Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 We're doing like 300 million trips a week. We were burning 52 million a week in China. We were competing in China with one hand tied behind our back. Andrew McDonald, he's the president and COO at Uber. He is Uber's longest tenur active employee. And today Uber is an absolute monster. They have a market cap of 160 billion, revenues of 52 billion in the full year of 2025.

00:24 They have 200 million consumers that use the app monthly. This was a behind the scenes on Uber like we haven't seen before. >> Autonomy is as bad as it's ever going to be today, right? And every single day, it's going to get better. Like in the end, distribution wins. We could do everything we do today with less people in 5 years because of the power of AI.

00:46 No one's been at the company longer than me at this point. >> Ready to go. Mac, I am so excited for this, dude. I've wanted to make this happen. And we've been DMing for like a long time. It's It's so good to do it in person. >> So great to be here. And you're right. I remember the first Twitter DM from you. And I was a bit of a fan from afar, as you probably hear often, but uh great to be here now and so glad to do it in person.

01:18 So, I spoke to Dar before the show and I said, "What's his superpower?" He's been here for like over a decade, whatever, 12, 13 years, >> 14 years. 15 in May. >> No one's been at the company longer than me at this point. >> My god. Um, and I said, "What's his super?" And he said, "Oh, very simple. People really like him, but he is an execution machine, and he is very good at driving people."

01:42 And I I suck at that. So can you no seriously how do you do that but retain people liking you? >> I get the question in the context of career advice. People start they join Uber they say you know you've been very successful at Uber. How do I you know how should I be successful here? What what did you do to get successful? And it it's hard because like every formula is different.

02:04 Um but there's a couple things I say. One is and I think the most important thing is if you genuinely are just trying to do what you think is the right thing for the company and that is your filter and you kind of build uh trust that that's what you're optimizing for all the time on every decision big decisions and small decisions that you are using the lens of what is the best thing for Uber.

02:29 You're not always going to get the decision right, but if people know that you're filtering on that, then I think that builds followership and trust over time. And then you can move people because if you're pushing on something, they know it's because you genuinely think it's the right thing to do. And then if you pair that with a deep knowledge of the business, and I' I've grown up in this business, so I know, especially ride hailing, like I know that better than anyone in the world at this point.

02:51 Um, those two things together, I think, are pretty powerful. >> You do literally know it better than anyone else in the world. Yeah, >> it's hard. I mean, it's only been around since 2009. I've been working on it since 2012, and you know, most folks from that time period are not working on it anymore. So, >> you said when you genuinely believe it's the right thing for the company.

03:10 >> What did you genuinely believe was the right thing for the company and it turned out you were wrong? >> Uh, I mean, the first thing I say is like I I am wrong every single day. Um, big things and small things, right? I actually love the I think it's a Bezos quote which is if you want to be right most of the time you got to change your mind a lot or something something to that effect right which is effectively like you're going to be wrong a lot and actually the people who are successful over time are willing to

03:34 change their mind so I I think that's true so I'm wrong a lot this is probably the most common running debate that Dar and I will have as I think of his tenure as CEO which is and and thematically it's like the tension between short-term levers and long-term levers for the business. So, like a short-term lever for ride hill is like price, right? Um, every dollar that we can put back into lower pricing, I think is valuable.

04:01 Even uh even if long-term there may be other things you want to do like acquire new users or build a membership program or build new business units, you should be weighing those investments versus I could just put a dollar back into price. And so I think I have been too short- termist on certain issues like membership Uber Uber one for example. I was running the mobility business.

04:25 I you're smiling. So I I I suspect you maybe thought of I don't know like well I'm smiling because I said to D, what is the single when I say like biggest disagreement that you've had with Mac that comes to mind first? And he's like say it's from me. Say it's from me. Normally people like anonymize this. Say it's from me. He was reticent about membership programs and I think now he's changed >> totally and and I've I've turned out to be wrong.

04:52 I mean the the the the reason I've changed is because our first of all Uber one is I I think on many metrics one of the more successful membership programs in the world. I mean we're not at like Amazon Prime or Costco levels but we're we're not we're within getting to within spit spitting distance. And from a company lever perspective it's highly efficient.

05:12 And when we look at efficiency, we usually look on like if I put a dollar in, you know, what am I getting back in terms of topline? And it's one of the best levers we have. And the longer out we can measure it, the more efficient it gets and the better it stacks up versus other levers. So you're like, okay, Mac, well, like how did you get that wrong?

05:27 Like if that's what the data showed you, then why why weren't you just sort of all in on membership? And when he says like when I say I wasn't all in on membership, what I mean by that is like, you know, I would constrain the capital envelope that we would have in the mobility business to invest in this. So if I had 40 million bucks next quarter to invest, you know, my gut was always like, put as much of that into pricing as you can or put as much of that into driver supply to prove the health of the marketplace so the

05:50 service is more reliable because like ride sharing at the end of the day is price, reliability, and safety. That's all it is. That's what it was 10 years ago. I think that's what it's going to be 10 years from now. Even when it's autonomous vehicles, it's like price, reliability, safety. Um, and putting money into something like membership where people get a suite of benefits or part of which is price, but a whole other host of things like you're explicitly choosing not to put that dollar back into price.

06:17 And that that's just the tension. And I probably was short- termist in my thinking there. >> You said there about dollar leverage, putting in dollars to what you get out. What is the single most efficient dollar in to dollar out business for you today? >> I think membership is the most efficient long-term consumer lever that we've got. Uh and the reason for that is like ultimately we we are looking at like IGB as a critical input metric for any dollar I deploy.

06:49 So what's >> incremental gross bookings? Think of it as incremental revenue. Okay? Right? Like if I put a dollar of incentive into the market, if I give Harry a dollar and I give a million other consumers a dollar discount, how much incremental revenue do I get back of that? And by the way, like the ROI on that is different because ROI is like if I get $2 of revenue back from Harry by offering you a dollar, um you might be like, okay, that's great.

07:13 That's a, you know, a 2:1 ratio, but actually we only make 7.5% of your dollar from a profit margin perspective. So you're still negative ROI, but you make those sorts of investments to grow the platform over time because, you know, I've increased Terry's engagement and then your LTB goes up over time. So, um, we're typically looking at like a very baseline IGB type or incremental revenue type metric for any any uh any dollar we're putting into the marketplace.

07:38 Membership just gets better over time. The reason it gets better over time is, you know, if Harry becomes a member, not only do you ride more next month, but actually that cohort of members we acquired in that month tends to ride more over time. They consol and part of that is because they're consolidating more of their mobility business onto Uber. Part of it is because actually that you get some Uber Eats benefits with your membership program, too.

07:58 So now you start using Uber Eats instead of Door Dash or Deliveroo. And so the LTV of Harry just goes up over time with membership. You're less likely to churn. you're more resilient from a market share perspective. Like there's all these downstream long-term impacts that sort of multiply the value of that first dollar I put into membership. Uh with with shorter term levels like price or promotion, there's some tail like you know if I give you a dollar to take a trip next week, there's some value in the following weeks

08:28 but it tends to sort of dissipate faster. And so that that's often the debate. You said it's not quite Amazon or Costco, say in terms of membership dominance. Yeah, >> I think that's fair. They've had a little bit more head start than you. When you look at that chasm between you, what do you not have that you would need to have to reach their dominance?

08:49 >> From my perspective, we need to put more consumer value into the membership program. So today, uh I think especially if you're a mobility rider. So on typically on mobility, you're getting like 5% cash back, right? is is our standard standard sort of offer. The consumer comprehension of that is still relatively low. Like for a membership program as big as we are, I think there's still a lot of people who have Uber one and don't actually fully realize the benefits they're getting on mobility.

09:13 The other thing we need to do is like we're looking for for features that are sort of high perceived value, low cost, right? Like that's the sweet spot of any membership type program or rewards program for for example. uh with our business that's tough because I don't have a lot of free to give away on the platform, right? If I want to give you a ride because you're a loyal member, either through a membership program or a rewards program, I still got to pay the driver to provide that ride, right?

09:45 I I don't it's not like a hotel where you might have excess inventory and so your marginal cost of giving away a room night is pretty low. Um the beauty of our model is we're primarily a variable cost model, right? means when demand drops, great, our costs scale down with it. But it also means that we just don't have a a fixed capacity to give away.

10:04 And so it just makes the challenges for building a membership or rewards program a little tougher for us. >> What line of revenue do you not have today that will be very significant in 5 years time? >> I mean, it's hard, right? Cuz significant for us is really [ __ ] big at this point, right? So we're we're a um you know approaching a4 billion dollars in GB, right?

10:27 So if you think about that topline metric, what is our GMV or GB number? We're not far off from being a $250 billion company. So for anything to pass the like significance test, it has to be a multi-billion dollar business in terms of transaction volume, right? So, I'm thinking of a new product. I want to stand up and it's a mobility service that we're going to offer through the Uber app.

10:49 For that to even be interesting, I have to see a path within a few years to multiple billions of dollars of GMV and it just actually constrains your thinking a lot. >> Yeah. Does that do you worry that that prevents you trying new things? >> Totally. >> Totally. >> Do you do like a Google Labs like go on try try Gmail pool bookite or do you know what I mean?

11:10 >> Yeah, I mean we do we try to set up structures to solve this problem. Um, I mean it's like a class of classic innovators dilemma problem, right? Which is like the thing you've already built is so big that it just swallows up your organizational capacity to do anything else. And even if you're able to stand up other businesses, it's impossible for those businesses to get the resourcing, attention, distribution, marketing dollars, engineering capacity, whatever it is.

11:34 It just gets swallowed up by the whole. And and part of it is just even management focus, right? like it's very hard to focus on the new thing when you've got this like $225 billion blob that you've got to manage over here. So, how do you solve that? I mean, we we we run a program called Growth Bats, which is, you know, intended very much to incubate new businesses within Uber.

11:54 >> How does that work? >> So, basically what we try to do is a um create dedicated resources. So, you know, if I've got 2,000 PE, made up number, but 2,000 people that work on our mobility business, I want to try to have, you know, 100 to 150 of them working on the new stuff, the small stuff, the stuff that we don't have product market fit or unit economics figured out.

12:19 But that could be a big future business. Um, but it requires like dedicated capacity and thinking. If you try to do it like as 5% of your job, like you know, I run the marketplace for Uber X in the US, but I'm also trying to incubate this other thing with 2% of my time. It's really hard. >> Do you know who the best in the world is at this? Nick Steronsky from Revolute.

12:40 >> Oh, interesting. >> Like, I've interviewed a thousand founders. He's the single best founder I've ever interviewed. And it's because he runs 26 product experiments at once. He gives them $2 million, tells them to run for a year. Every single week he checks in for 20 minutes with each of the leaders and then he determines whether to fund their next round or not.

12:56 >> Yeah, I love that. I mean, we have a version of that. It's not the I love the cadence of that by the way. The 20 like operating on weeks not months or quarters is how a new business should run. I think also having to sing for your supper like come back and ask for money like the challenge again the other challenge of standing up a new business within a big company with a big P&L and a big balance sheet is people just get fat on the resources, right?

13:17 And so you don't build it the way you would build it if you were a startup because you just have more resources. So you end up moving slower, consuming more cash, taking more like getting more heads than you otherwise would if you if you were actually starting up from a zero to one. And as a result, like it's not like you necessarily build something better.

13:37 You you just are slower and you're constantly actually chasing the people who are doing it from first principles. And so I I think that's hard. Now we should you have advantages. We have distribution, right? distribution is >> which is the mother of advantage >> 100%. And so if you can take if you can actually build something interesting and then plug it into 200 million consumers who use our app monthly, you're just going to be able to scale way faster than anyone who's doing it without that distribution advantage.

14:06 And even figuring out how to do distribution, right? like the 200 million number is attractive, but even within that 200 million, of course, there's tons of internal discussion and debate around how we how we spend our pixels, right? Every new product wants CRM support. Every new product wants to be featured on the mast head of Uber Eats or wants to be in the product selector for rides.

14:28 And so, like, how you make those decisions as an organization is tough, but you still have this built-in distribution that is super interesting. And so it's an advantage, but you got to figure out the other stuff, which is like how do you stand up new products in a company? >> Other than time, what is the one inhibitor to getting to 500 million users?

14:44 You mentioned 200 million. >> I mean, I would say like our our IR team is not going to love this answer because I I would say price. Um, and the reason our IR team won't love that answer is because when you start talking about price in the context of public markets, people are like, "Oh, you're going to get into a price war and like margins are going to come down and like it's a less attractive business."

15:05 But that's not really what I mean. What I mean by price is when you think about the businesses we operate um primarily you know mobility and delivery. The vast majority of the transactions in delivery of things or the vast majority of of the transactions in transportation broadly happen at a price point that is like way lower than our core products.

15:28 Right? Like taking an Uber X to and from work every day in New York City for like 35 bucks a direction. That's still a luxury product, right? The vast majority of transportation in New York City is not happening at that price point. And so if we want to get to 500 million users and we want to go from people using us on average, you know, six times a month to using us on average 25 times a month, that average cost of that transaction has to come down.

15:54 And so how do you get that down? There's all sorts of ways in doing that. You have more modes that are cheaper. You can get trains on Uber here in London. you have uh alternative modes like bikes and scooters etc. Because like once you deconstruct car ownership you're actually not it's not just about Uber X. It's about all the other things you do but you have to get price down.

16:16 >> Alapell I [ __ ] hate these bikes that litter the pavements. I oh my god they're so annoying. Oh my gosh. I'm an old >> You know Londoners love them generally. London is such a significant market for microobility. >> I know. I know. It's why I don't get out much. Um >> would you rather have more cars on the road? Would I? >> Yeah. >> I to be fair, I I live around the corner.

16:35 Uh to be fair, I use Uber as an argument every single day because I don't have a driver's license because I have Uber and my girlfriend has a car that's what 20 grand and then insurance is three or four and I'm like, do you know how many Ubers I'd have to take to get to 24 grand? >> Totally. I mean, the car the car the individually owned car is the most inefficient asset that anyone owns and certainly at any level of price point, right?

16:56 It sits idle 98% of the day. >> Depreciating. It's depreciating. The ongoing operating costs are actually high. Even if you're not driving it, you're paying for that insurance clip. Um, which I which is why I do think in some future world, maybe not 5 years, but 15 or 20 years, everyone's going to be like Harry. Nobody's going to own a car. Nobody's going to have their driver's license because you'll be able to get around.

17:18 And I think bikes and scooters will be part of that. I think autonomous vehicles will be part of that. I think public transportation will be a big part of that. But I I don't think you need to own a car. One way to bring down price is to remove cost and one way to remove cost is to think about um robo taxis autonomous. Um you said before it was existential.

17:36 Um why is it existential and how how do you think about that and how it changes the business forever? I'm I mean it's existential because at the end of the day it's a better product than our core product in many use cases and I think those use cases grow over time and eventually it's better in all use cases. Um you can quibble along the edges on like current autonomous vehicle experiences, right?

18:05 In most cases is it is going to be slower than a human driver. The pickup point may not be right in front of your door as you would get with a human driver. uh it's not going to work in all weather conditions, all geographies, all pickup points. Like you you can quibble on that today, but I think increasingly over time, autonomy is not only going to be safe, it's going to be safer.

18:25 And I think it's going to be a better experience because people like the in-car experience, the in-car experience of having privacy and being able to um work or sleep or talk with your partner or whatever it is you want to do like that is better and people prefer that for the most part. So when you have a better product that is only going to get better over time and autonomy is as bad as it's ever going to be today, right?

18:49 And every single day it's going to get better. Um then that's going to be the business and that's going to be how people get around. And if Uber uh doesn't have autonomy our platform and we will uh we will we will we are investing actively and aggressively to bring it to market. But if if we didn't then it certainly would be existential for our core business.

19:10 >> Is it the largest investment that you make? >> It is. I I mean I I think it kind of depends how you define it a little bit. Like if you look at our autonomy investments, we are making a mix of equity investments in companies, vehicle commit, purchase commitments, building out autonomous infrastructure, building out data collect fleet, like there's a lot of different ways we're spreading the dollars.

19:28 Um and and we're pretty confident in the ROI in those dollars long term. So yeah, it's the largest single sort of standalone investment we we make. Now, don't be, you know, don't get me wrong with at a P&L our size, we're moving billions of dollars around every month, but yes, it's the largest single area of investment. >> I'm a venture investor also, >> which means um I love to pontificate.

19:52 And I also say I love to say I told you so. >> Yes. >> Um you and Travis kind of went down this road already. Do you look at that with annoyance that you stop started and would you be materially ahead had you just been able to continue as planned? >> I I mean f first off I'll say um when we started our autonomous efforts you know this is a secret project within Uber.

20:16 I I was not involved in starting that. I don't want to take any credit for having that foresight because I think it was foresight right? I think >> this was 2016. No. Well, before 2016, um, you know, I I I you know, I think Travis had I I don't want to get it wrong, but um years earlier than that, knew that this would be the future and and like many sort of visionary founder types, he could see ahead of where the rest of us could see and and started taking the company in that direction.

20:51 Um so you know this would have been you know I don't know 2013 you know 2012 2013 2014 we would have quietly started working on this and I and I wasn't involved in it at all. Um and at that time like autonomy the narrative was ahead of the reality by a lot right I mean you can go back and read various prognostications um and not just from Elon from many people in the industry saying you know next year next year next year and it was never next year.

21:21 Um, but I look I think it would be rosecolored glasses to say, "Oh, see if we just stayed in the game, we'd have the leading autonomous vehicle company and this existential threat for us wouldn't wouldn't exist or we'd completely control our own destiny." I mean when when we ultimately uh divested ATG which was our intern uh internal autonomy group we were in the depths of co our mobility business had lost 84% of our topline in 3 weeks uh the company was burning billions annually uh we didn't have a core business

21:58 producing cash it wasn't the billions were not coming from investments and other stuff our core was burning money Uh we we did not believe we were leading in autonomy at the time. Uh we were trailing you can debate about whether we were trailing the field or whether we were just trailing Whimo, but we were we were not in the pole position. And you know Uber had a lot to prove that we could just lead and win and make money in our core business.

22:23 And so we divested ATG. Uh we turned the core businesses into cash flowing machines. We took the company public. we've grown the value, grown the business, almost any metric you pick from that point in time is up and to the right. And so on all those dimensions, I think the sort of focus strategy played out. But yes, of course, today do I wish we uh if you could sort of snap your fingers and say ATG would turn into one of the leading autonomous players globally and we completely control our destiny.

22:57 Yeah, I think that would be a good thing for us. Can I ask you when you fast forward 5 years time what percent of rides will be human driven versus robo taxi driven? >> It's it's so hard to predict. I mean for a few reasons. One is our the denominator is huge here, right? We're doing like 300 million trips a week uh on our core platforms. That is just massive scale.

23:23 So we do a few million trips in AVs on that platform today a month but is just such a small part of the business that it's going to grow tripledigit percentage months on months and months and months and it will still be a relatively tiny drop of the overall bucket. The second thing it's makes it hard to predict is our human-driven business is going to keep growing, right?

23:46 And so um you know we we found like in even in the largest AV markets where today we don't have AVs like San Francisco and LA, our human-driven business is growing faster than the rest of the US. So it's hard for me to know what the it's a moving target. The third piece is Uber is so global, right? And in mobility we operate across 75 countries. Two of our large three largest countries by volume are India and Brazil.

24:10 You know, the average fair in Brazil is like 350,4 bucks USD. In India, it's 250,3 bucks or something like that. It's it's going to be decades until the cost of autonomy compresses to the point where it compete with that cost of human labor. And those markets make up the majority of our trips. And so if you want to say when will the majority of trips at Uber be autonomous, I I can't tell you because I can tell you it's probably not going to be until autonomy gets to Brazil and India.

24:40 And I can tell you that's going to be a long time. So >> So what's really interesting there is actually it could still be a very low volume of trips. >> Low volume amount. It could actually be significantly high >> dollar amount. Yeah. Cuz if it's in the US and if it's in the largest cities in the US then like that's where the rubber meets the road.

24:54 So that's the for sure that's the counter to what I'm saying. you know, I'm saying, oh, it's going to be more complex and we have all this other but yes, of course, if autonomy starts to make up the majority of markets in San Francisco, LA, DC, Miami, New York, Boston, Chicago, like that's a big chunk of our bookings. Uh, that's a big chunk of our dollars.

25:17 And so that's kind of the ultimate question. >> Can I ask you who do you think is a bigger threat, Whimo or Tesla? that that's uh yeah, I mean I I don't know how many spicy takes I want to have here, but I think there's going to be more than two winners. Do I think Whimo and Tesla will ultimately be winners? Yes, I do. I don't know who who's going to bet against either of those, but I think there will be more winners.

25:37 I also think even in a world of of strong winners like a very natural question or often feedback we get from investors or smart types who follow our business is like so yeah I believe that there will be a few players that get to autonomy and I think they're ultimately going to work with you guys but they're going to have such strong leverage in the market that your share of every dollar is going to get squeezed and so I I just don't know even in a world where you have access to autonomy like you know how are your

26:07 margins going to look because today you guys benefit from fragmentation and that's true. I I think it's a true statement but there's a couple counterpoints to that. One is if you look at delivery as a sort of comparable vertical here McDonald's and Starbucks also are strong leaders in their individual verticals. They've spent billions building out fixed assets in terms of stores and that all the infrastructure that goes into their supply chain.

26:34 They have one P channels. You can walk in the front door of McDonald's. You can order through the McDonald's app. But they also ultimately work with the marketplaces. And we're able to come to a good economic agreement that works for both sides because at the end of the day, they have expensive fixed assets. And you want to drive as high utilization as possible.

26:53 And whether that's a store or a car, I think that's going to be true. And so I think whether Whimo or Tesla ends up being the bigger threat, I don't know. I think ultimately it's in both of their interests to put their vehicles on our network. Even if they have their own robo taxi apps or their own one apps, even if they work with our competitors on the ride share side or on the delivery side, I think everyone will work with us because ultimately we have distribution and ultimately they have expensive fixed assets that

27:19 need utilization. >> What's interesting there is you say then that distribution is more important than superior technology. I think in the end distribution wins and look of course if only one player gets to the finish line on the technology side then that is a problem for us but that is not the future that I think we think will exist and even if you look at what's happened in China there's not one AV company that is emerging as a winner there are already four or five so I don't know why China would have four or five

27:55 which by the way will over time become eight or 10 and the rest of the world would converge around one player. I I just don't see it emerging that way. >> You were at Uber when you did Uber China. No, >> I was. Yeah. We exited our China business in 2016. >> You you've got kids. I do. I have three daughters. >> Okay. So, with kids, you tell them story time.

28:19 >> Yes. >> Yeah. I I I pretend like you know it's story time. What's the wildest story from Uber China? So I was only like sort of over China for a few months before we ultimately did the deal deal with DD and like even just those few months were like I felt like I lived years right just seeing the deal process play out all the regular emotional highs and lows that come with the deal process but also then the specific you know China specific Travis specific like it it was just crazy and ultimately we got a successful

28:52 outcome that I think you know folks would say like most western companies did not have this even though we didn't win even though we took the silver medal in China >> um I think we got a better outcome than the vast majority of western companies and vast majority of western technology companies that try to do business in China. >> Do you have a crazy story like a story time for the girls?

29:08 So in in China, the the crazy thing was you'd be negotiating and and to be clear like others were running the negotiation. I was we were running the business, but the the sort of mandate behind the scenes of the negotiation was like we got to push on investment because like it gave you leverage at the table, right? So if if one side saw the other was gaining share as you were negotiating this deal, it kind of gave you relative strength.

29:33 And this was happening like day by day and both sides were just so well capitalized, right? I mean Travis used to have a a saying which is like we need to raise more money than all our competitors in the world combined because the basis for competition for ride share which is like product market fit was clear. So it was just a land grab at that point and money helped you solve the land grab and so we had raised immense amounts of capital on the other hand like so had DD right and and and the notion that we were going

30:02 to be able to raise more than everyone in the world combined it it was just never going to happen um past a certain point because you had players like SoftBank investing in the market as well and you know you remember those days like that was free money era >> and Uber was best in the world at capitalizing the free money era, but there were many others that were good at it as well and ran the same playbook as us.

30:25 So, all that is to say, I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning 52 million a week in China just on price subsidies because there was this heated behind the scenes battle happening to get to the best economics and the ultimate sort of surrender or ultimate sort of truce. Um, so that was crazy. Another story I heard which I thought was nuts and this was not an Uber story, but you know before like when when Uber and Di did our deal um we were the two largest players but before there was a third

31:02 player I think it was called Quatti and Di and Quadi merged um and they sort of merged the companies they did a deal you're combining HR systems and they realized that like of like the 2,000 employees here in the 2000 0 employees here. There were like 200 employees that were on both payrolls. And so you sort of had this dynamic where you sort of like realize like oh okay like you know this this is this is like real like deep competitive gnarly like you have employees that are wearing both hats which was crazy to me to

31:37 hear because that notion just in like competing in the US it just it's not something that I in a million years I could see happening. >> Feels like a frontier AI lab employee. Wild wild and so there was all sorts of stuff like that. I mean remember like we were we were competing in China with one hand tied behind our back. We we because of the nature of the sort of investor bases in each company.

31:58 Um you know at one point we were not able to operate on the WeChat platform that like trying to compete in China and not having access to WeChat you know it's like trying to compete in the US without like email or a phone number like it's very difficult to run your business. But we did have our own local partners that were helpful. >> Were you pleased to get out?

32:21 >> I mean, look, nobody, you're never pleased to take the silver medal. Um, I don't think it was plausible that we were ultimately going to be the market winner. I I I mean, even for geopolitical reasons alone, like the notion that a US tech company would ultimately be the largest mobility service in China, I just don't think it's something that was ever plausible.

32:43 And so it was always going to be about some exit to a local player. And I think all things considered, we got a pretty good exit. >> I don't think Xi Jinping is going to give you employee of the month award, is he? No. >> No, it's hard, right? It's hard. And like I I think like the hardest part of exiting, not the market opportunity that was obvious.

32:59 Um, not the growth because that was something that was exciting in our business, but was also heavily subsidized. But like the Uber China team, like these were people who bet on Uber, who joined Uber, I'm sure, when many of their friends and families are like, "What what are you doing? Like don't don't join those guys." They were like heart and soul Uber employees.

33:16 And I think one of the awesome things we did at the time was we tried to give as many of those folks who wanted it roles in the global machine. Um, and many of those folks, and there are still some today that are at Uber today, but that was that was hard. and and like um Travis is actually a pretty loyal guy for people who are like all in on the company and our Uber China team was all in on the company and so that was a hard moment for us.

33:43 >> Be wild freaking time. >> Wild it makes today with AI learned less wild. Um >> it's all relative, right? Like when you're in it like some of these things when you're in it, it's just like your reality and so you don't quite realize but then you have the benefit of like 10 years of hindsight and you're like that was crazy. Speaking of wild and crazy and like China letting US companies do well, China competing.

34:07 You blew through what was it? A year's budget for AI in 4 months. >> Sorry, I'm just laughing. It's like you go to this meeting and you're like, "So, how's the budget go?" >> Well, first of all, it's not like that was like a a big spreadsheet reveal and you're like, "Oh, it's gone." And I think like budgeting for new stuff is tough, right? >> It's like me and my mother in Chanel, I'm like, "Oh, the woman's gone.

34:34 >> I'll stay away from that." >> Yeah. Yeah. Terrifying. Um, is that evidence of incredibly effective tools or is that evidence of a desperate need for guard rails? >> I firmly believe multiple things can be true at once. So, let's let's come to that. Let let me give a little bit of backstory on this because we Uber had two big AI headlines in in the first half of this year.

34:52 Um I think both of which caught at least the people involved by surprise. One was Preine um was speaking at an event and you know generated this headline by saying we were through our our AI budget in the first few months of the year. Pine's our CTO. Um and then I did another podcast and said um you know uh it was hard to draw a direct line from our AI spend through to useful consumer features.

35:15 And both of those comments like caught fire in a way that I think neither of us expected. Right. Pine wasn't making a comment about like runaway spend like we're going to bankrupt ourselves. He was just saying like, you know, effectively like it's it's hard to predict usage. Usage has been more than I thought. We've been trying to drive usage and here we are um blowing through a budget, but you're setting a budget number in like November for a tool that's growing vertical in terms of usage.

35:40 Of course, it's hard to like pinpoint where you're going to be. And then my comment honestly, first of all, it wasn't insightful at all. like it was like held up as this insight either as if you it sort of showed to me the power of people reinforcing their preconceived notions like taking a statement which is fairly innocuous on its surface and either using it to prove their point on one side or the other.

36:01 So on the one side it was kind of like I think AI skeptics were sort of like see the Uber COO is saying there's no return on AOI or on uh on AI which is obviously not what I was saying. On the other side, there was sort of this like if you were like a fundamentalist AI evangelist, you were saying this guy has no idea what he's talking about. They're obviously doing it wrong because AI is God and like I I don't touch my computer without engaging AI, right?

36:30 And obviously like there's just nuance in the middle that is true. So the point around like ROI for me it's a couple things. One is at the end of the day you we do want to get efficiency or we want to get new and cool stuff built and we are seeing examples of that every single day. We have stood up a pod of 30 of our best AI engineers that are partnered with business people or partnered with folks in the GNA functions to go in and go process by process and start sort of ground up with AI.

37:08 How do you improve that process? And if you can take like a capital allocation process like every week we're allocating pricing dollars across thousands of markets globally and I can take that from being a 15-hour process to a 2-hour process which is what we've done that is tremendous tangible ROI because now you get 2 days of someone's time back. Um, if you're able to take a forecasting process, which our finance team is constantly reforcasting every inch of our business, uh, and you're able to turn that from, uh, 8

37:41 hours of work into two hours of work, you're able to now do that not only with more precision because you can put an additional layer of nuance into those forecasts, but you're just able to have your folks do other stuff. There's clear ROI there. if you're able to take marketing QA from two weeks to two days like there's so many examples of that um that we see and and and the way we've done that again is by pairing the business folks with the AI engineers.

38:07 The the second thing I think that >> are you actually seeing that today? Because Alex Cop came on CNBC or CNN and and said like no the the ROI question is still there like to to validate what you said to be clear outside of coding and customer support with the greatest of respects. I think anyone who runs a budget in a large enterprise state would say yes it's still not material at best.

38:31 I think it's just hard to know like these things are just hard to quantify and so you do have to be a bit top down. um and belief based about it, right? I I think three examples I just gave there. Assume there are dozens of more of those. The natural question is okay, great. Like how many of those people can I take out of my organization so that I get the cost back and that flows through to the bottom line or I can put it into other things.

38:55 But formulaically doing that is really hard because guess what? The the 8 hours of value that was created or the 8 hours of excess time gets filled with some other activity which is also like presumably high value. and maybe before wouldn't have got done to or wouldn't have been done to a level of precision. So it's just very hard. So I think the way companies ultimately have to extract AI efficiency at least from like a pure opex perspective is just in your target setting hold the constraints tighter.

39:22 Like if we really believe that AI is making our employees 10% or 20% or 30% more efficient, then next year we should just not increase headcount or we should increase it by 2% instead of 10%. Or we should decrease it by 5%. And say you all should be getting more done with less and here are all these sub examples of of people doing that. But drawing the direct line between I transformed this process and therefore like I need two less operations analysts is is really tough to do.

39:50 So I do think there's ROI there, but to be able to like precisely quantify it is is challenging. >> How do you think about effective budgeting then having been through what you've been through with this kind of blowing through it in 4 months with the difficulty of budgeting and us both acknowledging that? >> Well, I I think what you have to do is you you have to um you have to create combined pools of budgets and then let the people that you trust allocate where they see high ROI.

40:17 So if you're talking about, you know, our our CTO, I think it'd be totally reasonable for DAR to say, you know, your your headcount budget is X, our compute budget is Y, just add X and Y together and then spend it as you see fit. And so if you want to spend relatively more more money on compute, on inference, on whatever because you believe that's the highest ROI, do that.

40:41 But it means you have less for heads. If you actually think it's more efficient to just add more engineers because there's sort of a compounding value to the new and novel uh products they will build or it's not just about you know throughput then do that but like if you make if you combine the pools I think I think that's an interesting approach. The other thing I'd say is like remember like even at the beginning of this year the idea that you would be doing things like smart routing internally in terms of which

41:13 models you're using for which tasks the idea that you would like not only publish a AI usage leaderboard but also a associated cost leaderboard just so people were aware the idea that you might choose different models for different tasks from the outset or give different levels of employees different models for different tasks from the outset like all these things were not really happening.

41:35 >> Do you work with I think do you work with providers like fireworks to enable efficient routting? >> Yes. So we we work with external providers we also do some of this internally we've done things like build dashboarding so folks are aware I mean we have an internal >> is that helpful like usage and cost like I might be brilliant but I'm number one on the cost and I feel a bit guilty and I'm using an intense amount of compute.

41:59 Is that is that good or is it bad? Well, I think I think at some point it's wasteful. I I mean, you do not need the latest and greatest model from anthropic or open AI to ask like, you know, tell me who the president was in 1945 and then like run that again for the next five presidents and then run it again for the next five. You know what I mean? Like >> the leaderboards help, but I don't understand the point of them.

42:21 Why would I create them? >> I I definitely think visibility helps for both the usage and the cost side of the equation, right? So if I literally, you know, imagine a counter in the top right of whatever I'm tool I'm using, that is just showing me the equivalent cost of what I'm doing and ask that scales, that will make you more cognizant as a user, right?

42:40 If you're at the if you're at the grocery store and you're >> do I want to be number one or do I want to be bottom? >> Well, I think either extreme is probably wrong at this point, right? Because it's a question of how much value you're creating. That's where human judgment still matters. >> Well, then there's a bad leaderboard, Mag. Well, I do agree that like sometimes tools can be so blunt as to become useful useless because um folks are optimizing for the metric versus the outcomes.

43:05 And we I do think though there is value in everyone in our organization using the latest and greatesting greatest tools in their in their specific domain. Right? I don't need every person in the company using cloud code. Not not every, you know, customer support rep needs to be doing that. But for the AI assistant agent that is helping them be better customer support agent, I want every single agent using that tool.

43:37 And so an adoption leaderboard for that is helpful, right? And if you're not, I want to ask the question as to why. >> When you think about size of company, say in terms of people, will you have more or less people in 5 years? I think it's it's interesting because I'm I am tempted to say I think we'll have less and I think one of the reasons I'm tempted to say that is when you look at the largest teams from like a numbers of people perspective you do have uh sort of disproportionate headcount in like more producing

44:06 type functions right um whether it's customer support whether it's uh sales uh or even sort of content production or analytics where you're producing reports and dashboards and these sorts of things. And I think you know those sorts of functions lend themselves well to first augmentation by AI and eventually I think um at least partial replacement by AI.

44:34 And so I'm tempted to say less. The reason I won't emphatically state that is because I think that's sort of been proven wrong the last few years as AI's rolled out and employment in companies continues to grow and uh you find new and different >> it really does it like if you look at your Shopifies and the generation that you're in actually it hasn't headcount stayed flat and the companies have become much more efficient.

45:01 >> Yeah. No, I I think that's I think you could probably find examples to prove any point that you want to believe. Right. I mean, I'm not an AI doomerist from like an economy perspective. I think there's going to be like productivity benefits, but I also think there's be a whole new industries and fields stood up that we can't predict today. Um, just like every other industrial revolution that's happened, but I can't tell you exactly what that what that's going to be.

45:22 So, within companies, I think if you thought if you took everything Uber does today and held it static and said, you know, in 5 years you're going to need more or less people. I'd say, well, we could do everything we do today with less people in 5 years because of the power of AI, but we're going to be doing a whole bunch of new interesting stuff, and so maybe we need more employees to do that stuff.

45:44 >> You said about the AI ROI question, and that was one thing that Alex C mentioned. The other thing that he mentioned in this kind of um very pertinent kind of interview was that the biggest companies would be nervous to work with Frontier Labs. Do do you agree with that as someone who runs the P&L for one of the biggest businesses in the world? >> I mean, we we work with the Frontier Labs.

46:07 I I think if I I I you know, I think I watch some of the same. Um >> he's brilliant to watch. >> Yeah. I mean, amazing and I think insightful. And um you know the the risk one of the risks that I saw him highlight was this notion that you know you feed all of your data to the frontier labs and then they stand up a competing product effectively and so you're sort of um >> what's the expression like cannibalized yeah you know the the the fox in the hen house like you're sort of opening the gate um for for us like our

46:40 experience of working with the Frontier Labs has been great and and um I think we have uh experimented on multiple fronts. We are moving from experimentation to implementation and scale on a bunch of areas where we're seeing ROI. So I haven't seen that yet, but I certainly get that argument and I think there are companies that have fallen victim to that and he gave a bunch of examples.

47:04 >> I totally get it. I think you put Uber in the less um penetrable by Frontier apps. I would really get >> Look, I I mean we we have this like physical world component to our business that that makes it challenging to do that. Like I I don't know that I see OpenAI launching a ride sharing service anytime and going around to tens of thousands of cities around the world and getting locally locally licensed and then putting boots on the ground to run a physical world service.

47:25 I I you know I I think you know many of the places we play it's just doesn't lend itself well to that extensibility of their model. See I disagree. I I've always known that Dario in particular was very passionate about last mile delivery in Barcelona for convenience food. One of his big things to be on the watch for that. >> AGI and refreshments in Barcelona.

47:48 >> No, look, the physical world aspect to our business is like hard, but also it also means like I think some of the worst prognations haven't come true, right? I mean, even the transaction level, right? The the big conversations we were having in our leadership team like 18 months ago is like what's going to happen to the consumer front end? the disagregation risk on both delivery and mobility is that people want to start their uh you know their Uber ride with a a plain language query and like >> well that's

48:17 interesting where do you land on that like because I I was spoken about this with really smart people um and they talk about kind of agents and how agents will route you to provider and you have no customer loyalty how do you think about the disagregation of UI and an agent-led decision- making >> so this is this is where I think there's some interesting questions about what information do you provide to the various consumer front ends uh e either from the frontier labs or others because at some point maybe you're

48:47 giving away that that front end of the consumer experience in a way that is non-strategic so you know I don't want to be aggregated on price right I I I I you know we've not participated historically in the aggregation apps where you know somebody will come to us and pitch and say hey you know give us give us um APIs that give us real-time info on every car, every Uber car in the network.

49:11 Um, uh, what the price of that ride is, whatever other characteristics you can feed us. And because we're going to build an app, and then we're also going to put Lyft in there. We're going to put other providers in there, and then that'll be incremental business for you. I've been against that. I mean, I I want to be the front end. I want people to start at the Uber app for the Uber experience.

49:29 Um, and I think today we we win that front uh that that first look with 200 million consumers and growing uh every month. So there's a real question there like and and we were we've been worried and discussing like hey you know if I if is somebody going to just put into chat GPT or claude like you know get me get me my usual Uber. Um and I could imagine a world where like the query starts there.

49:55 The challenge is like we have a very managed transaction. Does that damage your business though? Get me an Uber transaction for you. >> It it doesn't damage the business and I would of course fulfill that query, right? I think there's a question as to, you know, compare the prices of Uber, Lyft, and Whimo and get me the cheapest one. Like, does that damage my business?

50:21 Well, no, if we're winning on the cheapest price every time. But if today 80% of people just start with Uber, do I do I need do I want them to merge to to migrate over to a service where they say they go to a comparison app? Whether that's a >> well or they just say get me a car and get me a car and then price. >> I think the challenge though is that like it's a managed transaction both on the delivery side and on the transportation side.

50:45 All the little things that happen between saying get me an Uber and you being done that ride that can that go wrong. The interaction between the driver and the driver, the visual experience of the pickup experience, I left something in the car, your payment credent like all these pieces that you sort of take for granted. Um that needs to be figured out, right?

51:06 This is not an e-commerce transaction where you sort of set it and forget it. You don't think about it until the package is on your doorstep. It is a managed transaction. And so I I that that that sort of worst fear hasn't played out yet. And I'm not saying it won't. I mean, Brian Chesy got kind of roasted, but I thought it was an insightful point when he said it's not clear to him that like the the right interface for hotel booking is a chat interface.

51:27 And he was kind of called a lite and this and that. But like I I think he was right. Like some experiences are more visual, some experiences are more managed. Um >> I think it depends if it's transactional. >> It depends. like which is like, "Hey, get me a hotel for my trip to London to see Harry." You probably don't care about it having a C view and being romantic for you and your wife, but you want it close to the office and efficient from a pricing perspective and compliant with your HR.

51:57 >> Yeah. >> But that denigrates the market. >> Yeah. Like you know I I host a show which is very popular actually um with uh two other investors who are much more insightful than me and they talk about the fortnightification of markets which is just like the shrinking of markets. >> And like don't get me wrong Airbnb is an amazing business. >> Yeah.

52:14 No, I think >> but if you remove the transactional booking travel, well then it just becomes experiential booking travel. >> Yeah. >> Smaller. >> Yeah. No, I think it's a reasonable perspective and it has to get ahead of it. a like I I want to be where the consumers are. So like ultimately we've chosen to participate >> participate with the like open AIs >> the the Yeah.

52:36 But but like really any of the large companies if they want to do something interesting with us on the consumer front end will have that conversation. Um >> and can you participate though if you won't give them the data? >> Well I think that's always a negotiation or discussion around like how much do you need where does the trans like there's a there's 15 different flavors of this, right?

52:55 The transaction can originate in different channels and then end in the Uber app. You have to define who has responsibilities for things along the way. What is the consu? So if you if you go into chat GPT and say or even this hotel booking example, what happens if the hotel needs to send Harry a message because uh you ask for early check-in and they can't give it to you.

53:17 Is that back through the AI? Is that coming directly from the hotel? Who bears the cost of that? these sort of like there's operational elements to the experience that need to be sorted. And I'm not saying this can't get sorted, but it's not as simple as the you shouldn't picture the experience that goes right as the sort of archetype of what this usually looks like because it's the experience that goes wrong or requires some level of management that needs to be solved for.

53:40 One of my very dear friends is a CEO of one of the largest airlines in the world. He says, "You have no [ __ ] idea how hard my business is. If your baggage is 12 minutes late, I will have 50 [ __ ] emails and I do five 5,000 flights every single day. >> Yeah, totally. And I'm not like um you know, I'm I'm not like we're not naive or being like no no our business is different.

54:02 It's hard. Like every business is hard, but I do think these things need to be sorted out. >> One you bought delivery hero. Um I know Nicholas really well. Interviewed him. Really like him. Brilliant guy. >> Know Oscar well from Glovo. really like him. Why buy it, not just dominate? Like is it not just like a market maturation question and you will slowly crush over time?

54:25 >> Look, I mean, I think it it's so first of all, I'll say like Uber has been on this journey, right? I I often get asked the question of, you know, what business is going to be bigger long term or like where is there a larger TAM? But like >> what food or mobility? >> Food or mobility. Yeah. Um because I mean even this sort of like the existential questions we get about AV tend to ignore the fact that we have basically an equally sized food delivery business that's in market leading positions in most of our markets

54:53 around the world. We get almost zero credit for that. But put putting that aside um deliveryy's also been growing faster right so it's almost as big as mobility been growing faster um and has been more constrained from a country's perspective right we actually did some rationalization of our country portfolio didn't launch as many of the sort of um frontier markets or emerging markets um we're more capital constrained when we were scaling delivery and so delivery hero I think presented a unique opportunity to um in in

55:23 one fell swoop expand our geographic footprint and it's not that we uh you know could never go launch and scale new markets. Um you know we have been launching new countries and delivery but it takes a lot of time like it just takes time and it's sort of back to what was discussing earlier like what's relevant scale like how how quickly does it take for a a new business line or a new country to get to a a relevant scale that matters for Uber.

55:52 We The other thing is Delivery Hero has built a lot of local brands that are really strong, right? And >> and they have exclusivity and lock in. Yeah. >> Well, whe whether that's true or not, they have consumer mind share, right? And they've built um you know, you Argentina, Korea, the Middle East, like these are leading brands that consumers identify with, have high household awareness, and are not like easily supplemented.

56:18 And so I think there's value in those brands. They've also localized their services really well. Um I think the combined uh mobility delivery offerings will now be able to offer in those markets is going to be really compelling for consumers. So it's scale it's it's some of the local brands that they've built. It's the platform and for us like when this deal you know we have to go through the the sort of requisite regulatory and shareholder processes but delivery will be a much bigger business for mobility.

56:48 Uh, and that's an exciting version of Uber for sure. >> Are you more passionate about one than the other? I know it sounds weird. >> Like, do you which which of your kids do you love the most? >> The oldest one. Um, >> actually, my baby right now, she's the the most daddy's girl of our three, so she's got a special special heart. >> Uh, she's 18 months.

57:10 >> Okay. >> Um, >> doing one sleep. >> Yeah. One one nap a day right now. Um, >> it's like a venture investor. about 2 p.m. Call it Siesta. Welcome to Europe, Mag. >> Hopefully less grumpy. Um, look, I grew up in the mobility business, right? For uh from 2012 to 2025. I spent 90% of my waking hours and most of my sleeping hours thinking about mobility uh and ride share primarily, but all the other mobility verticals we've built.

57:41 Um, as I said, I don't think there's anyone in the world who spent more hours thinking about rid share. Um, delivery, I've kind of managed teams over the years that have serviced the delivery business. It it came into like my portfolio quote unquote 14 months ago. Um, actually for the last couple months, I've been directly running the delivery business.

58:03 we we had our our our leader of the delivery business left and uh I took her role and I've been doing so two jobs, my day job and my night job and I literally had to have had to schedule a evening shift because there's just no way to fit my operating cadence in. >> Are you just a machine? You're an efficient executor. >> And even the way that you present it's like it's efficient.

58:25 >> It's it's well look I mean everyone is like struggling to find enough hours for the day. um the and and Uber right now like the teams are pushing hard and and I'm I'm worried that like some of our teams are are going to run out of gas like you know you can only push above the red line for so long. Um cuz you know we just have a lot of opportunity but also a lot of challenges and we're we're best in a crisis.

58:44 We're best with the challenge in front of us. We're best when we feel like um we're up against the world a little bit. That's our DNA. And so I I'm kind of inspired by that. But it's hard right now and and and personally I'm as I said I'm working sort of two jobs that but but back to your like which is your favorite business? I'm I'm working in the delivery business and directly pulling the levers myself for the first time ever in in my tenure at Uber and I'm really enjoying it.

59:10 It's a very complex business. Uh you know three-sided marketplace versus two. I think much more complexity in terms of what the consumer actually values the inputs that matter. you know the the speed uh the sort of u sort of price reliability safety on the mobility side it's a longer list on the delivery side of things that you have to nail and so it's interesting uh it's hard uh we are not number one in the US which also makes it harder because I think operating from a position of strength just gives you a nice

59:42 tailwind and so we're having to play the challenger role which we relish but it also changes the game a bit >> some of my friends who are old uberites who I'm I'm sure you know, but I'll keep them out. Um, say if Travis were here, we'd be number one in food. Is that true? >> I love I love D. Like, >> no. No. I >> I don't know Travis. So, >> no. I I And look, like the reality is I think anyone who operates anything that says if X were this, this would be different.

01:00:11 Like, you know, it's a little bit of that like in the arena quote. Like if you're not in the arena, it's easy to sit on the sidelines and say, "Oh, if if I were in the arena or if so and so were in the arena, it would be different." And it's fair to have that opinion. But when you're operating a business, it's hard and you have trade-offs to make and you get things wrong and you get things right and you don't get credit for the things you get right.

01:00:32 You certainly feel the blame and take the blame for the things you get wrong. So I I don't know that there's an alternative history. Like Door Dash is an excellent company. I think Tony's a tremendous entrepreneur and founder. They operate really well. They move quickly. They're aggressive. They take risk. They're well capitalized. Like, we have lots of competitors.

01:00:52 And >> did you ever have the chance to buy them? >> You know, you you hear things. As I said, I was on the mobility side of the business. I I don't know if that was ever a realistic possibility or not. Um, of course, there's always speculation, but I I I I don't I don't know. Um, do you know one of the best answers I got advised on dear friend Jacquiel Khan who is um Daniel X right-hand man.

01:01:14 >> Okay. >> He says ever you get a question you don't want just go hey mate that's above my pay grade. I'm just I'm just a podcaster me. >> That's a good way to handle just like me. No. >> No. I mean I I honestly don't know the answer to that question. The the >> Was Postmates a good acquisition? Cuz that seemed like a bit of a nuts one to be honest.

01:01:32 Like they were running out of cash. It was a it was a challenge business. When I saw that, I was like, they've got balls at Uber. >> I I mean, look, I think it's it's um we we've we've in my opinion, I think we probably get a harder uh a harder rep on M&A than than is deserved because in many cases, a deal that from the outside like you question or you're not sure what you got out of it like actually leaps forward internal capabilities that you you didn't know.

01:02:02 you learn things from the acquisition, you get good talent, you see where you have gaps, etc. Um, I think in the case of Postmates, and again, this is where like I'm a sideline observer, right? I could sit here and tell you that was the greatest deal in the world or no, we shouldn't have done it, but the reality is like I wasn't in the game at that time on the delivery side.

01:02:18 So, I don't actually know the answer to that. But, um, Postmates has a strong brand, a strong following followership, and some strong geographic pockets, and I think we've been able to build on those. >> Are you ready for a quick find? >> Sure, let's do Otherwise, I'm going to get in trouble from nerve taking too much of your time and you actually have to be productive in London.

01:02:35 Um, what have you changed your mind on most significantly in the last 12 months? >> I mean, I'm I'm a humanity bull and I'm I'm really sort of becoming more interested and obsessed with longevity and I actually do think we're going to solve, you know, all of human disease at some point. And the idea of I don't know if live forever, but live a very long time is going to be a possible thing.

01:03:00 And I've gotten more conviction there over the >> I it's all the whoop open AI or anthropic >> open AI for for me I use both the as we were chatting about earlier I use voice so much like it's my single most used AI feature by a mile probably 50x anything else is I record notes emails thoughts lists like I'm constantly working via voice and I I find OpenAI's voice engine incredible.

01:03:34 >> I write my investor updates by voice. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Um, okay. What's one thing that you most took from working with Travis? Like single biggest lesson. >> I want to give you two. He's a problem solver. Like he he he will define what what he is and what he looks for in others as creative problem solving. the ability for him to walk into any meeting on any topic, ask a few pointed questions, float a few ideas and in 15 minutes sort of change the mind or change the thinking or evolve the thinking of

01:04:13 the people in the room who have spent like weeks as experts on this topic is amazing. And to then go through every day, every week half an hour, half an hour, half our hour into the evenings and just like do that muscle over and over and over again is so value add. And so I think if as leaders we can play that role on like do a microcosm of that maybe not that good, you can move the ball forward a lot.

01:04:37 So sort of creative problem solving as as a skill that is valued in an organization is probably the top thing I took. Um I think the second is and and I think back to sort of the all hands that that he would host where he would not only give an answer to a question but he would explain his thinking on why that was the answer. I think that's exceptionally value valuable in leaders to take people through why what you say is is and it helps them it creates many versions of yourself right and so I think if you can do that

01:05:13 across your organization where you tell people how you got to an answer you you you're amplifying the power of the organization so the way I try to do that is by setting down principles right for having principles for how I want to think about a given problem a given solution area whatever and and having my people try to use those principles as they think about the problem themselves.

01:05:35 >> What's your biggest takeaway from working with Dar on the flip side? >> I think the the most impactful quote I've heard from Dar that I think speaks to who he is is management comes from an org chart. Leadership comes from the heart. And and what he means by that is we can create rules and structures and hierarchy and we can try to follow what the bureaucracy says.

01:06:03 But at the end of the day, we have leaders at all level of the company that are the ones who actually push the company forward. And those are the people who are leading with both the head and the heart. And those are the people that build followership. And that's exactly who Dra is. He he will not ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself. He's the first one over the fence.

01:06:25 He's the first one on the plane to go where the company needs him. Low ego, lots of heart. He pushes but it generally comes from a good place which makes people want to be successful for him and makes people want to say like what do you need me to do? And that's really powerful. >> You worked with both. We both know the politics that was around. very few people were able to work with both and they were like I'm a Travis or I'm the Dar era with the greatest of respect and they didn't want to get into what made you able

01:06:56 to be a OG with both. I I think um for me like first of all I think they're both excellent in in their own domains and I think DAR is exa was exactly the right leader for Uber when he came in and continues to be exactly the right leader for the company today and um they're different but it's not any easier. Um the you know for me it's like it kind of comes back to where we started like almost your first question of the interview which is like when when times have been hard at Uber I've not wanted to leave because I

01:07:31 didn't I felt like it was the wrong thing for Uber. I'd be leaving my teammates behind and it just didn't feel like the right thing to do. And then when times are good at Uber I want to stay because this is fun. We're building. We're conquering the world. And so it's been hard for me through the worst times and the best times to ever think about leaving.

01:07:52 And that's true regardless of of who the CEO has been. Um I also firmly believe that you like people need to take what they can get from their leaders, from their managers, from their boss, and you're not going to get everyone from everything from any one individual. And so I've been able to learn a lot from both of them. And I think that's been really great.

01:08:14 >> Final one for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given? >> We we hired a a woman, Rachel Wetstone, to run our um communications and policy team, let's say around uh 2015 or 2016. And she sent a the speech of a commencement address she gave uh to the whole company in her first week. And in that the the sort of central thesis was always say yes, just jump at the next adventure.

01:08:46 And it really resonated with me because I think you can always analyze a career opportunity. Should I tackle this problem? I'm being asked to do X. I'm not sure if I'm going to be good at it. Seems like there's a lot of risk. And I always just tell people just say yes because a bet on yourself. You're going to get in there. It's going to be hard. You're going to figure it out.

01:09:08 You're going to be better off for it and the company will be better off. Or maybe it will be too much for you, but you'll learn a lot from that failure and you'll just be a better version of yourself. So, I I think just say yes. >> Honestly, dude, I I've really so enjoyed this. You I do lots of shows and episodes like this remind me why I love what I do so much. So, thank you so much for doing it for being so brilliant. Honestly, amazing. >> Thank you. Awesome. So great to be here.