
and then a new CEO coming in at the
00:58:31
time. That was a really really difficult
00:58:32
time. Then we went through a period of
00:58:35
COVID which was again a disaster for the
00:58:37
company but ultimately prepared us to to
00:58:39
do better. Then people saying you know
00:58:41
it was a tough IPO. Uh Uber is never
00:58:44
going to get profitable and today we're
00:58:46
incredibly successful but we've got the
00:58:49
challenge and the opportunity of AI and
00:58:51
autonomous. So we've always been a
00:58:53
company that has been I would say
00:58:55
underestimated
00:58:58
and that feeds into our culture that
00:59:01
this is a we are a hungry company and I
00:59:04
do think we're sometimes
00:59:07
guilty of getting complacent in little
00:59:09
ways and I have a leadership team that
00:59:12
when they see complacency more often
00:59:15
than not than not they identify it and
00:59:17
they get it the hell out. It's it's a
00:59:20
team that is not satisfied, that's
00:59:22
always driving and I love that about us.
00:59:25
>> How does one balance enjoying the
00:59:28
success and the accomplishments? I mean,
00:59:30
you've turned this company around,
00:59:31
highly profitable company. Everyone that
00:59:33
I've spoken to, many of our mutual
00:59:35
friends have talked lovingly about the
00:59:37
impact you've had on the business. I
00:59:38
mean, the numbers speak for themselves.
00:59:40
When you joined Uber, Uber was losing
00:59:41
2.5 to 3 billion per year. Now, it
00:59:44
generates 8.5 billion in free cash flow
00:59:47
every year.
00:59:48
How do you get people to
00:59:50
>> 9.8 in the last year, but
00:59:52
>> you you're counting 9.8. Okay.
00:59:54
Incredible.
00:59:57
>> Celebrate. Chill.
00:59:58
>> Sure. Well, you you can you can
01:00:00
celebrate or not chill.
01:00:02
>> Okay. How
01:00:02
>> you can do we we take those moments. We
01:00:04
do c it's cool to run a company. That's
01:00:07
so important. It's cool to run a company
01:00:08
that's hitting record after record after
01:00:10
record. And we do celebrate those
01:00:13
records and we do celebrate those teams.
01:00:15
Maybe not enough. And again, it goes to
01:00:16
like what what what mistake would you
01:00:19
rather make? I'd I'd rather make the
01:00:21
mistake of celebrating a little bit too
01:00:23
little and kind of being a little pissed
01:00:25
off about life in general and pushing.
01:00:28
But um we we take our moments, but the
01:00:31
the the success itself, I don't know,
01:00:33
succeeding is almost a celebration in
01:00:35
and of itself. And and when you're
01:00:37
succeeding in such a competitive field,
01:00:40
I just find a deep sense of satisfaction
01:00:42
there. Uh and I think my team does, too.
01:00:45
How do you get the team to take take
01:00:47
those risks that they need to take? Is
01:00:49
there something you do you like
01:00:50
incentivize them on the amount of shots
01:00:52
they take? How do you do that? One is
01:00:54
they're always moving fast. That's what
01:00:56
we do. We push we're constantly pushing
01:00:59
the pace of the company in terms of
01:01:00
execution. So I think that helps. But
01:01:03
but I do think that there's there's a
01:01:05
mechanism that we talk now about that
01:01:07
I've talked to a team about taking smart
01:01:08
risks. I think you're absolutely right
01:01:10
which is as companies get bigger and
01:01:12
more successful they tend to become more
01:01:14
riskaverse
01:01:16
and it should be the exact opposite
01:01:17
because you can take more risks you can
01:01:19
make more mistakes because you've got
01:01:21
kind of this 9.8 8 billion of cash flow
01:01:23
to protect yourself against some of
01:01:25
those mistakes. So I have definitely in
01:01:28
the past I would say two years pushed
01:01:31
the team actively to push the envelope
01:01:33
in terms of risk. Don't be defensive, be
01:01:36
offensive, etc. And it comes from my
01:01:38
challenging the teams, my talking about
01:01:40
it, setting examples of sometimes
01:01:43
failing and then saying it's okay,
01:01:45
moving on. Uh and then sometimes my
01:01:49
taking decisions that are seen as more
01:01:51
risky than not. that setting the example
01:01:53
then allows the company to follow.
01:01:55
>> So if I was in one of your teams, what
01:01:58
how do you think about goal setting for
01:02:00
me?
01:02:00
>> Um all the teams have different goals,
01:02:02
business goals. The ads team has to
01:02:05
drive at technologydriven incremental ad
01:02:10
uh dollars per year andor customer
01:02:13
satisfaction uh customer NPS etc. So
01:02:16
every team has its own goals uh and they
01:02:20
organize against those goals and they
01:02:22
execute those goals and they're
01:02:23
religiously tracked. It's the best
01:02:25
mechanism that we have. I just wish that
01:02:28
there was a better one because the art
01:02:30
of the goal setting becomes the issue
01:02:32
which is are you setting the right
01:02:33
goals? Are they too ambitious? Are they
01:02:35
not ambitious enough? And sometimes
01:02:39
people can game the system. So we use it
01:02:42
but I can't tell you that it's perfect.
01:02:44
What about you talked earlier about
01:02:45
values. A lot of companies go and do an
01:02:47
offsite and they write some words on a
01:02:48
words on a white on a wall and they say
01:02:50
ambition, enthusiasm, courage, whatever.
01:02:53
What do you think of that sort of
01:02:54
corporate habit of go values and stuff?
01:02:58
>> We went through the exercise, failed the
01:03:00
first time, succeeded the second time.
01:03:04
We and and when it and we failed when it
01:03:07
first came to Uber, obviously there was
01:03:09
a view that there we needed a cultural
01:03:11
reset of the company and so it was very
01:03:15
important for me to go and inspect the
01:03:17
culture of the company and
01:03:20
change it. It was a statement and the
01:03:23
culture had I think some cool stuff in
01:03:26
there, some cool ideas in there. Like
01:03:27
for example, there was one value that
01:03:29
was um to stepping and the idea of toe
01:03:32
stepping is is what you and I talked
01:03:34
about earlier, which is we want to
01:03:36
challenge each other within the
01:03:38
organization. And so if I have to step
01:03:40
on your toes and tell you something that
01:03:42
you don't want to hear, I'm allowed to
01:03:45
even though it hurts you uh because the
01:03:48
truth is more important. So sometimes
01:03:50
the truth hurts and that's okay. That
01:03:52
was the idea of toestepping. And what
01:03:54
happened was sometimes those values
01:03:56
became weaponized where to stepping
01:03:59
whose spirit came from a place of we
01:04:02
want to speak the truth became an excuse
01:04:05
to be a jerk.
01:04:07
>> Right? So the values in and of
01:04:09
themselves can be great or
01:04:14
terrible based on how you execute on on
01:04:17
those values. When I first came in, we
01:04:19
had to redo the values. And I was there
01:04:22
there's a saying by um Jeff Bezos that
01:04:24
that I love, which is like the the
01:04:26
values of the company almost they they
01:04:28
they appear the value system of the
01:04:30
company appears to some extent. You
01:04:32
don't if you say thou shalt, you're
01:04:33
going to fail because the company shall,
01:04:36
>> right? And the approach that we first
01:04:38
took was that we will actually get the
01:04:42
value system. We had we had a vote for
01:04:45
all the employees in the company. What
01:04:46
values do you think should be part of
01:04:48
the new Uber, etc. We took all the
01:04:50
signal and then we edited it and came up
01:04:52
with a new list of of values. And there
01:04:55
was one value that I wrote myself. It
01:04:59
was mine and it was do the right thing.
01:05:03
Period. It wasn't crowdsourced. It was
01:05:06
just that. And and usually with these
01:05:08
values, you're like there's a whole
01:05:09
explanation and people are like, "Well,
01:05:11
what does do the right thing period
01:05:13
mean?" like you have to figure it out.
01:05:17
And for me, it it was a message to the
01:05:20
whole company, which was if you work at
01:05:23
Uber, you have a responsibility and I'm
01:05:26
not going to tell you exactly what to
01:05:27
do. So, use your judgment. And it's our
01:05:29
expectation that you use your judgment
01:05:31
to do the right thing. And sometimes
01:05:32
doing the right thing, it's not clear.
01:05:34
Should I go after my business goal?
01:05:35
Should I compromise on a business goal?
01:05:38
Because safety is in question. Of
01:05:39
course, you should. Safety comes first
01:05:40
before business, etc. But we were
01:05:43
putting that weight and that
01:05:44
responsibility in uh within the
01:05:46
employees. But the rest of the value
01:05:49
system that was kind of crowdsourced, it
01:05:52
was forgettable because it was the kind
01:05:54
of stuff that you passion, ambition,
01:05:56
teamwork, like what company doesn't
01:05:59
believe in teamwork? Give me a break. So
01:06:02
we uh Nikki uh Krishna Murphy who runs
01:06:05
uh people she pushed me to reset the
01:06:10
values four or five years in by then I
01:06:13
felt like I did have a right to have a
01:06:15
point of view I'd been there we weren't
01:06:18
quite done with the turnaround etc but I
01:06:20
was a part of the company and then we
01:06:22
came up with a value set which is
01:06:24
different you know there's uh our one of
01:06:27
our values by the way go get it was the
01:06:29
only one that survived
01:06:30
No, no, sorry. Uh, do the right thing
01:06:32
was the only one that survived. But for
01:06:34
example, go get it is one of our top
01:06:36
values. And the idea of go get it is
01:06:38
obviously it's literally what we do. We
01:06:40
go we help people go or get it, right?
01:06:44
Rise and eats. So it's kind of fun in
01:06:46
terms of what we do, but it's an
01:06:48
attitude which is we as a company, we're
01:06:52
go-getters. We're going to be
01:06:53
aggressive. We're going to push. We're
01:06:55
going to move fast. We play to win. And
01:06:58
so the value sets that we have, go get
01:07:00
it or one that I really like, great
01:07:03
minds don't think alike. We came up with
01:07:06
a with a set of values which I think is
01:07:08
unusual and describes how we are
01:07:10
different as a company and it's really
01:07:12
true to who we are.
01:07:13
>> How important is um this sort of this
01:07:15
attitude of failure and experimentation
01:07:17
especially in a world that's
01:07:18
transitioning as fast as the one we're
01:07:20
in. When you listen to people like Ray
01:07:21
Kurswell his predictions of the future
01:07:23
he says that if you're 10 now by the age
01:07:24
of 60 you'll experience a year's change
01:07:27
in I think it's 11 days and just this
01:07:28
sort of this sort of exponential
01:07:31
acceleration
01:07:31
>> the law of accelerating returns.
01:07:33
>> Yeah. Like how do you how do you you
01:07:34
know how do you create a culture or
01:07:36
build a team in a world where the
01:07:37
correct answer is changing this quickly?
01:07:40
I I think that it is um setting a
01:07:44
culture that does embrace that change
01:07:47
and is constantly challenging itself.
01:07:49
And I will give uh Travis and the
01:07:53
founding team credit. You know that
01:07:54
there's kind of this
01:07:57
idea of everything that they did was
01:07:58
terrible and that's just not true. We
01:08:00
have a very high talent bar at the
01:08:03
company. We have always kept a high
01:08:05
talent bar at the company and we haven't
01:08:06
compromised. And what I found is that
01:08:09
talented people who are also driven are
01:08:13
on a constant hunt for the truth. So
01:08:17
culture isn't enough. You actually need
01:08:19
the right people at the company. And I
01:08:21
think we've got a company that does have
01:08:23
a chip on a shoulder
01:08:25
was born out of the creation of a new
01:08:28
industry. So we've experienced it. Um,
01:08:32
and we have a group of people who are
01:08:34
driven and hungry
01:08:37
and are constantly looking for change
01:08:41
and you got a leader and a leadership
01:08:43
team that's pushing the company to do so
01:08:45
and doesn't penalize
01:08:48
folks for challenging them. I think it's
01:08:50
kind of this stew that you have to put
01:08:51
together, but it's a combination of
01:08:54
culture and people. Do you have any
01:08:55
mental case studies of great bets the
01:08:58
company has taken that most people
01:09:00
wouldn't have taken or thought was wrong
01:09:02
or wouldn't have taken the risk on that
01:09:03
trans transpired to be critical to your
01:09:05
success?
01:09:06
>> Well, you know, I don't know about um
01:09:09
well, I think it will be critical to to
01:09:11
the success, but there's a funny one
01:09:12
which is
01:09:15
taxis
01:09:16
are one of the fastest growing parts of
01:09:19
Uber's business. So you remember Uber,
01:09:21
we started as the enemy of taxis
01:09:24
>> and built out this peer-to-peer ride
01:09:26
sharing. And it's probably five or six
01:09:30
years ago, our head of product now,
01:09:32
Sachin, he worked on building kind of um
01:09:36
a technology that would allow taxi
01:09:38
companies to to have their own little
01:09:40
Uber app. And eventually he came to
01:09:42
Uber, thank God, and he's like, well,
01:09:44
why don't we build that in Uber? Why
01:09:46
don't we actually build taxis on Uber?
01:09:49
And originally within the company and
01:09:51
and I I kept in touch with some of the
01:09:53
founders just cuz I want their advice
01:09:55
cuz why not? You know, they they built a
01:09:57
great company. I'm standing on the
01:09:59
shoulders of giants. Uh they said it's
01:10:02
the most idiotic thing on earth that you
01:10:04
can't wire up taxis. They hate us. They
01:10:06
set rates will be terrible. Lots of
01:10:07
technical reasons. They had tried it
01:10:09
earlier. It was a total failure. But I
01:10:12
think Sachin
01:10:14
uh having worked in the industry and
01:10:17
then my being kind of ignorant saying
01:10:19
why the hell not try it that combination
01:10:20
allowed us to build out a taxi product
01:10:23
and taxi is the fastest growing segment
01:10:24
of the company and it went completely
01:10:26
against the founding of the company. But
01:10:28
now we're you know I I hope to have
01:10:31
every single taxi in the world wired up
01:10:32
to Uber. Why not?
01:10:35
>> For the first 10 years that I was a
01:10:36
founder I didn't prioritize getting a
01:10:38
good night's sleep at all. But over
01:10:39
time, I started to realize that it was
01:10:41
the key metric that influenced
01:10:42
everything in my life. My mood, my
01:10:43
focus, my ability to show up and to
01:10:45
think clearly and to lead well. So now
01:10:47
with my lifestyle being pretty crazy,
01:10:48
traveling across time zones, working
01:10:50
late, training late, I still fight to
01:10:51
protect my sleep, which sometimes means
01:10:53
starting the day a little bit later. It
01:10:54
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01:11:41
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incredibly psychologically uncomfortable
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01:13:52
description below.
01:13:54
And there's another um there's an alien
01:13:56
that's arrived amongst us um which is
01:13:58
AI. And you've you know Uber's always
01:14:00
been somewhat powered from what I
01:14:01
understand by very much so degree but um
01:14:04
the world has changed in the last couple
01:14:05
years as it relates to AI. There's been
01:14:07
a huge acceleration in investment and
01:14:09
improvement of the technology. What do
01:14:10
you
01:14:12
aside from Uber?
01:14:15
>> You talked earlier about your early
01:14:16
childhood and how you know you grew up
01:14:18
with a bit of a paranoia about losing
01:14:20
everything because that's what you
01:14:21
experienced as a young man.
01:14:23
>> You see this technology arrive which is
01:14:24
fundamentally disruptive to all of us
01:14:26
including me as a podcaster. Yeah,
01:14:27
>> I've done the tests and the retention
01:14:29
isn't the retention isn't far off when
01:14:31
it's me or AI. So, it's slightly
01:14:33
concerning, but like how do you how do
01:14:35
you approach such a disruptive
01:14:36
technology? Um, how do you think of it
01:14:39
broadly and the impact it's going to
01:14:40
have on society? And are you paranoid?
01:14:43
>> I'm not paranoid. I'm not I guess I was
01:14:46
going to say I'm not built that way, but
01:14:48
maybe I am. I I think my instinct is
01:14:50
always just to go just to move forward.
01:14:52
And Uber has been built out of an AI
01:14:55
core. all of our pricing, all of our
01:14:57
routing, who you're matched with, uh
01:15:00
whether or not a courier batches a trip,
01:15:03
which is do they take two orders or one
01:15:05
order. All of our systems, underlying
01:15:07
systems are are driven by AI. We do 40
01:15:10
million trips a day. You know, that kind
01:15:12
of orchestration can't be done by uh
01:15:16
heristic rules and we've got to work on
01:15:18
the streets of New York and the streets
01:15:20
of Logos as well. So the the we we have
01:15:24
built the entire company on small AI
01:15:28
models that have been trained on local
01:15:30
problems and then get stitched together.
01:15:32
That's literally what the company is. So
01:15:34
for us AI is it's kind of a core skill
01:15:36
set and and AI can it can mess things
01:15:39
up, right? It it's not because it's not
01:15:41
heruristics based. There are emergent
01:15:45
issues that come out of an AI that works
01:15:49
96% of the time and 4% of the time it
01:15:51
screws up. So we're comfortable with the
01:15:54
uncertainty layer of AI as a company. So
01:15:57
we are I would say moving headlong into
01:16:00
AI. We're not one of the, you know,
01:16:03
research shops, but I would say in terms
01:16:04
of applied AI, the team is driving to
01:16:09
build AI kind of newer AI experiences
01:16:12
across the company.
01:16:14
But, you know, stepping back as a as a
01:16:16
person, the impact on society is going
01:16:19
to be enormous. And going back to
01:16:22
Kurszswwell's kind of law of
01:16:24
accelerating returns,
01:16:26
whereas previously society has always
01:16:29
been able to adjust to these kinds of
01:16:31
shifts. Um, it's been able to adjust
01:16:34
because it had time to adjust. And AI
01:16:39
literally quite literally thinks and AI
01:16:42
will be able to replace the work that
01:16:47
70 80% of humans can do over the next 10
01:16:50
years. 10 years is not a lot of time for
01:16:53
society to adjust to that kind of an
01:16:55
impact. Now are they going to be more
01:16:57
expensive than humans, cheaper than
01:16:58
humans, etc. Who knows? But the
01:17:00
capability will be there probably in the
01:17:02
next 10 years for intellectual jobs
01:17:04
probably call it 15 years for physical
01:17:07
15 20 years for physical jobs because
01:17:10
physical AI
01:17:11
>> is harder you know robots cars etc more
01:17:16
capital heavy takes longer have to deal
01:17:18
with the physical world so the the
01:17:21
changes in society are going to be giant
01:17:24
but my view is you can't slow down the
01:17:29
rate of change.
01:17:31
And if you're a part of that change, at
01:17:34
least you can have some say as to how
01:17:38
that change imprints on society and
01:17:40
imprints on the real world. And so for
01:17:42
me, I'm leaning in. It's a it's a very
01:17:45
very exciting time.
01:17:47
>> 70 to 80% of jobs will be uh disrupted
01:17:50
by AI is like broadly what you said
01:17:52
there. And the pace of change is going
01:17:54
to mean that a lot of people don't have
01:17:56
new jobs to go to because we haven't
01:17:58
>> I think that's the question
01:17:59
>> the retraining challenge and people say
01:18:01
well there's going to be jobs in AI but
01:18:02
like listen I got some friends that
01:18:04
can't just
01:18:06
>> society's always adjusted right farming
01:18:08
was a huge percentage of our labor force
01:18:11
now it's less than 1%
01:18:12
>> but the speed of
01:18:13
>> yeah that I I think that's a question
01:18:14
and you could argue that AIs will be
01:18:16
able to retrain you right the job
01:18:18
retraining is going to change so of
01:18:20
course societyy's going to adjust
01:18:22
>> but I I do think it raises questions,
01:18:24
real questions.
01:18:25
>> I've I've not been able to get an answer
01:18:26
on that really, I think, from the
01:18:28
experts in AI that I've interviewed,
01:18:29
which is like what do those 70 or 80
01:18:31
people% of people do? Because we're
01:18:32
seeing in our own business that there's
01:18:34
many jobs which we would have hired for
01:18:35
previously.
01:18:36
>> Yeah.
01:18:36
>> Um across the board that AI is now doing
01:18:39
exceptionally well. And every single
01:18:40
day, literally daily, we try to see if
01:18:43
the new model, Gemini Pro 3 or whatever,
01:18:45
can do things that we're currently doing
01:18:47
manually. And every day we're getting
01:18:48
those little breakthroughs and going,
01:18:49
"Oh, okay. Now we no longer need to."
01:18:51
And coding is one of those big areas you
01:18:53
talk about a lot where there's been
01:18:54
already sort of big dis disruption
01:18:57
positive disruption at Uber and a lot of
01:18:59
your coders are now using AI to
01:19:01
>> yeah about 90% of our coders are using
01:19:03
AI now that's easy to say but but there
01:19:06
are probably 30% of them that were power
01:19:09
users they are showing a clear
01:19:12
um differentiation in the number of
01:19:14
diffs for example how much a diff is a
01:19:17
code release that's different from the
01:19:19
last code release. So one of the
01:19:20
measurements of productivity is just how
01:19:23
many diffs are you putting to the
01:19:24
codebase. Uber's just a giant codebase.
01:19:26
That's what we are. And so our engineers
01:19:28
are literally the builders of the
01:19:30
company. They are manufacturing the
01:19:32
bricks that go into the system. Uh and
01:19:34
they're architects who are kind of
01:19:36
thinking about what the system should
01:19:37
should look like. Uh, and so while 90%
01:19:41
of our engineers are using
01:19:44
AI tools of some sort, there's about 30%
01:19:47
of them that are using them at a
01:19:49
completely accelerated pace. And it
01:19:52
really is changing their productivity in
01:19:55
a way that I've never ever seen before.
01:19:57
Ultimately, I do think that the
01:20:01
job of a coder is going to change more
01:20:03
and more from actually writing the code
01:20:06
from to some extent orchestrating agents
01:20:09
who are writing the code or building
01:20:13
systems for you. It becomes more of an
01:20:14
orchestration job versus a manual
01:20:17
writing job. But the job will still be
01:20:20
there. And my attitude is if my average
01:20:23
engineer became 25 25% more efficient,
01:20:26
which we haven't gone there yet, but we
01:20:28
will get there. I'm gonna hire more
01:20:30
engineers because I want to go faster.
01:20:31
That there's still lots of unsolved
01:20:34
problems that we haven't solved. But I
01:20:36
can imagine, you know, maybe 5 years
01:20:37
from now as the engineers get more and
01:20:40
more productive, I may not decide to add
01:20:42
engineering headcount because at that
01:20:44
point instead of adding an engineer, I
01:20:46
should add agents and buy some more GPUs
01:20:48
from Nvidia. That may be the investment
01:20:50
in the future. We'll see
01:20:51
>> because thinking about linear versus
01:20:53
exponential as well. If we imagine a
01:20:54
rate of improvement, I don't know, in my
01:20:56
head I go, well, won't there come a time
01:20:58
where you as the CEO or you and a team,
01:21:01
an executive team can tell an agent what
01:21:03
you want to build? You can show it the
01:21:05
strategy and theoretically, I mean, I
01:21:07
can't figure out how this isn't going to
01:21:08
be possible. The agents will then build
01:21:11
and actually maybe they don't even need
01:21:13
you to set the strategy. Maybe
01:21:16
but theoretically, you know, if they if
01:21:17
you imagine any rate of improvement in
01:21:19
the intelligence, maybe at some point
01:21:20
they're going to go, "Well, listen, we
01:21:21
there's a better strategy here." DAR
01:21:22
>> what one of my uh uh one of my team
01:21:26
members told me that some teams have
01:21:28
built a DAR AI you know so so that they
01:21:32
basically make the presentation to the
01:21:34
DAR AI as a prep for making a
01:21:38
presentation to me because you can
01:21:39
imagine like you know by the time
01:21:41
something comes to me there's been a
01:21:42
prep and a meeting and the and the slide
01:21:45
deck has been beautifully honed so they
01:21:46
have DAR AI to tune their prep. Are you
01:21:49
concerned they might show DAR AI to the
01:21:51
board?
01:21:53
>> I was like I was like can I see the code
01:21:55
for DAR AI? I'm curious. She's like no
01:21:57
we're not showing it to you.
01:22:00
>> But is there anything like falsifiable
01:22:01
in what I just said about that there
01:22:03
coming a time in the not so near future
01:22:05
if we imagine exponential improvement
01:22:07
where
01:22:08
>> I think I think where AI
01:22:11
still is missing a beat that humans and
01:22:13
other creatures have is ability to learn
01:22:16
real time. Right? So if if you think
01:22:18
about you and I are learning for this
01:22:20
conversation and maybe your behavior is
01:22:23
going to change by 0.1% because of
01:22:25
actually what you learn here and the
01:22:27
construct of most large AI models is
01:22:32
capture enorm enormous amounts of data
01:22:34
based on the skill set that you're
01:22:35
trying to drive train pre-train that
01:22:39
model put it into the real world and
01:22:42
then there's some post-training of the
01:22:43
of the model based on feedback from from
01:22:45
the world and then when the model's is
01:22:47
released. It's kind of released, right?
01:22:50
And the way the model learns is, you
01:22:52
know, 35 becomes 38, but 35 didn't
01:22:56
learn. The engineers went out and built,
01:22:59
you know, built a new model that's 38
01:23:01
that might have elements of 35 to it,
01:23:04
etc. So, the the AI agents aren't
01:23:08
learning now. Now a lot of what we're
01:23:10
doing is we're building around the
01:23:12
foundation models that then bring kind
01:23:15
of the signals from the real world and
01:23:16
use the skills that the foundation
01:23:18
models have to do good stuff. So you can
01:23:22
>> post- training I'm posting
01:23:23
>> Exactly. So well so we are post-training
01:23:27
but we're learning real time as human
01:23:30
beings and when the models can learn
01:23:34
real time
01:23:35
>> that I think is the point at which I'm
01:23:38
going to kind of think yeah we are all
01:23:41
replaceable but at this point I haven't
01:23:43
seen a model that can learn real time.
01:23:45
One of the real areas of disruption in
01:23:46
AI has been autonomous vehicles. And I
01:23:48
was just before we started recording, I
01:23:49
was saying that uh I have a Tesla in LA
01:23:51
where I live.
01:23:52
>> And it's staggering that I can get in
01:23:55
the car,
01:23:56
>> press a button, and drive two and a half
01:23:58
hours to Joshua Tree without having to
01:23:59
touch the wheel or the the pedals.
01:24:01
>> Now driving, I think, is one of the
01:24:03
biggest employees in the world. Like as
01:24:05
a profession,
01:24:05
>> I mean, we've got nine and a half
01:24:07
million drivers and couriers on our
01:24:09
platform. We are the
01:24:11
largest organizer of flexible work
01:24:13
around the world. and they I I think the
01:24:15
second largest um workforce is a Chinese
01:24:17
army.
01:24:18
>> Wow.
01:24:19
>> Yeah. It's a big group of folks that
01:24:21
we've organized
01:24:22
>> and statistically there's less accidents
01:24:25
in an autonomous Tesla than there is if
01:24:27
a human drives it. So it's safer for my
01:24:29
car to drive itself statistically than
01:24:31
for me to drive it. That's true, right?
01:24:33
That the autonomous driving is currently
01:24:34
safer.
01:24:35
>> That's true. So Whimos are safer. And
01:24:37
then now you are a backup to the Tesla,
01:24:40
right, as a human being. So I've I've
01:24:42
got a Tesla as well. And once in a while
01:24:44
it disengages and I've got to or I've
01:24:46
got to disengage. So
01:24:49
it it's not necessarily the pure
01:24:52
autonomous agent that's better than
01:24:53
humans, but definitely the autonomous
01:24:56
agent with a human backup. No question
01:24:58
that's better than the pure human.
01:25:00
>> And we can't be far away from it just
01:25:01
being
01:25:02
>> I mean Whimo's there already, right? Uh
01:25:04
you you live in LA. Uh they've got the
01:25:07
Whimos. We work with them in Austin uh
01:25:09
in Atlanta. And by all accounts, Whimo
01:25:12
drivers are safer than human beings. And
01:25:14
that's going to be true of AV all over
01:25:16
the world. You know, there are million
01:25:19
deaths uh from driving every year in the
01:25:23
world. In the US, it's between 35,000
01:25:26
and 40,000 uh auto fatalities. So to the
01:25:30
extent that these these autonomous
01:25:32
agents and drivers can be better than
01:25:34
humans and they will be better than
01:25:36
humans over a period of time uh there's
01:25:38
a real return on human life as a result
01:25:41
of this
01:25:42
>> those 9 million drivers careers that you
01:25:44
have will be out of work conceivably in
01:25:47
the you know talking about being honest
01:25:49
about the situation. Yeah, I think again
01:25:51
it goes to physical AI as well, right?
01:25:53
So I think 20 years from now, you can
01:25:56
imagine that those 9 million will be
01:26:00
20 million uh AVs maybe, but we have
01:26:03
time between now and then partially
01:26:05
because we don't operate in the virtual
01:26:07
world, right? We operate in the physical
01:26:09
world. You have to get the regulations
01:26:10
up. You have to build the cars, you have
01:26:12
to build the sensor stacks, the the
01:26:14
models have to get there. So there is
01:26:16
time between now and then, but you can
01:26:18
imagine the majority of our trips being
01:26:22
fulfilled by robots of some kind.
01:26:25
Probably not 10 years from now, but you
01:26:28
go 15, 20 years from now, you're going
01:26:30
to start getting there.
01:26:32
>> What do the 9 million people do?
01:26:35
>> I don't know. Now we are expanding the
01:26:39
kind of work that's available on on on
01:26:41
the platform partially as a result of
01:26:43
it. Right? We used to be the only work
01:26:45
is driving. Now there's delivering. You
01:26:48
can have shoppers as well. I think it'll
01:26:49
be a little while at least before you
01:26:51
get AI shoppers. And now actually we
01:26:54
have a team called Uber AI solutions
01:26:57
that uh allows people to train these
01:27:00
same agents and train uh AI agents and
01:27:04
AI models uh and do all kinds of
01:27:06
knowledgebased work on their phone as
01:27:09
well to kind of extend the kind of work
01:27:12
that we offer uh humans on our platform
01:27:15
and different opportunities for for them
01:27:17
to to make money. So we are extending
01:27:19
the platform and then the question is
01:27:21
how much of the platform gets automated
01:27:23
and what's the velocity at which we can
01:27:25
extend our platform into other kinds of
01:27:27
work versus the velocity of automation.
01:27:29
I can't tell you which is going to go
01:27:30
faster.
01:27:31
>> Hands on heart though it does appear
01:27:33
that unemployment is going to be
01:27:35
significantly increased in a world of AI
01:27:37
especially we just imagine this sort of
01:27:39
continual rate of improvement. I just
01:27:41
can't
01:27:41
>> you you you would have to I unless again
01:27:45
historically in societies new kinds of
01:27:48
jobs have come up
01:27:49
>> knowledge jobs physical jobs and now
01:27:51
we've disrupted both
01:27:53
>> that's why there's a question here and I
01:27:56
do think there's a real question as to
01:27:57
the ability of societies to retrain the
01:27:59
abilities of human beings to retrain
01:28:02
themselves AI is going to be a part of
01:28:04
that but the timing there how fast is it
01:28:07
going to go it's a real question mark I
01:28:09
I think you're absolutely I don't think
01:28:11
it's going to be a big issue
01:28:13
big issue uh in the next 5 years, but
01:28:16
when you go 5 plus years, it's going to
01:28:18
become more of a more more of an issue
01:28:20
for society at large.
01:28:21
>> It's interesting because I was thinking
01:28:23
putting two and two together about your
01:28:24
your your father's journey of coming to
01:28:26
the US, losing what he had, losing his
01:28:28
job, and the the loss of like meaning
01:28:29
and purpose being really central to him.
01:28:31
And I could see that basically from your
01:28:33
face that I think what I interpreted
01:28:36
from your face was that he struggled
01:28:37
with as any provider would the loss of
01:28:41
like meaning that comes with because
01:28:42
jobs aren't just about money that it's
01:28:44
especially you know
01:28:45
>> they give you a sense of worth. It's
01:28:48
funny. I I I read um I read a study many
01:28:50
years ago that said when they looked at
01:28:52
suicide letters specifically from men, I
01:28:55
think it was an Australian study in the
01:28:57
suicide letters that the the sentiment
01:29:00
was about not feeling
01:29:03
worth
01:29:04
>> Yes.
01:29:04
>> to your family.
01:29:05
>> Yeah.
01:29:06
>> And the extreme of that was I think my
01:29:07
family would actually now be better off
01:29:09
without me.
01:29:10
>> Interesting. And um and this kind of you
01:29:12
know I think is probably adjacent to
01:29:15
this conversation around job
01:29:16
displacement which is where are we going
01:29:18
to find our meaning in a world where
01:29:22
the machines have now disrupted our
01:29:23
intelligence and our muscles.
01:29:26
>> It's every universal income basic income
01:29:30
test has failed. You know the answer
01:29:32
that you hear from folks is well the
01:29:34
robots are going to do all the work.
01:29:36
they're going to create um utility and
01:29:39
so our work won't have to create utility
01:29:42
so people will just have money but it
01:29:45
goes to exactly what you're saying which
01:29:46
is every single test they've done now
01:29:48
it's not 20 but they've done a couple
01:29:50
tests where certain section of the
01:29:52
population similar population gets
01:29:53
income certain section doesn't and every
01:29:56
time the ones who are getting income do
01:29:59
worse in terms of outcomes because well
01:30:03
we don't know the because I The because
01:30:06
is related to what you're saying which
01:30:07
is
01:30:11
market forces kind of that force someone
01:30:15
to work then create
01:30:17
a perception of self-v valueue
01:30:19
succeeding you know most people succeed
01:30:22
if they're driven to succeed they will
01:30:23
succeed and as they succeed it comes
01:30:25
with a very very deep and important
01:30:29
feeling of I am creating value I'm
01:30:32
supporting my family I'm uh building
01:30:34
this incredible piece of art, etc.
01:30:36
Whatever that value is to you, and
01:30:38
wherever that meaning comes from, I'm an
01:30:40
incredible parent. That value is what
01:30:43
keeps people going. Uh, and I don't
01:30:46
think that, you know, the government
01:30:49
raining money down on society is going
01:30:51
to help.
01:30:52
>> It's refreshing to hear your perspective
01:30:53
on this because a lot of the time, you
01:30:55
know, you'll hear CEOs in the media just
01:30:57
saying, "It'll be fine. Everyone's going
01:30:59
to figure it out." And I think that's
01:31:00
>> historically we have figured it out. So
01:31:02
maybe they're right. But but you have to
01:31:04
ask whether they're giving you the real
01:31:06
stuff or not.
01:31:07
>> Yeah. And that's kind of what I that's
01:31:08
what I I think because I sometimes hear
01:31:10
about private conversations and the
01:31:11
private conversations I hear about the
01:31:12
sheer amount of disruption that they
01:31:13
anticipate and then when I see them on
01:31:15
like CNBC or Davos, it's be fine and
01:31:17
figure it out. And I understand the
01:31:18
incentive because if they were to start
01:31:20
ringing the bell, it might hurt their
01:31:23
own chance of like innovating and
01:31:24
fundraising and all those things. But I
01:31:26
think you sit at this sort of happy
01:31:27
medium of being Yeah. as the CEO of
01:31:29
Uber, you've got to you've got to pursue
01:31:31
the opportunity in the technology. But
01:31:33
on the other hand, to be honest and say,
01:31:34
listen, there's going to be big
01:31:36
disruption and we I don't know the
01:31:38
answers.
01:31:38
>> I remember you were talking about CNBC,
01:31:40
a CNBC anchor once we had an interview
01:31:42
and afterwards she said, uh, you know, I
01:31:45
really like you.
01:31:46
>> You actually answer my questions. And
01:31:48
I'm thinking to myself,
01:31:50
what am I not supposed to? There there's
01:31:52
like the the PR trading is always if you
01:31:55
get a bad question, don't answer the
01:31:57
question. just pivot to something else.
01:31:59
And for me, like I've I've sworn to
01:32:01
myself, uh, and Noah, who's who's up
01:32:04
there, is probably going to kill me
01:32:05
afterwards. It's just I'm going to
01:32:07
answer the question. I'm not going to do
01:32:08
the BS. And again, I have to think the
01:32:12
anchor knows what's happening. The
01:32:15
audience knows what what's happening.
01:32:17
So, I'm like, I'll answer the question.
01:32:18
If it's a shitty question, I'll deal
01:32:19
with it.
01:32:20
>> I actually don't like interviewing CEOs,
01:32:21
which is funny because the name of the
01:32:22
podcast because active
01:32:23
>> how did how did the the Cuz I I looked
01:32:26
before I came on. And I'm like, I'm
01:32:28
going to look up on uh uh yeah, the
01:32:30
CEOs. And there aren't that many CEOs.
01:32:33
>> Well, if I looked at your diary, what
01:32:35
would I find inside your diary? I would
01:32:37
probably find you contending with being
01:32:38
a father, your psychology. I might find
01:32:40
some things in there about your health.
01:32:41
I can see you're a guy that goes to the
01:32:43
gym.
01:32:43
>> Yeah.
01:32:43
>> Um and I think it's all interlin. I
01:32:45
think for you to be an exceptional CEO,
01:32:47
you probably think a lot about your
01:32:49
past, your childhood, your health, your
01:32:51
how to optimize and all these things.
01:32:53
And so honestly, you can't do a podcast
01:32:55
like this for 20 years
01:32:58
>> and just hit the same thing every day.
01:33:00
>> You need to be I need to be
01:33:01
intellectually stimulated.
01:33:02
>> And you and me are both multifaceted
01:33:04
creatures, I guess. So that's why it's
01:33:06
evolved
01:33:07
>> until we become AIs.
01:33:08
>> Until we become AIs. Yeah. Just closing
01:33:12
off on that then, um, what can we do
01:33:15
about this from an AI AV perspective? Is
01:33:18
it the government's responsibility? Is
01:33:20
it collective action?
01:33:22
So one is I do think that we don't talk
01:33:25
enough in that for example with
01:33:26
autonomous AI can be a force for good
01:33:29
right it's these drivers are going to be
01:33:30
safer than human beings and those we can
01:33:33
take the 35,000 fatalities to 3,000
01:33:36
fatalities etc. I do think that the AI's
01:33:40
the AV is going to bring down the price
01:33:42
of transportation. So a a big part of
01:33:46
our goal is to make ondemand
01:33:48
transportation available for everybody.
01:33:50
One of the folks that I was talking to
01:33:52
was talking about how Uber has changed
01:33:54
her mother's life. Like her mom can get
01:33:56
around and it just wouldn't get around
01:33:58
without it, right? We want more moms
01:34:00
like that. So, I do think it's important
01:34:02
to recognize that if transport
01:34:05
fundamental transportation becomes
01:34:06
safer, it becomes cheaper. Going back to
01:34:09
Jean's paradox, that's a good thing for
01:34:11
society, right?
01:34:14
I don't think that the answer as it
01:34:17
relates to society is to try to slow
01:34:20
down the pace of change because
01:34:23
China won't for example if we're uh
01:34:26
talking about the west. So I think you
01:34:28
just have to lean into it. I think that
01:34:31
discussions like this are important. I
01:34:32
think you look for technology leaders
01:34:34
who are talking about it. Daario, for
01:34:37
example, Anthropic is talking uh about
01:34:39
it, pissing some people off, but I think
01:34:41
he's having good discussions there. And
01:34:43
then I do think that
01:34:46
the the society arming up to be able to
01:34:49
retrain
01:34:51
large groups of people at scale is not a
01:34:55
skill. I don't see people investing that
01:34:58
and I don't see that as a core
01:34:59
capability of any of our countries etc.
01:35:02
There's one thing I can come up with, it
01:35:04
will be that is the retraining machine.
01:35:06
>> You've got f four kids.
01:35:08
>> Yes.
01:35:09
>> They come to you, they say, "Dad,
01:35:10
listen. AI, robotics, give me some
01:35:12
advice for my future. What should I be
01:35:14
doing?"
01:35:14
>> Work hard. You're going to be fine. Work
01:35:17
hard. It's it's just that's I mean, now
01:35:21
the AI theoretically can can work harder
01:35:23
than you, but I I find
01:35:26
one of the pieces of advice I give to
01:35:28
young people is don't plan. Okay. I wind
01:35:31
up, we went through a history. I wound
01:35:33
up where I am today having not planned a
01:35:37
thing. I didn't when I was an investment
01:35:39
banker. I wasn't dreaming of becoming
01:35:40
CEO, etc. And and what I find is that
01:35:43
people who have too much of a career
01:35:45
plan, who have too much clarity about
01:35:47
what they're doing, they they lose their
01:35:49
curiosity. And and human beings look for
01:35:54
positive signal, right? you whether you
01:35:56
like it or not. Anytime someone agrees
01:35:59
with you makes you feel a little bit
01:36:01
better, anytime you get signal that goes
01:36:03
against your preconceived notions,
01:36:06
either you ignore it or you're like,
01:36:08
"All right, [ __ ] I'm going to I'm going
01:36:09
to take this on." It's unpleasant. And
01:36:12
so with with career planning, what I
01:36:15
find is people who have too clear uh
01:36:17
career plan, they're looking for signals
01:36:20
that feed into their career plan. I'm
01:36:21
going to be a vice president by this
01:36:22
much. I'm going to make X money by this
01:36:24
much. and they're not looking around,
01:36:26
they're not being curious. They're not
01:36:27
looking for signal that can change, you
01:36:30
know, their life. And and and so what I
01:36:32
tell some folks is like before you go
01:36:34
out and try to change a world, let the
01:36:36
world change you first. You know, take
01:36:39
input. And if you're like this, you got
01:36:44
blinders cuz I'm going here. You're not
01:36:46
going to take input. You're not going to
01:36:47
let you're not going to take all the
01:36:50
stimulus coming in from the world.
01:36:51
though it's, you know, the one constant
01:36:54
I see is people who are good are good.
01:36:57
People who are good. I've never seen a
01:36:58
successful person in in a job or a
01:37:01
career get there without
01:37:04
working hard. And my guess is, I don't
01:37:06
know about you, you kind of wound up
01:37:08
where you're wound up kind of by
01:37:10
accident.
01:37:12
>> And people are like, well, you got
01:37:13
lucky. I got very lucky to be here. like
01:37:17
I had so many kind of
01:37:20
moments and and some would say I took
01:37:23
advantage of that l of of that luck but
01:37:25
to some extent I was able to take
01:37:27
advantage of that luck because I was
01:37:28
open being open. You jumped from Expedia
01:37:31
to Uber. Um in part helped by some
01:37:35
advice that our mutual friend Daniel E
01:37:37
the founder of Spotify gave you.
01:37:38
>> He's actually just text me. I text him
01:37:40
saying hey can you uh can you send me a
01:37:41
question to ask Dario but he said I'm in
01:37:43
the middle of now texting while we're
01:37:44
talking. Damn it. No, just before I
01:37:45
walked in, I've just looked. He texted
01:37:46
me back saying he's on an earnings call.
01:37:50
Never mind. But um he said, "Good luck
01:37:52
with the interview." Um what did Daniel
01:37:54
X say to you that helped to form that
01:37:56
decision to go to Uber?
01:37:57
>> So he's the one who recommended I think
01:37:59
I was I was uh contacted by head hunter.
01:38:02
He recommended me to the head hunter who
01:38:05
called me. Uh I told him I was actually
01:38:07
at the Allen and Company conference
01:38:08
going back in a a circle with him and we
01:38:11
were having a drink one night and he
01:38:12
asked me, he's like, "Did the head
01:38:13
hunter call you?" there's this Uber roll
01:38:15
and at the at the time Uber was a
01:38:17
disaster like disaster and everyone was
01:38:20
reading about it. I was at Expedia. I
01:38:23
had just gotten this wonderful contract
01:38:25
that you said at the beginning. So I was
01:38:27
I was going to stay and I love working
01:38:28
for Barry. We're like it it it's been
01:38:31
it's been the best professional
01:38:33
partnership of of my life. And I said of
01:38:36
course I'm not going to go. You know I'm
01:38:38
so happy about what I'm doing at
01:38:39
Expedia. And Daniel like looks at me.
01:38:42
He's got his like cold Scandinavian
01:38:45
eyes. He's like, "Dra, since when is
01:38:48
life about being happy? It's about
01:38:50
making impact. Uber is a great company
01:38:54
and you can have an impact on that
01:38:56
company. You've got to do this." So the
01:39:00
next day I had called the head hunter
01:39:03
previously. I said, "No, no, I'm not
01:39:05
interested." The next day I called the
01:39:06
head hunter and I said, "Let's talk." So
01:39:08
Daniel was the one who opened me up. And
01:39:11
your dad, he gave you advice.
01:39:13
>> Well, I talked to my dad and uh his my
01:39:17
dad is keeps things simple and he said,
01:39:20
"Do you as far as he when a company
01:39:24
who's a verb tells you to run it, you
01:39:28
just say yes." So, I thought that was
01:39:30
good uh good advice. And and ultimately
01:39:33
I think people who
01:39:37
come to Uber stay at Uber. They come
01:39:40
because of the challenge but they stay
01:39:42
because of the impact. Like we are
01:39:44
building a company that is important to
01:39:47
the world and for me I could come and I
01:39:49
could have an I could have impact on
01:39:51
impactful company. So why the hell not?
01:39:53
And when he says a company that's a
01:39:55
verb, he's referring to the fact that
01:39:56
everybody in the the taxiing or
01:39:58
transportation category uses Uber as a
01:40:01
verb to even if they're talking about a
01:40:03
competitor.
01:40:04
>> Exactly. Right.
01:40:04
>> Um and there's always one company in
01:40:06
every sort of industry that owns them.
01:40:09
>> We have a closing tradition here where
01:40:10
the last guest leaves a question for the
01:40:11
next guest not knowing who they're
01:40:12
leaving it for. And the question left
01:40:14
for you is, what is one conversation
01:40:16
that if you could rewind time and have
01:40:19
you would have today but can no longer
01:40:21
have?
01:40:24
It was a conversation with with my dad.
01:40:27
Um,
01:40:29
you know, I told you I came to New York
01:40:31
from San Francisco and uh it was because
01:40:34
my dad was getting very old and he was
01:40:37
losing his mental facilities.
01:40:39
>> And I'm glad I came back and I got to
01:40:42
spend time with him. But those last
01:40:44
times, you know, when I spent time with
01:40:45
him, it wasn't really him. And I wish I
01:40:49
could talk to him about his experiences,
01:40:52
his younger life, the excitement of
01:40:55
building something and then the loss and
01:40:57
regrets he had in in life as well. I
01:40:59
never had, you know, my relationship
01:41:01
with him was kind of was there was love.
01:41:05
No question about love, but we didn't
01:41:08
have the deep kind of conversations that
01:41:10
certainly I'm hoping I get to have with
01:41:12
my kids. So, that's a conversation I'd
01:41:14
love to have. And you can't get time
01:41:16
back. Uh, and that's one of the
01:41:18
tragedies of life, but it's also one of
01:41:20
the beauties of life, you know, which is
01:41:22
there are some mistakes that you make
01:41:23
that are permanent. Um, and you can't
01:41:26
get that back. But my then making
01:41:30
genuine conversations with you and
01:41:32
connections with my friends and having a
01:41:36
real relationship not just with my wife
01:41:38
and my kids, but actually like with my
01:41:41
workmates. you know, we
01:41:44
having those genuine conversations and
01:41:46
connections
01:41:48
um is my way of correcting for the
01:41:51
conversation I never had with my dad.
01:41:57
>> Dra, thank you.
01:41:58
>> Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
01:41:59
You're a huge inspiration for me in so
01:42:01
many ways and even more so now having
01:42:03
done so much research on you in
01:42:04
preparation for this conversation
01:42:05
because it is it is rare to find a
01:42:08
leader who has been consistently
01:42:09
successful across different domains
01:42:10
who's built this really really in my
01:42:12
opinion quite rare skill stack from
01:42:14
investing to CFO to then being able to
01:42:15
transition to CEO and then has
01:42:18
repeatedly contended with moments of
01:42:19
transition and given us all frameworks
01:42:22
as founders and entrepreneurs for how to
01:42:23
deal with that transition. One of the
01:42:24
great ones I take away from you is is
01:42:27
honesty. Yeah, honesty is so powerful.
01:42:29
And I'll tell you, I learned I learned
01:42:31
that skill from my wife. She's just she
01:42:34
she's always like people are people.
01:42:36
Doesn't matter. You know, they eat, they
01:42:38
crab, they have to go to sleep. And she
01:42:40
treats everybody in her life the same
01:42:43
way regardless of their position. And
01:42:45
and uh
01:42:46
>> like your dad did.
01:42:46
>> Uh yeah. Yeah. And she's she's honestly
01:42:51
it's just so powerful.
01:42:54
>> Thank you so much.
01:42:55
>> You're very welcome.
01:42:55
>> An unbelievable inspiration. Thank you.
01:42:57
I appreciate it.
01:42:59
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