Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
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so uh， i came up here we scheduled this time to record what are we talking about today we have a talk about Uber in a while umm thats right a lot is happened since we did the ipo episode been what for years that is crazy alright yeah！

lets do it i order some food i hope that OK oh yeah yeah we can eat what we are we oh there！

it is one order greets oh yeah， thats me all right cool um doesnt want in here oh great its perfect so can i join you guys actually！

yeah the great come on in come on in who got the truth is you is you who got the truth now？

acquired the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them im Ben Gilbert！

im David Rosenthall。

and we are your hosts todays episode is an interview with Uber CEO Dora Kasrshai where he joins us from the acquiredhomestudio in Seattle and thats been a while since we checked in on Uber theygone through quite the transformation since are twenty nineteen episode on ipoday in the past months theyve done over thirty billion dollars in revenue up from just ten billion two years ago and thats not tmv thats revenue that is revenue and they have two businesses as many of you know that compliment eachother nicely in eats and mobility and theyve divested anything hardware international or thats too far in the future or speculative theyre even doing something we couldnimagine at ipotime， which is profitability now its very modest at this point， but we wouldnt dreamed Uber could even get to break even back when they burned David， what was it three billion dollars the year before the ipo？

yeah！

i think it was the most capital burned before an ipo by any campaign history up to that point well。

todays discussion of course， is partly about Uber as were alluding to here but as David and i evolve， the interview format were putting more of a focus on Dora as a person and sharing some of his craziest stories from throughout his whole career， so this is a candid conversation that dies in two moments like buying Expedia right one night eleven happened how he first met Berry diller at alanine company and what the financial mechanics are actually like of replacing ubers entire shareholder base or closetoit anyway， almost in its entirety sensed joining the company yeah！

not mention the Uber co recruitment process， which i dont think there is talked about anywhere else before no i dont think so either well。

if you are not rdy in the slack， you totally should join so many smartfolks commenting on episodes and bringing new information after we record that we didnt find in the research because many of you work in the fields that were actually covering on episode so you can join aacquireda datafm slash slack listen to our other episodes on our second show acq to like a great episode we just did with Jake seeper from emergency on ai motes in b to be SaaS and without further ado this show is not investment advice Stephen and i may have investments the companies we discuss and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only onto our conversation with Dara cheers Dara cheers welcome to acquiredthank you very much have it to be here appreciate you uh swing by the home studio on your way home from Expedia board meeting is that right yes， have i go uh i cant tell you yeah thats a thats right， thats right that was good actually， expedias a good place to start for folks who dont know about your pre Uber background you were the ceo of expedia from two thousand and 42017 is that right thirteenyears， thirteenyears this long time and when you became the ceo your previous role was you were at IAC with Barry dollar and you guys had bought a controlling interest in Expedia you took it private it was a Microsoft with rich Barton hesponedout it went public you made a bid to take it private i think over like two trunches there was like a controlling interest and then a full button out yeah！

we bought Microsoft stake Microsoft decided its its noncore and we bought Microsoft controlling stake and Expedia was bubble company， but we had a control position and then a sum point we decided hey， lets bring in the whole thing because we loved what region team were building。

so this being acquiredin us wanting to dive into a story theres one moment in particular that was pretty insane the term sheet was signed for IAC to buy Expedia before September elevents like earlier in 2021， the deal hadnt closed yet i think there was some kind of material adverse change clause than called it yes， you were allowed to pull out of the deal yes！

yes， i mean that what could be more material than September eleven for travel but you guys didnt like take us through yeah we we did and we knew we had the option to get out yeah and at the time you know one of the values of an option is time value right you dont want to exercise an option before the last moment that you can and rich called i think Barry of the time and he said listen happen business obviously has falling off cliff we think itll come back but i dont know and he said the place is pretty unstable now because no one knows whether the deals gonna go through or not go through theres is matclaws so if you want to get out like its fine， which is very confident hes a great entreperner is fine if you want to get out， but just like let us know you know if you which which way you want to go god hes good and hes really good， which really he just your point about time bad he just wants you make a decision and so i will be fine i cant imagine that if youre the company everyone was like what happening right theres a future， a companies thrive on certainty， on kind of rhythm， etc and it was a tough macrol position to be in and the micro position of whatgonna happen expedio so i can imagine what he was going through so we got together the team， the ic team and all of us were kind of talking and you know theres no clear decision to be made there barbari respected what rich asked for and i remember they mean were like all having all these debates and i think it was Barry who said it， he said you know if there isntravel theres a life so like you know， were like look each other were like lets go for this lets， lets do it and right after that meaning Barry called rich and said game on no changes to deal at all like exactly as no changes to the deal its like were gonna do this but Barry his passionis travel right and and i think he was right which is just when youre in the center of the storm it looks like oh my god life is gonna be over but things revert to normal i mean you look at like the pandemic and everyones looking for all these long term changes and everything reverts to norm and i think that was the wisdom of the time all the one year in the middle of craziness it should doesn feel calm but after that we said were an it got rishistability that he wanted and an highside it was a genius decision did you ever think you would uh then live through another moment like that over the last no what it like this one to be finally， the last， one never want to go through something like that again but it may it made a stronger as a company ultimately good for your the past couple years yeah， i i think the pandemic was incredibly painful and that sitting together SATAM85 percent your mobility volume， which was the profit driver the company falls of a cliff and and other cos you know they lost the ton of business， but most of these businesses were profitable we were losing to a half billion dollars and then they just got we worse so it was a very tough situation to be in and we uh had to cut a lot of overhead we had to cut up businesses that we thought were cord of the business you really had to bed on whatcore whats noncore but it was a huge accelerator as a release to her eats delivery business and and i think that discipline around side has been great but i would want that as that should have been the the precipine exactly yeah yeah alright before i let David bring us to today already lets go back down memory line so how did you meet Barry deller？

so i met Barry dealer when i was an analyst at Alan on company， which was my first job out of colleges an Vestian bank in the art city specializes in the media entertainment sector now much more tech theyve made the pretty cool transition announce a lowly announced and and i got assigned to the steel where Barry dealer who at the time was running qvc he was a sea of qvc， which was home shopping and he had run paramout and fox studios before that correct parent first and then he ran fox for murdoc， and then he decided he want to be his own boss and at some point John below and i think had control of kvc and Barry got the job to runs tvc and have control because he wanted to be his own boss and who can blame for that god to be in the room with those two characters as they are yeah negotiating they was golden for for a a a kid like me and so at the time summer down who was running vicom had come to an agreement to buy parament pictures which was barrys old home and Barry thought that he was getting a steel， so he decided to go after param in a hostile tender offer to come in as kind of a third party better hmm and it was a huge move because pairment was bigger than qvc you know， so like the mino swallowing the whale swelling the whale yeah flick uh capcities capcities exactly and 啊 i was an announce on the deal and it was a whole kind of bidding process you know Barry would be and then retstone would bit up， etc multiple steps there was a uh big core case that was pretty important in terms of did Barry have the right to come in and actually bid on this thing and break a part a negotiated deal the person who i work for the vp etc she got sick and so i had to kind of step up and work with Barry directly like making these pitches the Barry yous still couple years at a college at this point i was like two three years out of college and as some point berries like you know theyre all these complicated numbers that you put together and Barry want to know like who was the person running these numbers and he said i want to talk to the person running the numbers Herbert Alan comes like printout your model Barry wants to talk so like how to print out my whole lbo model bidding models at all right what are you？

what are you feeling point like holy shit but you know what it thonly question my mind was when am i gonna get fired right its its like this is a disaster and else is not supposed to talk to see out but i get in hindsight ive seen this patterning with Barry， which is he wants to get the real stuff he doesnt want a version an editive version of reality because then its just an edit version he wants to go to the source and he want to know like there are these numbers and im making at the time one of the business decisions of my professional life based on like these pieces of paper whois responsible for this and i want them to explain it to me hmm so for me it was like you know crazy lock but it was also its part of baries process which is get the unvarnished truth because that helps make better decisions but then i admin， i remember thinking hey if if theres ever a person that i want to work with like i i want to work for that person do you think there was something about you in the way you presented that made her balance believe that you would be customer ready and you could go and speak to you know one of the biggest media mogules of our time you herb was a big believer emit betting on people and not hiarkeys etc i dont know honestly i remember the advice at a game is but on people， nonecompanies and that was a patterning that he had a three result career is very loyal， found a good person and that would be on that person and bears the same， which is like hell throw a young person off a deep end and you lead sync or you swim heselectivenwhohethrows off you know what deep and etc but both of them were willing to give opportunity outside of like regular scope or regular process， etc and it shows you know they they build incredible loyalty in terms of the people who know them how did you find your way to element company i know idislike pulling at threads going backwards here but uh i was um， it was very considered decision， which was i studied engineering in a school when i she had a engineering management， um job lined up at a， at a pink factory and then i fell in love with a comity trader in York city and and at the time im like i need a job in your city what kind of job can i get and i was investing banking my brother work there uh still works， there right still works， there so i got the job and chased the woman of my dreams and broke up with her six month later but you know i got a job at all my company for a good career well。

i have you written her thank you note cuz yoube running a paintfactory otherwise thats a very good point i own it all to her but based on observing you in your history and everyone else in your family it would become like a paint factory that would then like by all the other paint factories that expand up and down the stack and then figure out how to add like 15 other businesses and it would become this like beautiful conglomeration of something i dont know you know you could be right or i could have just totally lucky by falling in the island company i really do think it was just things game together and everyones career who successful to combination of luck and opportunity taking advantage of the opportunity and yeah， i just got lucky so thats like a nice thing to say there are a lot of other people that couldof locked their way into an Allen and company job and then not turned it into an incredible performance with one of the most important people were your model needs to hold wait， which is very diller in that exact crucible moment in time， what do you say the young people when they sort of ask you this question about how much does luck have to do with it and how should i be the most prepared and how can i sees opportunities when they come up？

i think i always tell people that the most common mistake that i see in young people was that they over plan their career and like oh i want to do x or i want to be vice president or i want to make so much money by a certain time and when you over plan， your career you know that this is human bias which is to look for signal that agrees with the plan that you have an ignore it everything else that doesnagree with it so my advice for young people is like dont over plan you never know what opportunities are gonna come up i plan to stay down on a company my whole life it was my place my brother wound up being there but being open to possibilities， being open to opportunities， and then when you get that opportunity going all in you know， like its just dont head if youre gonna be in something go all in and do whats required of you and then like fifty percent more like blow people away uh and then you know tomorrow maybe something else comes up and and you get there but like why youre in you go all in but at the same time like keep your eyes open because you never know OK listeners now is a great time to think one of our big partners here acquiredservice now yes！

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a major partner of both Microsoft and Nvidia i was at nvidiasgtc earlier this year and Jensen brought up service now and their partnership many times throughout the Keynote so why is service now so important to both Nvidia and Microsoft companies weve explored deeply in the last year on the show well ai in the real world is only as good as the bedrock platform its built into so whetheryoulooking for AI 的 supercharged developers in it empowerent streamlinecustomerservice or enablehr to deliver better employee experiences service now is the platform that can make it possible interestingly employees can not only get answers to their questions。

but theyre offered actions that they can take immediately for example， smarter selfservice for changing 41K， contributionsdirectly through AI powered chat or developers building apps faster with ai powered code generation or service agents they can use ai to notify you of a product that needs replacement before people even chat with you with servicenals platformat your business can put ai to work today its pretty incredible that service now build ai directly into their platform， so all the integration work to prepare for it that otherwise would have taken you years is already done so if you want to learn more about the servicenal platform anyhow accounturbochargethetimetodeployeforyourbusinessgoovertoservicenow dot com slash acquiredand when you get untouchjust tellthemdavid sent you thanks service now alright so were gonna catch back up to that expedia era thirteenyears you have a pretty wild competition with booking dot com and i think you learn a lot of lessons from watching booking just crush it top line profit margins， uh rate of expansion everything about it booking built a help a company incredle when youre on the expedious side of things and then you get a fresh start at Uber how do you take those lessons with you and what did you learn gotta learn so much um booking was an execution machine and their focus when we talk about focus was hotels！

hotels， hotels and and expedia was much more it started with air right and hotel was to sumict secondary and so i think one of the lessons is i can go after the larger market and if your market place business go after fragmentation of supply， which is if you think about hotels there are so many more hotels in the world than there are airlines so i think they focused completely in the right area and build a global business first uh and just were an absolute execution machine the other area was that expedii was probably more focused on building demand kind of consumer， demand， brand， etc booking was more supply and especially the states nobody knew would booking totally was totally， but is like for for them it was about building up the hotel supply， and as you built up the hotel supply， every hotel became other piece of data that you could market through Google or metasearch， and if you have a hundredhotels in a market and expand that to two hundred hotels 和 market， that market is also gonna convert better hmm so not only do you build kind of a new segment of demand， but then if theres a search for you know， hotel and niece needs becomes better produc can convert more if you can convert more， you can get more traffic from Google， etc they play that optimization game like no one else hmm and for me the biggest lesson as i came to Uber was ubersmarkeplace business very very fragmented supply base right its five point six million drivers in couriers who are earning on our platform add a few million restaurants yeah， close to million restaurants and for us our growth is also supply led so if you think about postpandemic and one of the reasons， why i think generally were doing really well and gained a bunch a category share vs lift coming out the pandemic was because re really focused on bringing those drivers back to the platform building our services etc and it was a supply lead way of building the business。

which defining was a learning that i took from booking up with booking the you can build a market uh of a save geography for hotels and then used that to build vertical you can do the same thing at Uber in a way that your competitors on both sides of the business cant right because you can cross market exactly right in it。

exactly and especially in the us theres a much more crossover between careers who will deliver food and then drivers who dry people theres a much larger crossover and we can actually use eats almost as a recruitment tool in that moment when someone says i am interested in earning money， you know gig money on demand etc with all the flexibility freedom， etc the faster you can get that person earning money the higher the conversion rate and because of its you dont need to get your car inspected you know， theres a lot of steps， additional steps， background track， etc thats required for driving those steps dont necessarily need to be completed to deliver food you can get people into uh the food ecosystem they can start earning on the Uber platform， and then you can upsell them into additional opportunities， driving people shopping， etc it is a structual recruitment advantage we have in terms a building of supply， and as you build the supply the liquidity in the market case gets better you know， surge comedown pricing gets better， eta gets better， uability price gets better the demand shows up some extend so everything you just said thats always been like the the story yeah everybody！

it seems like in the past few years， though especially relative to your competitors its actually become more of a reality and im curious maybe you talked about booking being execution machines like what what is that Uber execution machine looked like since the pandemic to maybe make that more of a reality well。

i think that the theres always a delay between inputs and outputs， which is you you can start changing the inputs in terms of how you build a system etc it takes a while for the outputs to become a merge we did take a big step post pandemic once eats got the size to merge all the teams together the technical teams together the market place teams together uh single earner team， etc when is was small， it needed， it is on dedicated teams because if you had one team doing rides in eids， like all the attention will go to rides once we combined the teams that allowed you know， one technical team to really focus on the demand side eats is the recipient you know， so the ridesbusiness has most of the audience and generally we move more people from rides the eats so its a its a almost free customer acquisition tool for for eats its your largest customer acquisition channel for eats right？

yeah！

we we get more new customers from arise than we do from Google， meta， Instagram in a all of these other channels come pretty nice to own your media yeah， crazy add a quarter of the cost so i was like its its a preparator channel and its cheaper。

and now the support you do like charge internally for totally！

oh， yeah， totally， totally！

its an even advertising business right， so it did unit like any other exactly！

exactly， and so！

and it wed have to start charging each other for step plugs on it okay！

we can tell you a little about a internal pricing mechansis， but we know all of it sounds great， but the fact is that whatever pixel that you put on the ridesap to promote eats is taking something away from the rides app right， so theirs theres a bunch of experimentation that had to be done， which is what are the right services， what are the right messages？

how do you targeted， how often do you targeted setter so theres a theres a bunch of machinery that you have to build to do this stuff successfully and for the benefit that its gets to be significantly larger than the detriment that rides gets and to not get in the way of the rides experience you know， like you dont want to screw up that experience so to the question of like why is it happening now？

is one it looks great on paper， but then to build the machinery to actually do effectively takes time and then you know if eats has this new customer acquisition uh source every year new customers for eads account for lesson ten percent of the business of the overall business because its a big repi business songyear one hey， isa nice yes， nice， but it doesnt really show up to investors external investors but then once you know its a the saying compounding is the seventwonder the world， the eight one or the world was happening now as the compounding is happening right？

so weve had like three years of the machinery working so one year may not be notible two years may not be notiable three four years what were doing is essentially margins are going faster than a competition because we have a bunch of propriorys traffic thats coming over and then on the right side thespapartersupply coming over from eats again compounding is it still that um supply acquisition cost is bigger than demand acquisition cost for you guys yes， yeah yes， i mean it it is we are supplied led business at this point um probably two years ago we could have added uh 25 percent more drivers in careers into the platform they would all be like super busy instantly right now are supply generally is going fastmen demand because is catching up to demand and the average driver whos on the platform is working more because experiences better， earnings levels are are are pretty， are really good， so this point probably supplies still trailing demand by you know five percent or so， but the market place is now getting to a point where its balance。

but the its that compounding that really starts working i was reading through the most recent earnings new a chart were on average over the last five years or so drivers make more money per hour hmm if we entered some economic environment where a whole bunch of people were out of work and they wanted to become Uber drivers but that would make it so that the average earnings across the whole platform of plunged because you have a whole ton a new drivers coming on？

would you guys sort of gate it and be like hey！

we wanna like make sure that we dont sort of flood the supply side of the market place no uh because one of our core philosophy is this is an open platform and if your background check comes in OK， etc then you can have access to earneys opportunity thats a core belief for us the economics take care themselves right when you look at midcycle longcycle if earnings come down on the platform， then it becomes a less attractive platform to drivers and they will do something else there is this counter securality about our marketplace， which is during really good times it becomes harder for us to recruit drivers， so the cost of supply goes up， so while revenue and growth booings are growing and univolumes are strong are supply base becomes more expensive during softer economic times you get more drivers coming into the platform etais come down prices come down the price becomes cheaper socially are univolumes accelerate， so if you look like rq， one univolumes there group 24 percent verses， 19 percent Q4 so we accelerated you know trip growth， which is not something that you see at our scale but is its some of this stuff working out right？

so sort of the invisible hand of the market theory that sort of self regulates this for you yes！

not a theory it happens yeah i guess like yeah its this very cool experiment yeah economists like to talk about like things in theory but like you actually have a one of the largest data sets in human history of you know people doing work and other people consuming service this yeah if you if you ask our top economist ad Uber he would say that we actually dont control the price to the consumer that is actually the spot price for this kind of labor the market place sets based on the supply of labor coming in and the demand for transportation and so theres this you know people say like Uber setting prices he say were not setting prices hmm the marketplace setting is on price so what do you do？

then like you have to have some leverers your disposal yougetting a lot more profitable yes， i mean certainly i think in twenty whenever we did the ip episode newber had lost like close to three billion dollars the year before going public in the in the episode that it was the most that a company had ever lost before going putwork in history yes！

i know thats true， but uh attributed to Ben Gilbert but now over of magnitude thats true！

uh depending on what profitability metric you look at you guys are a break even or slightly positive business and increasingly getting more profitable and looking like a selfsustaining business so what can you do？

then if you arent in the business of deciding what a ride should cost well？

i think were in the scale business right， which is we send really wire up every form of transportation of whether its people or things and you know its increasingly people amend shared uh taxes， etc right， there for a half million taxes in the world who would imagine that Uber will be working with taxes but were gonna wire up every single taxing in the world right， and then on the curbs and the capases and the flywheels and by the way we work with them right a lot of times we will connect through them hmm as intimate years again to wire up these taxes and then weve gone from food to uh alcohol to grow series， etc we have a free uh business as well so the more we up the morning and now im sorry you have botes now we have botes Michael so just pretty cool we have the uh boys on the terms to yeah its like if it moves and it cares people when things were gonna wired up， hmm and make it available on demand that usually brings in the demand for transportation， etc and then its like matf you have to do it in a more more efficient way i think one of the secret sources that we have is we have a very large and capable market place team these are ml engineers who are building out the systems that match price all of this connectivity yeah and when your you know working over an ecosystem of two billion transactions， a quarter the data assets that that we have the experimentation that we can do in terms of whats the most optimal match how do you price etc its the bigger database than anyone else so every year when i can speak to her competors are matching and pricing， but every year matching and pricing probably improves by five percent a year so you improve your the market place through put by about five percent everything else being the same and thats like free growth and when its on top of you know， call it a hundred， hundred and thirty billion dollar runway a gets big and again its compounding like every year this machinery gets better。

so then it just to make sure im understanding right the reason why cause you talk to anybody in and there like youre like？

oh， what should i ask are and theyre like asking why ubrers are more expensive than they used to be and im like cus is a good business now but actually i i i dont think it sounds like thats not actually。

the right answer that the reason rides have gotten more expensive of our time is a inflation but be just that there is more demand for those rides than there is supply to serve them correct the cost of labors gone up right i mean how much you have to pay for any kind of blue color job you know everybodys talking about a right the bunch of retail ers were having trouble hiring enough people uh restaurants etc and then it did become more expensive to bring drivers into the ubert ecos system ernings expectations have gone up and by the way， i think thats a healthy fit right its if you gonna step back， you know the increase in salary in wages for blue color jobs hasn kept up with the salary of like tech workers or you know capital etc yeah， so i think the catch up is a really healthy catch up that is a reason why ubra some are expensive now now in this environment where we are adding supply faster than demand because of supplies really coming into the market place prices in Uber now year？

on year or down hmm so there we do year support in San Francisco this morning was the cheapest its been in month so thank you call wow！

itspecifically not thank you thank the invisible hand it thank you Mr market yes！

exactly how has the complexity of Uber relative to expedia matched up with your expectations coming in so theres complexity in terms of all of the stakeholders that you have to think about thats like its a difference between chess and like four dimensial chess it is like expedia， travel agency， your bringdemand， your supply base， etc and and you have to think about the travel ecosystem but with Uber Uber is like a incredibly important service to the cities of the world and also expedient you werent providing the service yes！

you are we we were demand they do a market place layer youre not operating the airplay ins exactly？

youre not you know making up the hotel rooms exactly you know the drivers are providing the service right， but its were much more responsible end to end but you know your responsible for your customers we have a very very important responsibility to driver and career community these over five million people who are making in earning or making kind of a side earnings on on Uber and then the responsibility in terms of like regulators and governments etc that consideration said， is is just its so much bigger so from that standpoint its tough， but also really interesting and satisfying in some ways were you ready for it was i ready for yeah no！

i know ready is this one of those like if you knew。

you wouldnve done it but now youve done it and so all this values been created and like great im so glad i did it it was a finish like there you have fun up like no im not having fun like i love it you know like the job is too hard to like its not fun but its so cool its such an interesting space you really feel like youhaving impact everyone at Uber that it we always talk like you dont come to Uber for easy like you dont come here for an easy job its complicated its hard core people were their asses of but like you love it and its not fun but anything fun but people love being at the company thats something i didnt and then the the dynamic real time nature of the market place in how we balance， the market place and the pricing etc is unique right its Thursday night theres a tailor swift concert all hands on deck we got a figure things out that operational nature but how dynamic and fastitiz it does a Uber hq plan for tailer concerts ahead of time is there happening yeah， i mean Uber hq doesnt， but there are ops teams on the ground yes， and you know that they are the heroes like they are on the ground city by city work there as often and they they are they are kind of where the rubber meets the road so to speak to use a t is a transportation metaphor so a David s this interesting question that i want a digital ba deeper on that that were you ready for it what kind of diligence did you get to do on the opportunity when this job came on the market in the national news in a very prominent way in a very short time or i would get lower wheels cover that i first when did you first get contact about like how do you how do you enter the Uber orbit so um i was reading about the news just like everyone else was right？

it was just all over the place and it was it was made crazy ml they was a yeah also！

everything going on i would let to it you know the the battle between travel and bench mark and all that stuff it was it was fascinating as an observer i never ever imagine that i would then play a part and a headhunter call me about this role so not aboard member directly a headhunter！

headhunter！

headhunter！

wow！

head hunter call me！

it was a structure process and like no way like it no thank you goodbye happens yeah！

all yeah thirteen years i got my place on would be i i love working for Barry like it was i i was good this is fun yeah and then and then we exactly was fun and then i i was at the sunvalley conference the Allen， a company sunvalue conference and um having drinks with Daniel lec and he said all right you know do you get the call from a headhunter about the Uber job？

i think you be perfect for the job and i dont know what the head hunter why the headarm called turn out Daniel， my dude why would i ever do that like im happy like why why would i ever jump into that mess so Daniel gave the headhoder your number yes and and im like no way， no way and he looks he looks me like with those like piercing scan and navian eyes Dara since when is life about having fun， its about having impact this important like you can do this and ive had a couple of drinks and now call was flowing and we were having fun and my wife says like yeah you can do this im like yeah i can do this so uh the next day i call they had hunter back and i said lets talk and the next step was for me to meet a board member and we had dinner and he was very charming and he kind of started the recruitment it was pretty cool and how long between them and when you accept the job god， i i think it was about two months it was over the summer and bit secret nobody knew i told them i i said listen upfront um i have a job and its a great job so the nano second that my name shows up in the news im out of here so i just want you know like the nano second shows up in the news im out of here but i had to be realistic that a couch open the news its amazing that that it did so actually at that point i call the Berry because i couldnt put bear in a situation or myself in a situation like a i work with them thirteen years， probably twenty years and i see and then even before the banker like in i have an incredible relation i always like so much to him i couldtake the risk of his scene it in the press and you know the the consequences of that um and the end the end the loss of truss i call them up as a Berry i dont call me about Uber um im gonna talk to them and hes like your f and crazy hung upon me i told i told say like oh my god im gonna get fired uh and nothing dead silence you were gonna get fire because what was Barry gonna do like step in nbc o himself he was a good these maybe he would maybe he would that i didnknow we we were together for a long time call on the next day he said uh speaking as a chairman of expedia， it will be a real mistake， but speakin is a friend i understand why youre interested i would be to how can i help and thats the definition of who is yeah you know because we weren in the news it was like we gossip about it like oh did you hear like meg is this and so it was a fun thing that we gossived about but he actually there was a point time when i had to make a presentation to the Uber board this was like my big presentation and and i heard that the other candidates were coming in to present as well， so this was a big day and i told them i think it was a Saturday or Sunday that im coming in making presentation such show me the presentation yeah， it was powerpoint so i show them powerpoint and he actually help me in the powerpoint is like this is good this is good you have to add at this page uh so it just it shows you the kind of person he is， which is he put friendship in that case over his own business interest calculate yeah， i just it just shows you the that that is true personal yes and theres an element to it to where if he got to collaborate with you wanted them there was a chance you would stick around on the Expedia board and remain a front of the company even though youdon the seat yes and i still im on the board is you know i love the company but is weird being on the board as a former co like its a its a strange experience did you do anything to prepare for that no like usually my life is like stumbling something on the figure out you are so busy did yeah but it was i want to stay on the board i want to help and you know the companies going through its own journey now so hopefully the greatness did you consider i mean this sort of famously was an issue when the Microsoft transition and um has been an issue when the Disney transition did you consider hey， actually maybe it would be better for the company if i didnt serve on the board just to give enough space for new leadership i talk to Barry about it and its ultimately up to him right and i think he decided that he wanted me there and i try to be helpful but but i think its absolutely right which is get you the job of the new co to some extent is to be the ceo and do something different from the old ceo like thats definitional the you know a little bit about that yeah， exactly that there could be hesitancy at a board media c era because the old persons there you know and so that it was i think on a net net i trusted barriest judgment it it does feel weird sometimes because ive moved on but its working i think its working。

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what did you get to learn about Uber and i mean to directly as did you get to talk to travel like did you get to talk to any of the sort of departing leadership well？

i talk to travel a couple times i talk with Ryan and guardwho were the other founders i talk to couple of other board members i did financial diligence etc and you know for me it was ultimately about the opportunity its such an important company i was tell people like i like for three things right its the work of people who me you like and you can learn from um can use an individual make an impact and then is the place or the company that youre at going to make an impact i wasensure number one but i was a co so i could build my own team hmm as a turned out there been like great folks there who have stayed who were there before me and then new folks like uh you know Tony west and now some chay that we brought etc so the new teams like a combination new unall， which is great and definitionally as a leadership team， we can have an impact on Uber and ubers a company that its unique in terms of its impact on the ground on the city so it all checked off in the financials you know it it was still a really young company so the financials for me yeah that would do ten years and right yeah oh yes than that probably yeah it was it was it was just about this years OK， yeah there you go you know better than i do i imagine you had to have been feeling like got if we can make this work the opportunity here is just like absolutely you know alterannounce are hard tech turn around are speciallyhard， but i think Uber had a global position， a talent pool， a brand that was absolutely exceptional that was just going through really really hard time it was a verb yeah， exactly， and so that that was actually the voice that made that gave me like when a company whos over bash， you are run it just say yes something like all right， so sometimes you can over complicate things and say hey！

do you want a tikshot i want tikshot its so funny you say turnaround i literally it never occurred to me that you could construe Uber as that， but it might be the only turn around in history where it was growing incredibly fast had ten billion of revenue had some of the smartest people in the world working at it had all this momentum of course， burning money catasterfee in the border room catasterfee in the seasuite so it it is a turn around in that sense Annie was losing a bunch shared a left right？

right， yeah， so that that was deleber yes， the delete deleteuber yeah moment etc so that that was a tough thing which is your burning a bunch？

a cache and at the same time you are losing category position to you know whats tough competter and a strong brand tell me if you agree with the statement in the us you know longer really have a formidable competitor in ride sharing， but in food delivery。

you have a tremendously formidable competitor i didnlive too stronger than people give a credit for hmm yeah stuff link going through tough time i in the new ceo is you know hes like moving his heis making moves hes super aggressive well see where that ends up i feel way better today then i did five years ago but i wouldnt count them out lift is such a great example of a story we see over and over again on acquiredof like its never over tiltoves never it was over over， it was over for left yeah and then it was not over and you know now theyre having a tough time well see， but door dash is a tough competter like doordash is larger than we are in the us we are focused on keeping share in the us and then gaining a bunch a share outside the us and then over per the time using the structual advantage you know， one build profitles outside us use that to attack the us over per to time and then use the structual advantage or we talk about in terms of customer acquisition over period time to hopefully gain category position against doordash， but theyre tough competitor we re respect them we dont like him。

but we respect them is is there something in particularly that you think theyve done i mean i what i think about them i think about what you were saying about booking just like being an execution machine uh im curious from your perspective i think it comes to like these company build is？

which are pretty important uh， which are pretty important they made a bat on the suberbs uh and they made a bat on selection restaurant selection Uber was an urban company we operate in the big cities transportation， etc the business in sub was as much lower， so we want to leverage a customer base that was an urban customer base， so we went after the urban restaurant etc and Uber was about cheap and fast hmm right， so the if you think about it if what youre trying to do is optimize for speed less a delivery in fifteen or twenty minutes the radius of restaurant that you can deliver front is smaller so you make a you make a sacrifice in terms of selection in order to optimize for speed as it turned out one the suburbs in terms of food or bigger uh than what families that cities yeah， big families， etc big demand， etc so we because of our urban vices we didnt look at the overall market were like whathour market， how how can we leverage our demand， etc that i think in hindset was mistake and this is like a 201 3-16 decision that everyone still sort of living with now i mean now weve corrected that yeah but listen it was i was running this the same playbook 201820192 so i dont wanna blame it on no， this is you know it was happening all long its just like usually you focus on the things that yougood at and we were really good at urban and we were really good at fastencheep right and uh we now are much more focused about building out selection uh as we built out selection in urban centers at category position versus door dashes actually quite constructive really strong we are looking to break into the suberves uh and there we got some word to do hmm and and the suberbs are very very strong position is kind of there profit pools right and then were building our profit pools outside in international and you know kind of the yeah， the battles happening in the big city yeah！

its interesting i uh， i would imagine the suburbs there are so much more weighted to food delivery than rideshare totally that yeah！

totally now we are expanding around chairinto the suburbs now and its a pretty fast growing part of our business so maybe like well get there over time but definallyi was an earlyame of the business we we now specifically are aiming in certain suburbs and you know you have to build out your career base your restaurant supply demand to all of it has to come together。

which is difficult and thordashes done a good job yeah not the end of the story though im curious uh theres so much of this strategy that if you connect this the dots looking backwards and the to use the Steve Jobs parlance it just makes so much sense this uh expanator nationally leverage the fact that ear sort of the leading global player generate cache user to compete domestically eats feeds ride sharing whichfeeds e now you can sort of use this flywheel we havent talk about free yet but im curious like of the threepillars today of ridesharing ubereats and free and divesting everything else all the autonomy， all of the self driving cars is autonomy well， since you guys die fast， all the international bikes and scooter yeah！

planes right yeah where a detail eleva yeah？

elby elevate said right yeah what of today strategy was in your pitch to the board？

when you were joining a ceo and what is an emergent thing thats happened while youre in the seat？

so the pitch to the board was really different in that it wasnt about strategy it was about operations in how you take the business to break even and profitability etc right， it was it was presenting myself as a mature operator and my track record at expedia i think now things of change， which is we have become much more focused on those on those three segments yeah， and if you look at rides， we have a number growth bats， which is there is base business Uber x， which is like can be fifty percent of a growth than about fifteen percent of our growth are international countries where the business model as we had it wasnlegal， so the attitude of time was well if our business models and legal， then like were not coming in， until were invited in， and we took a different ack， which is well what business model is legal lets adjust our business model to the country versus have the country adjust the business model hmm and once youre in you and you build trust within a country and you build a voice， etc maybe than the business model can change over per period to benefit the you know drivers careers， etc like were in Germany， were in Spain， were in Japan， were in Korea， were in Turkey theres a bunch of countries that were spending into with tweaks to the business final to make sure they were expanding to into those countries the right way and then theres a whole host of new bats that were making in terms of transportation taxi， which is huge low cost halables， two wheeler， three wheelers Uber for business health uh transportation um all of these different segments that whole kind of the new best porfoy will be thirty five percent of growth hmm so if we do it right， we will fifty percent of a growth will come from these new initiatives that really didnexist and now on the each side obviously was about food and kind of the general expansion of that business， but is really about getting into the other category is getting into grocery， liquor， etc one of the part im supersutted about is weve had kind of um call it it integrated offering if you think about eats， theres a markeplace offering you come to Uber eats and eats bring you demand and then， theres the fulfillment of that demand right the mybrain line here and delivering it right that is delicious by the way that has nothing do a demannecessarily but is filmit and these are two separate businesses they get stabled together exactly so， so we have now were separating the textack right so that now we can offer we can go to merchancese if you want market place great， but if you want fulfillment， we can offer you fulfillment in a separable way so for example， Walmart isnt in our marketplace because there Walmart they have incredible brand etc but they user fulfillment services and more more that our vision is we essentially want the local grocer to out Amazon Amazon like every single local business can deliver same day， which is better the next day um if we can connect that to marketplace thats great， but that can also be a separate part of our business that can uh grow how much of this you know goes back to like the original ten years ago fifteen years ago vision foruber it just takes so long to realize this i mean completion plex it looks great on paper than you know real life is a lot more difficult right are there activities that you sort of thought about where you？

you used to need to do something different or counter position the market in order to be successful were now you sort of look around your like and actually in this area were the incombid。

so theres a different strategy that we need to lean into as an incombid our working with taxes was was an interesting twist hmm right， which is the some extent they have been definitially the competition or we have been the competition or the um challenger to those in comments， um at some point we became much bigger than taxi but in the end， if you remove yourself from the emotions， etc you know were competing against x or why were the job of wiring up？

you know vehicles and drivers wanna drive people to places and that includes tacy like there four and a half million of them and if you take the high pothesis， which is the the days of old where you wave your arm to you know wave a taxi down like things are a changing then it was a move that was obvious but at the same time like the beauty of ubers when you get into the actual challenges like for example， we we launch axi the way that we match generally， Uber is one to one， so you uh hail for an Uber we will match you will make an offer to a specific driver， driver says yes， driver comes pick you up etc what we found in taxi markets is that when we weighthe one to one match if we werent integrated into the taxi meter， and that something that will build over per the time the taxie might be full， but the acceptance rate of the taxis was much much lower and we didn know why and if the acceptance rate is lower， you might wait for a long time to get match because we can come send offer offer before you get a match so the team built a technology blast dispatch， which is instead of a one to one match its a you know will make a dispatch a ten different taxes one of them access is just like the old taxi dispatched only like is you know theres a pick up um fifty four lingers street and someone says Joey says yeah i got that yeah， i got that one so like whats whats old becomes new whats new becomes old but it whats been interesting is this a simple idea， but then building out the tech infrastructure to be able to fit to that particular market becomes a challenge， but also its an opportunity， which is now for some are competters the copy that one is its taking a lot of tuning to actually get that experience to be excellent um there are some markets where were mixing demand you know you might uh click for a new werex a taxi might show up right is that a good thing is there basing improves marketplace。

liquiity and things that seem very simple on the surface to actually make the magic up and pushing a button and a car shows up in five minutes and you get great service is actually pretty build on the ground really cool that is cool i have another um sort of corporate structure question that im not curious about i think you guys betweenwhen you took the job and today turned over basically the entire Uber shareholder base im sure there are some people that still holder shares from yeah those early days but what is that like at the scale of a seventy eighty billion dollar market cap company turning over a shareholder base in its entirety very painful！

it was the displacement in terms of shareholders， it was tough right and and theres a certain cohorde of shareholders going after hypergrowth， etc especially in this market place where is much more about discipline growth， profile growth， etc that that change over has been difficult， but we now have a set a shared with the fideldies of the world capital morgins down， etc that have the capacity to own a lot of shares way more than they do today and theres a consistency about as we keep delivering they keep up in their stake were now seeing a stock price that generally is is working， but ill tell you when were in the middle of it， like it was it was tough you know after the ipo after the uh lockup stay travisol dollar shares both and those days like those were not everydays not probably percent of the company that was a lot there moments when you remember that stock prices are a function of supply and debate and when fifteen percent of a companies outstanding shares hit the market all one or two percent or two percent or what yeah right like thats yeah mean that like i think in hindsight um i think it was a good move by him because it create a separation he want to move on and so i in hindsight i respect what he did and a high side like i didnt see it at the time i was like pissed right and we deep were panicking oh my god travises selling what is that mean it said or like and any you know theres is everyone wants a create drama around Uber so it its difficult as the leader to keep the team focused than believing right because its very easy to keep score based on the stock price on the stock price is desop defining moving in the wrong direction and Travis you know whether you like them or not you respect them hes a really smart person hes a founder of the company like that was tough time but i think were now in a good place which is the shareholding is moving from either some of the start of folks or hatch funds to fund a metal long only players who hopefully will be shareholders for the next ten years one of the things that we heard from many people is we are researching that time period hmm was just the immense uh degree of the stakes involved for the whole legal cessor like this went beyond us the drama in the press thats one level right！

but like the number of university endowments who through the venturefunds that were invested in Uber had large portions of their whole university endowment that were dependent on the private ma mark of Uber and and fund of funds where compensation hearty been paid out as if this was a Liquid security。

but its not a Liquid security soverinations who that were you know not dependent but like paid attention to that sure were you aware of that did you feel that like oh yeah obvic benchmark and travel were in this power struggle but that there was this um heavy feel like when you talk to the benchmark folks theres this responsibility， which is this this was one of the hits of the sentry like this is a category defining um company and investment and benchmars had a lot of goones but this this one was a great one and while i wouldnt it was a probability there was a much r than nonzero uh possibility that it could all go it could all go poof so i think that was a very very heavy weight uh on bench mark and and some of the other startups etc which lead to all the events that ultimate led to like theybringing in an unknown outsider like that that those are some heavy decisions to make i wasnt there i was kind of yeah at the tail land of all that dram on。

but then you had to deal with the shareholder base turnover， which was like the real the unwinding of those that expectation what what one cool kind of um it was a cool of the time。

but but one really interesting kind of dynamic that that played out what when i got in was theres all this stuff happening like its had to go to London tfl they revoked our license and they had been a data bridge and we had to deal with add and just like it was craziness right and at the same time soft bank was looking to invest in the company right and this is the vision fun days and and you know sock bank the only way they came and was heavy like that there was no theres no take this being good where lets talk yeah and um the the issue that we had to deal with was one where benchmark and travel and the founders they all had highvote shares they both wanted to control the company and if you sold your shares， they would flip into local so there was this game of chicken which is softhank wanted in an untypical mossifashion it was like hey if you dont let us invest in you were gonna invest in at pink company right and its billions of dollars and so we had to get sofbank in and they want to miss the Uber because was top brand had top tacket， etc but the same time none of the shareholders want to sell because theres game a chicken whoever sold my lose control， etc and so we had to go around to all of the high vote shareholders and we literally had to like get everyone to agree to blow up the Hive out share that think is its actually the only time when tech uh tech company like they bleu up all of the highvotes and so every like we literally have to go shareholder， shareholder and like Ben said he would say yes and George like it like everybody and if anyone said no none of it would work and no soulbank would go to game to you know call pink which will be a disaster wow， so that was a really interesting kind of this it was like all or not right and in the end we got everyone including travel sbenchmark everyone agree to essentially switch over Hive out lowvote， and that one i got sofbang can but it stop the power struggle because then no one could control a company and that was actually real secondary benefit， which is then it became like how do we build a great company？

versus whois gonna get control when whos gonna have more impact that that like we did it for sofbank but in hinsite it was a really important move which is OK no more board control like this is no longer gonna be control company lets go built this was an eighty billion dollar？

prisoners， delema。

because if anyone said actually im im gonna move in my own self interest here actually long term it was a very everything would blown up and and you might have a lift who was getting category position against us with a ten billion dollar investment from south bank i try it was ten billion it was actually i think fifteen i oh and some secondary and some primary wow， it it would have been like that that would be maybe would have been life or death who who Helen us and any Uber had raised the most money of any company any started up at that point it was just it was a very very high six game and it it was we had a deal person cam who like did heroes work like just talk to everyone and then he would like kind of bring me in as a nice guy you know say of a nice things and but you know in in the end in the end like it works it was it was a big move and everybody everybody converted， which is pretty awesome wow， theres like a little bit echos of a you know summary redstone in your early uh you know good training the we good training right it was good training like a i love the the operating side of the business attack it said right thats a stuff that i love but add to say the investment banking background that i had help like it even the concept of hey， how do we get out this issue？

the way to get out this control issues everyone blows up the shares and i frames like wait like that will work like yeah like that could work show me the no theyre like going after like starting call people he humility is great null but uh you know where were you proud yourself when that went through no because the next day there was another crisis like it was like you know breathe for two minutes you know drink！

more wine and then out to the next battle our sponsorfor this episode is a brand new one for us statsig so many of you reached out to them after hearing their ceo vj on ack two that we are partnering with them as a sponsor of acquired yeah for those of you who havent listenedbjstory is amazing beforefoundingstatic vj spent ten years of Facebook where he led the development of their mobile app ad product， which as you all know went on to become a huge part of their business he also had a front row seat to all of the incredible product engineering tools that let Facebook continuously experiment and roll out product features to billions of users around the world yep。

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if your experimenting with new AI features for your product and you want to know if its really making a difference for your KPI， stat sigis awesome for that they can now injust data from data warehouses so it works with your companies data wherever its stored so you can quickly get started no betterhow your feature flagging is set up today you dont even have to migrate from any current solution you might have were pumped to be working with them you can click the link in the shownotes or go on over to statom to get started and when you do just tell them that you heard about them from bedding David here on acquire im very curious about how you operate your twitter account on the one extreme theres like an Elon Musk type uh operate a twitter account where is this only one Elon Musk type operated like there is no type！

but there are yeah its its a singular point there is one in i dont know how many amtals they have。

but one in some hundred million uh data point of tweeting whatever comes to your mind no matter the consequences and so much so that he bought the company yes， and then on the complete other side theres like Barack Obama in Tim cook and id say youre like one click in from the baracobama！

Tim cook and im curious like we consider that compliment yeah thank you like you you definitely operate your public persona with sort of ahead of state Grace and im curious if you ever think about you let me fly a little bit more do you have a full draft folder like how do you ever wish you would express yourself a little bit what i really think yeah twitter feed do you have a burner account so i twitmostly myself there some stuff that folks a we did this the its its me like i dont have someone to running the account and you know i mix it up with some personal stuff and then some business stuff because um you want to keep it entertaining but the same time im not using twitter to express myself ide rather have a longform discussion like this like this is to me much more interesting and so twitter tweads can be taken out of context etc so again im im not there stir the pot right um so maybe thatll comes out in terms of my twitter persona ill ill take about my asker client as if i do work take him yeah like thats thats quite a compliment alright？

next， i can i wekind like a lightning around here so next random lighting around topic you were on the board of the New York times yes， what are some of your biggest learnings from being involved with that company？

it was um defly my favorite board to be on it was a really interesting time at the neartimes because they were really becoming a top technical company in terms of being a publisher like its a pretty learning organization and they wanted me is like the tech person and was come from expedian you know optimization all last stuff and their capacity to learn like super traditional company capacity learn was pretty awesome， um， one of the fascinating parts about the company and is both a superpower could be a weaknesses total separation of church and state in terms of content business right， so like when i asked well whats the cost of certain kinds of content and then have a traffic you know， can we have the connection between cost content traffic was like no， you can not ask that question huh， because the content is separate so its just the fastening organization and the bet that they made on subscriptions was amazing um， it was not obvious because advertising business was much bigger the time but it was a enterprise bat based on core identity of the company， which is we believe in quality content and i thought that was one of the most impressive best because was totally nonobaches of the time like all every single news organization， etc was advertising advertising this is the busfeed days right it was quick content etc but i i think that the bet that they made quality was very much a bad on i there identity that wasnt backed up by data and certainly wasnbacked up by their financials but the company went all in and uh theyve really benefit do you think that could have happened in a company that wasnfamily controlled like did that have something to do with how they could make a bit like that without the data to support it yeah， i think theyre very sure of that core the quality of the content that theyre building and that allows them to make those content business best because in the end， they know that the content is going to win absolutely little bit like nephic students like quality content focus on subscriptions now they are going to the advertising right so you can have a forever strategy or be so dogmatic as to not to understand that markets change strategies have to change to the time but it was absolutely the right better the right time 我们 curious how much this was an explisive boarding conversation the times also made a very explisive bed on scale of quality content you could argue maybe walstrejournal。

but other than maybe them， maybe maybe the post， may be nobody else is aggregated quality content at scale globally no people might think of the the political stuff for the new stuff， but like the New York times company covers every vertical， every geography has at least twice as many reporters。

employees any other news organization in the world i think how much was that a discussion in the borgroom there was absolutely a view of the management and the board agreed and have to be careful because it was a board room in as confidential， etc which is theres going to be top global brand for quality news that should be the New Year times like why would it not be in your times uh theyre very clear out about that and there and theyre quite determined to chee than i think theyre theyre doing a great job yeah and it just right like the company is called the New York yeah times and yeah its a global you know it it really was a in a way that you know in in video and with Netflix i think it was a more an easier leap to make fornews i think it wasreally unique leap that the the the times made well， it will be interesting to see， which is they your netflixes is building like Korean content that then extends globally your times is unnecessarily doing that right its English language content that is relevant to the world， but is probably relevant， especially international to subsegment， right its， its higher and consumer， etc who can afford the price， but again its been a absolute， whatever strategy and whatbeen a tough business yeah！

i mean theres a graveyard in the middle between the independent publisher with a low cost structure and the New York times， and theres not much in between the middle is where you go to die yeah， more lightning around uh！

i remember hearing in 2013 that it was cool that i was in twenty thirteencus 20141 year away was gonna be the year of soft driving cars yeah and here are in 2023 is next year the year how close are we wow that is a its an unanswerable question i mean it it is because theres the last two percent of use cases the tail use cases um it is unknowable what will take to get pass that last two percent and theres？

this pretty interesting philosophical question which is how saved does a robot have to be in the us？

i think there 40 thats as a result of car exits lets say that robot cars but ten time safer so and i think lets highway accidents are one of the top two or three causes of death in the United States period period so like something ten timesafer yeah！

if your tentimesafer you know fast forward twenty five years from out like lou who knows what will be four thousands thats a year right so lua more than ten a day and like if you have four companies that are responsible for for the market base five five companies right and there are ten des today like a good day is hey， we only had one fatality thats a good day like its just i cant imagine that and so theres this well does it have to be ten times better， i dont think its good enough they have to be a hundretimes better that maybe thats not good enough so like from a sociable stamp point of course， if its a hundred times better uh， we should go forward with it but i mean there for hundred fatals a year one every single day and i dont know how society would deal with that society is very not call forgiving but like they understand humans are human in humans make mistakes i think you must have experience with this already with yeah， i mean listen we we have this on unbelievably unfortunately circumstances and phoenix and it causeus to completely redesign how we build for safety first， etc ultimately because of the pandemic would decide to get out of selfdriving what which i think is it was a good decision because our core skill said as like building this demand network connecting uh demand to supply in a dynamic way， etc we now get to work with a bunch of partners and like waymos， a partner， auroras， a partner， etc so we get to work with a much larger ecosystem but i think the question of that that last percent and then what is society ready you know what whats safety will society underwrite to those two questions you know are for me unanswerable my instinct is that you will see small scale continue dex uh experiments kind of get bigger over the next five years but is gonna take a good ten years for to be a material part of our network or transportation at large but thats a guess im curious to also。

uh i want to ask given both your job and uh you uniboth live in San Francisco something crazy has happened in the past six eight months that like is now happening in San francies like we went from a for fifteen years everybody been like yeah self driving cars is tapping tomorrow and like yeah yeah yeah yeah but like have you ever taken a ride on one i havent yeah but like you everyday you walk down the street you like those cars going by with no driver in the sea its pretty stronger and its its become just so common place that like i dont even think about it anymore but then friends come visit now like what what was going on here yeah but still like the the service for certain originations and destinations it works the the pick up in again its its OK for human driver to double park for a pick up not OK for a robot so they they islike again will you get into the detail if you look at our right here service for example。

if which is the percenture time someone as for a ride and then theres a car available if thats less than call in 98 percent， thats like all hands on debt， like its a disaster so like we are available all the time everywhereset around theres a lot of work that goes into that for any singular writer provider to provide that kind of coverage is gonna be really really difficult， which why ultimately， we think the better solution is for the wamers of the world， aurorers of the world etc mobilize to work with us so that you you have this kind of hybrid transition state where you can still have this 98 percent coverage everywhere no matter what whether it is zero but we have this more kind of switching layer sometimes a human should come pick you up sometimes the robot should come pick you up but the transitions gonna take a while。

but its a it is happening its cool all right last lighting around question then i have a closing segment if you could only own Uber eats or Uber the transportation business， which one would you rather own also！

its is a transportation business oh， uh mobels transportation of stuff you can you get it？

you you like like choose between your children like is a georgers a Donnie like come on you cant be serious you could own a business on the twenty percent take rate or a business with thirty percent take rate， which one would you rather own so i i i will answer someone seriously， which is um high take razer dangerous so our job as a company is to grow volume as much as we can as fasses we can， maker shareholders happy enough help minimizing the takerate， which is taking as much of that dollar and and giving it to drivers in careers like last quarter growth bookingscrew um you know over twenty two percent， or so， which is really good the money that drivers in careers including tips made on the platform group by thirty percent higher and of the same time we were able to expand our margins brief free casual positive so like the design spec that were building is how do you like torture the organization？

because sometimes it is torture like watch every single nick one done being incredibly efficient everything that you do automake， everything get fraled out the system etc so that you can actually operate a business as scale of the lowest take rate possible like talking about booking not common one thing that we learn when i started expedition take rate was twenty five percent and bootingstakerate was 15 an over like a tortuous thirteenyears we took expedias take gray from twenty five percent to the teens it was like seventeen i think or so when when i left and theres like pure margin dollars that youre taking out like theres no goodness that comes out of that and so this is just really hard work to do and as a result were pretty hard core， which is any quarter i can deliver anything on the bottom line if i can move my take rate up a little bit but like its too easy， its too tempting yeah and so were very hard core about like not we gotta keep take rate flow and you gotta do the hard work to be able to keep take rate low so i say i take the twenty percent take rate business like its its more lasting the growth can go on for much much longer yeah i asked a tongue in cheek way but i completely understand that and see the um its the ncs capital thing its the do what what is when uh bill girly wrote that blogpost years ago about the rate too far right yeah exactly right you build more durability by leaving more on the table for your ecosystem partners or maybe more accurately you make yourself too vulnerable if you yeah it and it is just too now the room right it is like whats is saying uh fat pigs getsletter right yeah yeah uh pigs get fat hogs get yeah exactly how is and like you can you you dont wanna put yourself in that position its very tempting its very very easy this is temptation obviously this quarterly kind of treadmo let your own etc theres like you can make someone happy by increasing take rate and foreigners of the bottom line and we we really really culturally try to resist that notion cool well the last segment that i have here is giving you the floor you know were at the end of a long form podcast so anybody that still listening appreciates new wants and so if theres something that you feel is often misunderstood or that you want to say to people that are willing to let a longform argument so again what do you think is misunderstand about the company or you or the industry or this time that urine right now really anything you want to talk about i dont know if its misunderstood， but but its certainly something that thats top of my for us is that we ultimately the future of the business as a stands now depends on our building of the best platform for earners and it goes to like the take rate right， if the take rate goes up too much， then were taking too much of the service， etc and the fact is that i think Uber was guilty of taking earners for granted because when i first came in and for much of the company， like we were in a state of our supply， we had too many drivers， it ghost and instead of gating， and etc we just did really invest in the driver experience on the career experience the way that we should of， and then the way that we organize the company around the earner experience we was pretty standard in terms of a b ToC business right there s a team you， theres a team that runs the Uber app， theres a team that runs the eats app and the team that runs the driver app and you do all the typical stuff， which is analycs and measurements an ab test etc in order to optimize throughput in the market place etc but like is we step back you know we dont ab test what the fora one k match should be for employees right， like it was equivalent some of the experimentation that we were doing on the earner side is like you know yeah， should we match a three percent or six percent？

unless， look at employee turnover cool experiment maybe you could optimize but when your building a product that people are making a living off of or are earning money that they have to earn with theres a different duty of care and the amount of time that theyspending on the ad most of you burn plays myself to like order rise all time or eats all time you know you get in get out， etc but a driver will be spending four hours， five hours， six hours with app every single day， so the consequence of like all this coming together and are building for drivers the way that we essentially build for consumers， which is like pretty cool on techi， etc you know， one is like the P95 experiences you like， you build your only P50X averages lie and then you look at P95 well， thats the worst experience well the the probability percentage yeah， the probability percentages you know drivers， an average drivers driving a week experienced like a p 95 circumstance every single week multiple times a week cause they spend a lot more time on that so theres been a pretty important culture change of the company， which is like higher duty of care actually slowing down in terms of how we build for earners being a lot more humble listening to them， their experience， etc the fact is that when you have five point six million earners on the platform， there is us marketplace， which is it works for some earners are doesnt right， so theres always gonna be ten percent， which is like half femillion people who are not happy with experience， but we got to make sure that 九十 percent or were getting more uh people who like the experience into the platform， but because of where we came from its actually pretty new muscle for us to like build this earner experience， and i do think like as i step back and i think about like what am i gonna be proud of at the company and like theres a lot of to be proud of in terms of turning around the business so like the team that we built in the service that we built i think theres a sense which is like tech is out a touch with the real world and its a lot like tech is you know youre building for the virtual world then Uber is unique in that its a technology company that like built for the real world and the impact that we have especially as a release earners like its real people and so what i would be most proud of one is this a practical reality， which is a we build a company that is has a best product experience for earners were gonna win long term but if were that technology company thats like very much connected not with elite but with you know at earnerbase and the broad population not just in San Francisco but all over the world like that thats a company be proud of but the same time is like we i think that that muscle weve been developing in the last two to three years we have a long way to go is Uber the largest order platform in the world yeah， i think were the largest source of work anywhere by far and growing pretty fast thats a crazy statement yeah！

yeah cause the largest companies who like even if you just look at employees companies that employee people employee max like two million max yeah！

yeah and Uber has how many earners on the platform five point six million a you know as of the last quarter its growing what is a lot of earners？

what is the federal government employee？

its like on par with its got to be on part with that no law the vast majordier i know theres white part time yeah but its still the scope is pretty stronger well and is everywhere so cool well thank you dara youvery welcome as a pleasure im glad trading me to the wine well now i mean you you traded us and im glad you decided to stay after dropping it off you gave me your good tip ill work out uh David that was a blast so fun funny its like you were just here next to me in seeadone now youre there in San Francisco the magic of the internet im really missing that delicious wine that are abroad us i know listeners you tell us if you like that better not our foot was too canpy if you want more of David and i we recently did an episode on my first million and it was really fun we went behind the scenes of acquired and we sort of talked about acquiredsbusiness our journey turning it from a podcast into a business why we think the podcast works and listeners you might have your own ideas， but where are differentiation is in the market of content out there today and i know it just a blast samage on a really fun to talk to so if you are interested in hearing that you can click the link in the shownotes to specifically go to that episode or search any podcast player for my first million that they also did episodes recently with couple friends of the show davidsenra from the founders podcast and actually， David， one of you and my favorite youtubers yes， dog demuro in the car category for anyone interested in cars dug is such such a nice guy yeah， check out ack two its are interviewshow where we talk to focus who are on the cutting edge of whats next figring out things like where is the defensibility in ai for B2B SaaS companies or you know our interview with the ceo of angelist talking about how theyre deploying ai at their company i know ai is a buzzword， but like it is just dominating how every company is making moves these days and its great to talk to the protagonist who are actually in the arena right now making all of these moves so thats on ack to check out the slack its where we are talking about this episode and every other acquiredatafm slash slack and if you want to come closer into the kitchen and be a part of what David and i are building here become a lp acquireddatafm slash lp current benefits include once a season， you guys will pick an episode yullpicked Lockheed Martin which a shaping up to be one of our biggest episodes ever so thank you and uh i had a blast researching that one so thanks to rlps and David， we get a schedule on lp call here yeah month or so get it on the books yep withatlisteners thanks so much i will see you next time well？

see you next time who got the truth is you isu is you who got the truth now 哼。