The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Uber CEO: At Uber, If You Don’t Perform, You’re Out! Uber Was Losing $3b A Year

Starting point is 00:00:00 We just got back from Davos in Switzerland, this snowy village where some of the world's leading experts, CEOs, founders, world leaders gather in this one space. And while I was there, my colleague Juan, was telling me about something he does, which many of my friends do. They list their properties when they go away on Airbnb. So many of us, when we go away, we leave our house as this dormant asset that's doing nothing for us other than racking up bills. And as some of you might know, Airbnb are one of our show partners. And I've stayed in their properties all over the world and continued to do so. but I've never actually hosted one of my properties on there.

Starting point is 00:00:33 But when I heard this, it got me thinking, what a smart move it is to make money from an asset that's currently probably costing you money. Every time you're away, your home sits empty. And what Juan told me is how easy it was to get set up. He makes his home available for specific dates so that his guests always depart the day before he gets home. So if you're trying to find an easy way to make some extra money on the side,

Starting point is 00:00:53 hosting on Airbnb might be exactly that, especially if you move around a lot. Your home might be worth more than you think. and you can find out how much your home is worth by going to Airbnb.ca slash host. You come to Uber, you're going to work your ass off. And if you're not performing, we're going to let you know. But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth? And they can leave.

Starting point is 00:01:12 Because the most important skill in life is a skill of working hard. And when you see the top athletes, Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, of course they're talented. But the thing that's different about them is they work their asses off. And that's a learned skill. That's not something you're born with. You may be smarter, more talented, etc. But I'm not going to let anyone outwork me. With that mentality, when you joined Uber, it was losing $3 billion per year.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Now it generates $8.5 billion in free cash flow every year. But it seems that you were forged in such a way that you were going to be relentless. Yeah, and it really started with being born in Iran. With the Islamic Revolution in 1978, we were not safe there. And I remember at one point, we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard, and bullets went through our living room. So my family came to the U.S. to rebuild their lives.

Starting point is 00:01:59 You were eight, nine years old? Yeah. And it really destroyed my dad. Sorry, it's tough for me to talk about it. All right, let me try again. Seeing that has put me on a road where I just wanted to make my family proud. So I studied bioelectrical engineering, and then my first job was invest in banking, and I got to see the process of big companies being built.

Starting point is 00:02:28 And then I had the opportunity to take over Expedia. And in your 12 years of CEO, Expedia sales increased from 2.1 billion to 8. 8 billion, and you were the highest paid CEO of the US tech company. And I left it all behind to go to Uber. And I want to get into practical company building how you would get that company to work hard and create a culture of continuous improvement and all that stuff. But there's an alien that's arrived amongst us, which is AI. Now, driving, I think, is one of the biggest employees in the world, like, as a profession.

Starting point is 00:02:54 I mean, we've got 9.5 million drivers and careers on a platform. Those drivers, careers that you have will be out of work. Being honest about the situation, what do the 9 million people do? Just give me 30 seconds of your time. two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can. and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. You lead, one of the most consequential, interesting, talked about companies of my generation. It's worth hundreds of billions of dollars last time I checked, and it's a company that I use every single day. Thank you. I've looked through your story. You were the CEO of Expedia at one point. You're currently the CEO of Uber, and you've turned that company from a loss-making company to a highly profitable company and one that has continued to be successful through such a great time of transition. Your story starts in a very interesting way.

Starting point is 00:04:30 And I was, you know, when I start doing the research for guests sometimes, I think I come in with some kind of presumption that I grew up in California, you went to Stanford, etc. But that is not the case. Can you take me to that earliest context so I can understand. How and why you are the way that you are? Quite the starting questions, but I'll try. I think that for me, the events that shaped my life and maybe a part of who I am really started with my being born in Iran. And Iran at the time was modernizing, becoming a modern society. And my family built a pretty big industrial company that everyone was.

Starting point is 00:05:15 quite proud of in Iran. We lost all of that with the revolution in 1978. And my family had to come to the U.S. to rebuild their lives. You had to come to the U.S. We were not safe there. One of my uncles actually was a cabinet member of the Shaws who had just been toppled. And at one point, we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard. They were actually going after our neighbor's house, and one of their guns went off, and bullets went through our living room, shattered the glass in the living room.

Starting point is 00:05:57 And at that point, my mom's like, we're not safe being here. So we had to come to the U.S. And I do think that event, to some extent, has shaped not just me by my family, in that the rebuilding of our lives, of our economic lives to some extent, where we're all trying to rebuild what we lost in Iran.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Do you look back on that? And can you identify any sort of fingerprints that were left on you from that time that have defined you in a business capacity? I think at my core, I never feel safe. You know, the experience of losing everything, and for the kids, I tell you, it was fine for the kids. But seeing my parents lose everything,

Starting point is 00:06:40 and it really destroyed my dad. You know, it really, his losing, his value to the world as he saw it, really hurt his inner being. And I do think to some extent seeing that has put me on a road where I want to rebuild, I want to make my family proud. But at the same time, I never, that feeling of having the floor, you know, the rug pulled out of you, of building everything. that's a feeling that never leaves you. I think Americans underestimate what this place represents in its ideals, right, which is if you build something, it's yours, there's rule of law, can't be taken away from you. That is not true for the majority of the population of the world.

Starting point is 00:07:31 And so I think for me, there's a drive to build, and it's at the same time, never, ever, ever taking anything for granted, never being satisfied because the minute you take things for granted, then that rug can be pulled out from under you. On your father, there was a moment where he, a couple of years, I think six years, where he got trapped in Iran and wasn't granted an exit visa. Yes. And I imagine at that time, your mother was raising you alone here in New York City. Yeah, in Tarrytown, New York, 45 minutes north of New York City. But she went from a life of never having to work to she had to become a salesperson to make some money. And she did it all herself. And she really stepped up. So I think it shaped us. It was difficult in some ways. I miss my dad.

Starting point is 00:08:18 I remember when he left, he was like a giant compared to me. And then when he came back, it was my sophomore year at college. And he still saw me as a kid. And so he wanted to drive me to college. And he did. And then he's like, he wanted to hang out. I'm like, dad. Can you get out of here? I went to hang out with my kids. I was with my friends. I was excited to go back to school. And it was just, it was sad seeing the change, you know, of a man who had gotten older.

Starting point is 00:08:48 His time in Iran was really tough on him. He had a heart attack on the plane coming back. So he was a diminished person to some extent. But it was great that I had many, many years with him, you know, since then. When he was away, when he was trapped around and wasn't able to exit, your mother Lily? Yes. Referenceed how you didn't mention him much, but when he returned, you broke down in tears. It's okay.

Starting point is 00:09:26 No, don't be. He was a very stoic man. Sorry, he passed away a couple of years ago, so it's tough for me to talk about it. All right, let me try again. He was a very stoke man, so he kept it all inside. and we were taught to do the same thing. But we wrote letters together, and they're beautiful letters.

Starting point is 00:10:14 He wrote poetry, so I communicated with him in Iran. But there's expression of feelings and kind of frustration were not something that my family did. You know, you just dealt with the situation. And so, yeah, I think I suffer from overstosis and then breaking down

Starting point is 00:10:37 every once in a while, as you just saw. It's a familiar story of the men that I've interviewed that grew up with that kind of sort of emotional composure enforced and modeled to them. Yeah, I don't know if it was enforced. Like, it wasn't actually, yeah, like we were a very loving family, but my father was very humble. He did not believe that just because you're in a position of power, you should kind of project that power, you should communicate that to everyone.

Starting point is 00:11:07 and there was a stosis inside my family, which is, don't complain. So it was a weird combination of stosis and love at the same time. How does, because I'm not a father yet. Yes. But I'm approaching that.

Starting point is 00:11:24 Congratulations. Almost. Yeah, almost. Yeah. I've just proposed to my fiance and we're in the process now of bringing children into the world, hopefully. And it's one of the things I think a lot about,

Starting point is 00:11:34 which is how do I stop my own stoicism? passing on to my children. First of all, fatherhood, parenthood is so humbling. You have such a picture in your mind as to how you're going to raise your family, what your kids are going to be like. And they just become their own people. And it's such a beautiful process to see. And at first there's this alarm, oh my God, I'm losing control.

Starting point is 00:12:04 You know, I've done everything. You've planned everything. this is how I'm going to raise kids, but then real life gets in the way. It is absolutely exhausting. So you probably execute on 80% of your plan and you're 20% imperfect because you are exhausted and you're working. You got a career or often some people do. And at some point, you see these kids kind of move off into this completely unexpected territory. And there's a point for me, it was like, I'm a bit of a control free.

Starting point is 00:12:35 So I'm like, this is not good. They're kind of doing their own thing. But then you step back and you're like, it's absolutely gorgeous what's happening. So the advice that I would just give in terms of being a parent is just spend the time with the kids. You know, it is that is the magic is not what you do or the particular tactics, but it's the investment in them and the time spent with them and the rest, you know, you can't control.

Starting point is 00:13:01 But what you can't control is kind of that connection. I am speaking of children I went back and looked through lots of different photos of where you lived and where you grew up to try and get a picture of your world in an early context and all these photos look incredibly incredible I think that was your fifth birthday oh wow I had hair back then

Starting point is 00:13:20 my mom loved to dress us up in like little doll outfits I can tell yeah yeah oh Lord look at that I'm definitely not going to do that to my kids age four in London Yes. Yes. You and your cousins there?

Starting point is 00:13:37 Yes. Family was everywhere for us. And again, another one with a beautiful haircut there. It was a great childhood. It was amazing. I spoke to your mum. Lily. I hope, well, how to go.

Starting point is 00:13:51 We'll see. She said, I'll play the audio file, just so people can hear it. When he was very little, he told me that he wants to do something important. the world and he said becoming wealthy it's not his priority but making it change is I can't say I remember that conversation but the one of my early experiences that really imprinted on me was we went to visit one of my dad's factories family factories my dad was in charge of designing factories, building them, operating them. And the respect that that population, the factory had for him and the visit and how excited

Starting point is 00:14:40 they were that his family was visiting was just really cool. And the way that he treated, he knew everyone's name. He treated them with such respect. It really imprinted on me. There was this care. It wasn't the boss is coming and there's fear. And so for me, like that ability to build a life where you have impact on a lot of people, but it's positive kind of building impact.

Starting point is 00:15:08 You have the broad respect of these folks. It really imprinted on me. So I always wanted, you know, when we came to the States, making money was important. I don't want to kind of BS and say like, oh, I didn't care about it because we lost everything. And so my first job was like, invest in banking. What's a goal of investing? Have fun, but make money, right? And so that was a priority for me.

Starting point is 00:15:34 But then as I matured in life, as I knew, I had safety in terms of, okay, yes, I know I can do that. I can make money. I can provide for my family. I can support my mom and dad. Then building kind of an enterprise, having that feeling that I saw with my father, that connection with his team was something that became really important to me. When you came to New York, you were eight, nine years old? Nine years old, yes.

Starting point is 00:16:01 If I'd asked you at nine years old when you arrived at New York what you wanted to do when you're older, what would you've said? I have no idea. I want to make my dad proud. That was it. I wasn't kind of motivated for specific target at all. I just wanted to make my family proud. Why I want to make my dad proud?

Starting point is 00:16:20 He's always been an important figure in my life. You know, there's this, and I think part of it is that I never got to know him that well as an individual, you know, because he was obviously when I was younger, he was working all the time. So he would show up once in a while for dinner, et cetera. We always had family dinners together. And then he went away. And then I worked. So I never really got to know the person that he was. was, but I don't know, there's kind of this sense of duty. There's, there's a hope that,

Starting point is 00:16:57 you know, he's, he's somewhere or maybe he's not someplace, but that making my father proud has always been a strong current, undercurrent in my life. So you're nine years old, you've arrived in New York City. You do end up going off to college sometime later? Yes, I went to Brown University, studied engineering there. How do you think about that choice at that time and how determinant that was of your trajectory in your life, that decision to go to that university and study that subject. My father always said, you can do anything in your life as long as either you're a doctor or an engineer. And I picked engineering. I just loved the problem solving aspect of engineering and all the layers of equations, et cetera, and those equations being able to represent

Starting point is 00:17:40 something in real life and then magically that's something in real life following what it should theoretically. Like the problem solving aspect in engineering fascinating me. I absolutely loved it. And I think it serves me to this day. Engineers make good CEOs? Great CEOs. If you step back, companies are just machines, right? They're machines that are run by people. And over a period of time, you actually try to automate some of the stuff that the people do. And then you send the people off to do new stuff that can't be automated. Like, we are rules-based, like it's an organism and it's a machine at the same time. And to some extent, the job of the CEO is engineering, how do I set up the company to achieve

Starting point is 00:18:28 the goals that, you know, I set for, shareholders set for it, my board sets for it. It's a giant engineering problem. And to me, that's, like, fascinating. Putting together the pieces to get to what you perceive to be the goal. And one of the really important things is you've got to pick the right goals. That is one giant problem solving engineering challenge, and it's one of those fascinating parts of my job. I want to get into that, the practical company building,

Starting point is 00:18:55 how you organize an organization to be a well-functioning machine, setting goals and all that stuff. After college, you go into investment banking for a period of time. Yeah, I work there for eight years in risk arbitrage to begin with and then merges an acquisition advisory work as well. And that experience I was reading taught you about betting on people. Yes. What do you mean by betting on people?

Starting point is 00:19:19 And why is that important? It was actually a lesson that I learned from Herbert Allen, who was running Allen and company at the time. It was the Allen's family started the company. And he always told me, and at the time, I didn't really listen to him. He always had Dara always bet on people. companies go there are good companies, bad companies, but great people stay great all the time. And one of the things that made Allen and Company was really special, you know, investment banking can be a doggy talk sport.

Starting point is 00:19:53 But Allen and Company really cultivated relationships with people whom they perceived to be great, both in terms of potential and in terms of character. And of all the investment banks, that loyalty, that making a bet on a person and then staying with them through their whole careers is a pattern of how that place works. And it's definitely something that I learned there. What is it about one's character that makes them qualify as a great person? You look for success, honor, loyalty, people who will tell you what they're going to do, whether it's good or bad and then follow through on their promises. Hard work. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned. Well, that comes with success.

Starting point is 00:20:36 Okay. Talent and hard work. You put those two together. And why did you leave Allen and company? I left Alan because I met Barry Diller. He was a client of mine. We got to meet an big kind of deal, unfriendly, hostile tender offer for Paramount at the time. There's another one happening, I guess, for Paramount now as we speak.

Starting point is 00:21:01 And he was the one person. I thought I was going to be an Alan lifer. I thought I was going to be there forever. My older brother, Kave, is an Alan lifer. He has, it's the only job he's had in his life. But Barry was the one person who I thought, you know, if I get a chance to work for this person, I'm going to jump out in. And I did. Why?

Starting point is 00:21:21 Why, Barry? He's spectacular. I mean, he was spectacular. He is spectacular. A doer, you know, he, he, he, I met him in a circumstance where he lost. It was, it was his giant hostile tender offer, bids going back. back and forth between the winner Viacom and Barry. Ultimately, Barry stepped away.

Starting point is 00:21:42 And we were planning an announcement. You know, and you can imagine all these like fancy PR people sitting around a table. How do we present a loss as a win, right? So he bid for a company. He didn't get it. He didn't get it. And he walked away. He didn't get it because he walked away, which in hindsight was a mistake.

Starting point is 00:22:01 He could have paid more. And then in the release where he walked away, I think the release was, they won, we lost next. And he was a constant motion machine. Like, they won, we lost next. What's next? Let's go. And that's the kind of person I wanted to work for. In business, losing is part of the game.

Starting point is 00:22:23 Absolutely. Absolutely. But then calling it out. You know, not bullshitting. Not like, oh, we tried our best in the circumstances. They won, we lost next. It's okay. Does it matter how you lose?

Starting point is 00:22:37 Absolutely it does. Absolutely it does. And I find companies guilty of two things. Like one is ignoring losses, like papering over losses, et cetera, right? And then sometimes being obsessive about the loss, you know, inspecting it, what happened, let's do a summary, let's meet, what went wrong, etc. And, you know, for me, it's somewhere in the middle, which is recognize why you lost, recognize that you lost. Say it because it's important to say it. Analyze it, but then move on.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Like, let's move on. And the next time you hope to have learned some kind of judgment to avoid that kind of a loss, but it doesn't mean you're going to avoid losing at all. Like if you're not taking shots, you're not missing. You're not losing. So for me, it's constantly moving and taking your shots, losing learning next, losing learning next. That constant motion is what I want to see. That constant motion and learning is what excites me. This is business advice, but also life advice generally, because a lot of people who I meet

Starting point is 00:23:46 will come up to me and ask me questions about things, often ask questions that sounded a lot like what you just said. It's dealing with rejection, dealing with taking an L, and how that L then stays with them, sometimes for a decade, sometimes for 15 years, and holds them back. Harts their confidence, means that they don't take any more shots, and this can cause a sort of a downward confidence spiral. Totally. And listen, I'm talking a big game, but I would tell you, in my personal life,

Starting point is 00:24:13 I can't deal with a rejection. I have a really hard time dealing with a rejection. Professional life, no problem whatsoever. So it's like in the end, we're all humans after all. You have a difficulty dealing with rejection in your person? Very much. Yeah, yeah. What kind of rejection?

Starting point is 00:24:26 any kind of rejection conflict. Like it's something that has been that I fought my whole life, which is because I was one of the younger cousins, because I was a youngest brother, I just kind of didn't have rights. So I was, I went with a flow. And going with a flow means you're going with a current, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:24:48 I didn't cause trouble. And that has followed me in my personal life, in my professional life, I don't have as much trouble there. I guess my professional life to some extent is a mask because I get to be aggressive. I get to lose, et cetera. It's something that Sid, my wife, has really helped me with,

Starting point is 00:25:07 but it is something in my personal life that generally I'm conflict-avoidant. You're conflict-avoidant in your personal life. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's not good in a relationship. No, no. That's why Sid's helping me out.

Starting point is 00:25:21 I'm much better now. I'm much better. But it's when I take those issues on, I have to fight myself. There's some core. You know, if you and I were having an issue and I was sitting down with you and saying, hey, I'm not happy about X or Y. I can feel there's a core of me saying, just let it go. But that's how resentment builds.

Starting point is 00:25:45 And that's how relationships over a long period of time start moving the wrong way. So it is something that is at my core, but I actively fight. And I'm getting better at it, but I'm still on a learning journey there. I'll tell you that. Eventually, you go on to becoming the CEO of Expedia. Yes. There was a couple of CEOs that came before you, but you became the third and took that company on. Very different job going from investment banking to being a CEO.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Yeah. Yeah. Now, there was a journey there because I went from banking to running deals. and I knew that I liked how companies worked. The thing that I liked about investment banking was that I got to see a lot. I got to see really smart people, really cool companies build. But I couldn't go along with that journey. I was jealous of the journey that these CEOs were moving on.

Starting point is 00:26:39 So then when M&A was a bridge to work at a company and build the company, I move from M&A to CFO, Chief Financial Officer, because that's to some extent finance, but it's also being the CEO's partner and helping the CEO build. So I always knew the direction that I want to go in, which is, hey, at some point I want to actually be an operator. And then I have the opportunity to take over Expedia,

Starting point is 00:27:06 the CEO at the time. Eric Blasford kind of said, yeah, big company thing, not for me. So he resigned. And honestly, Barry didn't have. have an alternative. Barry was the CEO and chairman of IAC, which was a parent company of what became Expedia, IAC travel. The head of IAC travel resigned. I raised my hand.

Starting point is 00:27:30 I said maybe I could do it. Barry was desperate. He had no one else. So he promoted me to be CEO of IAC travel. In IAC travel was going through some difficult time. So we spun it off at Expedia. So that's when I became the CEO. Expedia, the public company and I moved to the Netherlands of Seattle.

Starting point is 00:27:50 In your job just before you took on that role as CEO, you were buying businesses. So M&As, mergers and acquisitions, you were buying companies. Yes. What are some of the companies that you bought? Oh, we bought a lot of companies. We bought Ticketmaster. We bought Match.com, bought Expedia Hotels.com. And it was all about the theme that Barry and I were fascinated with was the

Starting point is 00:28:15 movement of commerce online. You know, it was it was during that time. It was the late 90s, early 2000. And we saw it happening with our very own eyes, really with home shopping, right? It was a flat screen. It was a television and you were offering products and people were calling up buying those products electronically. And just the medium change, a medium change from a TV screen to an internet screen. And instead of calling, you could use HTTP. And so while the medium change, we kind of saw this opportunity to take advantage of the change of platform. So match.com essentially in the olden days, you know, you had online dating, but you would call a number. You'd be like, my name is Dara and I'm six foot two. And this is you describe yourself and you hear other kind of recordings.

Starting point is 00:29:09 And you would get matched up based on someone who seemed nice. And all of that just moved online. That was what batch.com was. Same thing with Ticketmaster. You know, in the olden days, you would go to a Tower Records. Have you ever been to a Tower Records? Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:22 So there were these things called record stores. And they also had a desk where they would sell concert tickets. So you would either call for a concert ticket or you would physically go and buy one. Amazing. And there were lines, Tower Record lines. And all of that exactly moved online. And same thing would travel, right? You would call a travel agent.

Starting point is 00:29:44 And so all of there was this movement of retail and phone commerce to online commerce. And we identified the early players to make that shift. And personal, ticketing, travel were the ones that we went for. Because at the time, Amazon was doing everything else, like physical fulfillment. So what we were going for were essentially electronic transactions that did not require physical fulfillment. it. And that was travel because, you know, it's a virtual good, ticketing, match.com, which was personal. So there was a pattern around men, so to speak, but we went out and bought all these companies. It was a really great time. I've got two questions that emerged that.

Starting point is 00:30:27 One is, again, I'm really interested to understand how you would look for talent or how you'd think about what a great company is. Are there like, we're looking at the company culture, are you looking at the founders? Was there something else? Was it the profitability? And the other one is just really intrigued as to what this period of your life and thereafter taught you about how to spot opportunity in transition. Because that is a transitional moment of technology. And I think there is a certain pattern recognition one can develop as to like know what to bet on in these moments of transition where there's huge skepticism. The internet's cannot go anything. So two questions. One is like, how do you spot great companies? And then the second is like patterns in

Starting point is 00:31:05 transition. So they're, I'd say that they're related, which is we would spot great companies. just by observing who is taking the lead in these transitions. You know, these transitions are difficult. You can't predict exactly where things are going, how quickly they're going, how much you do invest, what's a return, what the market, how large is the market going to be. But there were companies that were emerging as the leaders, and we would just, I just identify the leaders and call call these folks up and say, I want to come in and talk to you. Like, that was it.

Starting point is 00:31:38 And to some extent, it's a self-reinforcing cycle, which is, yes, the great management teams and the great founders were the ones who were able to identify the opportunity and hit that opportunity faster than anyone else, recognize that opportunity and execute on the opportunity faster than anyone else. So to some extent, the companies who were in the lead, of course had the best management teams and had the best founding teams. And when those two things matched, that was when we jumped. And then the last thing I would tell you in terms of these pattern recognition is that we never completed a successful deal because we got the company cheap. We actually overpaid for every single great company that we bought, but we overpaid based on what the market thought at the time, not what the reality turned out to be. So I do think one of the kind of pieces of pattern recognition with me is just humans think about success and transitions in a linear way because time is linear. Would you mean by that something that doesn't just they think of it going like this? Yeah, you know, it's the everything kind of moves this way, right?

Starting point is 00:32:55 Your schedule is relatively linear, right? It's you sleep seven hours a day. Like your life is a linear life. but company and company success and company momentum, especially with new technologies where if there's a technology that's truly better than the other technology within the virtual world, there's absolutely no friction holding it back.

Starting point is 00:33:18 These companies move in an exponential way in terms of their growth and ultimately in terms of their value. So whereas most people kind of see things, when they project out to the future, they see this, what actually happens is this. A hockey stick. And that's where the opportunity is. It's the spread between the hockey stick and kind of the straight line.

Starting point is 00:33:40 And it's very difficult for people to process that. And so that was, you know, those were the companies that we identified that hockey stick. And online travel was a hockey stick. Personals was a hockey stick. Ticketing was a hockey stick. I heard about the, is it Jevin's paradox? Yes. Which I think kind of sort of overlaps with what you're saying that.

Starting point is 00:34:01 When things become easier, faster, cheaper, people do them not incrementally more, but exceptionally more often. I mean, that's the definition of Uber, and we can get to that at some point, was originally it was built as a black cab service, so to speak, a black car service. Can you tell me that's where it came from? Because a lot of people have forgotten the story of how it came to be. Now, to some extent, it was, well, to a large extent, it was that the founding was before me. But it was Garrett Camp, who was one of the founders, had this idea, and I think it was born in Paris. It was like a snowy day in Paris, and they couldn't find a black car. And it was a bunch of young tech guys.

Starting point is 00:34:42 Like, how cool would it be to pick up my phone and call a black car? And that was the core idea, which is, hey, you can use your phone to call a black car. He brought on Travis Kalanick. Travis was the operator and the founder. and to your pawn and Jevin's paradox to some extent, people thought, well, what's the size of the black car market place and it was a couple billion dollars? Or what's the size of the taxi industry and it was more than a couple of billion dollars? But what they didn't see at the time was that as you improve the, if you radically make something either more convenient or cheaper, the market expands beyond how you calculate it. the Uber's size and scale now is way beyond the original marketplace of black cars and

Starting point is 00:35:33 or taxis. It's the company, the company today is a result of Jevin's paradox. Timing. We often don't think much about the luck of timing. Luck is an interesting word to use, but how important timing is and other sort of foundational factors are in enabling a company like Uber to exist. When you think about the timing of Uber, what are the sort of the foundations that made it possible. Well, it was a mobile revolution. It was mobile data technology, the iPhone

Starting point is 00:36:03 coming together. In the early days, one of the geniuses of Travis was he would hire these market managers who would be GMs of new cities that they would expand into. And they would literally go to the city with a bag full of iPhones and give away iPhones to black car drivers to get them to come on Uber. Because at the time, a lot of them didn't have, you know, they they didn't have smartphones, so to speak. So the onset of the smartphone was that kind of that beautiful magic of timing coming together and then aggressiveness of that founding team to understand that there's a pattern here, and I'm going to replicate that pattern all the world,

Starting point is 00:36:47 and raise as much capital as I have to to get there faster than anyone else. That was the magic. But it was, you know, again, it's, yes, there's luck in there. but if that founding team hadn't been as aggressive in, you know, blitzscaling, which is a term that folks used all around the world, company wouldn't be what it is today. Your transition out of investment banking into Expedia, CFO, then CEO. You know, listen, there's a stereotype in business that investment bankers and CFOs don't necessarily make the best CEOs because they might stereotypically.

Starting point is 00:37:22 Over-financialize. Over-financialize. Yeah, totally. Maybe be less risk adverse, maybe be less, you know, those kinds of things. And when I spoke to Barry, he did say the following. I'll just play it for you because it's better coming from him. He was not a natural leader because he had, his career until then, has had been on the financial side of things.

Starting point is 00:37:46 So he really had not yet had the experience opportunity to manage people. That came in a difficult. way to him. And he mastered it. It didn't take him all that long. He mastered how to become a leader and he mastered how to undertake ultimate responsibility for a company. Yeah, it was, growing up under Barry was, and by the way, I wouldn't be where I am today without, not him as a mentor, because he's not like a mentoring kind of guy, but him as my leader learning from him. But I'd say that the experience that really, really shaped me as it relates the Expedia was, I did come in as more of a financial leader.

Starting point is 00:38:27 Our leadership at Expedia.com failed. I hired a, I had to fire the first person, I hired a second person, complete disaster. And so I was 0 for two in terms of hiring for our largest business. This business was 50% of our profits. And I was 0 for 2 in hiring. And so I went to Barry in the board. And I said, well, if I miss hiring, the third person to run the biggest parts of our business, then you should fire me. Barry quickly

Starting point is 00:38:57 agreed. Yes, of course we will. So I said, obviously, I don't understand enough about the job to find the right person. So I think I've got to take the job myself for six months to a year to understand what is it that the job entails for me to then go in and find that person. And so for what turned out to be, I think it was five or six years, I ran both the holding company, Expedia Inc., which is a public company, and I ran Expedia.com. I was president of the largest part of the company. That experience taught me my operating chops. That experience actually taught me how is it that you operate a company? How is it that you run something? And that's a very different skill set from capital allocation and, you know, all the financial wizardry that people,

Starting point is 00:39:47 Bark on, that's important. But what I discovered was operating a company, leading a company, organizing it, operating it, setting up the goals, getting the right team together. That's the part of the job that I loved. So it took me a while to get there. Like my whole life, my whole early career was in this financial sector, which I enjoyed. But I didn't find my true love, which is operations, and running companies and running a technology company until way, way later in my career. And I think to some extent now I've got both. I've got that financial part because it has to work. But the operations and the leadership part of the business is something that I love.

Starting point is 00:40:34 And watching Barry take responsibility, take shots, go against the grain as aggressively as he consistently did, I think has made me a much better operator than what the counterfactual would be if I had another boss. Three months into that role, the head of HR told you that you were scaring people. I've forgotten about that. I think that was my job. What's the context there? You know, the context was that, first of all, turnarounds in technology are really hard. We were talking about the momentum thing when momentum is positive.

Starting point is 00:41:14 In the technology sector, if momentum turns negative, it is remarkably difficult to turn it around. You know, Yahoo is hanging on, but it was the great company and you see where it is now. It's brutal when you get it wrong. And it always takes longer than you think. And it goes to, you know, I was talking about linear versus exponential, just like the curves up are exponential, curves down are exponential. as well. The first couple of years look bad, but they're not that bad. But

Starting point is 00:41:50 you know in your mind that 10 years from now, it's going to be a fucking disaster. So what I saw with Expedia was a technology company whose technology engine was broken. Codebase was old,

Starting point is 00:42:06 had not been reinvested in. Technology leadership was coasting. And that really alarmed And one of the things that I learned from Barry in terms of leadership is that when, you know, a bell is wrong. When you see something, when you see a pattern, you have to act. You can't wait for a second. So in my mind, once I figured out, oh, my God, this really is a turnaround.

Starting point is 00:42:34 This isn't like a company that I've got to tune. This company, if I don't move and move hard and fast, is going to start on that exponential decay curve. I had to move quickly. And at that point, and I am one of the skills that I learned from Barry is transparency. It's like whenever he wanted to understand an issue, he wanted to go to the source. He didn't want a summary. And it didn't matter where that source was. Is it a junior analyst or a president?

Starting point is 00:43:05 He wanted to hear from the source because what he didn't want to lose is lose the fidelity of the issue. You know, when there's an issue here and then it goes through. the analyst and the associate and the vice president and an SVP and whatever, by the time it's summarized for you as the CEO, it's just it's lost everything. And usually their levels are like, hey, do we really want to tell them that? Why don't we phrase it this way, et cetera? So your whole life as a CEO is kind of a, it's a version of the world that your team wants you to see. And if you got a good team, usually it has more do with reality than not. But you are subject to your team and the information flow that gets to you.

Starting point is 00:43:50 And so Barry always wanted to go to the source. He would just cut through levels, cut through levels, get to the core of the idea. And then once he did, he would move and he would move fast. And for me, I've kind of, I have held on to that, but I've also turned. turned it the other way, which is one of the ways in which I can depend on getting the real shit from you is my being honest with you, right? And human beings are good, bullshit, you know, kind of meter, so to speak. And when you're the CEO and you're talking to your staff and you're giving all the, you know, the business talk and we're doing this, but the last quarter

Starting point is 00:44:35 we had some certain challenges and this and that, they see you. bullshitting them. And so why the hell should they tell you the truth? Right? If their, if their boss isn't telling them the good stuff, why should they give the good stuff back to the boss? So for me, it was almost like a self-defense mechanism that as a boss, I'm going to tell you what's going on because that's the only way I can drag the hard truths back from you. Because otherwise, you're going to filter yourself. You're going to be, I don't want daughter, no, this happened. But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth, then they can leave. And I think that that's, so I think that's what my head of HR were saying.

Starting point is 00:45:16 I was scaring the shit out of people because I'm like, we have a real problem here and we've got to come together. And I think that, that, you know, there's a, I was a good decision making framework for me is if I make a mistake, where do I want to make the mistake on? Right. And so if I want to, if I'm going to air with my company, I'm going to err in telling the truth and potentially scaring someone away. I'll take that. Because if that person doesn't want to face the truth, if he or she's not up for the fight, then they should go someplace else. They can have a good time.

Starting point is 00:45:51 I'm sure they can have a good career, et cetera. So for me, as a leader, I've always, always believed in transparency, partially because then I think you attract the right people. And partially because then I'm going to get the good information. so to act on. Usually the failures I see with CEOs aren't because they made the wrong decisions. It's because they were getting the wrong data that led to the wrong decisions. So it's incredibly important as a leader of any organization for you to build the channels and build the kind of culture that surfaces problems to you quickly. And then for me too, you always have to have your random direct channels.

Starting point is 00:46:32 You know, the, again, if you think about organizations as organisms, they have their own incentives. And so my staff's incentive is to control the information that gets to me. Not because they're bad people. It's just their job because I can get overwhelmed. Who do I meet with? What's my schedule? You know, is this person worthy of meeting the CEO? And for me, my fight is, I just set up a bunch of random shit.

Starting point is 00:46:59 I'll meet with, you know, engineers four levels down consistently because usually they've got the kind of personality where they don't give a shit. They'll tell me anything and everything. And they like putting the CEO down. That's great. They like putting the CEO down. It's, you know, engineers often, you know, don't like authority. And code is like the biggest authority buster. It's like the truth, truth.

Starting point is 00:47:22 So I find a lot of engineers have a personality, which is, yeah, I'm going to tell you what it's like. Like, you know, they, they, their value isn't something else. But often they don't, there's a kind of a disrespect for authority that I love. I found in my companies that there's sometimes like a 24-year-old young girl who will just tell me the truth. Yeah. And she's the one you want to hang out with. She's the one I always go and ask for an opinion. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:47:47 So that's, you've got to have your own channels. But the way to, the way to get transparency from your team is first, first you've got to give it to them. What's the culture hardworking when you arrived? Because you used the word coasting to describe some of the team when you arrived at Expedia. Medium. I think the company had been successful for a long time and had coasted on that success to some extent. So I needed to turn over the team. Turn over like the entire team very, very quickly and get some hungry people in there.

Starting point is 00:48:16 The entire team? Almost the entire team. Yeah, yeah. It was rough going for a while. But then you have kind of mission-oriented people who are trying to prove themselves. and it's part of the renewal that every company has to go through. And we turned it around. It was tough going, but we really turned around.

Starting point is 00:48:32 And that was when I kind of learned, hey, my love is running shit. It's great. It's the best part of my job. How did you get that company to work hard? Because there's so many people listening right now that are in a company that might have been successful. Yeah. It might be two decades in. And this is an ultimate question in like executive management.

Starting point is 00:48:50 How do you turn around the culture of a big or even even 200 people? It's very difficult. And sometimes the shortcut is to change your people. Like it's very easy to say, oh, you have values, this and that. So it's finding the people who you believe will line up with your cultural mechanisms or how you work or your values. And then embodying those values and those mechanisms as examples and then making sure that your team embodies those values and imbues down the, down the, down the organization. So part of working hard is like, you know, sending emails to the team on a Saturday.

Starting point is 00:49:30 And if I don't get a response on Saturday, sending them an email on Sunday with a question mark. It's going on. You know, I think at Expedia, in hindsight, we worked intensely and we went hard. But not as hard as I like because Expedia was we were selling vacations, right? It was the product that we were selling was about turning yourself off. And so we did talk about work-life balance. And in hindsight, at Uber, I don't. You know, you come to Uber.

Starting point is 00:50:05 You're going to work your ass off. We're going to be really demanding. If you're not performing, we're going to let you know. And if you don't fix it, we're going to push you out. But while it will be incredibly hard, you will have real agency of the company. We're a big company, but individuals can make a big difference. And it's a company that's making a difference in the world. You're going to learn so much.

Starting point is 00:50:32 And while you will have worked hard, you're going to have a great time. But this is, don't come here if you want to coast. And I'm very clear about that. And I should have been more clear at Expedia, but we were selling vacation. So I couldn't be quite that clear. New Year always has a strange energy to it because people start talking about their goals, fresh starts, new habits. But the reality is that most people carry the same idea.

Starting point is 00:50:55 they had last year into the new year. I'm guilty of that too. And they still don't end up doing anything with them. And I get why. Starting something new, especially if it's a business or a project is overwhelming. Before you start, you're looking for the perfect moment and to be the perfect version of yourself when really what matters most is taking that first step. If you had an idea for a while, a product, a store, something you've been sitting on, our sponsor Shopify makes it easy to get started because you can build your store, sell on socials, take payments, use AI tools, and manage everything all in one place. So 2026 is the year you finally back yourself.

Starting point is 00:51:29 Go to Shopify.com.uk slash Bartlett and start selling. And you can sign up for a $1 per month trial right now too. Just go to Shopify.com.uk slash Bartlett. I promise you, you don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to start. In your 12 years of CEO, Expedia stock grows 550%. and sales increased 400% from 2.1 billion to 8.8 billion. And you were the highest paid CEO of the US tech company

Starting point is 00:52:02 with a pay of 94.1 million. I left it all behind to go to Uber. You left it all behind to go. It was a big options packet that I never bested it, but it's all good. It was a great run. I'm so intrigued about this point of hard work because I think 10 years ago saying what you just said was very taboo. Yes.

Starting point is 00:52:20 It feels to be more invoked now. We're freed now, yes. You're freed now. Yes, yes, indeed. I've gotten, you know, sometimes people ask you the question, what advice would you give to young people? And to me, the most important skill in life is a skill of working hard. And it's not a skill.

Starting point is 00:52:41 You can't just, like, decide you're going to do it. And I think way too many people, you know, focus on, should you be a computer programmer or a doctor or something? study the liberal arts now that anyone can vibe code, just learn to work hard. And it is, you know, when you see the top athletes, of course they're talented. And, you know, their talent level is world levels. But the thing that changes that that's different about the elite athletes than the non-elite athletes.

Starting point is 00:53:12 And I'm talking elite is they work their asses off. They're disciplined. They're structured. They're relentless. You know, look at Ronaldo. look at Michael Jordan, et cetera. That's the same thing is true in all of life. It's true in business.

Starting point is 00:53:28 It's true in personal life. And so for me, with my kids, I just want to teach them how to work hard. And for me, like growing up, I, as a banker, as an executive, I'm not going to let anyone outwork me. And if that's true, then they may be smarter, more talented, et cetera, but I'm not going to let anyone outwork me. And I think that that's a huge advantage that you have in a period of time that advantage compounds. And I want that in our company. Like I want Uber to be an incredibly hardworking company. Comes at a cost, though, no, working hard?

Starting point is 00:54:02 Yes. It comes at a tradeoff. And we believe in flexibility. So people confuse kind of lack of flexibility to working hard. You can work hard. And at the same time, you can have flexibility. So if you want to have dinner with your family and I'm religious about having dinners with my family when I'm in town, you know, six to eight, absolutely spend that time with my family.

Starting point is 00:54:23 But at, you know, 9.30 p.m., I'm checking emails. Right? When I wake up at 5.30 in a.m., I'm checking email. So, of course, there are tradeoffs. And, you know, life is about tradeoffs. I think one of the most important things I've learned from interviewing CEOs. And generally, we've gone through a transition of COVID and remote work and then come back into, like, everyone's in the office again,

Starting point is 00:54:42 is actually the most important thing is what you've just said, which is being honest with people so that they can make decisions for themselves in their lives. I think the thing that one might describe as toxic is when you say something publicly, but then when they arrive, it's a completely different deal. But what you're doing is you're being honest, and you're therefore allowing people to make decisions for themselves when they're in their own lives. And I'm allowing them to be honest back to me. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:04 And that's a company culture that someone like me would be attracted to. Absolutely. But there's lots of people listening that couldn't think of anything worse. And that's okay. Yes. Yeah. There are plenty of companies that they could find, or plenty of causes that they can find. It's fine.

Starting point is 00:55:15 You said learn to work hard, learn. It's a skill. Really? Yes, of course it is. Because you've got to, the idea of just staying focused on something, not being discouraged by failing, trying over and over again, and just working harder than others. It's not something you can turn on and off. I see it in people all the time.

Starting point is 00:55:38 There's just like this grim determination. Like at Uber, there's actually saying it's in some of it. one of our values, embrace the grind. You know, embrace it. That's a learned skill. That's not something you're born with. Maybe there's an element that you're born with. Have you ever seen someone who isn't a hard worker become a really hard worker, an exceptionally

Starting point is 00:56:01 hard worker? That's a good question. No one doesn't occur to me, have you? No, I heard, I think it might have been maybe Brian Chesk at Airbnb or Elon say that he's never seen someone who wasn't a hard worker become a really hard worker. That's interesting. And this is why I'm trying to come up with someone. Failing so far.

Starting point is 00:56:24 And maybe I might posit that it's somewhat to do with, you know, these photos that you have in front of you. Your childhood, your early context, which you didn't choose. I was working hard here. But that, you were forged in such a way that you were going to be ruthless. Sorry, relentless is the way I meant. Yeah. I mean, ruthless to myself. Relentless, relentless is right.

Starting point is 00:56:46 You know, I think at one point, Jeff Bezos was going to call Amazon Relentless. That was, I was thinking about that being the name of the company, right? It's just, and that is, when I see successful technology companies and especially technology companies, there is this relentness about them. Like at Uber, we have lots of different groups that are trying to do different things. But each and every team is built and targeted. on optimizing and improving their own particular function. There isn't a piece of the company that is not improving every single day.

Starting point is 00:57:22 And if they're not improving fast enough, someone else is going to take their place and going to improve it. So as an organism, every part of the company, whether it's a payments team, in terms of new payments types or payment success or the fraud team or the mobile app team in terms of conversions, et cetera. every team is set up and organized for and gold on improving everything that they do. So the whole company in small ways is constantly improving, never ever stopping, and it is that relentless nature of business.

Starting point is 00:57:57 And at the minute, and it's not good enough to get better, we have to get better faster than our competitors, because their competitors are all getting better as well. So it's basically like who can adapt faster to either the reality of the market. market as it is today or the prediction of the market as you see it tomorrow. And it's the speed of change and it's identification of the opportunity. Those are the two factors, I think that are most important. And the speed of change, you know, if you can work fast, you're kind of accelerating time. You know, every one shot that you take, I can take two shots. I've got more time than you do. And then, of course, there's identifying the opportunity and going after. Those are the two things you

Starting point is 00:58:39 really have to get right. If you're taking two shots, not only you're going to get two data points of information, but you're also increasing your probability of having a successful shot by like 100%. Shots on goal. Just shots on goal. How do you create a culture of continuous improvement? Because successful companies, as you kind of highlighted earlier, they become complacent with their victories and they like to take some time off and celebrate. You know, we high five and then we chill. And then actually the studies show they did this big meta-analysis where they looked at successful companies and they showed that they become risk adverse. Totally.

Starting point is 00:59:09 Because loss aversion, they have something to lose now. So just protect. I think the good news to some extent with Uber is that we've always been a company that has had a chip on a shoulder. You know, the company had a chip on a shoulder when it was founded and had to, like, fight taxi unions for its very existence. And then the disaster happened with Travis leaving and then a new CEO coming in at the time. That was a really, really difficult time. Then we went through a period of COVID, which was, again, a disaster for the company, but ultimately prepared us to do better. Then people saying, you know, it was a tough IPO.

Starting point is 00:59:46 Uber's never going to get profitable. And today we're incredibly successful, but we've got the challenge and the opportunity of AI and autonomous. So we've always been a company that has been, I would say, underestimated. And that feeds into our culture. This is a, we are a hungry company. And I do think we're sometimes guilty of getting complacent in little ways. And I have a leadership team that when they see complacency more often than not, they identify it and they get it the hell out.

Starting point is 01:00:21 It's a team that is not satisfied that's always driving. And I love that about us. How does one balance enjoying the success and the accomplishments? I mean, you've turned this company around, a highly profitable company. everyone that I've spoken to, many of our mutual friends have talked lovingly about the impact you've had on the business.

Starting point is 01:00:41 I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. When you joined Uber, it was losing 2.5 to 3 billion per year. Now it generates 8.5 billion in free cash flow every year. How did you get people to... 9.8 in the last year. I guess you're counting.

Starting point is 01:00:56 9.8. Okay, incredible. Celebrate. Chill. Well, you can celebrate a nutshell. Okay. We take those moments. We do sell. It's cool to run a company that's so important.

Starting point is 01:01:10 It's cool to run a company that's hitting record after record after record. And we do celebrate those records and we do celebrate those teams. Maybe not enough. And again, it goes to like what mistake would you rather make? I'd rather make the mistake of celebrating a little bit too little and kind of being a little pissed off about life in general and pushing. But we take your moments. But the success itself. I don't know, succeeding is almost a celebration in and of itself.

Starting point is 01:01:39 And when you're succeeding in such a competitive field, I just find a deep sense of satisfaction there. And I think my team does too. How do you get the team to take those risks that they need to take? Is there something you do, do you like incentivize them on the amount of shots they take? How do you do that? One is they're always moving fast. That's what we do. We push.

Starting point is 01:02:00 We're constantly pushing the pace of the company in terms of execution. So I think that helps. But I do think that there's a mechanism that we talk now about, that I've talked to a team, about taking smart risks. I think you're absolutely right, which is as companies get bigger and more successful, they tend to become more risk-averse. And it should be the exact opposite because you can take more risks. You can make more mistakes because you've got kind of this $9.8 billion of cash flow to protect

Starting point is 01:02:26 yourself against some of those mistakes. So I have definitely in the past, I would say two years, pushed the money. the team actively to push an envelope in terms of risk. Don't be defensive, be offensive, et cetera. And it comes from my challenging the teams, my talking about it, setting examples of sometimes failing and then saying it's okay, moving on. And then sometimes my taking decisions that are seen as more risky than not. That setting the example then allows a company to follow.

Starting point is 01:02:58 So if I was in one of your teams, how do you think about goal setting for me? All the teams have different goals, business goals. The ads team has to drive at technology-driven incremental ad dollars per year and or customer satisfaction, customer MPS, etc. So every team has its own goals and they organize those goals and they execute those goals and they're religiously tracked. It's the best mechanism that we have. I just wish that there was a better one. Because the art of the goal setting becomes the issue, which is, are you setting the right goals? Are they too ambitious?

Starting point is 01:03:38 Are they non-ambitious enough? And sometimes people can gain the system. So we use it, but I can't tell you that it's perfect. What about you talked earlier in about values? A lot of companies go and do an offsite and they write some awards on a white on a wall, and they say ambition, enthusiasm, courage, whatever. What do you think of that sort of corporate habit of values and stuff? We went through that exercise.

Starting point is 01:04:01 failed the first time, succeeded the second time. And we failed when it first came to Uber, obviously there was a view that we needed a cultural reset of the company. And so it was very important for me to go and inspect the culture of the company and change it. It was a statement. And the culture had, I think, some cool stuff in there, some cool ideas in there. Like, for example, there was one value that was. was toe stepping. And the idea of toe stepping is what you and I talked about earlier, which is we want to challenge each other within the organization. And so if I have to step on your toes

Starting point is 01:04:43 and tell you something that you don't want to hear, I'm allowed to, even though hurts you, because the truth is more important. So sometimes the truth hurts, and that's okay. That was the idea of toe stepping. And what happened was sometimes those values became weaponized, where co-stepping, whose spirit came from a place of, we want to speak the truth, became an excuse to be a jerk. Right? So the values in and of themselves can be great or terrible based on how you execute on those values. When I first came in, we had to redo the values.

Starting point is 01:05:24 And I was, there's a saying by Jeff Bezos that I love, which is like the values of the company almost, they appear. The value system of the company appears to some extent. You don't, if you say thou shalt, you're going to fail because the company shall, right? And the approach that we first took was that we will actually get the value system. We had a vote for all the employees in the company. What values do you think should be part of the new Uber, et cetera? We took all the signal and then we edited it and came up with a new list of values. And there was one value that. I wrote myself. It was mine. And it was do the right thing, period. It wasn't crowdsourced.

Starting point is 01:06:08 It was just that. And usually with these values, you're like, there's a whole explanation. And people are like, well, what does do the right thing, period, mean? Like, you have to figure it out. And for me, it was a message to the whole company, which was, if you work at Uber, you have a responsibility. and I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do. So use your judgment. And it's our expectation that you use your judgment to do the right thing. And sometimes doing the right thing. It's not clear.

Starting point is 01:06:36 Should I go after my business goals? Should I compromise on a business goal because safety is in question. Of course you should. Safety comes first before business, et cetera. But we were putting that weight and that responsibility within the employees. But the rest of the value system that was kind of crowdsource, it was forgettable. Because it was the kind of stuff that you, passion, ambition, teamwork.

Starting point is 01:07:00 Like, what company doesn't believe in teamwork? Give me a break. So we, Nikki, Krishna-Marthy, who runs people, she pushed me to reset the values four or five years in. By then, I felt like I did have a right to have a point of view. I'd been there. We weren't quite done with the turnaround, et cetera, but I was a part of the company. And then we came up with a value set, which is different.

Starting point is 01:07:27 You know, there's one of our values. By the way, go get it was the only one that survived. No, no, sorry. Do the right thing was the only one that survived. But for example, go get it is one of our top values. And the idea of go get it is, obviously, it's literally what we do. We go, we help people go or get it, right? Rise and eats.

Starting point is 01:07:47 So it's kind of fun in terms of what we do. But it's an attitude, which is we, as a company, we're go-getters. We're going to be aggressive. we're going to push, we're going to move fast. We play to win. And so the value sets that we have, go get it, or one that I really like, great minds don't think alike. We came up with a set of values, which I think is unusual and describes how we are different as a company. And it's really true to who we are.

Starting point is 01:08:16 How important is this attitude of failure and experimentation, especially in a world that's transitioning as fast as the one we're in? When you listen to people like Ray Kurzweil, his predictions of the future, he says that if you're 10 now, by the age of 60, you'll experience a year's change in, I think it's 11 days and just this sort of this sort of exponential acceleration. The law of accelerating returns. Yeah, like, how do you, you know, how do you create a culture or build a team in a world where the correct answer is changing this quickly? I think that it is setting a culture that does embrace that change and is constantly challenging

Starting point is 01:08:51 itself. And I will give Travis and the founding team credit. You know, there's kind of this idea of everything that they did was terrible, and that's just not true. We have a very high talent bar at the company. We have always kept a high talent bar at the company, and we haven't compromised. And what I found is that talented people who are also driven are on a constant hunt for the truth. So culture isn't enough. You actually need that. You actually need the right people of the company. And I think we've got a company that does have a chip on a shoulder, was born out of the creation of a new industry.

Starting point is 01:09:31 So we've experienced it. And we have a group of people who are driven and hungry and are constantly looking for change. And you've got a leader and a leadership team that's pushing the company to do so and doesn't penalize folks for challenging them. I think it's kind of the stew that you have to put together, but it's a combination of culture and people. Do you have any mental case studies of great bets the company has taken

Starting point is 01:10:01 that most people wouldn't have taken or thought was wrong or wouldn't have taken the risk on that transpired to be critical to your success? Well, you know, I don't know about, well, I think it will be critical to success, but there's a funny one, which is taxis are one of the fastest growing parts of Uber's business. So you remember, Uber, we started as the enemy of taxis and built out this peer-peer ride sharing. And it was probably five or six years ago. Our head of product now, Sotchen, he worked on building kind of a technology that would allow taxi companies to have their own little Uber app. And eventually he came to Uber, thank God.

Starting point is 01:10:45 And he's like, well, why don't we build that in Uber? Why do we actually build taxis on Uber and originally within the company? And I kept in touch with some of the founders just because I want their advice because why not? You know, they built a great company. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. They said it's the most idiotic thing on earth that you can't wire up taxis. They hate us. They separate.

Starting point is 01:11:09 It'll be terrible. Lots of technical reasons. They had tried it earlier. It was a total failure. But I think Sachin, having worked in the, industry and then my being kind of ignorant saying, why the hell not try it, that combination allowed us to build out a taxi product and taxi is the fastest growing segment of the company. And it went completely against the founding of the company. But now we're, you know,

Starting point is 01:11:32 I hope to have every single taxi in the world wired up to Uber. Why not? For the first 10 years that I was a founder, I didn't prioritize getting a good night's sleep at all. But over time, I started to realize that it was the key metric that influenced everything in my life. I moved my focus, my ability to show up and to think clear. and to lead well. So now, with my lifestyle being pretty crazy, traveling across time zones, working late, training late, I still fight to protect my sleep, which sometimes means starting the day a little bit later. It was my whoop that helped me to make this connection. They are one of my sponsors for the show. And for the last four years, every day, my whoop has given me insights into my

Starting point is 01:12:03 sleep, my recovery, the strain I'm taking on, and more broadly, how my daily behaviors influence my overall holistic health. It's the difference between guessing and knowing why I might be feeling the way that I feel. Sometimes it will nudge me. Sometimes it will get me to slow down. Sometimes it pushes me to go even harder, but all the time it provides me with data that gives me a deeper understanding of myself. And without it, it'd be hard to optimize how I live and perform. Right now, you can get one month free through my link at join.wop.com slash CEO. One month free, join.com.com slash CEO. This company that I've just invested in is growing like crazy.

Starting point is 01:12:41 I want to be the one to tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you. Whisperflow is an app that you can get on your computer. your phone on all your devices and it allows you to speak to your technology. So instead of me writing out an email, I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the email into existence. And it uses AI to clean up what I was saying. And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here and the whole email is written for me. And it's saving me so much time in a day because Whisper learns how I write. So on WhatsApp, it knows how I am a little bit more casual, an email a little bit more professional. And also, there's this really interesting thing they've just done. I can create little

Starting point is 01:13:15 phrases to automatically do the work for me. I can just say Jack's LinkedIn, and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me because it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time. This company is growing like absolute crazy. And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor of this show. And Whisperflow is frankly becoming the worst kept secret in business, productivity and entrepreneurship. Check it out now at Whisperflow, spout W-I-S-P-R-F-L-O-W.A-I-S-E-E-I-S-E-E-L-E-E-L-E-E-L-E. It will be a game-change of you. something that I've made for you. I've realized that the Dyer of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's

Starting point is 01:13:50 in business or health. We all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable, because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So, what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries. And we've released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to

Starting point is 01:14:33 the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at the diary.com where you can get 20% off our Black Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. And there's another, there's an alien that's arrived amongst us, which is AI. And you've, know, Uber's always been somewhat powered from what I understand by... Very much. Yeah. But the world has changed in the last couple of years as it released AI. There's been a huge acceleration in investment and the improvement of the technology.

Starting point is 01:15:13 What do you, aside from Uber, you talked earlier about your early childhood and how, you know, you grew up with a bit of a paranoia about losing everything because that's what you experience as a young man. You see this technology arrive, which is fundamentally disruptive to all of us, including me as a podcast, I've done the tests and the retention isn't, the retention isn't far off when it's me or AI, so it's slightly concerning. But like, how do you approach, a disruptive technology, how do you think of it broadly and the impact it's going to have on society? And are you paranoid? I'm not paranoid.

Starting point is 01:15:47 I'm not, I guess I was going to say I'm not built that way, but maybe I am. I think my instinct is always just to go, just to move forward. And Uber has been built out of an AI core, all of our pricing, all of our routing, who you're matched with, whether or not a career batches, a trip, which is do they take two orders or one order? All of our systems, underlying systems, are driven by AI. We do 40 million trips a day. You know, that kind of orchestration can't be done by heuristic rules. And we've got to work on the streets of New York and the streets of Lagos as well. So we have built the entire company on small AI models that have been trained on local problems and then gets this together.

Starting point is 01:16:35 That's literally what the company is. So for us, AI is, it's kind of a core skill set. And AI can, it can mess things up, right? It's not because it's not heuristics based. There are emergent issues that come out of an AI that works 96% of time and 4% of time it screws up. So we're comfortable with the uncertainty layer of AI as a company. So we are, I would say, moving headlawn into AI. We're not one of the research shops.

Starting point is 01:17:06 I would say in terms of applied AI, the team is driving to build AI, kind of newer AI experiences across the company. But, you know, stepping back as a person, the impact on society is going to be enormous. And going back to Kurzweil's kind of law of accelerating returns, whereas previously society has always been able to adjust to these kinds of shifts. it's been able to adjust because it had time to adjust. And AI literally, quite literally thinks, and AI will be able to replace the work that 70, 80% of humans can do

Starting point is 01:17:51 over the next 10 years. 10 years is not a lot of time for society to adjust to that kind of an impact. Now, are they going to be more expensive than humans, cheaper than humans, et cetera, who knows? But the capability will be there. probably in the next 10 years for intellectual jobs, probably call it 15 years for physical, 15, 20 years for physical jobs because physical AI is harder. You know, robots, cars, et cetera, more capital heavy, takes longer, have to deal with the physical world. So the changes in society are going to be giant, but my view is you can't slow down the rate of change.

Starting point is 01:18:32 and if you're a part of that change, at least you can have some say as to how that change imprints on society and imprints on the real world. And so for me, I'm leaning in. It's a very, very exciting time. 70 to 80% of jobs will be disrupted by AI as like broadly what you said there.

Starting point is 01:18:55 And the pace of change is going to mean that a lot of people don't have new jobs to go to because we haven't... I think that's the question. The retraining. challenge and people say, well, there's going to be jobs in AI, but like, listen, I've got some friends that can't just can't become research. Society's always adjusted, right? Farming was a huge percentage of our labor force. Now, it's less than 1%. But the speed of which... Yeah, I think that's a question. And you could

Starting point is 01:19:17 argue that AI's will be able to retrain you, right? The job retraining is going to change. So, of course, society's going to adjust. But I do think it raises questions, real questions. I've not been able to get an answer on that, really, I think, from the experts in AI that I've interviewed, which is like, what do those 70 or 80% of people do? Because we're seeing it in our own business that there's many jobs which we would have hired for previously across the board

Starting point is 01:19:40 that AI is now doing exceptionally well. And every single day, literally daily, we try to see if the new model, Gemini Pro 3 or whatever, can do things that we're currently doing manually. And every day we're getting those little breakthroughs and going, oh, okay, now we no longer need to... And coding is one of those big areas.

Starting point is 01:19:55 You talk about a lot, where there's been really sort of big disruption, positive disruption at Uber. and a lot of your coders are now using AI. Yeah, about 90% of our coders are using AI. Now, that's easy to say, but there are probably 30% of them that are power users. They are showing a clear differentiation in the number of diffs, for example,

Starting point is 01:20:17 how much a diff is a code release that's different from the last code release. So one of the measurements of productivity is just how many diffs are you putting to the code base. Uber's just a giant code base. That's what we are. And so our engineers are. literally the builders of the company. They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system and their architects who are kind of thinking about what the system should look like. And so while 90% of our engineers are using AI tools of some sort, there's about 30% of them

Starting point is 01:20:50 that are using them at a completely accelerated pace. And it really is changing their productivity in a way that I've never ever seen before. I do think that the job of a coder is going to change more and more from actually writing the code from, to some extent, orchestrating agents who are writing the code or building systems for you. It becomes more of an orchestration job versus a manual writing job. But the job will still be there. And my attitude is if my average engineer became 25% more efficient, which we haven't gone there yet, but we will get there, I'm going to hire more engineers because I want to go faster.

Starting point is 01:21:34 There's still lots of unsolved problems that we haven't solved. But I can imagine, you know, maybe five years from now, as the engineers get more and more productive, I may not decide to add engineering account because at that point, instead of adding an engineer, I should add agents and buy some more GPUs from Nvidia. That may be the investment in the future. We'll see. Because we're thinking about linear versus exponential as well. If we imagine a rate of improvement, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:21:59 In my head, I go, well, weren't there come a time? where you as the CEO or you in a team, an executive team, can tell an agent what you want to build. You can show it the strategy. And theoretically, I mean, I can't figure out how this isn't going to be possible. The agents will then build. Actually, maybe they didn't even need you to set the strategy. Maybe. But theoretically, you know, if you imagine any rate of improvement in the intelligence,

Starting point is 01:22:22 maybe at some point they're going to go, well, listen, there's a better strategy here, Dara. One of my team members told me that, some teams have built a DARA AI, you know, so that they basically make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me. Because you can imagine, like, you know, by the time something comes to me, there's been a prep and a meeting and the slide deck has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep. Are you concerned they might show Dara AI to the board?

Starting point is 01:22:56 I was like, can I see the code for Dara AI? I have a curious, she's like, no, we're not showing it to you. But is there anything like falsifiable in what I just said about that they're coming a time in the not so near future, if we imagine exponential improvement where... I think where AI still is missing a beat that humans and other creatures have is the ability to learn real time. Right. So if you think about you and I are learning for this conversation and maybe your behavior is going to change by 0.1% because it actually what you learn here. And the construct of most large AI models is capture enormous amounts of data based on the skill set that you're trying to drive, train, pre-trained that model, put it into the real world. And then there's some post-training of the model based on feedback from the world.

Starting point is 01:23:48 And then when the model's released, it's kind of released. Right. And the way the model learns is, you know, 3-5 becomes 3-8. but 3-5 didn't learn. The engineers went out and built, you know, built a new model that's 3-8 that might have elements of 3-5 to it, et cetera. So the AI agents aren't learning. Now, a lot of what we're doing is we're building around the foundation models, then bring kind of the signals from the real world and use the skills that the foundation models have to do good stuff.

Starting point is 01:24:22 Sounds like me. Yeah. Post-training. I'm post-training. Exactly. So we are post-training, but we're learning real time as human beings. And when the models can learn real time, that I think is the point at which I'm going to kind of think, yeah, we are all replaceable. But at this point, I haven't seen a model that can learn real time.

Starting point is 01:24:47 One of the real areas of disruption in AI has been autonomous vehicles. And just before we started recording, I was saying that I have a Tesla in L.A. where I live. and it's staggering that I can get in the car, press a button, and drive two and a half hours to Joshua Tree without having to touch the wheel or the pedals. Now, driving, I think, is one of the biggest employees in the world, like as a profession. I mean, we've got nine and a half million drivers and couriers on our platform.

Starting point is 01:25:12 We are the largest organizer of flexible work around the world. And I think the second largest workforce is a Chinese army. Wow. Yeah. It's a big group of folks that we've organized. And statistically, there's less accidents in an autonomous Tesla than there is if a human drives it. So it's safer for my car to drive itself statistically than for me to drive it. That's true, right?

Starting point is 01:25:35 That autonomous driving is currently safer. That's true. So Waymos are safer. And then now, you are a backup to the Tesla, right, as a human being. So I've got a Tesla as well. And once in a while it disengages and I've got to or I've got to disengage. So it's not necessarily the pure. autonomous agent that's better than humans, but definitely the autonomous agent with a human backup,

Starting point is 01:26:00 no question that's better than the pure human. And we can't be far away from it just being... I mean, Waymo's there already, right? You live in L.A. They've got the Waymos. We work with them in Austin, in Atlanta, and by all accounts, Waymo drivers are safer than human beings. And that's going to be true of AV all over the world.

Starting point is 01:26:20 You know, there are million deaths from driving. every year in the world. In the U.S., it's between 35,000 and 40,000 auto fatality. So to the extent that these autonomous agents and drivers can be better than humans, and they will be better than humans over a period of time, there's a real return on human life as a result of this. Those 9 million drivers careers that you have will be out of work conceivably. Talking about being honest about the situation. Yeah, I think, again, it goes to physical. AI as well, right? So I think 20 years from now, you can imagine that those 9 million will be

Starting point is 01:27:01 20 million AVs maybe, but we have time between now and then, partially because we don't operate in the virtual world, right? We operate in the physical world. You have to get the regulations up. You have to build the cars. You have to build the sensor stacks. The models have to get there. So there is time between now and then, but you can imagine the majority of our trips being fulfilled by robots of some kind, probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15, 20 years from now, you're going to start getting there. What do the 9 million people do? I don't know.

Starting point is 01:27:38 Now, we are expanding the kind of work that's available on the platform partially as a result of it, right? We used to be the only work is driving, now there's delivering, you can have shoppers as well. I think it'll be a little while at least before you get. at AI shoppers. And now actually we have a team called Uber AI Solutions that allows people to train these same agents and train AI agents and AI models and do all kinds of knowledge-based work on their phone as well to kind of extend the kind of work that we offer humans on our platform and different opportunities for them to make money. So we are extending the platform. And then the

Starting point is 01:28:23 question is how much of the platform gets automated and what's the velocity of which we can extend our platform into other kinds of work versus the velocity of automation. I can't tell you which is going to go faster. Hand on heart, though, it does appear that unemployment is going to be significantly increased in a world of AI, especially we just imagine this kind of continual rate of improvement. I just can't. You would have to. Unless, again, historically in society's new kinds of jobs have come up. Knowledge jobs, physical jobs. Yeah, I mean. And now we've disrupted both.

Starting point is 01:28:55 That's why there's a question here. And I do think there's a real question as to the ability of societies to retrain, the abilities of human beings to retrain themselves. AI is going to be a part of that. But the timing there, how fast is going to go? It's a real question mark. I think you're absolutely right. I don't think it's going to be a big issue, big issue in the next five years.

Starting point is 01:29:19 But when you go five plus years, it's going to become more of a more of an issue for society large. It's interesting because I was thinking putting two and two together about your father's journey of coming to the US, losing what he had, losing his job, and the loss of like meaning and purpose being really central to him. And I can see that basically from your face that I think what I interpreted from your face was that he struggled with, as any provider would, the loss of like meaning that comes with, because jobs aren't just about money. It's especially, you know, they give you a sense of worth. It's funny. I've read a study many years ago that said when they looked at suicide letters specifically from men,

Starting point is 01:29:57 I think it was an Australian study, in the suicide letters that the sentiment was about not feeling worth for to your family. And the extreme of that was, I think my family would actually now be better off without me. Interesting. And this kind of, you know, I think it's probably adjacent to this conversation around job displacement, which is where are we going to find our meaning in a world where,

Starting point is 01:30:22 where the machines have now disrupted our intelligence and our muscles. It's every universal income, basic income test has failed. You know, the answer that you hear from folks is, well, the robots are going to do all the work. They're going to create utility. And so our work won't have to create utility. So people will just have money. But it goes to exactly what you're saying, which is every single test they've done, no, it's not 20, but they've done a couple tests where certain section of the population,

Starting point is 01:30:55 similar population gets income, certain section doesn't. And every time the ones who are getting income do worse in terms of outcomes because, well, we don't know the because. But I think the because is related to what you're saying, which is market forces kind of that force someone to work then create a perception of self-value, succeeding. You know, most people succeed. if they're driven to succeed, they will succeed.

Starting point is 01:31:27 And as they succeed, it comes with a very, very deep and important feeling of, I am creating value. I'm supporting my family. I'm building this incredible piece of art, et cetera. Whatever that value is to you and wherever that meaning comes from, I'm an incredible parent. That value is what keeps people going. And I don't think that, you know, the government's raining money down on society is going to help. It's refreshing to hear your perspective on this because a lot of the time, you know, you'll hear CEOs in the media just saying, it'll be fine, everyone's going to figure it out. And I think that's such a cop-out.

Starting point is 01:32:03 Historically, we have figured it out. So maybe they're right. But you have to ask whether they're giving you the real stuff or not. Yeah, and that's kind of what I think is I sometimes hear about private conversations and the private conversations I hear about the sheer amount of disruption that they anticipate. And then when I see the one like CNBC or Davos, it's why everyone will be fine and figure it out. And I understand the incentive because if they were to start ringing the bell, it might hurt their own chance of innovating and fundraising and all those things. But I think you sit at this sort of happy medium of being, yeah, as the CEO of Uber,

Starting point is 01:32:33 you've got to pursue the opportunity and the technology. But on the other end, to be honest and say, listen, there's going to be big disruption. And I don't know the answers. I remember you were talking about CNBC, a CNBC anchor once we had an interviewing afterwards. She said, you know, I really like you. You actually answer my questions. And I'm thinking of myself, what am I not supposed to? do. There's like the PR trading is always, if you get a bad question, don't answer the question,

Starting point is 01:33:00 just pivot to something else. And for me, like, I've sworn to myself and Noah, who's up there is probably going to kill me afterwards. It's just, I'm going to answer the question. I'm not going to do the BS. And again, I have to think the anchor knows what's happening. The audience knows what's happening. So I'm like, I'll answer the question. If it's a shady question, I'll deal with it. I actually don't like interviewing CEOs, which is funny because the name of the podcast, because active CEOs. Yeah, how did the, because I looked before I came on, I'm like, I'm going to look up on the CEOs. Yeah, the CEOs. And there aren't that many CEOs. Well, if I looked at your diary, what would I find inside your diary?

Starting point is 01:33:39 I would probably find you contending with being a father, your psychology. I might find some things in there about your health. I can see you're a guy that goes to the gym. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's all interlinked. I think for you to be an exceptional CEO, you probably think a lot about your part. your childhood, your health, your how to optimise and all these things. And so, honestly, you can't do a podcast like this for 20 years and just hit the same thing every year.

Starting point is 01:34:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to be like, I need to be intellectually stimulated. And you and me are both multifaceted creatures, I guess, so that's why it's evolved. Until we become AI's. Until we become AI's, yeah. Just closing off on that then, what can we do about this from an AI-AV perspective? Is it the government's responsibility? Is it collective action? So one is I do think that we don't talk enough in that, for example, the autonomous AI can be a force for good, right?

Starting point is 01:34:31 It's these drivers are going to be safer than human beings. And those, we can take the 35,000 fatalities to 3,000 fatalities, et cetera. I do think that the AI's AV is going to bring down the price of transportation. So a big part of our goal is to make on-demand transportation available for everybody. One of the folks that I was talking to was talking about how Uber has changed her mother's life, like her mom can get around and just wouldn't get around without it, right? We want more moms like that. So I do think it's important to recognize that if fundamental transportation becomes safer,

Starting point is 01:35:09 it becomes cheaper, going back to general paradox, that's a good thing for society, right? I don't think that the answer as it relates to society is to try to slow down the pace of change because China won't, for example, if we're talking about the West. So I think you just have to lean into it. I think that discussions like this are important. I think you look for technology leaders who are talking about it. Dario, for example, Anthropic is talking about it, pissing some people off. But I think he's having good discussions there. And then I do think that the society arming up to be able to retrain large groups of people at scale is not a skill.

Starting point is 01:35:58 I don't see people investing that. And I don't see that as a core capability of any of our countries, et cetera. If there's one thing I can come up with, it will be that, is the retraining machine. You've got four kids. Yes. They come to you. They say, Dad, listen, AI, robotics. Give me some advice for my future.

Starting point is 01:36:16 What's going to be doing? Work hard. You're going to be fine. Work hard. It's just that, I mean, now the AIs theoretically can work harder than you. But I find one of the pieces of advice I give to young people is don't plan. Okay, I wind up, we went through our history. I wind up where I am today having not planned a thing.

Starting point is 01:36:40 I didn't, when I was a best banker, I wasn't dreaming of becoming a CEO, et cetera. And what I find is that people, people who have too much of a career plan, who have too much clarity about what they're doing, they lose their curiosity. And human beings look for positive signal, right? You, whether you like it or not, anytime someone agrees with you, it makes you feel a little bit better. Anytime you get signal that goes against your preconceived notions, either you ignore it or you're like, all right, shit, I'm going to take this on.

Starting point is 01:37:12 It's unpleasant. And so with career planning, what I find is people who have to clear career plan, they're looking for signals that feed into their career plan. I'm going to be a vice president by this much. I'm going to make X money by this much. And they're not looking around. They're not being curious. They're not looking for a signal that can change, you know, their life.

Starting point is 01:37:33 And so what I tell some folks is like, before you go on and try to change a world, let the world change you first. You know, take input. And if you're like this, you got blinders because I'm going here, you're not going to take input. You're not going to let, you're not going to take all the stimulus coming in from the world. So it's, you know, the one constant I see is people who are good or good, people who are good. I've never seen a successful person in a job or career get there without working hard. And my guess is, I don't know about you.

Starting point is 01:38:10 You kind of wound up where you're wound up, kind of by it. accident. And people were like, well, you got lucky, I got very lucky to be here. Like, I had so many kind of moments. And some would say, I took advantage of that luck, of that luck, but to some extent, I was able to take advantage of that luck because I was open. Being open, you jumped from Expedia to Uber, in part helped by some advice that our mutual friend, Daniel Eck, the phone of the Spotify gave you. He's actually just text me. I text him saying, hey, can you send me a question to ask Darry? But he said, I'm in the middle of an hour. He's been texting

Starting point is 01:38:46 while we're talking. He did. No, just before I walked in, I've just looked, he texted me back saying he's on an earnings call. Never mind. But he said, good luck with the interview. What did Daniel X stay to you that helped to inform that decision to go to Uber? So he's the one who recommended, I think I was contacted by headhunter. He recommended me to the headhunter who called me. I told him, I was actually at the Allen & Company conference

Starting point is 01:39:11 going back in a circle with him, and we were having a drink one night. And he asked me, he's like, did the head hunter call you? There's this Uber role. And at the time, Uber was a disaster, like disaster. And everyone was reading about it. That was at Expedia. I had just gotten this wonderful contract that you said at the beginning. So I was going to stay.

Starting point is 01:39:30 And I love working for Barry. We're like, it's been the best professional partnership of my life. And I said, of course I'm not going to go. you know, I'm so happy about what I'm doing Expedia. And Daniel, like, looks at me. He's got his, like, cold Scandinavian eyes. He's like, Dara, since when is life about being happy? It's about making impact.

Starting point is 01:39:55 Uber is a great company, and you can have an impact on that company. You've got to do this. So the next day, I called the headhunter previously. I said, no, I'm not interested. The next day, I called the headhunter, and I said, let's talk. So Daniel was the one who opened me up. And your dad? He gave you advice.

Starting point is 01:40:16 Well, I talked to my dad and my dad keeps things simple. And he said, daughter, in his, farcey, when a company who's a verb tells you to run it, you just say yes. So I thought that was good advice. And ultimately, I think people who come to Uber. stay at Uber, they come because of the challenge, but they stay because of the impact. Like, we are building a company that is important to the world. And for me, I could come and I could have an impact on impactful company, so why the hell not? And when he says a company that's a verb, he's referring to the fact that everybody in the taxiing

Starting point is 01:41:00 or transportation category uses Uber as a verb to, even if they're talking about a competitor. Exactly right. And there's always one company in every kind of industry. We have a closing tradition here where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, what is one conversation that if you could rewind time and have you would have today but can no longer have? It was a conversation with my dad. You know, I told you I came to New York from San Francisco and it was because my dad was getting very old and he was losing his mental facilities. And I'm glad I came back and I got spent time with him.

Starting point is 01:41:46 But those last times, you know, when I spent time with him, it wasn't really him. And I wish I could talk to him about his experiences, his younger life, the excitement of building something. And then the loss and regrets he had in life as well. I never had, you know, my relationship with him was kind of, was there was love. No question about love. but we didn't have the deep kind of conversations that certainly I'm hoping I get to have with my kids. So that's a conversation I'd love to have. And you can't get time back.

Starting point is 01:42:19 And that's one of the tragedies of life, but it's also one of the beauties of life, you know, which is there are some mistakes that you make that are permanent, and you can't get that back. But my then making genuine conversations with you and connections with my friends and having a real relationship, not just with my wife and my kids, but actually like with my workmates. You know, we, having those genuine conversations and connections is my way of correcting for the conversation I never had with my dad. Dara, thank you.

Starting point is 01:43:00 Thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're a huge inspiration for me in so many ways, and even more so now, having done so much research on you in preparation for this conversation, because it is rare to find a leader who has been consistently successful across different domains who's built this really, really, in my opinion, quite rare skill stack from investing to CFO to then being able to transition to CEO and then has repeatedly contended with moments of transition. And given us all frameworks as founders and entrepreneurs for how to deal with that transition,

Starting point is 01:43:26 and one of the great ones I take away from you is honesty. Yeah, honesty is so powerful. And I'll tell you, I learned that skill from my wife. She's just, she, she's always like people are people. Doesn't matter, you know, they eat, they crap, they have to go to sleep. And she treats everybody in her life the same way, regardless of their position. And, like your dad did? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:43:50 And she's, honesty, it's just so powerful. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. An unbelievable inspiration. Thank you. I appreciate it. Got back from Davos in Switzerland. the Snowy Village where some of the world's leading experts, CEOs, founders, world leaders gather in this one space.

Starting point is 01:44:35 And while I was there, my colleague Juan, was telling me about something he does, which many of my friends do. They list their properties when they go away on Airbnb. So many of us, when we go away, we leave our house as this dormant asset that's doing nothing for us other than racking up bills. And as some of you might know, Airbnb are one of our show partners. And I've stayed in their properties all over the world and continued to do so. but I've never actually hosted one of my properties on there. But when I heard this, it got me thinking, what a smart move it is to make money from an asset

Starting point is 01:45:03 that's currently probably costing you money. Every time you're away, your home sits empty. And what Juan told me is how easy it was to get set up. He makes his home available for specific dates so that his guests always depart the day before he gets home. So if you're trying to find an easy way to make some extra money on the side, hosting on Airbnb might be exactly that, especially if you move around a lot.

Starting point is 01:45:22 Your home might be worth more than you think. and you can find out how much your home is worth by going to Airbnb.ca slash host.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Uber CEO: At Uber, If You Don’t Perform, You’re Out! Uber Was Losing $3b A Year

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