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You come to Uber, you're gonna work your ass off.

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And if you're not performing, we're gonna let you know.

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But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth?

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And they can leave because the most important skill in life is the skill of working hard.

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And when you see the top athletes, Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, of course they're talented.

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But the thing that's different about them is they work their asses off.

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And that's a learned skill. That's not something you're born with.

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You may be smarter, more talented, etc.

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But I'm not gonna let anyone outworldly.

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With that mentality,

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when you joined Uber who was losing 3 billion per year,

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now it generates 8.5 billion in free cash flow every year.

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But it seems that you were forged in such a way that you were gonna be relentless.

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Yeah, and it really started with being born in Iran.

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With the Islamic Revolution in 1978, we were not safe there.

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And I remember at one point we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard

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and bullets went through our living room.

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So my family came to the US to rebuild their lives.

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You were eight, nine years old?

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Yeah, and it really destroyed my dad.

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Sorry, me.

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It's tough for me to talk about.

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All right, let me try again.

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Seeing that has put me on a road where I just wanted to make my family proud.

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So I studied bio-electrical engineering and then my first job was investment banking.

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And I got to see the process of big companies being built.

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And then I had the opportunity to take over Expedia.

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And in your 12 years of CEO, Expedia sales increased from 2.1 billion to 8.8 billion.

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And you were the highest paid CEO of the US tech company.

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And I left it all behind to go to Uber.

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And I want to get into practical company building how you would get that company to work hard,

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and create a culture of continuous improvement and all that stuff.

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But there's an alien that's arrived amongst us, which is AI.

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Now driving, I think, is one of the biggest employees in the world, like as of profession.

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I mean, we've got nine and a half million drivers and careers on our platform.

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Those drivers' careers that you have will be out of work.

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They're honest about the situation.

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What do they nine million people do?

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Just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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Two things I wanted to say.

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The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show.

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Week after week means the world to all of us.

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And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had.

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And couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

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And if you enjoy what we do here,

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please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly

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and follow us on this app.

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Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.

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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to

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and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

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Thank you.

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Dara, you lead one of the most consequential,

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interesting talked about companies of my generation.

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It's worth hundreds of billions of dollars last time I checked.

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And it's a company that I use every single day.

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Thank you.

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I've looked through your story.

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You were the CEO of Expedia at one point.

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You were currently the CEO of Uber and you've turned that company from a

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lost making company to a highly profitable company.

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And one that has continued to be successful through such a great time of transition.

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Your story starts in a very interesting way.

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And when I start doing the research for guests sometimes,

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I think I come in with some kind of presumption that I grew up in California.

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You went to Stanford, etc.

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But that is not the case.

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Can you take me to that earliest context so I can understand

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how and why you are the way that you are?

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Quite the starting questions.

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But I'll try.

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I think that for me, the events that shaped my life and maybe a part of who I am really started

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with, my being born in Iran and Iran at the time was modernizing, becoming a modern society.

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And my family built a pretty big industrial company that everyone was quite proud of in Iran.

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We lost all of that with the revolution in 1978.

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And my family had to come to the US to rebuild their lives.

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You had to come to the US.

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We were not safe there.

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One of my uncles actually was a cabinet member of the Shaws who had just been toppled.

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And at one point we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard.

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They were actually going after our neighbor's house.

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And one of their guns went off and bullets went through our living room.

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Shattered the glass in the living room.

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And at that point my mom was like, we're not safe being here.

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So we had to come to the US and I do think that event to some extent has shaped not just me

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by my family and that the rebuilding of our lives, of our economic lives to some extent,

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where we're all trying to rebuild what we lost in Iran.

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Do you look back on that and can you identify any sort of fingerprints that were left on you

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from that time that have defined you in a business capacity?

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I think at my core, I never feel safe, you know,

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when the experience of losing everything and for the kids, I tell you, it was fine for the kids.

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But see my parents lose everything and it really destroyed my dad.

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You know, it really, his losing, his value to the world as he saw it really hurt his inner being.

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And I do think to some extent seeing that has put me on a road where I want to rebuild,

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I want to make my family proud. But at the same time, I never, that feeling of having the floor,

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you know, the rug pulled out of you, of building everything, that's a feeling that never leaves you.

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I think Americans underestimate what this place represents and its ideals, right?

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Which is if you build something that's yours, there's a rule of law can't be taken away from you.

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That is not true for the majority of the population of the world.

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And so I think for me, there's a drive to build and it's at the same time,

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never, ever, ever taking anything for granted, never being satisfied.

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Because the minute you take these for granted, then that rug can be pulled out from under you.

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On your father, there was a moment where he, a couple of years, I think six years,

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where he got trapped in Iran and wasn't granted an exit visa.

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Yes.

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And I imagine at that time, your mother was raising you alone here in New York City.

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Yeah, and Terry Downey or 45 minutes north of New York City.

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But she, she went from a life of never having to work to, she had to become a salesperson to

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make some money and she did it all herself and she really stepped up.

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So I think it shaped us. It was difficult in some ways. I miss my dad. I remember when he left.

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He was like a giant compared to me. And then when he came back, it was my sophomore year at college.

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And he still saw me as a kid. And so he wanted to drive me to college and he did.

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And then he's like, he wants to hang out. I'm like, Dad, can you get out of here? I went

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hang out with my kids. I was with my friends. I was excited to go back to school. And it was just,

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it was sad seeing the change, you know, of a man who had gone older. His time in Iran was really

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tough on him. He had a heart attack on the plane coming back. So he was a diminished person to

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some extent. But it was great that I had many, many years with him, you know, since then.

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When he was away, when he was trapped in Iran, I wasn't able to exit. Your mother Lily.

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Yes. Reference to how you didn't mention him much. But when he returned, you broke down in tears.

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It's okay. We're not don't be.

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He was a very stoic man.

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Sorry, me.

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Passed away a couple of years ago. So it's tough for me to talk about.

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All right, let me try again. He was a very stoic man. So he kept it all inside. And we were

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taught to do the same thing. But we wrote letters together in the beautiful letters. He wrote

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poetry. So I communicated with him in Iran. But there's expression of feelings and kind of

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frustration. We're not something that my family did. You know, you just dealt with the situation.

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And so yeah, I think I suffer from over stoicism and then breaking down every once in a while as you

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just saw. It's a familiar story of the men that I've interviewed that grew up with that kind of

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sort of emotional composure, enforced and modeled to them. Yeah, I don't know if it was enforced.

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Like it wasn't implicitly. Yeah, like we were very loving family. But my father was very humble.

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He did not believe that just because you're in a position of power, you should kind of project

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that power. You should communicate that to everyone. And there was a stoicism inside my family,

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which is don't complain. So it was a weird combination of stoicism and love at the same time.

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How does I'm because I'm not a father yet. Yes, but I'm approaching that. Congratulations.

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Almost. Yeah, almost. Yeah, I've just proposed to my fiancee and we're in the process now of

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you know, bringing children into the world, hopefully. And it's one of the things I think a lot

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about, which is how do I stop my own stoicism passing on to my children? First of all,

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fatherhood, parenthood is is so humbling. You have such a picture in your mind as to how you're

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going to raise your family, what your kids are going to be like. And they just become their own

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people. And it's such a beautiful process to see. And at first, there's this alarm. Oh my god,

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I'm losing control. You know, I've done everything. You've planned everything. This is how I'm going

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to raise kids, but then real life gets in the way. It is absolutely exhausting. So you probably

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execute on 80% of your plan and you're 20% imperfect because you are exhausted and you're working.

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You got a career or often some people do. And at some point, you see these kids kind of move off

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into this completely unexpected territory. And there's a point for me, it was like, I'm a bit of

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a control freak. So I'm like, this is not good. They're kind of doing their own thing. But then you

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you step back and you're like, this is, it's absolutely gorgeous. What's happening? So the advice

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that I would just give in terms of being a parent is just spend the time with the kids. You know,

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it is that is the magic is not what you do or the particular tactics, but it's the investment in

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them and the time spent with them and the rest, you know, you can't control, but what you can control

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is kind of that connection. I am speaking of children. I went back and looked through lots of

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different photos of where you lived and where you grew up to try and get a picture of your world

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in an alley context and all these photos look incredibly incredible. I think that was your fifth birthday.

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Oh wow. I had a hair back then. My mom loved to dress us up in like little doll outfits. I can

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tell. Look at that. I'm definitely not going to do that to my kids. Age four in London. Yes.

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You're in your cousins. Family was everywhere for us. And again, another one with a beautiful hair cut.

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It was a great childhood. It was amazing. I spoke to your mom. Lily. I hope, well, how to go.

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We'll see. She said, I'll play the audio file to say people can hear it.

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When he was very difficult, he told me that he wants to do something important in the world.

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And he said becoming wealthy is not as priority, but making a change is.

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I can't say I remember that conversation. But the one of my early experiences that really

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imprinted on me was we went to visit one of my dad's factories, family factories. My dad was in

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charge of designing factories, building them operating them. And the respect that that population,

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the factory had for him and the visit and how excited they were that his family was visiting

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was just really cool. And the way that he treated, he knew everyone's name. He treated them

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with such respect. It just, it really imprinted on me. There was this care. It wasn't the boss

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is coming and there's fear. And so for me, like that ability to build a life where you have

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impact on a lot of people, but it's positive kind of building impact. You have the broad respect

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of these folks. It really imprinted on me. So I was wanted, you know, when we came to the states,

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making money was important. I don't want to kind of be as and say, like, oh, I didn't care about

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it because we lost everything. And so my first job was like, invest in banking. What's a goal

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as banking? Have fun, but make money, right? And so that was a priority for me. But then as I'm

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matured in life, as I knew, I had safety in terms of, okay, yes, I know I can do that. I can make

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money. I can provide for my family. I can support my mom and dad. Then building kind of an enterprise

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having that feeling that I saw with my father, that connection with his team was something that

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became really important to me. And when you came to New York, you were eight, nine years old?

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Nine years old, yes. If I'd asked you nine years old, when you arrived in New York, what you

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wanted to do when you were older, what would you have said? I have no idea. I want to make my dad proud.

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That was it. I wasn't kind of motivated for specific target at all. I just wanted to make my

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family proud. Why? I want to make my dad proud. He's always been an important figure in my life.

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You know, there's this. And I think part of it is that I never got to know him that well

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as an individual, because he was obviously, when I was younger, he was working all the time.

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So he would throw up once in a while for dinner, et cetera. We always had family dinners together.

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And then he went away. And then I worked. So I never really got to know the person that he was.

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But I don't know. There's kind of the sense of duty. There's there's a hope that

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you know, he's somewhere or maybe he's not someplace. But that making my father proud has always

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been a strong current, undercurrent in my life. So you're nine years old. You've arrived in New York City.

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You do end up going off to college sometime later. Yes. I went to Brown University studied

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engineering there. How do you think about that choice at that time and how

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determinant that was of your trajectory in your life, that decision to go to that university

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and study that subject? My father always said, you can do anything in your life as long as

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either you're a doctor or an engineer. And I picked engineering. I just loved the problem solving

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aspect of engineering and all the layers of equations, et cetera. And those equations being able

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to represent something in real life. And then magically, that's something in real life,

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following what it should theoretically. Like the problem solving aspect that engineering

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fascinated me. I absolutely loved it. And I think it serves me to this day.

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Engineers make good CEOs. Great CEOs. If you step back,

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companies are just machines, right there. They're machines that are run by people. And over

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a period of time, you actually try to automate some of the stuff that the people do. And then you

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send the people off to do new stuff that can't be automated. Like we are rules based like it's an

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organism and it's a machine at the same time. And to some extent, the job of the CEO is engineering,

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how do I set up the company to achieve the goals that I set for shareholders, set for my board,

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sets for sets for it? It's a giant engineering problem. And to me, that's like fascinating.

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The putting together the pieces to get to what you perceive to be the goal. And one of the really

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important things is you got to pick the right goals. That is one giant problem solving engineering

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challenge. And it's one of those fascinating parts of my job. I want to get into that, the practical

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company building, how you organize an organization to be a well-functioning machine, setting goals

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and all that stuff. After college, you go into investment banking for a period of time.

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Yeah, I work there for eight years in risk arbitrage to begin with and then mergers and acquisition

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advisory work as well. And that experience I was reading taught you about betting on people.

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Yes. What do you mean by betting on people? I'm aware it's the important.

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It was actually a lesson that I learned from Herbert Allen who was running Allen and company at the

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time. It was the Allen's family start of the company. And he always told me, and at the time,

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I didn't really listen to him. He always said, Dara, always been on people. Companies go,

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they're good companies, bad companies, but great people stay great all the time. And one of the

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things that made Allen and company was really special, investment banking can be a doggy talk's

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sport. But Allen and company really cultivated relationships with people whom they perceive to be

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great, both in terms of potential and in terms of character. And of all the investment banks,

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that loyalty, that making a bet on a person and then staying with them through their whole

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careers is a pattern of how that place works. And it's definitely something bad that I learned

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there. What is it about one's character that makes them qualify as a great person? You look for

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success, honor loyalty, people who will tell you what they're going to do, whether it's good or bad,

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and then follow through on their promises. Hard work. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned.

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Well, that comes with success. Okay. It's hard work. You put those two together.

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And why did you leave Allen and company? I left Allen because I met Barry Diller. He was a client

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of mine. We got to meet a big kind of deal, unfriendly hostile tender offer for Paramount at the time.

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It's that there's another one happening, I guess for Paramount now as we speak. And he was the one

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person. I thought I was going to be an Allen lifer. I thought I was going to be there forever.

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My older brother, Kave is an Allen lifer. It's the only job he's had in his life.

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But Barry was the one person who I thought, if I get a chance to work for this person,

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I'm going to jump out it and I did. Why? Why Barry? He's spectacular. I mean, he was spectacular.

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He is spectacular. A doer. I met him in a circumstance where he lost. It was his

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giant hostile tender offer. Bids going back and forth between the winner, Viacom and Barry,

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ultimately, Barry stepped away. And we were planning an announcement. And you can imagine,

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all these fancy PR people sitting around a table, how do we present a loss as a win, right?

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So he bid for a company. He didn't get it. And he walked away. He didn't get it because you

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walked away, which in hindsight was a mistake. He could have paid more. And then in the release

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where he walked away, I think the release was they won. We lost next. And he was a constant

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motion machine like they won. We lost next. What's next? Let's go. And that's the kind of person I

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wanted to work for. In business, losing is part of the game. Absolutely. Absolutely. But then calling

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it out, you know, not bullshitting, not like, oh, we tried our best and the circumstances,

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they won. We lost. Next. It's okay. Does it matter how you lose? Absolutely it does.

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They absolutely it does. It's an, and I find companies guilty of two things. Like one is ignoring

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losses, like papering over losses, etc. Right. And then sometimes being obsessive about the loss,

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you know, inspecting it. What happened? Let's do a summary. Let's meet what went wrong,

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etc. And, and you know, for me, it's somewhere in the middle, which is recognize why you lost.

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Recognize that you lost. Say it because it's important to say it. Analyze it. But then move on.

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Like, let's move on. And the next time you hope to have learned some kind of judgment to avoid

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that kind of a loss. But it doesn't mean you're going to avoid losing it all. Like if you're not

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taking shots, you're not missing, you're, you're not losing. So for me, it's constantly moving and

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taking your shots, losing, learning, next, losing, learning, next. That constant motion is what I

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want to see. That constant motion and learning is what excites me. This is business advice, but

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also life advice generally because a lot of people who I meet come up to me and ask me questions

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about things often ask questions. That sounded a lot like what you just said. It's dealing with

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rejection, dealing with taking an L and how that L then stays with them. Sometimes for a decade,

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sometimes for 15 years and holds them back. How it's their confidence means that they don't take it

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anymore shots. And this can cause a sort of a downward confidence spiral. And listen, I'm talking

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a big game, but I will tell you in my personal life, I can't deal with rejection. I have a really

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hard time dealing with rejection. Professional life, no problem whatsoever. So it's like in the

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end, we're all humans, after all. You have a difficulty dealing with rejection in your puzzle.

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Very much. What kind of rejection? Any kind of rejection conflict, it's something that has been

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that I fought my whole life, which is because I was one of the younger cousins. Because I was a

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youngest brother, I just kind of didn't have rights. So I was, I went with a flow. And going with a

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flow means you're going with a current, etc. I didn't cause trouble. And that has followed me in my

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personal life and my professional life. I don't have as much trouble there. I guess my professional

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life to some extent is a mask because I get to be aggressive. I get to lose, etc. It's something that

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said my wife has really helped me with. But it is something in my personal life that generally

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I'm conflict-avoidant. You conflict-avoidant in your personal life? Interesting. Yeah, definitely.

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That's not good in a relationship. No, that's why it's helping me out. I'm much better now.

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I'm much better. But it's, it's when I take those issues on, I have to fight myself. There's some

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core. You know, if you and I were having an issue and I'm sitting down with you and saying,

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hey, I'm not, I'm not happy about X or Y. I can feel there's a core me saying, just let it go.

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But that's how resentment builds and that's how relationships over a long period of time start

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moving the wrong way. So it is something that is in my core, but I actively fight and I'm getting

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better at it. But I'm still on the learning journey there. I'll tell you that. Eventually you go

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on to becoming the CEO of Expedia. Yes. There was a couple of CEOs that came before you,

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but you became the third and took that company on. Very different job going from investment banking

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to being a CEO. Yeah, yeah. Now, there was a journey there because I went from banking to running

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deals and I knew that I liked how companies worked. The thing that I liked about investment banking

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was that I got to see a lot there. I got to see really smart people, really cool companies built.

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But I couldn't go along with that journey. I was jealous of the journey that these CEOs were

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moving on. So then when M&A was a bridge to work at a company and built the company, I moved from

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M&A to CFO, Chief Financial Officer, because that's to some extent finance, but it's also

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being the CEO's partner in helping the CEO build. So I always knew the direction that I want to go

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in, which is hey, at some point I want to actually be an operator. And then I had the opportunity

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to take over Expedia, the CEO of the time, Eric Blackford kind of said, yeah, big company,

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not for me. So he resigned. And honestly, Barry didn't have an alternative. I was the CEO and

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chairman of IAC, which was a parent company of what became Expedia, IAC travel. The head of IAC

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travel resigned. I raised my hand and said, maybe I could do it. Barry was desperate. He had no

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one else. So he promoted me to be CEO of IAC travel. And IAC travel is going through some

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difficult time. So we spun it off at Expedia. So that's when I became the CEO of Expedia, the

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public company, and I moved to the Netherlands of Seattle. When you were job just before you took

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on that role as CEO, you were buying businesses. So M&A is mergers and acquisitions. You were buying

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companies. Yes. What are some of the companies that you bought? Oh, we bought a lot of companies.

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We bought Tickamaster. We bought match.com, bought Expedia Hotels.com. And it was all about the theme

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that Barry and I were fascinated with was the movement of commerce online. You know, it was during

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that time. It was the late late 90s, early 2000. And we saw it happening with our very own eyes,

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really, with home shopping. It was a flat screen. It was a television. And you were offering

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products. And people were calling up buying those products electronically. And just the medium

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change, the medium change from a TV screen to an internet screen. And instead of calling, you could

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use a HTTP. And so while the medium change, we kind of saw this opportunity to take advantage of

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the change of platform. So match.com is actually the olden days. You know, you had online dating,

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but you would call a number. You'd be like, my name is Dara. And I'm six foot two. And this is

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you describe yourself. And you hear other kind of recordings. And you would get matched up based

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on someone who seemed nice. And all of that just moved online. That was what batch.com was.

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Same thing with Tickamaster. You know, in the olden days, you would go to tower records. Have you ever

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been to tower records? Yes. So there were these things called record stores. And they also had a

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desk where they would sell concert tickets. So you would either call for a concert ticket or you

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would physically go and buy one. Amazing. And there are lines, tower record lines. And all of that

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exactly moved online. And same thing with travel, right? You would call a travel agent. And so all

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of there was this movement of retail and phone commerce to online commerce. And we identified

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the early players to make that shift and personal's ticketing travel were the ones that we went for.

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Because at the time, Amazon was doing everything else like physical fulfillment. So what we were

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going for were essentially electronic transactions that did not require physical fulfillment. And that

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was travel because, you know, it's a virtual good ticketing match.com, which was personal. So there

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was a pattern around madness, so to speak. But we went out and bought all these companies. This

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was a really great time. I've got two questions that emerged. That one is, again, I'm really

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interested to understand how you would look for talent or how, how you think about what a great

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company is. Are there like, we look at the company culture, we looking at the founders, was

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there something else? Was it the profitability? And the other one is just really intrigued us to

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what this period of your life and thereafter taught you about how to spot opportunity and transition.

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Because that is a transitional moment of technology. And I think there is a certain pattern

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recognition one can develop as to like know what to bet on in these moments of transition,

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whether it's huge skepticism, the internet's going to not get anything. So two questions,

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I want is like, how do you spot great companies? And then the second is like patterns in transition.

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So there, I'd say they're related, which is we would spot great companies just by observing

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who was taking the lead in these transitions. These transitions are difficult. You can't predict

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exactly where things are going, how quickly they're going, how much should you invest, what's a return,

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what the market, how large is the market going to be. But there were companies that were emerging

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as the leaders. And we would just identify the leaders and call call these folks up and say,

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I want to come in and talk to you. That was it. And to some extent, it's a self-reinforcing cycle,

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which is yes, the great management teams and the great founders were the ones who were able to

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identify the opportunity and hit that opportunity faster than anyone else, recognize that opportunity

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and execute on the opportunity faster than anyone else. So to some extent, the companies who were

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in the lead, of course, had the best management teams and had the best founding teams. And when those

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two things matched, that was when we jumped. And then the last thing I would tell you in terms of

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these pattern recognition is that we never completed a successful deal because we got the company

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cheap. We actually overpaid for every single great company that we bought, but we overpaid based

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on what the market thought at the time, not what the reality turned out to be. So I do think one of

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the kind of pieces of pattern recognition with me is just humans think about success and transitions

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in a linear way because time is linear. Which is something that doesn't just, they think of it going

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like this. Yeah, you know, it's the everything kind of moves this way, right? Your schedule is

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relatively linear, right? It's, you sleep seven hours a day, like, your life is a linear life.

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But company and company success and company momentum, especially with new technologies where

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if there's a technology that's truly better than the other technology within the virtual world,

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there's absolutely no friction holding it back. These companies move in an exponential way in terms

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of their growth and ultimately in terms of their value. So whereas most people kind of see things,

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they, when they project out to the future, they see this, what actually happens is this. That's where

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the opportunities, it's the spread between the hockey stick and kind of the straight line. And

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it's very difficult for people to process that. And so that was, you know, those were the

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companies that we identified that hockey stick. And online travel was a hockey stick,

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personal was a hockey stick, ticketing was a hockey stick. I heard about the, is it Kevin's paradox?

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Yes, which I think kind of sort of overlaps with what you're saying now, when things become

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easier, faster cheaper, people do them not incrementally more, but like exceptionally more often.

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I mean, that's the definition of Uber and we can get to that at some point was originally,

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it was built as a black cab service, so to speak, a black car service.

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Can you tell me that's where it came from? Because a lot of the, history has now moved forward.

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Yeah. People have forgotten the story of how it came to be.

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Now, to some extent, it was, well, to a large extent, it was that the founder was before me,

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but it was Garrett Camp, who was one of the founders, had this idea. And I think it was born in Paris.

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It was like a snowy day in Paris and they couldn't find a black car. And it was a bunch of young,

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young tech guys like, how cool would it be to like pick up my phone and call a black car? And that

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was the core idea, which is, hey, you can use your phone to call a black car. He brought on Travis

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Kalnik. Travis was the operator and the founder. And to your point, and Kevin's paradox is some extent,

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people thought, well, what's the size of the black car market place? And it was a couple of

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billion dollars. Or what's the size of the taxi industry? And it was more than a couple of billion

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dollars. But what they didn't see at the time was that as you improve the, if you radically make

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something either more convenient or cheaper, the market expands beyond how you calculate it.

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So the Uber size and scale now is way beyond the original marketplace of black cars and

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our taxis. It's the company, the company today is a result of Kevin's paradox.

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Timing. We often don't think much about the luck of timing. Luck is an interesting word to use,

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but how important timing is and other sort of foundational factors are in enabling a company

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like Uber to exist. When you think about the timing of Uber, what are the foundations that made it

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possible? Well, it was a mobile revolution. It was mobile data technology, the iPhone coming

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together. In the early days, one of the geniuses of Travis was he would hire these market managers

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who would be GMs of new cities that they would expand into. And they would literally go to the

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city with a back full of iPhones and give away iPhones to black car drivers to get them to come

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on Uber because at the time, a lot of them didn't have, they didn't have smartphones, so to speak.

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So the onset of the smartphone was that kind of that beautiful magic of timing coming together

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and then aggressiveness of that founding team to understand that there's a pattern here. And I'm

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going to replicate that pattern all the world and raise as much capitalite as I have to to get

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there faster than anyone else. That was the magic, but it was, again, it's, yes, there's luck

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in there, but if that founding team hadn't been as aggressive and blitz scaling, which is a term

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that folks used all around the world, company won't be what it is today. Your transition out of

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investment banking into Expedio, CFO, then CEO, you know, it's a necessary type in business

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that investment bankers and CFOs don't necessarily make the best CEOs because they might

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stereotypically overfinancialize, overfinancialize, maybe be less risk adverse, maybe be like,

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you know, those kinds of things. And when I spoke to Barry, he did say the following, I'll just

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play it for you because it's been a coming from him. He was probably actually a leader

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because he had killed him and had been on the financial side of things, so he really had not

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yet had the experience of alternative managed people. That came in a difficult way to him

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and he mastered it. It didn't take him all that long. He mastered how to become a leader,

395
00:36:56.960 --> 00:37:00.720
and he mastered how to take ultimate responsibility for a company.

396
00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:07.840
Yeah, it was growing up into Barry was, and by the way, I wouldn't be where I am today without,

397
00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:13.520
not him as a mentor because he's not like a mentoring kind of guy, but him as my leader learning

398
00:37:13.520 --> 00:37:20.080
from him. But I say that the experience that really, really shaped me as it relates to Expedio was,

399
00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:29.120
I did come in as more of a financial leader. Our leadership at Expedia.com failed. I hired a,

400
00:37:29.120 --> 00:37:36.480
I had to fire the first person, hired a second person, complete disaster. And so I was over two

401
00:37:36.480 --> 00:37:41.840
in terms of hiring for our largest business. This business was 50% of our profits, and I was over

402
00:37:41.840 --> 00:37:50.000
two in hiring. And so I went to Barry in the board and I said, well, if I miss hiring the third

403
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.640
person to run the biggest parts of our business, then you should fire me. Barry quickly agreed. Yes,

404
00:37:54.640 --> 00:38:00.720
of course, we will. So I said, obviously, I don't understand enough about the job to find the

405
00:38:00.720 --> 00:38:07.520
right person. So I think I've got to take the job myself for six months to a year to understand

406
00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:16.160
what is it that the job entails for me to then go in and find that person. And so for what turned

407
00:38:16.160 --> 00:38:21.760
out to be, I think it was five or six years, I ran both the holding company Expedia Inc, which is

408
00:38:21.760 --> 00:38:26.720
a public company, and I ran Expedia.com. I was president of the largest part of the company.

409
00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:33.360
That experience taught me my operating traps. That experience actually taught me, how is it that

410
00:38:33.360 --> 00:38:38.320
you operate a company? How is it that you run something? And that's a very different skill set

411
00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:44.560
from capital allocation and all the financial wizardry that people embark on. That's important.

412
00:38:45.200 --> 00:38:52.400
But what I discovered was operating a company, leading a company, organizing it, operating it,

413
00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:58.880
setting up the goals, getting the right team together. That's the part of the job that I loved.

414
00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:05.040
So it took me a while to get there. Like my whole life, my whole early career was in this

415
00:39:05.040 --> 00:39:13.920
financial sector, which I enjoyed. But I didn't find my true love, which is operations and running

416
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:20.560
companies and running a technology company until way, way later in my career. And I think to some

417
00:39:20.560 --> 00:39:27.040
extent, now I've got both. I've got that financial part because it has to work. But the operations

418
00:39:27.120 --> 00:39:33.520
and the leadership part of the business is something that I love. And watching Barry take

419
00:39:33.520 --> 00:39:41.120
responsibility, take shots, go against the grain, as aggressively as he consistently did,

420
00:39:41.120 --> 00:39:45.920
I think has made me a much better operator than what the counterfactual would be if I had another

421
00:39:45.920 --> 00:39:49.760
boss. Three minutes into that role, the head of H. Shaw told you that you were scaring people.

422
00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:59.600
I forgot about that. I think that was my job. What's the context then?

423
00:39:59.600 --> 00:40:06.080
You know, the context was that, first of all, turn around in technology are really hard.

424
00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:13.280
We were talking about the momentum thing when momentum is positive. In the technology sector,

425
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:19.440
if momentum turns negative, it is remarkably difficult to turn it around. You know,

426
00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:26.320
Yahoo is hanging on, but it was the great company and you see where it is now.

427
00:40:27.120 --> 00:40:34.320
It's brutal when you get it wrong. And it always takes longer than you think. And it goes to,

428
00:40:34.320 --> 00:40:38.720
you know, while I was talking about linear versus exponential, just like the curves up our

429
00:40:38.720 --> 00:40:44.480
exponential curves down our exponential as well. The first couple of years look bad, but they're

430
00:40:44.480 --> 00:40:51.600
not that bad. But you know in your mind that 10 years from now, it's going to be a fucking disaster.

431
00:40:52.640 --> 00:40:59.840
So what I saw with Expedia was a technology company whose technology engine was broken.

432
00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:10.080
Codebase was old, had not been reinvested in, technology leadership was coasting, and that really

433
00:41:10.080 --> 00:41:17.840
alarmed me. And one of the things that I learned from Barry in terms of leadership is that when,

434
00:41:17.840 --> 00:41:24.320
you know, a bell is wrong. When you see something, when you see a pattern, you have to act. You can't

435
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:30.000
wait for a second. So in my mind, once I figured out, oh my god, this really is a turnaround. This

436
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:37.040
isn't like a company that I've got a tune. This company, if I don't move and move hard and fast,

437
00:41:37.840 --> 00:41:44.080
is going to start on that exponential decay curve, I had to move quickly. And at that point, and I am

438
00:41:45.600 --> 00:41:50.800
one of the skills that it learned from Barry is transparency. It's like whenever he wanted to

439
00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:56.800
understand an issue, he wanted to go to the source. He didn't want to summary. And it didn't

440
00:41:56.800 --> 00:42:02.320
matter where that source was. Is it a junior analyst or a president? He wanted to hear from the

441
00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:08.960
source because what he didn't want to lose is lose the fidelity of the issue. You know, when there's

442
00:42:08.960 --> 00:42:14.000
an issue here, then it goes through the analyst and the associate and the vice president and an SVP

443
00:42:14.080 --> 00:42:21.200
and whatever, by the time it's summarized for you as the CEO, it's lost everything. And usually

444
00:42:21.200 --> 00:42:25.760
their levels are like, hey, do we really want to tell them that? Why don't we phrase it this way,

445
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:34.800
et cetera? So your whole life as a CEO is kind of a, it's a version of the world that your team

446
00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:42.480
wants you to see. And if you got a good team, usually it has more to with reality than not. But you

447
00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:48.480
are subject to your team and the information flow that gets to you. And so Barry always wanted to

448
00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:55.040
go to the source. He would just cut through levels, cut through levels, get to the core of the idea.

449
00:42:55.600 --> 00:43:04.080
And then once he did, he would move and he would move fast. And for me, I kind of, I have held on

450
00:43:04.080 --> 00:43:10.800
to that. But I've also turned it the other way, which is one of the ways in which I can depend on

451
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:17.600
getting the real shit from you is my being honest with you, right? And human beings are good

452
00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:24.960
bullshit, you know, kind of, kind of meter, so to speak. And when you're the CEO and you're talking

453
00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:30.480
to your staff and you're giving all the, you know, the business talk and we're doing this,

454
00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:35.840
but the last quarter we had some certain challenges and this and that, they see you both

455
00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:40.800
shooting them. And so why the hell should they tell you the truth, right? If they're, if their

456
00:43:40.800 --> 00:43:45.440
boss isn't telling them the good stuff, why should they give the good stuff back to the boss?

457
00:43:46.240 --> 00:43:51.760
So for me, it was almost like self-defense mechanism that as a boss, I'm going to tell you what's

458
00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:58.400
going on because that's the only way I can drag the hard truths back from you. Because otherwise,

459
00:43:58.400 --> 00:44:02.640
you're going to filter yourself. You're going to, I don't want to order. No, this happened.

460
00:44:02.640 --> 00:44:06.560
But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth? And they can leave.

461
00:44:07.680 --> 00:44:12.400
And I think that that's, so I think that's what my head of HR were saying. I was scaring the

462
00:44:12.400 --> 00:44:17.120
shit out of people because I'm like, we have a real problem here and we've got to come together.

463
00:44:17.120 --> 00:44:23.840
And I think that that, you know, there's a, I was a good decision making framework for me is,

464
00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:31.040
if I make a mistake, where do I want to make the mistake? Right? And so if I want to,

465
00:44:31.840 --> 00:44:37.440
if I'm going to air with my company, I'm going to air in telling the truth and potentially

466
00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:42.240
scaring someone away, I'll take that because if that person doesn't want to face the truth,

467
00:44:42.240 --> 00:44:47.600
if he or she's not up for the fight, then they should go someplace else. They can have a good time,

468
00:44:47.600 --> 00:44:53.760
I'm sure they can have a good career, et cetera. So for me, as a leader, I've always, always believed

469
00:44:53.760 --> 00:45:00.400
in transparency partially because then I think you attract the right people. And partially because

470
00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:06.960
then I'm going to get the good information so to act on. Usually the failures I see with CEOs

471
00:45:07.600 --> 00:45:11.680
aren't because they made the wrong decisions. It's because they were getting the wrong data that

472
00:45:11.680 --> 00:45:16.800
led to the wrong decisions. So it's incredibly important as a leader of any organization

473
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:24.240
for you to build the channels and build the kind of culture that surfaces problems to you quickly.

474
00:45:24.240 --> 00:45:28.800
And then for me too, you always have to have your random direct channels. You know, the,

475
00:45:29.680 --> 00:45:36.480
again, if you think about organizations as organisms, they have their own incentives. And so

476
00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:44.160
my staff's incentive is to control the information that gets to me. Not because they're bad people,

477
00:45:44.160 --> 00:45:49.200
it's just their job because I can get overwhelmed. Who do I meet with? What's my schedule? You know,

478
00:45:49.200 --> 00:45:55.200
is this person worthy of meeting the CEO? And for me, my fight is I just set up a bunch of random

479
00:45:56.160 --> 00:46:01.680
shit. I'll meet with, you know, engineers four levels down consistently because usually they've

480
00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:05.280
got the kind of personality where they don't give a shit. They'll tell me anything and everything. And

481
00:46:05.280 --> 00:46:11.280
they like putting the CEO down. That's great. They like putting the CEO down. It's, you know,

482
00:46:11.280 --> 00:46:16.880
engineers often, you know, don't like authority. And code is like the biggest authority buster.

483
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.840
It's like the truth truth. So I find a lot of engineers have a personality which is, yeah,

484
00:46:21.840 --> 00:46:26.320
I'm going to tell you what it's like. Like, I'm, you know, they, they, they, their value is in

485
00:46:26.320 --> 00:46:30.720
something else. But often they don't, there's a kind of disrespect for authority that I love.

486
00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:36.320
I found in my companies that there's sometimes like a 24-year-old young girl who will just tell me

487
00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:41.680
the truth. Yeah. And she's the one you want to hang out with. She's the one I always go and ask

488
00:46:41.680 --> 00:46:48.000
for an opinion. Absolutely. So that's, you've got to have your, your own channels. But the way to,

489
00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.800
the way to get transparency from your team is first, first, you've got to give it to them.

490
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:56.080
What's the culture hardworking when you arrived? Because you used the word coasting to describe

491
00:46:56.080 --> 00:47:00.960
some of the team when you arrived at Expedia. Medium. I think the company had been successful for

492
00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:08.160
a long time and had coasted it on that success to some extent. So I needed to turn over the team,

493
00:47:08.160 --> 00:47:11.760
turn over like the entire team very, very quickly and get some hungry people in there.

494
00:47:11.840 --> 00:47:18.160
The entire team. Almost entire team. Yeah. Yeah. It was rough going for a while. But then you have

495
00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:23.360
kind of mission-oriented people who are trying to prove themselves. And it's part of the renewal

496
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:27.840
that every company has to go through. And we turned it around. It was tough going but we really

497
00:47:27.840 --> 00:47:34.320
turned around and that was when I kind of learned, hey, my, my love is running shit. It's great.

498
00:47:34.320 --> 00:47:38.560
It's the best part of my job. How did you get that company to work hard? Because there's so many

499
00:47:38.560 --> 00:47:41.600
people listening right now that are in a company that might have been successful to coasting.

500
00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:46.640
Might be two decades in. And this is an ultimate question in like executive management. How do you

501
00:47:46.640 --> 00:47:54.240
turn around the culture of a big or even even even 200 people? It's very difficult. And sometimes

502
00:47:54.240 --> 00:47:58.640
the shortcut is to change the people. Like it's very easy to say, oh, you have values this and that.

503
00:47:58.640 --> 00:48:07.360
So it's it's finding the people who you believe will line up with your cultural mechanisms or how

504
00:48:07.360 --> 00:48:16.480
you work or your values. And then embodying those values and those mechanisms as examples and

505
00:48:16.480 --> 00:48:22.000
then making sure that your team embodies those values and imbues down the, down the organization. So

506
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:26.640
part of working hard is like, you know, sending emails to the team on a Saturday and if I don't

507
00:48:26.640 --> 00:48:31.200
get a response on Saturday, sending them an email on Sunday with a question mark. It's going on.

508
00:48:31.840 --> 00:48:38.400
You know, I think at Expedia in hindsight, we we worked intensely and and we went hard.

509
00:48:39.120 --> 00:48:46.320
But bananas hard as I like because Expedia was we were selling vacations, right? It was it was the

510
00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:52.720
the product that we were selling was about turning yourself off. And so we did talk about work

511
00:48:52.720 --> 00:49:01.600
life balance. And in hindsight, at Uber, I don't. You know, you come to Uber, you're going to work

512
00:49:01.600 --> 00:49:09.280
your ass off. We're going to be really demanding. If you're not performing, we're going to let you

513
00:49:09.280 --> 00:49:15.600
know. And if you don't fix it, we're going to push you out. But while it will be incredibly hard,

514
00:49:17.120 --> 00:49:22.080
you will have real agency of the company. We're a big company, but individuals can make a big

515
00:49:22.080 --> 00:49:26.960
difference. And it's a company that's making a difference in the world. You're going to learn so

516
00:49:26.960 --> 00:49:33.280
much. And while you will have work hard, you're going to have a great time. But this is don't come

517
00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:37.840
here if you want to coast. And I'm very clear about that. And I should have been more clear at

518
00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:40.640
Expedia, but we were selling vacations. So I couldn't be quite that clear.

519
00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:47.120
New year always has a strange energy to it because people start talking about their goals,

520
00:49:47.120 --> 00:49:52.160
fresh starts, new habits. But the reality is that most people carry the same ideas they had last

521
00:49:52.160 --> 00:49:56.560
year into the new year. I'm guilty of that too. And they still don't end up doing anything with them.

522
00:49:56.560 --> 00:50:00.560
And I get why. Starting something new, especially if it's a business or a project is overwhelming.

523
00:50:00.560 --> 00:50:04.160
Before you start, you're looking for the perfect moment and to be the perfect version of yourself

524
00:50:04.160 --> 00:50:09.280
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526
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529
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530
00:50:40.560 --> 00:50:48.880
figured out. You just need to start. In your 12 years of CEO, Expedia stock rose 550 percent

531
00:50:49.520 --> 00:50:57.280
and sales increased 400 percent from 2.1 billion to 8.8 billion. And you were the highest paid

532
00:50:57.280 --> 00:51:03.040
CEO of a U.S. Tech company with a pay of 94.1 million. I left it all behind to go over.

533
00:51:03.040 --> 00:51:07.120
You left it all behind. It was a big options package that I've never bested but it's all good.

534
00:51:08.080 --> 00:51:13.680
It was a great run. I'm so intrigued about this point of hard work because I think 10 years ago

535
00:51:13.680 --> 00:51:20.400
saying what you just said was very taboo. Yes. It feels too long. We're free now. Yes. You're

536
00:51:20.400 --> 00:51:27.040
free now. Yes indeed. I've gotten, you know, sometimes people I say the question,

537
00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:34.240
what advice would you give to young people? And to me, the most important skill in life is a

538
00:51:34.240 --> 00:51:39.360
skill of working hard. And it's not a skill. You can't just like decide you're going to do it.

539
00:51:40.080 --> 00:51:48.560
And I think way too many people focus on should be a computer programmer or a doctor or study

540
00:51:48.560 --> 00:51:54.800
the level of arts now that anyone can vibe code just learn to work hard. And it is, you know,

541
00:51:54.800 --> 00:52:01.600
that when you see the top athletes, of course they're talented and the, you know, their town level

542
00:52:02.080 --> 00:52:07.680
were levels. But the thing that changes that that's different about the elite athletes than the

543
00:52:07.680 --> 00:52:14.080
non-elite athletes. And I'm talking elite is they work their asses off. They're disciplined.

544
00:52:14.080 --> 00:52:19.520
They're structured. They're relentless. You know, look at Ronaldo, look at Michael Jordan,

545
00:52:19.520 --> 00:52:25.040
etc. That's the same thing is true in all of life. It's true in business, it's true in personal

546
00:52:25.040 --> 00:52:32.640
life. And so for me, with my kids, I just want to teach them how to work hard. And for me,

547
00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:40.480
like growing up, I as a banker, as an executive, I'm not going to let anyone outwork me. And if that's

548
00:52:40.480 --> 00:52:46.800
true, then they may be smarter, more talented, etc. But I'm not going to let anyone outwork me. And

549
00:52:46.800 --> 00:52:50.880
I think that that's a huge advantage that you have in over a period of time, that advantage

550
00:52:50.880 --> 00:52:54.960
compounds. And I want them in our company, like I want Uber to be an incredibly hard working

551
00:52:54.960 --> 00:53:01.680
company. Comes at a cost third day, working hard. Yes. It comes at a trade off. And we believe in

552
00:53:01.680 --> 00:53:07.280
flexibility. So people confuse kind of lack of flexibility to working hard. You can work hard.

553
00:53:08.000 --> 00:53:12.320
And at the same time, you can have flexibility. So if you want to have dinner with your family,

554
00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:16.720
and I'm religious about having dinners with my family when I'm in town, you know, six to eight,

555
00:53:17.680 --> 00:53:22.080
absolutely spend that time with my family. But at, you know, 9.30 pm, I'm checking emails.

556
00:53:23.040 --> 00:53:27.920
Right? When I wake up at 5.30 pm in an AM, I'm checking emails. So of course, there are trade-offs.

557
00:53:28.480 --> 00:53:32.480
And, you know, life is about trade-offs. I think one of the most important things I've learned

558
00:53:32.480 --> 00:53:36.080
from interviewing CEOs, and generally we've gone through a transition of COVID and remote work,

559
00:53:36.080 --> 00:53:39.600
and then come back into like everyone's in the office again, is actually the most important

560
00:53:39.600 --> 00:53:43.200
thing is what you've just said, which is being honest with people so that they can make decisions

561
00:53:43.200 --> 00:53:47.360
for themselves in their lives. Absolutely. I think the thing that one might describe as toxic

562
00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:52.960
is when you say something publicly, but then when they arrive, it's a completely different deal.

563
00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:56.000
But what you're doing is you're being honest, and you're therefore allowing people to make

564
00:53:56.000 --> 00:53:59.440
decisions for themselves when they're in lives. And I'm allowing them to be honest back to me.

565
00:54:00.160 --> 00:54:03.680
Yeah. And that's a company culture that someone like me would be attracted to.

566
00:54:03.680 --> 00:54:06.240
Absolutely. But there's lots of people listening and I couldn't think of anything worse.

567
00:54:06.240 --> 00:54:09.440
And that's okay. Yes. Yeah. There are plenty of companies that they could find.

568
00:54:09.440 --> 00:54:14.800
Or plenty of causes that they can find is fine. You said, learn to work hard, learn.

569
00:54:15.920 --> 00:54:23.200
It's a skill. Really? Yes. Of course it is. Because you've got to the idea that there's staying

570
00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:28.800
focused on something, not being discouraged by failing, trying over and over again,

571
00:54:28.800 --> 00:54:33.360
and just working harder than others. It's not something you can turn on and off. I see it in

572
00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:39.440
people all the time. There's just like this grim determination like we at Uber that there's

573
00:54:39.440 --> 00:54:48.480
actually saying it's inside one of our values, embrace the grind, embrace it. That's a learned

574
00:54:48.480 --> 00:54:52.080
skill. That's not something you're born with. Maybe there's an element that you're born with.

575
00:54:52.080 --> 00:54:56.480
Have you ever seen someone who isn't a hard worker that come a really hard worker?

576
00:54:56.480 --> 00:54:59.280
An exception to hard worker. That's a good question.

577
00:55:00.240 --> 00:55:02.240
No one doesn't occur to me, have you?

578
00:55:03.920 --> 00:55:11.280
No. I think it might have been maybe Brian Cheska, Airbnb, or Elon say that he's never seen someone

579
00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:15.200
who wasn't a hard worker, but come a really hard worker. That's interesting.

580
00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:19.520
And this is why I'm trying to come up with someone, failing so far.

581
00:55:20.160 --> 00:55:26.080
And maybe I might posit that it's somewhat to do with these photos that you have in front of you.

582
00:55:26.080 --> 00:55:29.200
Your childhood, your early context, which you didn't change.

583
00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:34.240
That's a working hard here. But you were forged in such a way that you were going to be

584
00:55:35.120 --> 00:55:37.520
ruthless. So, relentless is the one I'm talking about.

585
00:55:37.520 --> 00:55:43.360
Yeah, I mean, ruthless to myself. Relentless is right. I think at one point,

586
00:55:43.360 --> 00:55:48.400
Jeff Bezos was going to call Amazon Relentless. That was thinking about that being the name of the

587
00:55:48.400 --> 00:55:56.640
company. And that is when I see successful technology companies and especially technology companies,

588
00:55:56.640 --> 00:56:02.080
there is this relentless about them. At Uber, we have lots of different groups that are trying

589
00:56:02.080 --> 00:56:11.440
to do different things. But each and every team is built and targeted on optimizing and improving

590
00:56:11.440 --> 00:56:17.280
their own particular function. There isn't a piece of the company that is not improving every

591
00:56:17.280 --> 00:56:21.520
single day. And if they're not improving fast enough, someone else is going to take their place

592
00:56:21.520 --> 00:56:28.320
and going to improve it. So, as an organism, every part of the company, whether it's a payments team

593
00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:35.760
in terms of new payments types or payment success or the fraud team or the mobile app team in

594
00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:43.440
terms of conversions, etc. Every team is set up and organized for and gold on improving everything

595
00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:50.400
that they do. So, the whole company in small ways is constantly improving, never ever stopping.

596
00:56:50.400 --> 00:56:54.880
And it is that relentless nature of business. And the minute and it's not good enough to get

597
00:56:55.840 --> 00:57:00.320
better, we have to get better faster than our competitors because our competitors are all

598
00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:06.880
getting better as well. So, it's basically like who can adapt faster to either the reality of the

599
00:57:06.880 --> 00:57:13.040
market as it is today or the prediction of the market as you see it tomorrow. And it's the

600
00:57:13.120 --> 00:57:18.400
speed of change and it's identification of the opportunity. Those are the two factors. I think

601
00:57:18.400 --> 00:57:24.160
that are most important. And the speed of change, you know, if you can work fast, you're kind of

602
00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:30.240
accelerating time. You know, every one shot that you take, I can take two shots. I've got more

603
00:57:30.240 --> 00:57:34.640
time than you do. And then of course, there's identifying the opportunity going after. Those are

604
00:57:34.640 --> 00:57:38.720
the two things you really have to get right. If you're taking two shots, not only you're going to

605
00:57:38.720 --> 00:57:43.120
get two data points of information, but you're also increasing your probability of having a successful

606
00:57:43.120 --> 00:57:49.200
shot by like 100%. Shot angle. Just shot angle. How do you create a culture of continuous improvement?

607
00:57:49.200 --> 00:57:52.720
Because successful companies, as you kind of highlighted earlier, they become complacent with

608
00:57:52.720 --> 00:57:57.280
their victories. And they like to take some time off and celebrate. And, you know, we high five,

609
00:57:57.280 --> 00:58:00.640
and then we chill. And then actually the studies show they did this big metronautical analysis

610
00:58:00.640 --> 00:58:04.720
where they looked at successful companies. And they showed that they become risk-adverse.

611
00:58:04.880 --> 00:58:09.280
Totally. Because lost a virgin. They have something to lose now. So just protect.

612
00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:15.200
I think the good news to some extent with Uber is that we've always been a company that has had a

613
00:58:15.200 --> 00:58:19.840
chip on a shoulder. You know, the company had a chip on a shoulder when it was founded and it had

614
00:58:19.840 --> 00:58:28.160
to like fight taxi unions for its very existence. And then the disaster happened with Travis leaving

615
00:58:28.160 --> 00:58:32.480
and then a new CEO coming in at the time that was a really, really difficult time. Then we went

616
00:58:32.480 --> 00:58:37.440
through a period of COVID, which was again a disaster for the company, but ultimately prepared us

617
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:43.840
to do better than people saying, you know, it was a tough IPO. Uber is never going to get profitable.

618
00:58:43.840 --> 00:58:49.360
And today we're incredibly successful, but we've got the challenge and the opportunity of AI

619
00:58:49.360 --> 00:58:55.360
and autonomous. So we've always been a company that has been, I would say, underestimated.

620
00:58:56.320 --> 00:59:04.480
And that feeds into our culture. This is a, we are a hungry company. And I do think we're sometimes

621
00:59:05.760 --> 00:59:12.000
guilty of getting complacent in little ways. And I have a leadership team that when they see

622
00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:16.960
complacency more often than not, than not, they identify it and they get it the hell out.

623
00:59:17.680 --> 00:59:22.560
It's a team that is not satisfied. That's always driving. And I love that about us.

624
00:59:23.520 --> 00:59:29.120
How does one balance enjoying the success and the accomplishments? I mean, you've turned

625
00:59:29.120 --> 00:59:33.520
this company around a highly profitable company. Everyone that I've spoken to many of

626
00:59:33.520 --> 00:59:37.280
mutual friends have talked lovingly about the impact you've had on the business. I mean,

627
00:59:37.280 --> 00:59:42.560
the numbers speak for themselves. When you joined Uber, it was losing 2.5 to 3 billion per year.

628
00:59:42.560 --> 00:59:49.200
Now it generates 8.5 billion in free cash flow every year. How do you get people to 9.8 in the

629
00:59:49.200 --> 00:59:59.600
last year? You're counting 9.8. Okay, incredible. Celebrate. Chill. Well, you can celebrate

630
00:59:59.600 --> 01:00:06.000
a nutshell. We take those moments. We do sell it. It's cool to run a company that's so important.

631
01:00:06.000 --> 01:00:11.520
It's cool to run a company that's hitting record after record after record. And we do celebrate

632
01:00:11.520 --> 01:00:15.280
those records. And we do celebrate those teams. Maybe not enough. And again, it goes to like,

633
01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:21.680
what mistake would you rather make? I'd rather make the mistake of celebrating a little bit too

634
01:00:21.680 --> 01:00:28.720
little and kind of being a little pissed off about life in general and pushing. But we take

635
01:00:28.720 --> 01:00:34.480
our moments. But the success itself, I don't know, succeeding is almost a celebration in and of

636
01:00:34.480 --> 01:00:40.080
itself. And when you're succeeding in such a competitive field, I just find a deep sense of

637
01:00:40.160 --> 01:00:46.480
satisfaction there. And I think my team does too. How do you get the team to take those risks

638
01:00:46.480 --> 01:00:51.280
that they need to take? Is there something you do like incentivize them on the amount of shots

639
01:00:51.280 --> 01:00:56.400
they take? How do you do that? One is they're always moving fast. That's what we do. We push. We're

640
01:00:56.400 --> 01:01:02.160
constantly pushing the pace of the company in terms of execution. So I think that helps. But I do

641
01:01:02.160 --> 01:01:06.400
think that there's there's a mechanism that we talk now about that I've talked to a team about

642
01:01:06.480 --> 01:01:10.800
taking smart risks. I think you're absolutely right, which is as companies get bigger and more

643
01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:16.640
successful, they tend to become more risk averse. And it should be the exact opposite because you can

644
01:01:16.640 --> 01:01:21.360
take more risks. You can make more mistakes because you've got kind of this 9.8 billion

645
01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:27.680
of cash flow to protect yourself against some of those mistakes. So I have definitely in the past,

646
01:01:27.680 --> 01:01:34.480
I would say two years push the team actively to push on the open terms of risk. Don't be defensive,

647
01:01:34.480 --> 01:01:39.520
be offensive, etc. And it comes from my challenging the teams, my talking about it,

648
01:01:40.240 --> 01:01:45.440
setting examples of sometimes failing and then saying it's okay moving on. And then

649
01:01:46.720 --> 01:01:51.680
sometimes my taking decisions that are seen as more risky than not. That setting the example

650
01:01:51.680 --> 01:01:55.840
then allows a company to follow. So if I was in one of your teams, what,

651
01:01:56.960 --> 01:02:01.920
how do you think about goal setting for me? All the teams have different goals, business goals.

652
01:02:01.920 --> 01:02:11.440
The ads team has to drive at technology driven incremental ad dollars per year and or customer

653
01:02:11.440 --> 01:02:19.840
satisfaction, customer MPS, etc. So every team has its own goals. And they organize guess those

654
01:02:19.840 --> 01:02:24.720
goals and they execute those those goals on their religiously tracked. It's a best mechanism that

655
01:02:24.720 --> 01:02:29.920
we have. I just wish that there was a better one because the art of the goal setting becomes the

656
01:02:29.920 --> 01:02:34.880
issue, which is, are you setting the right goals? Are they too ambitious or are they not ambitious

657
01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:42.320
enough? And sometimes people can gain the system. So we use it, but I can't tell you that is perfect.

658
01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:46.000
What about you talked earlier about values? A lot of companies go and do an off-site and they write

659
01:02:46.000 --> 01:02:51.680
some words on a white and a wall and they say ambition, enthusiasm, courage, whatever. What do you

660
01:02:51.680 --> 01:02:57.440
think of that sort of corporate habit of goal values and stuff? We went through the exercise.

661
01:02:58.400 --> 01:03:07.120
Fail the first time succeeded the second time. And when we failed, when it first came to Uber,

662
01:03:07.120 --> 01:03:10.960
obviously there was a view that there we needed a cultural reset of the company.

663
01:03:11.760 --> 01:03:19.760
And so it was very important for me to go and inspect the culture of the company and change it.

664
01:03:19.760 --> 01:03:25.680
It was a statement. And the culture had, I think some cool stuff in there, some cool ideas in

665
01:03:25.680 --> 01:03:31.280
there. For example, there was one value that was toast stepping. And the idea of toast stepping

666
01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:36.320
is what you and I talked about earlier, which is we want to challenge each other within the

667
01:03:36.320 --> 01:03:42.000
organization. And so if I have to step on your toes and tell you something that you don't want to

668
01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:48.640
hear, I'm allowed to, even though hurts you, because the truth is more important. So sometimes the

669
01:03:48.640 --> 01:03:53.600
truth hurts and that's okay. That was the idea of toast stepping. And what happened was sometimes

670
01:03:53.600 --> 01:04:00.080
those values became weaponized, where toast stepping, whose spirit came from a place of

671
01:04:00.640 --> 01:04:09.120
we want to speak the truth, became an excuse to be a jerk. So the values in and of themselves

672
01:04:09.120 --> 01:04:18.400
can be great or terrible based on how you execute on those values. When I first came in, we had

673
01:04:18.400 --> 01:04:24.160
to redo the values. And I was there, there's a saying by Jeff Bezos, that I love, which is like

674
01:04:25.040 --> 01:04:29.440
the values of the company almost they, they appear, the value system of the company appears

675
01:04:29.440 --> 01:04:34.000
to some extent. You don't, if you say thou shalt, you're going to fail because the company shall.

676
01:04:35.360 --> 01:04:42.480
And the approach that we first took was that we will actually get the value system we had,

677
01:04:42.480 --> 01:04:46.400
we had a vote for all the employees in the company, what values do you think should be part of

678
01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:51.440
the new Uber, et cetera. We took all the signal and then we edited it and came up with a new

679
01:04:51.440 --> 01:05:00.560
list of values. And there was one value that I wrote myself. It was mine. And it was do the right

680
01:05:00.560 --> 01:05:07.280
thing, period. It wasn't crowdsourced. It was just that. And usually with these values,

681
01:05:07.280 --> 01:05:11.600
you're like, there's a whole explanation and people are like, well, what does do the right thing

682
01:05:11.600 --> 01:05:19.280
period mean? You have to figure it out. And for me, it was a message to the whole company,

683
01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:25.440
which was if you work at Uber, you have a responsibility and I'm not going to tell you exactly

684
01:05:25.440 --> 01:05:30.160
what to do. So use your judgment. And it's our expectation that you use your judgment to do the

685
01:05:30.160 --> 01:05:33.440
right thing. And sometimes doing the right thing, it's not clear. Should I go after my business

686
01:05:33.440 --> 01:05:38.160
goals? Should I compromise on a business goal because safety is in question. Of course,

687
01:05:38.160 --> 01:05:42.560
you should. Safety comes first before business, et cetera. But we were putting that weight and

688
01:05:42.560 --> 01:05:50.320
that responsibility within the employees. But the rest of the value system that was kind of crowdsourced,

689
01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:55.920
it was forgettable. Because it was the kind of stuff that you passion, ambition, teamwork,

690
01:05:55.920 --> 01:06:03.440
like what company doesn't believe in teamwork? Give me a break. So we, Nikki, Krishna Marthy, who

691
01:06:03.440 --> 01:06:12.880
runs people, she pushed me to reset the values four or five years in. By then, I felt like I did

692
01:06:12.880 --> 01:06:17.680
have a right to have a point of view. I've been there. We weren't quite done with the turnaround,

693
01:06:17.680 --> 01:06:23.280
et cetera. But I was a part of the company. And then we came up with a value set, which is different.

694
01:06:23.280 --> 01:06:28.240
You know, there's one of our values. By the way, go get it was the only one that survived.

695
01:06:28.960 --> 01:06:34.000
No, sorry. Do the right thing was the only one that survived. But for example, go get it is one of

696
01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:40.080
our top values. And the idea of go get it is, obviously, it's literally what we do. We go, we help

697
01:06:40.080 --> 01:06:47.200
people go or get it, right? Rise and eats. So it's kind of fun in terms of what we do. But it's an

698
01:06:47.200 --> 01:06:53.760
attitude, which is we as a company, we're go getters. We're going to be aggressive. We're going to push.

699
01:06:53.840 --> 01:07:00.320
We're going to move fast. We play to win. And so the value sets that we have go get it or one

700
01:07:00.320 --> 01:07:06.880
that I really like. Great minds. Don't think alike. We came up with a set of values, which I think

701
01:07:06.880 --> 01:07:11.200
is unusual and describes how we are different as a company. And it's really true to who we are.

702
01:07:11.920 --> 01:07:16.640
How important is this sort of this attitude of failure and experimentation, especially in the

703
01:07:16.640 --> 01:07:20.240
world that's transitioning as fast as the one we're in. When you listen to people like Ray Curswell,

704
01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:23.680
his predictions of the future, he says that if you're 10 now by the age of 60,

705
01:07:23.680 --> 01:07:28.000
you'll experience a year's change in I think it's 11 days and just this sort of this sort of

706
01:07:28.000 --> 01:07:33.520
exponential acceleration. Love accelerating returns. Yeah. How do you you know,

707
01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:37.200
how do you create a culture, build a team in a world where the correct answers changing this

708
01:07:37.200 --> 01:07:47.120
quickly? I think that it is setting a culture that does embrace that change and is constantly

709
01:07:47.120 --> 01:07:53.840
challenging itself. And I will give Travis and the founding team credit. You know, there's kind of

710
01:07:53.840 --> 01:08:00.080
this idea of everything that they did was terrible. And that's just not true. We have a very high

711
01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:05.200
talent bar at the company. We have always kept a high talent bar at the company and we haven't

712
01:08:05.200 --> 01:08:13.520
compromised. And what I found is that talented people who are also driven are on a constant hunt for

713
01:08:13.520 --> 01:08:19.680
the truth. So culture isn't enough. You actually need to write people the company. And I think we've

714
01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:27.520
got a company that does have a chip on a shoulder was born out of the creation of a new industry.

715
01:08:27.520 --> 01:08:37.040
So we've experienced it. And we have a group of people who are driven and hungry and are

716
01:08:38.160 --> 01:08:43.120
constantly looking for change. And you got a leader and a leadership team that's pushing the

717
01:08:43.120 --> 01:08:49.440
company to do so and doesn't penalize folks for challenging them. I think it's kind of the stew

718
01:08:49.440 --> 01:08:54.320
that you have to put together, but it's a combination of culture and people. Do you have any mental case

719
01:08:54.320 --> 01:09:00.560
studies of great bets the company has taken that most people wouldn't have taken or thought was

720
01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:04.480
wrong or wouldn't have taken the risk on that trend transpired to be critical to your success?

721
01:09:05.040 --> 01:09:11.040
You know, I don't know about, well, I think it will be critical to success, but there's a funny one

722
01:09:11.040 --> 01:09:19.920
which is taxis are one of the fastest growing parts of Uber's business. So remember, Uber,

723
01:09:19.920 --> 01:09:27.760
we started as the enemy of taxis and built out this peer-to-peer ride sharing. And it was probably

724
01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:35.440
five or six years ago, our head of product now, Sachin, he worked on building kind of a technology

725
01:09:35.440 --> 01:09:40.880
that would allow taxi companies to have their own little Uber app. And eventually he came to Uber,

726
01:09:40.880 --> 01:09:46.320
thank God. And he's like, well, why don't we build that in Uber? Why don't we actually build

727
01:09:46.320 --> 01:09:52.240
taxis on Uber and originally within the company. And I kept in touch with some of the founders,

728
01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:56.320
just because I want their advice, because why not? You know, they built a great company. I'm standing

729
01:09:57.280 --> 01:10:02.800
on the shoulders of giants. They said it's the most idiotic thing on Earth. You can't wear

730
01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:07.280
taxis. They hate us. They separate. It will be terrible. Lots of technical reasons. They had

731
01:10:07.280 --> 01:10:14.640
tried it earlier. It was a total failure. But I think Sachin, having worked in the industry,

732
01:10:15.280 --> 01:10:19.760
and then my being kind of ignorant, saying why they hell not try it, that combination allowed us

733
01:10:19.760 --> 01:10:24.400
to build out a taxi product. And taxi is the fastest growing segment of the company. And it went

734
01:10:24.400 --> 01:10:29.920
completely against the founding of the company. But now we're, you know, I hope to have every

735
01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:35.440
single taxi in the world wired up to Uber. Why not? For the first 10 years that I was a founder,

736
01:10:35.440 --> 01:10:39.200
I didn't prioritize getting a good night's sleep at all. But over time I started to realize that

737
01:10:39.200 --> 01:10:43.200
it was the key metric that influenced everything in my life. I moved my focus, my ability to show up,

738
01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:46.880
and to think clearly and to lead well. So now with my lifestyle being pretty crazy,

739
01:10:46.880 --> 01:10:50.800
traveling across time zones, working late, training late, I still fight to protect my sleep,

740
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this really interesting thing they've just done. I can create little phrases to automatically

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being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals

768
01:13:03.680 --> 01:13:09.280
is by breaking them down into tiny small steps, and we call this an R team the 1%. And actually,

769
01:13:09.280 --> 01:13:15.120
this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you

770
01:13:15.120 --> 01:13:21.040
at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries, and we've released

771
01:13:21.040 --> 01:13:25.920
these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back,

772
01:13:25.920 --> 01:13:31.040
but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to the diaries. So now we have

773
01:13:31.040 --> 01:13:37.200
a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a

774
01:13:37.200 --> 01:13:42.480
process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all

775
01:13:42.480 --> 01:13:47.680
sell out once again. And you can get yours now at the diary.com where you can get 20% off

776
01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:50.880
our Black Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.

777
01:13:53.280 --> 01:13:57.920
And there's another, there's an alien that's arrived amongst us, which is AI. And you've,

778
01:13:58.160 --> 01:14:00.800
you know, it was always been somewhat powered from what I understand by.

779
01:14:00.800 --> 01:14:05.920
The world has changed in the last couple of years as I released AI. There's been a huge

780
01:14:05.920 --> 01:14:11.920
acceleration and investment and the improvement of the technology. What are you, aside from Uber?

781
01:14:13.760 --> 01:14:18.320
You talked earlier about your early childhood and how you grew up with a bit of a paranoia

782
01:14:18.320 --> 01:14:22.480
about losing everything because that's what you experience as a young man. You see this technology

783
01:14:22.480 --> 01:14:26.240
arrive, which is fundamentally disruptive to all of us, including me as a podcast owner. I've

784
01:14:26.240 --> 01:14:32.400
done the tests and the retention isn't far off when it's me or AI. So it's slightly concerning.

785
01:14:32.400 --> 01:14:37.760
But like, how do you, how do you approach such a disruptive technology? How do you think of it

786
01:14:37.760 --> 01:14:40.960
broadly and the impact it's going to have on society? And are you paranoid?

787
01:14:42.000 --> 01:14:47.200
I'm not paranoid. I'm not, I guess, I was going to say I'm not built that way, but maybe I am.

788
01:14:47.200 --> 01:14:53.920
I think my instinct is always just to go, just to move forward. And Uber has been built out of an AI

789
01:14:53.920 --> 01:15:00.240
core, all of our pricing, all of our routing, who you're matched with, whether or not a career

790
01:15:00.240 --> 01:15:06.160
batches, a trip, which is, do they take two orders or one order? All of our systems underlying

791
01:15:06.160 --> 01:15:12.960
systems are driven by AI. We do 40 million trips a day. That kind of orchestration can't be done

792
01:15:13.680 --> 01:15:18.960
by heuristic rules. And we've got to work on the streets of New York and the streets of Lagos as

793
01:15:18.960 --> 01:15:29.040
well. So we have built the entire company on small AI models that have been trained on local

794
01:15:29.040 --> 01:15:34.240
problems and then gets to together. That's literally what the company is. So for us, AI is,

795
01:15:34.240 --> 01:15:39.840
it's kind of a core skill set. And AI can, it can mess things up, right? It's not because it's

796
01:15:39.920 --> 01:15:48.640
not heuristics-based. There are emergent issues that come out of an AI that works 96% of time

797
01:15:48.640 --> 01:15:55.280
and 4% of time and screws out. So we're comfortable with the uncertainty layer of AI as a company. So

798
01:15:55.840 --> 01:16:02.880
we are, I would say, moving headlong into AI, we're not one of the research shops, but I would say

799
01:16:02.880 --> 01:16:10.960
in terms of applied AI, the team is driving to build AI, kind of newer AI experiences across

800
01:16:10.960 --> 01:16:19.920
a company. But stepping back as a person, the impact on society is going to be enormous. And

801
01:16:20.720 --> 01:16:27.440
going back to Kurzweil's kind of law of accelerating returns, whereas previously society has always

802
01:16:27.440 --> 01:16:34.960
been able to adjust to these kinds of shifts. It's been able to adjust because it had time to adjust.

803
01:16:35.840 --> 01:16:42.720
And AI literally, quite literally, thinks an AI will be able to replace the work that

804
01:16:45.360 --> 01:16:52.400
70, 80% of humans can do over the next 10 years. 10 years is not a lot of time for society to

805
01:16:52.400 --> 01:16:57.120
adjust to that kind of an impact. Now, are there going to be more expensive than humans, cheaper

806
01:16:57.120 --> 01:17:02.000
than humans, et cetera, who knows? But the capability will be there probably in the next 10 years for

807
01:17:02.000 --> 01:17:08.320
intellectual jobs, probably call it 15 years for physical, 15, 20 years for physical jobs because

808
01:17:08.320 --> 01:17:16.640
physical AI is harder, robots, cars, et cetera, more capital heavy takes longer, have to deal with

809
01:17:16.640 --> 01:17:26.960
the physical world. So the changes in society are going to be giant. But my view is you can't

810
01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:34.560
slow down the rate of change. And if you're a part of that change, at least you can have some say

811
01:17:35.520 --> 01:17:41.360
as to how that change in prints on society and in prints on the real world. And so for me,

812
01:17:41.360 --> 01:17:49.840
I'm leaning it. It's a very, very exciting time. 70 to 80% of jobs will be disrupted by

813
01:17:49.840 --> 01:17:53.840
AI is like broadly what you said there. And the pace of change is going to mean that a lot of

814
01:17:53.840 --> 01:17:57.920
people don't have new jobs to go to because we haven't. I think that's the question.

815
01:17:57.920 --> 01:18:00.880
The retraining challenge. And people say, well, there's going to be jobs in AI. But like,

816
01:18:00.880 --> 01:18:07.840
listen, I've got some friends that can't just. Society's always adjusted, right? Farming was a

817
01:18:07.840 --> 01:18:12.720
huge percentage of our labor force now. It's less than 1%. At the speed of which. Yeah, I think

818
01:18:12.720 --> 01:18:17.120
that's a question. And you could argue that AI's will be able to retrain you, right? The job

819
01:18:17.120 --> 01:18:22.160
retraining is going to change. So of course, society's going to adjust. But I do think it raises

820
01:18:22.160 --> 01:18:26.560
questions, real questions. I've not been able to get an answer on that really, I think, from the

821
01:18:26.560 --> 01:18:31.120
experts in AI that I've interviewed, which is like, what do those 70 or 80% people do? Because

822
01:18:31.120 --> 01:18:34.480
we're seeing it in our own business that there's many jobs which we would have hired for previously.

823
01:18:35.200 --> 01:18:40.640
Across the board, that AI is now doing exceptionally well. Every single day, literally daily,

824
01:18:40.640 --> 01:18:45.520
we try to see if the new model, Gemini Pro3, whatever, can do things that we're currently doing

825
01:18:45.520 --> 01:18:48.480
manually. And every day, we're getting those little breakthroughs and going, oh, okay, now we

826
01:18:48.480 --> 01:18:53.120
no longer need to. And coding is one of those big areas. You talk about a lot where there's been

827
01:18:53.120 --> 01:18:59.280
already sort of big disruption, positive disruption at Uber. And a lot of your coders are now using

828
01:18:59.840 --> 01:19:07.120
90% of our coders are using AI. Now that's easy to say, but there are probably 30% of them that

829
01:19:07.120 --> 01:19:13.840
were power users. They are showing clear differentiation in the number diffs, for example, how much

830
01:19:14.720 --> 01:19:19.600
a diff is a code release that's different from the last code release. So one of the measurements

831
01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:24.160
of productivity is just how many diffs are you putting into the code base? Uber is just a giant

832
01:19:24.160 --> 01:19:28.800
code base. That's what we are. And so our engineers are literally the builders of the company.

833
01:19:28.800 --> 01:19:34.560
They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system and their architects who are kind of

834
01:19:34.560 --> 01:19:42.000
thinking about what the system should look like. And so while 90% of our engineers are using

835
01:19:42.960 --> 01:19:49.120
AI tools of some sort, there's about 30% of them that are using them at a completely accelerated

836
01:19:49.120 --> 01:19:56.000
pace. And it really is changing their productivity in a way that I've never ever seen before.

837
01:19:56.480 --> 01:20:03.040
Ultimately, I do think that the job of a coder is going to change more and more from actually

838
01:20:03.760 --> 01:20:11.840
writing the code, from to some extent, orchestrating agents who are writing the code or building systems

839
01:20:11.840 --> 01:20:18.320
for you. It becomes more of an orchestration job versus a manual writing job. But the job will still

840
01:20:18.320 --> 01:20:25.680
be there. And my attitude is if my average engineer became 25% more efficient, which we haven't

841
01:20:25.680 --> 01:20:30.240
gone there yet, but we will get there. I'm going to hire more engineers because I want to go faster.

842
01:20:30.240 --> 01:20:35.280
There's still lots of unsolved problems that we haven't solved. But I can imagine, you know,

843
01:20:35.280 --> 01:20:40.720
maybe five years from now, as the engineers get more and more productive, I may not decide to add

844
01:20:40.720 --> 01:20:46.160
engineering account because at that point, instead of adding an engineer, I should add agents and

845
01:20:46.160 --> 01:20:50.080
buy some more GPUs from Nvidia. There may be an investment in the future. We'll see.

846
01:20:50.080 --> 01:20:54.400
Because thinking about linear versus exponential as well, if we imagine a rate of improvement,

847
01:20:54.400 --> 01:20:59.440
I don't know, in my head, I go, when they come a time where you as the CEO or you and a team,

848
01:20:59.440 --> 01:21:03.680
an executive team can tell an agent what you want to build. You can show it the strategy.

849
01:21:04.320 --> 01:21:08.560
And theoretically, I mean, I can't figure out how this isn't going to be possible. The agents will

850
01:21:08.560 --> 01:21:12.800
then build. Actually, maybe they didn't even need to set the strategy. Maybe

851
01:21:12.800 --> 01:21:18.400
theoretically, you know, if you imagine any rate of improvement in the intelligence, maybe at

852
01:21:18.400 --> 01:21:22.160
some point they're going to go, well, listen, there's a better strategy here, Dara. One of my

853
01:21:23.920 --> 01:21:31.280
one of my team members told me that some teams have built a Dara AI, you know, so that they basically

854
01:21:31.280 --> 01:21:38.160
make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me. Because you can

855
01:21:38.160 --> 01:21:42.320
imagine, like, you know, by the time something comes to me, there's been a prep and a meeting

856
01:21:42.320 --> 01:21:47.920
of the slide that has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep.

857
01:21:47.920 --> 01:21:50.080
Are you concerned they might show Dara AI to the board?

858
01:21:52.960 --> 01:21:57.280
Can I see the code for Dara AI? She's like, no, we're not showing it to you.

859
01:21:58.720 --> 01:22:02.960
But is there anything like falsifiable in what I just said about that they're coming a time in

860
01:22:03.120 --> 01:22:08.320
not so near future if we imagine an exponential improvement where I think I think where AI

861
01:22:09.360 --> 01:22:14.800
still is missing a beat that humans and other creatures have is ability to learn real time.

862
01:22:15.600 --> 01:22:19.600
Right. So if you think about you and I are learning for this conversation and maybe

863
01:22:20.480 --> 01:22:24.720
your behavior is going to change by 0.1 percent because it actually what you learn here.

864
01:22:25.520 --> 01:22:33.440
And the construct of most large AI models is capture enormous amounts of data based on the skill

865
01:22:33.440 --> 01:22:40.320
set that you're trying to drive, train, pre-trained that model, put it into the real world,

866
01:22:40.320 --> 01:22:44.320
and then there's some post-training of the model based on feedback from from the world.

867
01:22:44.320 --> 01:22:50.960
And then when the model's released, it's kind of released, right? And the way the model learns is,

868
01:22:51.920 --> 01:23:00.240
3.5 becomes 3.8, but 3.5 didn't learn. The engineers went out and built a new model that's 3.8 that

869
01:23:00.240 --> 01:23:09.120
might have elements of 3.5 to it, etc. So the AI agents aren't learning now. Now a lot of what we're

870
01:23:09.120 --> 01:23:14.160
doing is we're building around the foundation models, then then bring kind of the signals from

871
01:23:14.160 --> 01:23:19.280
the real world and use the skills that the foundation models have to do good stuff so you can

872
01:23:19.280 --> 01:23:29.040
be post-training. Exactly. So we are post-training, but we're learning real time as human beings.

873
01:23:29.040 --> 01:23:37.680
And when the models can learn real time, that I think is the point at which I'm going to

874
01:23:38.400 --> 01:23:42.480
kind of think, yeah, we are all replaceable. But at this point, I haven't seen a model if I can

875
01:23:42.480 --> 01:23:46.400
learn real time. One of the real areas of disruption in AI has been autonomous vehicles.

876
01:23:46.880 --> 01:23:51.360
Just before we start recording, I was saying that I have a Tesla in LA where I live and

877
01:23:52.720 --> 01:23:56.720
it's staggering that I can get in the car, press the button, and drive two and a half hours to

878
01:23:56.720 --> 01:24:01.680
Joshua Tree without having to touch the wheel or the pedals. Now driving, I think, is one of the

879
01:24:01.680 --> 01:24:06.160
biggest employees in the world, like as a profession. I mean, we've got nine and a half million

880
01:24:06.160 --> 01:24:12.320
drivers and couriers on our platform. We are the largest organizer of flexible work around the

881
01:24:12.320 --> 01:24:19.520
world. And I think the second largest work forces of Chinese army. Wow. Yeah. It's a big group of

882
01:24:19.520 --> 01:24:25.520
folks that we've organized. And statistically, there's less accidents in an autonomous Tesla than

883
01:24:25.520 --> 01:24:30.240
there is if a human drives it. So it's safer for my car to drive itself statistically than for me

884
01:24:30.240 --> 01:24:34.880
to drive it. That's true, right? That autonomous driving is currently safer. That's true. So

885
01:24:34.880 --> 01:24:40.480
Waymos are safer. And then now you are back up to the Tesla, right, as a human beings. I've got

886
01:24:40.480 --> 01:24:46.240
a Tesla as well. And once in a while, it disengages, and I've got to, or I've got to disengage. So

887
01:24:48.560 --> 01:24:53.920
it's not necessarily the pure autonomous agent that's better than humans, but definitely the

888
01:24:53.920 --> 01:24:58.960
autonomous agent with a human backup. No question that's better than the pure human. And we can't

889
01:24:58.960 --> 01:25:05.520
be far away from it just being, I mean, Waymos are already, right? You live in LA. They've got the

890
01:25:05.520 --> 01:25:12.000
Waymos. We work with them in Austin, in Atlanta. And by all accounts, Waymo drivers are safer than

891
01:25:12.000 --> 01:25:17.440
human beings. And that's going to be true of AV all over the world. You know, there are million

892
01:25:17.440 --> 01:25:27.280
deaths from driving every year in the world. In the US, it's between 35,000 and 40,000 auto fatalities.

893
01:25:27.280 --> 01:25:33.520
So to the extent that these autonomous agents and drivers can be better than humans, and they

894
01:25:33.520 --> 01:25:39.840
will be better than humans over a period of time, there's a real return on human life as a result

895
01:25:39.840 --> 01:25:46.240
of this. Those 9 million drivers careers that you have will be out of work conceivably. And

896
01:25:46.240 --> 01:25:50.800
you know, talking about being honest about the situation. Yeah, I think again, it goes to physical

897
01:25:50.800 --> 01:25:56.880
AI as well, right? So I think 20 years from now, you can imagine that those 9 million will be

898
01:25:57.520 --> 01:26:05.200
20 million AVs maybe, but we have time between now and then partially because we don't operate in

899
01:26:05.200 --> 01:26:09.280
the virtual world, right? We operate in the physical world. You have to get the regulations up,

900
01:26:09.280 --> 01:26:13.840
you have to build the cars, you have to build the sensor stacks, the models have to get there.

901
01:26:13.840 --> 01:26:20.240
So there is time between now and then, but you can imagine the majority of our trips being

902
01:26:20.880 --> 01:26:28.400
fulfilled by robots of some kind, probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15, 20 years from now,

903
01:26:28.400 --> 01:26:34.160
you're going to start getting there. What do the 9 million people do? I don't know.

904
01:26:34.800 --> 01:26:40.560
Now we are expanding the kind of work that's available on on the platform,

905
01:26:40.560 --> 01:26:45.280
partially as a result of it, right? We used to be the only work is driving, now there's

906
01:26:45.280 --> 01:26:50.160
delivering, you can have shoppers as well. I think it'll be a little while at least before you

907
01:26:50.160 --> 01:26:57.520
get AI shoppers. And now, actually, we have a team called Uber AI Solutions that allows people

908
01:26:57.520 --> 01:27:06.000
to train these same agents and train AI agents and AI models and do all kinds of knowledge-based

909
01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:14.000
work on their phone as well to kind of extend the kind of work that we offer humans on our platform

910
01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:19.200
and different opportunities for them to make money. So we are extending the platform and then

911
01:27:19.200 --> 01:27:24.240
the question is how much of the platform gets automated and what's the velocity at which we can

912
01:27:24.240 --> 01:27:28.480
extend our platform into other kinds of work versus the velocity of automation. I can't tell you

913
01:27:28.480 --> 01:27:33.760
which is going to go faster. Hands on heart, though, it does appear that unemployment is going to be

914
01:27:33.760 --> 01:27:38.240
significantly increased in a world of AI, especially we just imagine this sort of continual rate

915
01:27:38.400 --> 01:27:45.760
improvement. I just can't, you would have to. Unless, again, historically in societies,

916
01:27:45.760 --> 01:27:50.800
new kinds of jobs have come up. Knowledge jobs, physical jobs. Yeah, I mean, we've disrupted both.

917
01:27:51.840 --> 01:27:56.400
That's why there's a question here. And I do think there's a real question as to the ability of

918
01:27:56.400 --> 01:28:02.640
societies to retrain the abilities of human beings to retrain themselves. AI is going to be a part

919
01:28:02.640 --> 01:28:08.000
of that. But the timing there, how fast is it going to go? It's a real question mark. I think

920
01:28:08.000 --> 01:28:14.480
you're absolutely right. I don't think it's going to be a big issue, big issue in the next five

921
01:28:14.480 --> 01:28:20.320
years. But when you go five plus years, it's going to become more of an issue for society, large.

922
01:28:20.320 --> 01:28:24.160
It's interesting because what I was thinking, putting two and two together about your father's journey

923
01:28:24.160 --> 01:28:28.720
of coming to the US, losing what he had, losing his job and the loss of meaning and purpose

924
01:28:28.720 --> 01:28:32.080
being really central to him. And I can see that in, but basically from your face that

925
01:28:32.960 --> 01:28:38.960
I think what I interpreted from your face was that he struggled with as any provider would,

926
01:28:38.960 --> 01:28:42.320
the loss of like meaning that comes with, because it's still not just about money, though. It's

927
01:28:42.320 --> 01:28:49.040
especially, you know, they give you a sense of worth. It's funny. I read a study many years ago

928
01:28:49.040 --> 01:28:54.320
that said when they looked at suicide letters specifically from men, I think it was an Australian

929
01:28:54.400 --> 01:29:03.920
study in the suicide letters that the sentiment was about not feeling worth, yes, full to your family.

930
01:29:03.920 --> 01:29:07.680
Yeah. And the extreme of that was, I think my family would actually now be better off without

931
01:29:07.680 --> 01:29:14.800
me. Interesting. And this kind of, you know, I think is probably adjacent to this conversation

932
01:29:14.800 --> 01:29:18.880
around job displacement, which is where are we going to find our meaning in a world where

933
01:29:19.680 --> 01:29:23.760
the machines have now disrupted our intelligence and our muscles.

934
01:29:24.880 --> 01:29:30.960
It's every universal income, basic income test has failed. You know, the answer that you hear

935
01:29:30.960 --> 01:29:35.440
from folks says, well, the robots are going to do all the work. They're going to create

936
01:29:36.640 --> 01:29:41.760
utility. And so our work won't have to create utility. So people will just have money.

937
01:29:42.720 --> 01:29:47.680
But it goes to exactly what you're saying, which is every single test they've done. No, it's not

938
01:29:47.680 --> 01:29:51.280
20, but they've done a couple of tests where certain section of the population, similar

939
01:29:51.280 --> 01:29:56.800
population gets income, certain section doesn't. And every time the ones who are getting income

940
01:29:57.520 --> 01:30:04.480
do worse in terms of outcomes because, well, we don't know the because. But I think the because

941
01:30:04.480 --> 01:30:14.320
is related to what you're saying, which is market forces kind of that force someone to work

942
01:30:14.320 --> 01:30:20.800
then create a perception of self-value, succeeding. You know, most people succeed. If they're

943
01:30:20.800 --> 01:30:25.440
driven to succeed, they will succeed. And as they succeed, it comes with a very, very

944
01:30:26.240 --> 01:30:33.440
deep and important feeling of I am creating value. I'm supporting my family. I'm building this

945
01:30:33.440 --> 01:30:37.760
incredible piece of art, et cetera. Whatever that value is to you and wherever that meaning comes

946
01:30:37.760 --> 01:30:45.760
from, I'm an incredible parent. That value is what keeps people going. And I don't think that,

947
01:30:45.760 --> 01:30:49.600
you know, the government's raining money down on society is going to help.

948
01:30:50.320 --> 01:30:54.400
It's refreshing to hear your perspective on this because a lot of the time, you know,

949
01:30:54.400 --> 01:30:58.240
you'll hear CEOs in the media just saying, you'll be fine. Everyone's going to figure it out.

950
01:30:58.240 --> 01:31:02.800
And I think that's a historically we have figured it out. So maybe they're right. But you have

951
01:31:02.800 --> 01:31:07.600
to ask whether they're giving you the real stuff or not. Yeah. And that's kind of what I think,

952
01:31:07.600 --> 01:31:10.800
because I sometimes hear private conversations and the private conversations. I hear about the

953
01:31:10.800 --> 01:31:15.280
sheer amount of disruption that they anticipate. And then when I see them on like CMBC or Davos,

954
01:31:15.280 --> 01:31:18.800
it's going to be fine and figured out. And I understand the incentive because if they were to

955
01:31:18.800 --> 01:31:23.440
start ringing the bell, it might hurt their own chance of like innovating and fundraising and

956
01:31:23.440 --> 01:31:28.720
all those things. But I think you sit at this sort of happy medium of being, yeah, as the CEO of Uber,

957
01:31:28.720 --> 01:31:32.160
you've got to, you've got to pursue the opportunity and the technology. But on the other hand,

958
01:31:32.160 --> 01:31:37.040
to be honest and say listen, there's going to be a big disruption. And we, I don't know the answers.

959
01:31:37.040 --> 01:31:41.520
I remember you were talking about CMBC, a CMBC anchor once. We had an interview in afterwards.

960
01:31:42.160 --> 01:31:46.480
She said, you know, I really like you. You actually answer my questions.

961
01:31:49.280 --> 01:31:55.280
Am I not supposed to? There's like the PR trading as always, if you get a bad question,

962
01:31:55.280 --> 01:32:00.320
don't answer the question. Just pivot to something else. And for me, like I've sworn to myself

963
01:32:01.200 --> 01:32:05.600
in Noah, who's up there is probably going to kill me afterwards. It's just I'm going to answer

964
01:32:05.600 --> 01:32:12.480
the question. I'm not going to do the BS. And again, I have to think the anchor knows what's happening.

965
01:32:13.200 --> 01:32:17.200
The audience knows what's happening. So I'm like, oh, I said the question. If it's a shady

966
01:32:17.200 --> 01:32:20.240
question, I'll deal with it. I actually don't like interviewing CEOs, which is funny because the name

967
01:32:20.240 --> 01:32:29.120
of the podcast, because I looked before I came on, I'm like, I'm going to look up on the

968
01:32:29.120 --> 01:32:34.640
CLs. And there aren't that many CLs. Well, if I looked at your diary, what would I find inside

969
01:32:34.640 --> 01:32:39.120
your diary? I would probably find you contending with being a father, your psychologist, might find

970
01:32:39.120 --> 01:32:42.960
some things in there about your health. I can see you're a guy that goes to the gym. And I think

971
01:32:42.960 --> 01:32:47.760
it's all interlinked. I think for you to be an exceptional CEO, you probably think a lot about

972
01:32:47.840 --> 01:32:51.920
your past, your childhood, your health, your how to optimize and all these things. And so

973
01:32:52.800 --> 01:32:58.320
honestly, you can't do a podcast like this for 20 years and just hit the same thing every year.

974
01:32:58.320 --> 01:33:03.120
You need to be I need to be intellectually stimulated. And you and me are both multifaceted

975
01:33:03.120 --> 01:33:08.560
creatures, I guess. And that's why it's evolved until we become AIs. Until we become AIs.

976
01:33:10.240 --> 01:33:16.400
Just closing off on that then. What can we do about this from an AI AV perspective?

977
01:33:16.400 --> 01:33:19.280
Is it the government's responsibility? Is it collective action?

978
01:33:20.800 --> 01:33:26.880
So one is I do think that we don't talk enough in that, for example, autonomous AI can be a force

979
01:33:26.880 --> 01:33:32.160
for good, right? It's these drivers are going to be safer than human beings. And those we can take

980
01:33:32.160 --> 01:33:39.680
the 35,000 fatalities to 3000 fatalities, etc. I do think that the AIs the AV is going to

981
01:33:40.320 --> 01:33:47.760
bring down the price of transportation. So a big part of our goal is to make on-demand transportation

982
01:33:47.760 --> 01:33:52.800
available for everybody. One of the folks that I was talking to was talking about how Uber has

983
01:33:52.800 --> 01:33:56.880
changed her mother's life, like her mom can get around and just wouldn't get around without it,

984
01:33:56.880 --> 01:34:03.120
right? We want more moms like that. So I do think it's important to recognize that if

985
01:34:03.120 --> 01:34:07.520
transferred fundamental transportation becomes safer, it becomes cheaper, going back to

986
01:34:08.000 --> 01:34:16.560
paradox. That's a good thing for society, right? I don't think that the answer as it relates to

987
01:34:16.560 --> 01:34:24.960
society is to try to slow down the pace of change because China won't, for example, if we're talking

988
01:34:24.960 --> 01:34:30.240
about the West. So I think you just have to lean into it. I think that discussions like this

989
01:34:30.240 --> 01:34:36.160
are important. I think you look for technology leaders who are talking about it. Dario, for example,

990
01:34:36.240 --> 01:34:41.440
anthropic is talking about it, pissing some people off, but I think he's having good discussions

991
01:34:41.440 --> 01:34:51.440
there. And then I do think that the society armying up to be able to retrain large groups of people

992
01:34:51.440 --> 01:34:58.160
at scale is not a skill. I don't see people investing in that. And I don't see that as a core

993
01:34:58.160 --> 01:35:03.280
capability of any of our countries, etc. If there's one thing I can come up with, it will be that,

994
01:35:03.280 --> 01:35:09.040
is the retraining machine. You've got four kids. Yes. They come to you. They say, Dad, listen,

995
01:35:09.040 --> 01:35:14.320
AI, robotics, give me some advice for my future. What should I be doing? Work hard. You're going to

996
01:35:14.320 --> 01:35:21.760
be fine. Work hard. It is just that. I mean, now the AI is theoretically can work harder than you,

997
01:35:21.760 --> 01:35:28.240
but I find one of the pieces of advice I give to young people is don't plan.

998
01:35:29.040 --> 01:35:36.000
Okay, I wind up. We went through a history. I wind up where I am today having not planned a thing.

999
01:35:36.000 --> 01:35:41.440
I didn't when I was a, that's in banker. I was in dreaming of becoming CEO, etc. And what I find

1000
01:35:41.440 --> 01:35:46.480
is that people who have too much of a career plan, who have too much clarity about what they're doing,

1001
01:35:47.360 --> 01:35:55.360
they lose their curiosity. And human beings look for positive signal, right? You, whether you like

1002
01:35:55.360 --> 01:36:00.960
it or not, anytime someone agrees with you, makes you feel a little bit better. Anytime you get

1003
01:36:00.960 --> 01:36:06.880
signal that goes against your preconceived notions, either you ignore it or you're like, all right,

1004
01:36:06.880 --> 01:36:13.280
shit, I'm going to, I'm going to take this on. It's unpleasant. And so with, with career planning,

1005
01:36:13.280 --> 01:36:19.120
what I find is people who have to clear career plan, they're looking for signals that feed into

1006
01:36:19.120 --> 01:36:22.720
their career plan. I'm going to be a vice president by this much. I'm going to make X money by

1007
01:36:22.720 --> 01:36:26.320
this much. And they're not looking around. They're not being curious. They're not looking for

1008
01:36:26.320 --> 01:36:33.360
signal that can change their life. And so what I tell some folks is like, before you go on and

1009
01:36:33.360 --> 01:36:42.000
try to change a world, let the world change you first. Take input. And if you're like this,

1010
01:36:42.000 --> 01:36:46.720
you got blinders because I'm going here, you're not going to take input. You're not going to let,

1011
01:36:46.720 --> 01:36:52.240
you're not going to take all the stimulus coming in from the world. So it's the one

1012
01:36:52.320 --> 01:36:57.760
constant I see as people who are good or good, people who are good, I've never seen a successful

1013
01:36:57.760 --> 01:37:06.000
person in a job or a career get there without working hard. And my guess is I don't know about you.

1014
01:37:06.000 --> 01:37:11.680
You kind of wound up where you wound up kind of by accident. And people are like, well, you got

1015
01:37:11.680 --> 01:37:21.120
lucky. I got very lucky to be here. Like I had so many kind of moments. And, and some would say,

1016
01:37:21.760 --> 01:37:26.320
I took advantage of that, of that lock. But to some extent, I was able to take advantage of that

1017
01:37:26.320 --> 01:37:33.760
lock because I was open. Being open, you jumped from Expedia to Uber. In part, helped by some advice

1018
01:37:33.760 --> 01:37:38.080
that our mutual friend Daniela, the phone is going to forgive you. He's actually just text me.

1019
01:37:38.080 --> 01:37:41.360
I text him saying, hey, can you, can you send me a question to our starry, but he said, I'm in

1020
01:37:41.360 --> 01:37:44.960
the middle of an accident while we're talking. No, just before I walked in, I've just looked,

1021
01:37:44.960 --> 01:37:51.200
he text me back saying he's on an earnings call. But he's a good luck with the interview.

1022
01:37:51.200 --> 01:37:55.680
What did Daniela stay to you that helped to reform that decision to go to Uber?

1023
01:37:55.680 --> 01:38:02.480
So he's the one who recommended, I think, I was contacted by a headhunter. He recommended me to

1024
01:38:02.480 --> 01:38:07.520
the headhunter who called me. I told them I was actually at the Allen & Company conference going

1025
01:38:07.520 --> 01:38:11.600
back in a circle with them and we were having a drink one night. And he asked me, he's like,

1026
01:38:11.600 --> 01:38:17.040
did the headhunter call you? There's this Uber roll. And at the time, Uber was a disaster.

1027
01:38:17.040 --> 01:38:22.560
Like disaster. And everyone was reading about it. That was at Expedia. I had just gone this

1028
01:38:22.560 --> 01:38:27.280
wonderful contract that you said at the beginning. So I was going to stay. And I love working for

1029
01:38:27.280 --> 01:38:35.520
Barry. We're like, it's been the best professional partnership of my life. And I said, of course,

1030
01:38:35.520 --> 01:38:39.520
I'm not going to go. You know, I'm so happy about what I'm doing at Expedia. And Daniel,

1031
01:38:39.680 --> 01:38:46.800
looks at me. He's got his like cold Scandinavian eyes. He's like, Dara, since when is life

1032
01:38:46.800 --> 01:38:54.480
about being happy? It's about making impact. Uber is a great company. And you can have an

1033
01:38:54.480 --> 01:39:02.080
impact on that company. You've got to do this. So the next day, I called the headhunter

1034
01:39:02.080 --> 01:39:05.680
previously. I said, no, I'm not interested. The next day, I called the headhunter and I said,

1035
01:39:05.680 --> 01:39:12.960
let's talk. So Daniel was the one who opened me up. And you dad? He gave you. Well, I talked to

1036
01:39:12.960 --> 01:39:21.280
my dad. And as my dad is, keeps things simple. And he said, Dara, and it's Farsi,

1037
01:39:21.920 --> 01:39:29.520
van a company who's a verb tells you to run it. You just say yes. So I thought that was good,

1038
01:39:30.480 --> 01:39:38.960
good advice. And ultimately, I think people who come to Uber, stay at Uber, they come because

1039
01:39:38.960 --> 01:39:44.960
of the challenge, but they stay because of the impact. Like we are building a company that is

1040
01:39:44.960 --> 01:39:50.960
important to the world. And for me, I could come and I could have an impact on impactful company.

1041
01:39:50.960 --> 01:39:54.560
So why the hell not? And when he says a company that's a verb, he's referring to the fact that

1042
01:39:54.560 --> 01:40:01.360
everybody in the taxing or transportation category uses Uber as a verb to even if they're talking

1043
01:40:01.360 --> 01:40:06.080
about a competitor. Exactly right. And there's always one company in every kind of industry.

1044
01:40:07.360 --> 01:40:10.000
We have a closing tradition here where the long sketch leaves a question for the next guest

1045
01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:15.440
not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, what is one conversation

1046
01:40:15.440 --> 01:40:19.680
that if you could rewind time and have, you would have today but can no longer have?

1047
01:40:19.840 --> 01:40:30.240
It was a conversation with both my dad. You know, I told you I came to New York from

1048
01:40:30.240 --> 01:40:36.080
San Francisco. And it was because my dad was getting very old and he was losing his mental

1049
01:40:36.080 --> 01:40:43.120
facilities. And I'm glad I came back and I got spent time with him. But those last times,

1050
01:40:43.120 --> 01:40:49.440
you know, when I spent time with him, it wasn't really him. And I wish I could talk to him about

1051
01:40:49.440 --> 01:40:55.920
his experiences, his younger life, the excitement of building something. And then the loss and

1052
01:40:55.920 --> 01:41:00.880
regrets he had in life as well. I never had, you know, my relationship with him was kind of,

1053
01:41:01.760 --> 01:41:08.240
was there was love. No question about love. But we didn't have the deep kind of conversations

1054
01:41:08.320 --> 01:41:13.280
that, certainly I'm hoping I get to have with my kids. So that's a conversation I'd love to have.

1055
01:41:13.280 --> 01:41:19.200
And you can't get time back. And that's one of the tragedies of life. But it's also one of the

1056
01:41:19.200 --> 01:41:23.280
beauties of life, you know, which is there are some mistakes that you make that are permanent.

1057
01:41:24.560 --> 01:41:31.440
And you can't get that back. But my then making genuine conversations with you and connections with

1058
01:41:31.680 --> 01:41:39.440
my friends and having a real relationship, not just with my wife and my kids, but actually

1059
01:41:39.440 --> 01:41:48.080
like with my workmates. You know, we having those genuine conversations and connections is my way

1060
01:41:48.080 --> 01:41:57.360
of correcting for the conversation I never had with my dad. Dara, thank you. Thank you very much.

1061
01:41:57.360 --> 01:42:01.120
I appreciate it. You're a huge inspiration for me in so many ways and even more so now,

1062
01:42:01.120 --> 01:42:05.760
having done so much research on your own preparation for this conversation because it is rare to

1063
01:42:05.760 --> 01:42:10.080
find a leader who has been consistently successful across different domains who's built this really,

1064
01:42:10.080 --> 01:42:14.560
really in my opinion, quite rare skill stack from investing to CFO to then being able to transition

1065
01:42:14.560 --> 01:42:20.480
to CEO and then has repeatedly contended with moments of transition. And given us all frameworks

1066
01:42:20.480 --> 01:42:23.600
as founders and entrepreneurs for how to deal with that transition and one of the great ones I take

1067
01:42:23.600 --> 01:42:30.000
away from you is honesty. Yeah, honesty is so powerful. And I tell you, I learned that skill from

1068
01:42:30.000 --> 01:42:36.560
my wife. She's just, she's always like people are people. Doesn't matter, you know, they eat, they

1069
01:42:36.560 --> 01:42:42.960
crap, they have to go to sleep. And she treats everybody in her life the same way regardless of their

1070
01:42:42.960 --> 01:42:50.880
position and like you're done. Yeah. Yeah. And she's, she's honesty, it's just so powerful.

1071
01:42:50.880 --> 01:43:00.880
Thank you so much. You're very welcome. And unbelievable inspiration. Thank you. I appreciate it.