Uber’s Profit, Power and Problems with CEO Dara K
01:00:09 Share

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on! It's on!

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Our guest today is Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. It's an interview you did live on stage at the Lesbians Who Tech conference. Explain who are the lesbians and what do they tech, Kara? They tech everything. It's actually a very big conference. I just got back from San Francisco this morning. This conference is going on, I think it's 10 years now.

And I did a bunch of interviews. I did an interview with the original cast of The L Word, which, of course, you might imagine this group really liked. And I always bring in a tech person every year. And over the years, Sheryl Sandberg's gone, Lorraine Powell Jobs, Mark Benioff. And it fills the Castro Theater, which is an enormous old theater. Not many of those exist anymore. And so most people really want to go, most of these leaders.

It's a great group held by Leanne Pittsburgh. Yeah, she's run it for years and she's got an astonishing team. And they always come, you know, they have a lot of lunches and, you know, breakout sessions and this and that. But I specialize on the main stage stuff. And then the power lesbians who tack dinner, which I had to miss this year. I mean, I miss that myself. They're so inclusive to invite us straight ladies. They invite, there's a lot of straight people. They do. It's a group kind of advocating for more LGBTQ plus allies across the tech industry and to increase the visibility of people inside and around tech.

bring some diversity to the four as you have called for for ages. But it's just a great conference. That's all. That's why I go. You don't like the name. I don't. I've never liked the name. What do you think it should be called? I don't know. You know what? She's done a great job. She's done a great job. Leanne's done a great job, so I'm not going to guess of what she should do. It's a strange name. And I think when I bring it to different leaders, they're like, what?

And the only one who was very funny about it was Mark Benioff, where I said, I want you to come to Lesbian New Tech. And I go, who's that? I said, it's thousands of women in the cast who tech lesbians. You know, it's a really loud and screaming audience full of lesbians who tech. And he goes, you don't have to ask me twice.

And so he went. Mark Benioff is actually a good corollary to this interview. You took the stage with Dara Khosrowshahi, who is an advocate for many reasons, including the fact that his own daughter came out to him in 2020. Yeah. He told me more in doubt about it in a New York Times piece. Yeah. And I really enjoyed that.

This interview, because it had a sense of that Mark Benioff and you quality, which is like, you guys have a good rapport. And Dara is, I saw this back in 2021 when he came on our old show, but he's, you can poke at him and then he will poke back. And he does. It has a good, good energy. Yeah, it does. He's really good. He answers questions. Now, not everybody agrees with him. Someone from the crowd yelled out.

And he's cleaned up Uber a lot from a cultural point of view. He's gotten it to profitability. Yes. It's still an incredibly difficult business. I don't care if he's got profitability, it's going to be hard keeping it there. Yes. And I think that he came in, obviously, at a very hard time in the company there. They had suffered billions of dollars in loss. They had Travis Kalanick right before lots of issues. Investors were kind of reeling over Uber. This was in 2017, I think. Yeah. And he very much has been the face of cleaning it up. And also, he did, remember?

when in the pandemic he was a driver for a little bit? He was. That's a stunt. I find those things stunty. Whatever. It's fine. It's fine. He gave this all-hands presentation called Why Uber Sucks. And so he's famed, at least in Wall Street and media circles, for trying to clean up the sack.

He did. I actually broke the news to him of his job, getting the job. There were others in the race, including Meg Whitman and Jeff Immelt was also in the race. Did you share his comp details with him too? No, but I texted Barry Diller and said, I'm about to post this and who's his mentor.

And then he called Dara and says, Kara says you have the job, so you clearly have the job. What was interesting about when he got there is that he was very honest with the people who were hiring about the mess there. And the first thing he did, because Travis was so famously hostile to the press, is he had a, he rented a whiskey bar, which was smart, in San Francisco and invited all the press. And he said, thanks for the job, I think, because, you know, they had lots of reporters that had done a lot of extensive reporting. That said-

And, you know, most of the billions that have been lost to the company have been lost under Dargosh Rashahi. It's $32 billion in right now in terms of... So it's good they're making a small profit, but it's been a long road. I'm surprised it's so small given the prices we pay. Uber is my second highest expenditure after rent. And there are days that I spend...

Yeah. You know, over $100 just traversing New York City. You should take the subway. I do. But sometimes, Kara, I have to be on the phone, you know, calling you. Yeah, I guess. But Stephen Levy at Wired recently interviewed Dara and said, you know how much it cost me to get here? It's like a two-mile ride. Okay, Stephen. Yeah.

He can afford it. Zara guessed 20. It was 50. Because it used to cost four and it never cost four. Yeah, because it was just the subsidies of venture capitalists trying to trap us in. Yes. Welcome to real economics. Sorry. That's what things cost. Yeah. But it is a challenge when you can drive companies out of business with your VC subsidized offer. Yes, that's what they do. But it is crazy. Like Megan was just one of our producers here at Omnish talking about

She scheduled an Uber last Friday. She paid almost $80. Do you know what the driver got of it? Did he tell her? Yeah, he did. Around $30. Yeah. And the same thing has happened to me. I remember being, I was in Baltimore and a recent refugee who's an Uber driver was,

I was getting charged $85. He was making $28. $28, yeah. And so Uber talks a lot about how they pass on 70% to drivers. They speak a lot about that, but they have all these- Charges. Well, and they have all these ways to do it. They're like bonuses if you get

30 rides, then you'll get the $100 bonus. And a lot of drivers I've talked to say, well, I only make it to ride 29. I never see that bonus. And speaking to many of these drivers, they feel like they're controlled. Yes, they do. And I get it. Uber has to get demand and supply there, right? Otherwise, no one's going to pick you up in XYZ location if there aren't enough cars. And so they're trying to control and engineer the system. I think the screwed up thing is that

They do own the algorithm. They do build this whole network, but it's built on the back of drivers. Drivers train that AI. Yes. I mean, this is the same thing with Google, whether it's Facebook, whether it's all of Amazon. You think Amazon, you're just, they're doing you a favor. They know exactly what you do and they're using it to...

take advantage of you. And in that case is they're trying to keep prices low, but they could raise prices anytime they want. I think Uber is a company that we all are married to, but we do not like being in the marriage. Well, some of it. I think it's been, I think it's a mixed bag on a lot of things. In a lot of ways, a lot of people do like driving for it. They won that California initiative that was attempting to make them employees. They lobbied hard for that. I understand, but they won and the others lobbied hard too. So

You know, that's just the way it is. Like, that's what happens. This is the California initiative that would classify drivers as independent contractors, not employees. Yes. And there was plenty of lobbying on the other side. I'm just saying it's a complicated situation because a lot of people do like the idea of driving as an independent contractor and also just dipping in and out and stuff like that. And at the same time, they own the data. They own the algorithm. It's no different than...

Google owning the search algorithm or mapping. Guess who paid for mapping? The U.S. taxpayer. Guess who benefits from it? Google. You know what we're going to do, Cara? What? Make you an Uber driver for a day. I'm not pleasant enough. And you know, they're under a lot of challenges. If you would like Cara to drive you in an Uber, please write in. No, I don't want to drive people around. It's not my job. All right, your job is to interview people. Let's take a break and we'll be back with the interview with Dara Khosrowshahi.

It's on.

We're here at Lesbians Who Text, so I wanted to start with your connection to this. Your daughter, Chloe, said she was an Iranian lesbian. When she came out, you said it's the best thing in the world to be gay, which was a lovely thing for a father, said I didn't get quite the same welcome, Matt, my mom. This is a safe space, obviously, but given the huge rise in anti-gay rhetoric, do you still feel that way, and how is it to be a father in that?

You know, for me, it was the thing that hit me hard was how nervous she was and what a difficult decision it was for her to come out to me and the rest of my family. And, you know, what she did, because I knew her, it was completely fine for me, although that pain that she had to go through and that journey that she had to go through was tough. And what's difficult is, you know,

Seeing the hatred, seeing the discrimination now, seeing kind of this pushback, it just feels so misguided to me. And for me as a parent, I want to be there for her. I want to help her on her journey. But she's a strong, independent young woman, and she's more than capable of finding her own way. And if she needs help, I'm going to be there for her. Yeah. Okay. That's the softball question. You're done. Okay. Okay.

So let's get to Uber. When we spoke last January, actually January 2021, Uber was not yet profitable. It had not been profitable ever. You never believed we would get there? I did not say that. I said, how are you going to get there? She's like, when will you ever make money? I didn't say you never would. I said, well, let me get to that. OK, well, let me get to the question three. I get to poke her a little bit.

Uber had $32 billion in cumulative losses until now, most of which happened during your time as CEO. You benefited from easy money and investors willing to trade profits for growth. Amazon did that. It was obviously worth it.

Explain why, and I felt $32 billion is a good question. When are you going to make money? That's a lot of money to lose. That seems like a lot of money. It's almost as much as Elon's going to lose. It is a lot of money, yeah. It's almost as much as Elon's going to lose at Twitter or more. He's going to lose more. Explain why that was and is a good thing for that to happen. Well, I think that's...

The environment has changed, right? The environment that we lived in five years ago, 10 years ago, or 12 years ago when Uber was founded, it was an easy money environment, right? Interest rates were low. Zerp. Yeah, Zerp. And so investors were willing to put up money for promise, so to speak.

I think the great thing and what I can be proud of as CEO of Uber and all Uber employees can be proud of is that it's created a company of real value. So 32 billion went into the company, the company's market cap is 90 billion. We are profitable now and we pivoted from growth at all costs where we were probably two, three years ago to a balance of profitability and growth.

We're growing, you know, we do over a million trips every single hour. What caused that shift from your perspective as everyone was, besides other companies, sort of looking longingly to be able to do things like this? I think there was a profound shift in terms of what investors are looking for. And ultimately, investors are our owners, right? So as the CEO of the company, you get to guide the company going forward, but I work for our investors.

And in a world where interest rates have been increasing, the cost of capital has been increasing, there's a little bit of a view in terms of where a lot of the view of investors say, show me the money. And we, in relation to other tech companies, we recognize that switch earlier on.

We stopped hiring and adding to headcount early last year, and we really started focusing on profitability and it's showing on the bottom line. And I think it's the right thing to do. And by the way, this environment should be a pretty good environment for us because not that many other competitors in our industry

are making money. So I actually think this is a decent environment for Uber to thrive. - What caused you to shift? What was the shift? Now, let me just say you made in August, 2023, Uber finally posted a real profit. - Yes. - It was first time 394 million, I think operating profit of 326 million for the quarter. It's a quarterly thing. I will note you've been profitable before, but only on investment games and trickery. - Yes, that doesn't count. - Right, yeah. I call it trickery, trickery, yeah.

Listen, I've been around the block. AOL at one time sold off chairs and pretended it was extraordinary income. And I kept saying, what is this number here? And it was chairs and tables that they sold. We did not sell anything else. Okay, just making sure. So you did have a slight miss in revenue, not much, $100 million. You had $9.23 billion. It sent the stock down. Talk about why that is. Obviously, Lyft has done worse. We'll get to that in a second. Why is Wall Street reacting that way?

So the revenue for us missing the street was essentially because of some accounting changes that we made, which is our marketing costs for our Uber Eats business. This is not particularly entertaining, but it's true.

now became contra revenue. So it was pure accounting care. - But Wall Street didn't see it that way, why do you? - Wall Street, I think, saw it that way. I think the news didn't see it that way. And generally, if you look at our stock price this year,

60, 70% in a market that's been a lot tougher on other companies. So I've got no complaints in terms of investors and where the stock is going. You're definitely doing better. Let's discuss the different pieces of revenue. You just mentioned a few ads. This new in-app advertisement service you recently launched shows ads to riders and eaters. It makes sense for eaters. It's somewhat irritating for riders, I can tell you. This is credited with pushing the company into profitability. Talk about ads, because a lot of people are getting into the ad business.

Yeah, so the majority of our advertising business is essentially having small and medium businesses and restaurants pay for increased placement in the feed. When you come onto Uber Eats,

There are some folks who kind of reorder. There's five or 10 restaurants that they always reorder from. But that's a very, very valuable audience for you to introduce your SMB, your small restaurant in. So about 80% of our advertising revenue comes from smaller restaurants or sometimes chains. - So placement, just placement. - Yeah, it's just placement. It's same thing as Google coming up in Google search.

But it's a very highly qualified piece of advertising. And on average, restaurants who are advertising on Uber Eats, they're making seven to ten times their spend in terms of advertising. Because they're the first thing that scrolls up. It depends. They may be the first. They may be the fifth based on personalization. Because we want to make sure that if a restaurant is advertising, it's a high-quality restaurant, and it's a high-quality restaurant that you could be interested in. Right. So...

pain doesn't necessarily get you in first place. So I can see it working better in Uber Eats and especially if it's relevant, for example. Unlike the 4,000 Cheech and Chong ads I get on Twitter now, which is very nice for them, but not for me.

In Uber, on the rides, why does that make sense? Well, it makes sense because a lot of times people, when they're waiting for their Uber, we can show them an advertisement. And then when you're in the ride, once you're on the Uber, that's another kind of surface area where we can show you advertisements. And again, we make sure that the ad quality is high and it doesn't get in the way of your experience.

And, you know, Uber, the Uber consumer, it's an urban consumer, tends to be a demographic that is a very attractive demographic for advertisers. So that's been a very successful part of our business, too. So putting them in there, do you see a point where it's a problem?

where you start to-- - We essentially-- - You and I have talked about this. The Uber app is a utilitarian app. You open it, order, leave. - Very much. - Which makes it more pleasurable than most apps. - Thank you, thank you. - It just does. - Well, it's not that pleasurable. - We try to keep it that way. - Meaning I don't pay attention, it's just I use it to order. - It's easy, yeah. So we want to make sure that the Uber user experience doesn't suffer. And generally the way that we do this is 80% of the audience is getting ads.

20% of the audience is not getting ads. And we track the performance of that 80 versus 20. And if we see that 80 who's getting ads,

If retention rates go down or if customer complaints are up on that 80, we will tune down the ads. So far, the advertisements because of the quality of the ads, our ad load is low. We don't show too many ads to folks. So far, it's had no change of behavior. - But a big business, you see this as a big business. - Oh yeah, we've talked about our advertising business next year being a billion dollar business in terms of revenue.

and we're ahead of those targets at this point. - So one that you were more excited about when I saw Uber Freight, it's been a challenge as an overall business. Will Uber continue? We're really off this quarter. Will Uber continue? - Oh, absolutely. - Why? Explain what Uber Freight is. I assume these people know. - Yeah, so with Uber Freight in the olden days,

when you want to get a taxi you will pick up the phone and you will call a taxi dispatcher and dispatch would call a bunch of taxis and say cara needs a ride at this address and one of them will say yes and you get that ride uber essentially made that matching completely electronic

The same thing is happening in freight now. So we brought the same technology that matches riders and Ubers. We're matching shippers with truckers electronically. Why are you having such struggles with this? Because the freight market is at historical lows now. Post-COVID, freight rates went up to the moon. We had a lot of truckers come into the marketplace, so there's a lot of supply out there.

Now that the COVID effect is wearing off, freight rates are coming down significantly and there's gonna be real displacement in the industry.

But I view that as an opportunity. You know, Uber Freight, we're a big company at Uber. We are long-term investors. We have a strong balance sheet. And I actually think during tough times is when you can have the greatest opportunity. So we're definitely in freight. We'll talk a minute about your investment in Aurora. I spent some time with Chris Urmson. Yeah, he's great. Which is autonomous trucking. It's not as bad as it sounds. Yeah.

Uber Eats, you had a pandemic surge, but customers are going back to restaurants, and restaurants are still finding Uber Eats, and all of them, to be fair, a tough proposition in terms of the money you take and the quality. That's the other thing. Now Uber Eats is lagging slightly behind DoorDash, which is your significant competitor. What kind of investment do you need to...

to push that through. And it seems like a race to the bottom, this thing. I would disagree with you, Kara. So the Uber Eats business, from our standpoint, is actually doing great. It saved you during the pandemic. Yeah, it absolutely, it saved us. And also, it saved many of our drivers, right? Many of our drivers who couldn't make money or felt unsafe

driving someone from point A to B, they could deliver food and feel safe doing so. I try to stay in touch with our drivers and one driver who drove for Uber delivered for eats after the pandemic and she didn't go back to driving. I asked her why. She said, because I can't get COVID from a Big Mac, right? Right. So it allowed... You can get a lot of other things. Yeah, so it... Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

It helped us, it helped our drivers as well. And now if you look at Uber Eats, it's about half of our business. It's profitable. The majority of the business is actually outside the US.

In the U.S., we compete against DoorDash. They're a tough competitor, and it's going to be a very, very tough fight for them. What's differentiating in that that people choose? I use Uber Eats. I do. Thank you. I don't use DoorDash. Thank you very much. I'm just lazy. It's not because you're so much better. Never underestimate the power of human laziness. It's actually pretty powerful. What differentiates Uber Eats is actually Uber, which is once you come into the Uber ecosystem...

We've got your identity. We've got your payment types. We have a membership program called Uber One. I know. Where you can get free delivery. You keep asking me to join it, and I'm not going to do it. Why? Just stop. You're too rich, Kara, if you're not joining Uber Eats. So it's with the membership. I am, by the way. Yeah, there you go. That is correct. You can get discounts on rods. I don't want them. You can get discounts on eats. Yeah. No, thank you. And... Hard pass. Hard pass.

Hard pass on that. Yes. If you don't like saving money... Good try. Move along. By the way, you'll be more profitable for us, so we don't mind. No, thank you. But the differentiator is...

The differentiator is you get to stay inside the Uber ecosystem and it's just easy for people to be able to use one service versus the other. You're profitable even with DoorDash is very much significant. The others have fallen away. All in profitable and the growth rate for Uber Eats is actually accelerating. So when you can accelerate growth rate and you're profitable, that's a business that's

that's actually trending pretty well. - And obviously the last one is the original ride hailing. Prices are way up, as you know, and I use it a lot, they really are. - Thank you. - I always did think the prices were ridiculous. $4 to get across San Francisco, someone, not me, was paying drivers and venture capitalists. I minded it for the drivers, but not for venture capitalists. I'm happy to take their money.

Efficiency is also up. How do you look at that core business? So when we look at the core business, really what we're trying to do is match as much user demand to driver supply. And if you look there, like it's working, right? So our mobility business is gaining share category position in eight out of our top 10 markets. Driver earnings are healthy.

and continue to be healthy. So yeah, I mean, if we pay $15.1 billion to earners, you know, drivers and couriers last quarter, that grew 19% year on year versus our overall volume growing at 18% year on year. So as we get bigger, we get more efficient, we try to pass on more of what you pay to drivers. Is that correct? Prices have gone up 40%. 40%.

Prices have gone up from pre-pandemic by 40% and driver earnings have gone up by more. By driver earnings? Driver earnings have gone up by more than 40%. All right, we'll get into that in a second. We'll be back in a minute.

So I will get to pricing and drivers in a second, but you make a short appearance in my upcoming memoir about your arrival at Uber. Thank God it's short. I actually reported that you got the job before you knew you got the job. But congratulations. It's an interesting interview process. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, your friend Barry Diller called me like, "Are you saying you got the job?" I'm like, "You did." He goes, "I think I'll call him and tell him." I'm like, "Okay, go for it." But assess your role in the company's transformation. Obviously, it was highly controversial, meaning low bar for you, which is a good thing. Maureen Dowd called it a dad who had to mop up after a frat party, put all the Solo cups away, and get vomit off the marble floor.

That is certainly a picture, and I think pretty accurate, actually. Actual vomit. She obviously made the obvious contrast between you and Travis Kalanick. I'm bored by that fight between the two of you, honestly, because I thought the idolatry of so-called innovators and his hardcore nonsense...

was ridiculous and pointless. I didn't understand. What do you think? I think it's stupid. I hate when people say hardcore to me. So dumb. I slept on the floor of my factory. Like, you're an idiot. Why do you need to sleep on the fucking... Such bullshit.

Not to insult men, I have three of them I'm raising, but honestly, it's so male. I slept on the floor. Can't believe I had to be up all night. I don't know. Anyway, but how do you look... Is there a question here? Yes. But you're painted as the nice guy, the dad. Those words come off of you. How do you look at your tenure so far? Not everybody agrees that you're the nice guy. They think you're the pretty face. Okay. Fine. Okay.

Talk about what you think your tenure so far has been. So I think, listen, it's incomplete. I think that the original team there, Uber was a disruptor and had to fight very, very powerful forces that essentially wanted to keep them out of business and put them out of business.

And they adapted disruptor tactics. They were super aggressive Sometimes they we broke the law and It was that kind of activity was necessary for the survival of the company And I would tell you like I don't know as a person if I would be able to do that I just don't know and and I couldn't put myself in that position of like literally it's a matter of survival at some point

the disruptor became the incumbent, started to get big, started to get powerful, raised the $30 billion that you're talking about. And I think that the mistake, and it's a hugely important mistake that the company made was they became an incumbent, they didn't recognize it or they didn't want to recognize it, and they were still using disruptor tactics. And an incumbent who's acting like a disruptor can be a bully.

And I think that the company needed a change. I personally don't think Travis is a bad person. I think he was, you know, he's an aggressive entrepreneur. And the board decided the company needed a change or was a question as to what kind of a change. I was lucky enough to be picked.

And the thing is, it's a great company. I have to give credit to that early team, which is they expanded all around the world. They built a fundamental service that people loved. And of course, there were things that I had to do, right? I did have to change a culture of the company. One of our most

important cultural norms is do the right thing, period. It's time to take responsibility. It's time to understand that we as a company aren't just important to ourselves or investors, but to the world at large, to our stakeholders, to our drivers, to governments, et cetera. And that requires you to compromise. It requires you to slow down. It requires you to sometimes not do the best thing for yourself.

But long term, it's the right thing to do. And as I look at Uber now, you know, it's a company that I'm proud to work at. So I was going to wear my Uber T-shirt here today. I couldn't wear it for a long time. And I disagree with you about the nature of the company before. I think the kindest thing you could say was they were assholes. The unkindest thing to say is that they were malevolent. They created a malevolent culture.

that was anti everybody but them and created a kind of idea of punching people in the face. And where we are today, writ large, at X or in politics or anywhere else. And I don't... I think you did do a great... You know, again...

You clean vomit off a floor. You know, that's what you had to do. Underneath the vomit, there was a beautiful floor. Okay, all right. I'm going to let you out on that one. I don't agree with you on the niceness of your predecessor. In any case, it's fine. You can have your opinion. It's wrong. So...

You're one. This is where she gets the last word every time. I do, and that's correct. You can talk. Go ahead. You go ahead and defend Travis Kalanick. Go for it. It's not a hill I would die on. You're one major competitor in the ride share space is Lyft. It's not been profitable. People wonder if it's for sale. Their new CEO has stabilized the place, I would say, but it's long struggled behind Uber. Are they a competitor anymore in your mind? Would you consider buying them?

They're not global. Uber is scaled back globally. Yeah, so they're very much a competitor, right? So they've got about 25% of the category. We've got 75% of the category. The new CEO has cut costs. And I think he is stabilizing the place. So we take them very seriously as a competitor. And we would never, ever be able to buy them. So I don't even think about it for a second. So you wouldn't buy them?

I couldn't buy them. Oh, that's antitrust. It's absolutely impossible. When you think about that, is that hindering for you not to be able to consolidate? No, because the US market is a huge market. We're making good money here. It's a profitable market. So we don't need to buy to grow. And the businesses, the US consumer is really strong. The US economy is terrific. So we're happy with where we are. And I think that's-

Fast forward 10 years from now, Uber's going to be around, Lyft is going to be around. Is going to be around. Yeah. Yeah, most people don't agree with you on that one. Let's talk about, though, recent innovations. It's always good to have a competitor. They unveiled a new feature for women and non-binary riders and drivers to increase their significance of matching with other women and non-binary app users. Does Uber...

Does Uber have plans to focus here? And let me say it's pertinent since a panel of judge recently ruled that 80 sexual assault cases against Uber can be joined together in federal court. You obviously tried to stop the consolidation of the cases. I understand why you would. Talk as much as you can about the case. It's not specific to the case in terms of our riders, woman, man, and our drivers. What we're focused on is improving safety for everybody.

So if you look at, we have consistently led in terms of safety on the platform where if you feel unsafe, you can call 911, you can text 911. It's right there on the app. We undergo kind of deep background checks for our drivers and we update those background checks to make sure that the person whose car you're riding on is, we know that person, et cetera. We,

We have introduced a feature now, actually, where audio recording, both for the rider and the driver, and the recording stays on your local phone. And if something happens, it goes to Uber, et cetera. So we have our focus is we want everybody to be safe. We certainly want women on our platform to be safe. We want men on our platform to be safe. We want riders and drivers to be safe. And I think we have led in terms of safety innovation for years and years.

You don't require fingerprint background checks for drivers, though, correct? No, but we require background checks for drivers. Why not have fingerprint background checks for drivers?

dash cam recordings in all the cars? So we are, we have audio recordings in the cars. Drivers can get their own dash cams and we let them, we essentially get them discounts on dash cams as well. But we're working on improving the availability of video recording. Why not just require it? Why not just... Because some drivers can't afford it because it's hard. Why wouldn't you pay for it for safety? Because it doesn't, because some drivers...

No, no, it's fine. I'll tell you why. It's a good question, which is the vast majority of drivers are casual drivers, right? So they drive 10, 20 hours on the platform and the economics just don't make sense. So it's, you know, drivers are independent contractors and they can make their own decisions as to whether they want to buy a dash cam or not. And we make it easier for them to do so. We give them discounts to do so and we encourage them to do so. So drivers deserve health care.

Okay, we'll get there. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. We're going to get there, if you don't mind. I have that question. I'm quite prepared for that one. Talk about this. Can you talk about the sexual assault cases that are happening? Not specifically. I mean, there are a lot of cases in court.

These are drivers that assault people, correct? About half of cases of assault are riders assaulting drivers. Half of them are drivers assaulting riders. It's incredibly unfortunate when it happens. I think you've seen we have published a safety report. We've been completely transparent, more so than any other company on earth.

And that transparency is pushing us to improve our own safety metrics. We're not where we need to be by a long shot. - So what's the status of the recently announced Uber for teens? - Uber for teens, for folks who don't know, is parents can essentially invite their teens onto the Uber platform.

They use your credit card, etc. And every single time that a teen hails a ride, he or she will be matched to their driver with a PIN code so that you absolutely make sure that they are picking the right driver and vice versa. As a parent, then you can track

So you know where the ride starts, where the ride ends. There's an audio recording of the ride automatically, and you can contact the driver as well. So we think it is- Should those drivers, again, have fingerprint background checks? Dara, I have four kids. This is an important thing to me. No, no, I get it.

My kids use Uber as well, right? So what we do in terms of Uber teens is we use the drivers who have the longest driving history for us

and essentially have the highest star rating for us. So we take a subset of drivers. If you're a beginner driver, if you've driven only 100 rides, we're not gonna match you up with a team. But if you're a driver who's been on our platform, you've got 10,000 rides, you have a great safety record, so to speak, that's the highest quality driver that will match up with you. - You know, I actually tracked my kid. He went to meet a girl really late at night and I knew just where he went.

And I wrote him, and he was still using an Uber, and I wrote him, you're finished. Your life has ended because it was the middle of the night. And he wrote me back a note that I love. I'm going to read it at his wedding saying, sometime it's going to be like that, chief. I like it. I like it.

I tell my kids because I track them on the Ubers. I almost texted you like Uber made my kid go have a booby call at 2 a.m. I ask no questions. I ask no questions. If they take an Uber at 2 a.m. All right, let's get to drivers because it is important. Two things, AI and drivers. Obviously, Uber's gotten more expensive because it was subsidized before and offered users artificially low prices to spur growth often at the expense of drivers. Again, I could care less about VCs losing money. Talk about the problem.

pricing model and transparency with drivers, you still complain every time I get in an Uber, and I'll get to benefits in a second, that they do not benefit from the higher pricing whenever I ask about it. You have said 70% of revenue is going back to the driver. That's not the case on a per-car basis. Why is there such a disconnect between Uber rides being so expensive and drivers still feeling they're not

Getting the amount of money you're getting you're getting too much of the cut Yeah, so I think it's um, it's obviously something that we got to do better at the average driver in the US in this last quarter

made between $33 and $34 per hour that they were utilized on the platform. So that's how much they're making per hour. And this is average. These are our numbers. That's what they're making. And basically, a driver gets it. They can get on the platform. We send them a request. They can accept or refuse that request. Once they accept that request, they're making $33, $34 an hour. In San Francisco, they're making $38 an hour.

But there's still a disconnect. Well, you're making more. What's that? You're making more of that. We make, so in the U.S., not including commercial insurance costs that are very expensive, our take rate is about 15%. Okay, so 15% goes to us for a $50 ride, right? We'll make $750. Some goes to insurance or so, but the rest goes to the driver.

And I think a 15% take rate is a fair take rate based on the service that we bring and the demand that we bring.

Now, the issue is that driver earnings, just like our earnings, can be volatile. When you get on the platform, you don't have a guarantee in terms of your earnings. And if you get a great ride, you make a lot of money. But there are some periods when you come on the platform where there aren't that many rides or there aren't that many attractive rides, et cetera. And so a driver who drives over a long period of time

is on average going to make this $33, $34. But you're gonna have some days when you make 20 bucks and you're gonna have some days when you make $40. Now with Uber, because we have over a million rides an hour, we don't have the same volatility that a driver kind of lives with. - Meaning you get your VIG no matter what? - We make our 15%, right? But our 15% is the average of some drivers who have had good days and some drivers who have had bad days.

And so somehow we've got to figure out a way of making those bad days less bad. You know, helping those drivers like this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. So I'm not lying, but I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. No, no, I know. I'm saying this is the average of all drivers in all of the U.S.,

So you may have had your experience, and I'm really sorry about that. And it doesn't work out for some drivers. And that's where we have to get better. Like, it's hard for a driver, and I've driven. It's hard to know how much you're going to make that day. I'm going to try to do my job. I think I'm pretty good at it. So I appreciate everybody talking. But why not pay just a standard hourly wage no matter what?

Because then drivers are essentially employees. Well, we'll get to that. Then you're doing shift work. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. That's not how the model works, right? This is from a Forbes article I'm sure you didn't like. Armed with such market insight, Uber is an ideal position to practice what economists call first-order price discrimination. That is charging customer prices based on their known willingness to pay and setting each driver's pay based on their known willingness to serve.

The resulting upside potential of such price discrimination is enormous. The opportunity, massive data and AI algorithms and upfront pricing policies and the need growing investor pressure for near-term profitability to exploit that is urgent. Why not just be as transparent as possible or would the gig be up, so to speak? So I think we are. Every week, drivers get their own earning statement and it shows in every single detail how much essentially passengers paid for fares.

How much went to taxes and fees and insurance and how much the driver made and what our take rate is. We're perfectly transparent with drivers on a weekly basis. Should you get less of a take rate? I think a 15% take rate is a fair take rate, Kara. You can disagree. Yes, I do. But it's...

But we think it's fair. Speaking of gig, gig work has been controversial. There have been a surge of union activity lately. A recent Labor Relations Board ruling has offered a path to unionization for Uber drivers. You won on Proposition 22 in which workers remain independent, but unions are still trying harder. What are your future plans in addressing unionizing efforts?

Well, over 80% of drivers who use the platform want to be independent contractors. You have said that. Look, you won that. You won that. No, no, but the why is our drivers want to be independent contractors. They don't want to be employees. They don't want to be a part of a union. So it's in the end, if you want to have a full-time job in our incredible economy in the US, you can get a full-time job.

And with driving for Uber, you have flexibility. It comes with volatility. There's a trade-off there, right? But you have flexibility to be able to work whenever you want. Would you welcome unions into it, unionizing efforts? So we have, for example, in Europe, we have sectoral bargainings with unions where, for example, in France...

The driver, through sectoral bargaining, we actually increased the minimum fare for drivers. And California with Prop 22, generally, we think the right way forward is we want drivers to be independent contractors. They want to be independent contractors. But we're perfectly willing to have minimum earnings levels so that drivers know there's a safety net. They know what they're going to make over. What level is that?

And it's well above minimum wage. So I don't know exactly. - Well, minimum wage is sat at the same place. - No, I agree. Listen, on average, drivers are making 33, 34. So they're making way above. - So here's two more questions. One memorable quote from you. "Our system is called capitalism. "It's designed to optimize long-term growth of capital." I get that. "When people wonder, well, "are capital owners advantaged over labor, "it ain't called laborism." That's quite a quote, Dharav Shashahi. Explain.

Well, it's true. I mean, I think that

Our system, you may like it or not, it's optimized for capital owners. And even if you think about taxes, the fact that capital is taxed at lower rates than labor, I think is incredibly stupid. If you're an investor, you have savings, et cetera, why should you have your taxes be at lower rates than labor? So there's a reason why people are pissed off about inequity here.

And we have a system that is, and capital can flee, right? If someone who owns capital doesn't like what's going on in particular geography, they can just, capital can move geographies very easily, labor can't. So I do think generally as a system, we should place more safety nets

I hope that we fix our tax system in terms of capital being taxed at lower rates. I think it's nuts. And we should help labor. Okay. You're experimenting with AVs in delivery. Uber invested $400 million in Aurora. It's a self-driving freight company, which you sit on the board. And as I said, I recently did an interview with Chris Urmson.

What are your plans for driving workforce as autonomous vehicles progress? Now, let me say, people do not realize this. We're down 100,000 truck drivers in this country. It is not actually, there's not enough. I think some of those stats were older right now. I'd say there aren't enough truck drivers out there, which is why freight rates are coming down. So generally, we think autonomous, like any piece of automation, is going to be a complement to human labor.

So we are working with Aurora, we're working with Waymo, for example. And the future that we see is seven years from now, if you're using Uber, you may get picked up by a robot car or you might get picked up by a person.

We actually offer those services in some markets and people right now, most people still want to take a ride with a person. - Right now, interestingly. - And as the business grows, we think we're gonna have a mix of robots and people, but I think it'll be the majority. - And you'll be partnering to do this. - Yeah, we're partnering. We're not interested in, we don't build cars,

we're not going to build autonomous systems ourselves. But will drivers be obsolete? Travis seemed giddy at the notion when I interviewed him nearly a decade ago. He's like, I can't wait till the guy in the front gets taken out of the seat. That was, well, he was honest, right? He's a terrible person, as I said, but he was honest. When you and I spoke in 2021, you said there will be a driver in the car, whether or not it be human. What did you mean by that? Well, it could either be a robot driver or a human driver. I think that

Listen, the drama around automation always seeks to be binary, right? The fact is that robots compliment humans. They help humans become more productive. And I do think for the next 10 to 15 years, you're gonna have more and more humans driving Uber. They'll be complimented by robots.

and that will provide a more dependable service, a lower cost service so that our service can become more affordable wherever you live. - How do you assess AVs right now? I'm impressed by them. I've been driving them in 20 years and they're actually getting very good. That said, people are very much against them here in San Francisco. Not everybody, not everybody. Let's be clear. It's a mix. I was driving back in one, testing it, and a guy with a bicycle with a poodle in his back, that was the perfect part, kept getting in front of the Waymo

And three miles, we went three miles an hour, four, three miles. And he kept moving over and the Waymo wouldn't go around him. It was such a moment. I was like, okay, here we are in San Francisco. But how do you look, assess them as a technology right now? I think the tech is really good. It's getting there. I think it's going to take a while for it to be commercial. 20 years, five years? I think the commercialization will really start happening in five to 10 years in scale. But the tech is pretty cool. And, you know,

these robot drivers keep learning and it's getting better and better. AI, Uber has filed patents in various AI developments, including one for predictive AI feature. It's obviously critically important to your business. What is the feature and how will it affect driver and consumer experience? So we use AI when you get quoted a price for an Uber, when a driver gets an offer for a particular ride.

When we route you, when you open up Uber Eats, all of it is powered by AI. So AI is intermingled in every single part of our service at this point. And it's increasingly important, presumably. Yeah. I mean, these algorithms are superior to the technology that we had five to 10 years ago because they learn.

And they can learn at scale and they can learn in a personalized way. And it's a pretty powerful tech out there. So I want to start and on a personal question. I started on one. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the situation in the Middle East. You were born in Iran. You fled there due to the revolution in 1979. Yeah.

your family has lived experiencing this. Although you and I had a real difficult conversation around Yamal Khashoggi. You had Saudi owners. I said, get rid of them. They're murderous thugs.

You did not. But you were one of the few people who would engage me on it. What are your thoughts now? Because you operate- About what's going on in the Middle East? Yes, what's going on. You operate not in Israel, but you do operate around the Gulf region. Yeah, so we've got operations in Dubai, the Emirates, Egypt, Pakistan. We have big operations in the area. We don't have any operations in Israel, the West Bank, or Palestine.

And it's absolutely tragic what's going on there. I experienced growing up in Iran,

a government who I don't believe reflects the views of its people. The Islamic Republic of Iran and their hatred for all things American, all things Western, doesn't reflect, I think, the people of Iran and doesn't serve the people of Iran in any way, shape or form. Certainly not who I am, a bunch of my family is in Iran. And it's my view that Hamas is the same in terms of Palestine. What they did was absolutely terrible.

And I don't think that they serve the interests or are they reflective truly of what the Palestinian people think and they want. As a CEO, how does that, because a lot of CEOs have been silent. They haven't said anything. How difficult is that to do that as a CEO these days? I mean, it's tough because people expect you to have an opinion about everything. So when we see these issues, and we've been active in certain issues in Ukraine, for example, there are three questions that we ask ourselves. One is,

Do we have nexus? Does it affect our operations and our people directly? The answer here is no, because we actually don't operate in Israel. The second is like, is my voice, is our voice as a company, is it going to add to the dialogue? Is it going to be constructive one way or the other? Because, you know, a bunch of opinions isn't necessarily a good thing. You can see that in Twitter. And sometimes it can cause hurt more than it helps. So do we have something to say that can help? And then the third, and this is really important to me, is

What can we do? What substantive action can we take to be helpful in that circumstance? In Ukraine, for example, we've partnered up with the UN and we're using our technology where the UN is delivering food and supplies for people in need in the frontline. We can actually help. And what I've told my team is,

Talk is cheap. We're not in this to virtual signal. So if we have something to say, if it affects us, if we have something to say that is constructive, and then most importantly, if we can freaking do something

Then it's time to speak. Otherwise, you know, it's a fraught time for tech CEOs. It is. It is. But my opinion has just as much bearing as your opinion, just as much as anyone else who works here. Interestingly, people don't know this. Your wife, who is Jewish, has tattooed your name in Farsi on her. And you have her name in Hebrew on your neck. Yes.

Peace in the Middle East. That's what we represent. I think we will end on that. Dara Khosrowshahi. Thank you very much. That audience member was not happy with Dara. Not happy. Was it one person or many people saying that? Just one, just one person. And she came up to me afterwards and was super cool. Because at one point I'm like, I can do this job. Thank you for the help. I do understand your issues.

And she was fine. I don't mind. Did she talk to Dara? No, he had gone by then. But she came up to me and sent me an email. And I'm going to forward it to Dara. And he said he would talk to her. You know, it's good for him to hear all this. And he's aware of it, of course. But I think different people have a real problem with the amount of money Uber gets.

That's Uber argues. It creates the platform. It creates the market. It creates the services, blah, blah, blah. You know, like a lot of tech companies. So it's a good debate to have. And I do, as I said on stage, when he said, you know, we take 15% and it's higher, according to other studies. I thought 15% VIG was too much, but I think that is too much for Apple. It's too much for all of them. Dara talked about that 15% take rate. He made it specific to the U.S. and then he

deducted all the commercial insurance, which of course would be high in the U.S. where there's so much litigation. I'm sure a disproportionate amount of their global litigation happens here. But globally, their last quarter report showed about a 28% take rate. And part of that was driven up by this redefinition in the U.K. that, you know, drove it up about 8%. But still, you know, no matter how you cut it, it's north of 20% globally. Yes, of course. But welcome to the internet world. A more benevolent model,

would be if there had been some kind of driver's fund, an equity fund for drivers, where drivers had a piece of the equity. They did. They actually did. They did in the IPO. Yeah, but it was tiny. Yeah, well, yeah. You know how many employees they have versus how many drivers they have? No, I don't. Probably a huge, huge amount of drivers, right? Around 30,000 employees. And then it's 5 million drivers. And say the 5 million drivers are only, you know, only 1 million of them drive full-time drivers.

Yeah, I think the full-time drivers would be the ones I would reward. Others that dip in and out, they dip in and out. Yeah. But in that back of the envelope math, that'd still be, what, 0.03% of the global workforce, the employees earning 20-odd percent of the global upside, right? But I can see you're going to tell me, welcome to capitalism. Welcome to capitalism. I was going to say that. The very first line of my book, I shouldn't give it away, is, so it was capitalism after all. So, yeah.

There you have it. I'm not surprised. I like Naomi Klein and Deb Roy's world, you know, the Canadian world. They have services like that. There's services that do share more with drivers that are more of a collective. It's just Uber has won this particular race because of the enormous amount of money they spent on marketing and brand and systems. And they work better. They do. Lyft is struggling. Yeah.

which is slightly nicer to drivers, I think, from what I understand. They are. I mean, it's funny that you asked him if he was going to buy Lyft. He couldn't buy Lyft. That would be the most egregious antitrust violation. And also, why should he? Of course, but why should he? He doesn't need it. He just, he doesn't need it. Remember when Lyft had those ugly pink mustaches? I remember I complained about them frequently. And actually, they hired an Apple executive who was a designer who changed the whole thing. And

I walked in and he said, don't worry, the mustaches are going. And I said, I love you. By the way, the idea of these dash cams and recordings is quite creepy. Well, I think you should be able to say on your app if you want it to be recorded or not when you do the ride. That's how Travis got caught on one of those dash cams. Remember when he was being a douche to the driver? I think if it's like uploading to some secure location, I don't want me getting in and out of cars.

I don't know. Seems kind of creepy, too, to have that video somewhere elsewhere. That's why you can have a choice. That's why you can have a choice about your safety, where you want to set your safety levels. I wouldn't have it on. I don't really...

I don't have that. I might just sit there and look at my text. Last thing, specifically on Dara. He was very diplomatic to Travis. He was. I find that reprehensible. I just don't. You know, the same thing. We had a big argument about the Saudis. And I said, you need to get them off your board. You can't call the Saudis murderous thugs. You should narrow that critique.

I don't mean all the Saudis. I meant the leadership. It's the leadership. I'm sorry it was the leadership. Fine. In any case, I had issues with all these tech companies. I've written about it a lot. But, you know, money is money to these people. And now everybody's running to the Gulf to get money, especially Saudi Arabia, but throughout the Gulf area. I don't know what will happen with this conflict going on, but that's where they're going to get investment funds. I appreciate Dara's comments on the conflict and his not weighing in when it's not...

I can't remember his three-point system, but it's like, we don't operate there. We can't do anything about it. Do you think Dara Kostraschavi, nice guy, pretty face, something in between? Oh, I think he's a very good executive. I think he did a great job here. I don't think he's that perfect. I think he- Perfect. Perfect.

No, well, he's good. He did. He changed this company. And I still think it's a shitty business, but he's finding new and interesting revenue streams. And so I credit him with that. And he definitely changed the culture. Again, not perfect, much more diverse, much more. I mean, it was, I can't tell you how toxic that culture was under Travis Kalanick, which is why it irritates me that he's...

Whatever. He's so nice to him. They're always like, bygones. By the way, I know. He did it in India. It was crazy. He cannot have that. If you covered Travis as much as we did at Recode and watched it in real time...

Dara should not be touting him. Well, it's a great interview. Hopefully he'll come back for more needling. Yeah, he's a good interview. All right. You want to read us out, Kara? Sure. Today's show was produced by Neha Miraza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Megan Burney, and Claire Tai. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Eric Johnson, and of course, the lesbians who tech, all of them, especially Leanne Pittsford.

Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a subsidized dash cam. If not, you have to subscribe to Uber One. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.