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Uber

also referred to as: ubers

includes Uber Eats, Uber Black, Uber Freight, Uber China, Uber ATG, Uber One, Uber Elevate, Uber Lux, Uber Rider, Uber XL, Uber Pool

296 statements across 140 episodes · 106 bullish · 72 bearish · 122 people on the record · first statement Jan 13, 2015 by Kris Jones · said 1,669 times in 422 episodes since 2015 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (532), Shervin Pishevar (56), Andrew Macdonald (Mac) (53), Dara Khosrowshahi (39), Scott Gorlick (38), Emil Michael (36), Jason Lemkin (33), Brian Tolkin (29)

tap a year for its mentions
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02550201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
00325650201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 235 mentions in 46 episodes 5 per episode
2025 265 mentions in 46 episodes 6 per episode
2024 179 mentions in 40 episodes 4 per episode
2023 162 mentions in 35 episodes 5 per episode
2022 166 mentions in 38 episodes 4 per episode
2021 62 mentions in 20 episodes 3 per episode
2020 80 mentions in 25 episodes 3 per episode
2019 108 mentions in 41 episodes 3 per episode
2018 50 mentions in 25 episodes 2 per episode
2017 104 mentions in 36 episodes 3 per episode
2016 179 mentions in 46 episodes 4 per episode
2015 79 mentions in 24 episodes 3 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Uber, oldest first

Jan 13, 2015 bullish
Opinion
Kris Jones argues 2015's high tech valuations reflect disruption, not a bubble
“I think the valuations right now are very, very high. But I don't believe so, and the reason I don't believe there's a tech bubble is because I believe that the period of time we're in right now is a period where you're going to see a lot of disruption, meanin…”
Kris Jones Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 21:03 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones
Jan 13, 2015 positive
Assertion Supported
Ghoorah: Uber completed 2M rides on New Year's Eve
“They did two million rides On New Year's Eve at one point it was 58 destinations a second.”
Bob Ghoorah Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 19:12 20 VC 003: Bob Ghoorah on Startups, The Pitch and Uber
Jan 13, 2015 bullish
Insight
Ghoorah: Uber is fundamentally a logistics and data engine ready to expand
“Yeah, I think that there's absolutely an opportunity for that company to get into adjacent market spaces. At the end of the day, I think it's kind of a core logistics Company, as well as a data company. And you know, you can have, you can apply those two core …”
Bob Ghoorah Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 7:55 20 VC 003: Bob Ghoorah on Startups, The Pitch and Uber
Jan 13, 2015 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ghoorah: Uber will grow into and exceed its $40B valuation
“Uber certainly is a company that can grow into that valuation and frankly exceed it.”
Bob Ghoorah Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 19:04 20 VC 003: Bob Ghoorah on Startups, The Pitch and Uber
Mar 26, 2015 neutral
Opinion
McCall: Uber was evolutionary mobile-meets-taxis rather than revolutionary
“Uber is not revolutionary. It's evolutionary, right? It's mobile meets, you know, taxis at the end of the day, but it's how it was done.”
Matthew McCall Mar 26, 2015 ▶ 12:57 20 VC 022: Letting go of the life we planned and the Power of the Female Narrative with Matthew McCall
Apr 16, 2015 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Teare: Series A and B Face Severe Capital Shortage
“There's about five billion dollars available at the seed stage for all the companies every three to five years. There's about one to two billion available at the A and B stage. And then at the growth stage, at the other end, there's more than a hundred billion…”
Keith Teare Apr 16, 2015 ▶ 21:15 20 VC 028: Co-Founding TechCrunch and The Benefits of Not Raising Venture Funding with Keith Teare
Apr 20, 2015 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lipman: Uber raised $4.9B at $41B valuation versus Lyft's $862M at $2B
“I think the last time I looked, when I was online here Uber raised 4.9 billion at a forty one billion dollar valuation. Better lift. That's in total. And, Lyft has raised, you know, 862 and a half million at two billion dollar valuation.”
Brandon Lipman Apr 20, 2015 ▶ 13:51 20 VC 029: The Potential Upside To A Technology Bubble with TechCrunch's Brandon Lipman
May 21, 2015 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2020
Tran King-Yens predicts Uber will become a trillion-dollar company
“Yes. They're changing the way in which people move from A to B, and that, and democratizing that in a way that it's not owned by companies, but by individuals.”
Angela Tran Kingyens May 21, 2015 ▶ 19:48 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures
May 25, 2015 positive
Opinion
Menashy: Uber expands the transport market rather than replacing black cabs
“I don't think it's replacing black cabs. I mean, there may be a little bit of replacement in the short term, but I think it's enabling totally new journeys.”
Simon Menashy May 25, 2015 ▶ 9:19 How to Pitch a Top VC with Simon Menashy @ MMC Ventures
Jun 1, 2015 bullish
Prediction Held up
Calacanis pledges to invest in Travis Kalanick's next company if Uber fails
“Travis and I are very good friends, you know, from Uber and have been for a long time. And we, I would be good friends with him if his company failed, and I would invest in his next company”
Jason Calacanis Jun 1, 2015 ▶ 36:32 Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
Jun 1, 2015
Assertion Supported
Calacanis: Uber and Thumbtack had a combined $9M valuation at first round
“Thumbtack and Uber, You know, they were nine million dollars, and they're like, well, we only want one million dollars more. I was like, no, no, combined. Their valuation was nine million combined when I invested in their first rounds”
Jason Calacanis Jun 1, 2015 ▶ 45:55 Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
Jun 1, 2015
Disclosure
Calacanis details early Uber investment alongside Bill Gurley and Shervin Pishevar
“I was the angel investor in Uber, Bill Gurley did the A round, Shervin did the B”
Jason Calacanis Jun 1, 2015 ▶ 14:56 Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
Jun 4, 2015 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2020
Altucher in 2015: Uber will become a trillion-dollar company
“They're ultimately a logistics company where on one side are people who want to do things for money, and on the other side are people who want to pay for services. So they're going to be an entire slice of kind of the world's, you know, GDP at some point. So, …”
James Altucher Jun 4, 2015 ▶ 15:45 James Altucher: Ideas, Investing and Entrepreneurs
Jul 3, 2015 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: Uber and the freelance economy cannot be significantly regulated
“I'm really bullish on Uber in particular, I think, and the freelance economy. It's now too large a section of the economy for significant regulatory changes to occur.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 3, 2015 ▶ 11:46 Founders Friday 002: Balderton's James Wise interviews 20VC Founder, Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2015 neutral
Assertion Supported
Polling Shows Most Uber Drivers Prefer Independent Status Over Employee Status
“If you actually look at some of the polls, it's actually not the case. I mean, if you even talk to a lot of Uber drivers, they're not even aware of it, and if you ask them if they prefer to be W-II or T-Nine-I mean, not necessarily in those terms, they say tha…”
Jonathan Libov Jul 13, 2015 ▶ 24:56 20 VC 053: Inside Union Square Ventures with Jonathan Libov @ Union Square Ventures
Jul 13, 2015 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Uber Is Capitalized Well Enough to Adapt to Worker Classification Rules
“I think they're so well capitalized that they can figure out a way to make their model work with W-II's or ten-ninety-nines.”
Jonathan Libov Jul 13, 2015 ▶ 24:26 20 VC 053: Inside Union Square Ventures with Jonathan Libov @ Union Square Ventures
Aug 3, 2015 bearish
Opinion
Arabshahi: Most horizontal marketplace opportunities have already been captured
“Most horizontal infrastructure that is going to be disrupted by big marketplaces has probably already been done so, right? So like Uber Airbnb, like the, you know, I think taxis are pretty much taken care of at this point.”
Arteen Arabshahi Aug 3, 2015 ▶ 17:00 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures
Aug 17, 2015 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Galston: Chicago is Uber and Instacart's second or third largest market
“If you ask Uber or Instacart, what, you know, their second or third most important market is, it's almost inevitably Chicago.”
Ezra Galston Aug 17, 2015 ▶ 8:15 20 VC 063: What It Takes To Standout In A Crowded Market with Ezra Galston @ Chicago Ventures
Sep 9, 2015 bullish
Opinion
Ver Ploeg: Uber's growth mirrors early Google, justifying its valuation
“You know, I haven't seen their financials, but, you know, I've talked to their investors who have, and, you know, they say things like, you know, it's financials are like the early days of Google, that, you know, it really is growing that Stratospherically, an…”
Eric Ver Ploeg Sep 9, 2015 ▶ 13:05 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital
Nov 18, 2015 positive
Disclosure
Founder Collective's small Uber seed check would move the dial for anyone
“Yeah, so, ok, so we are, you know, as investors in Uber, and we didn't write a very big check, I think that current value alone of that small check would be very attractive to any venture fund of any size, even though our check that we started with was small, …”
Eric Paley Nov 18, 2015 ▶ 15:14 20 VC 089: Eric Paley @ Founder Collective on Outliers, Inspirational Founders and Pro Rata
Nov 18, 2015 neutral
What-if
Following on in every Uber round wouldn't double Founder Collective's returns
“If we had invested in every single round we still wouldn't, I don't think, come close to doubling what our current value is.”
Eric Paley Nov 18, 2015 ▶ 18:05 20 VC 089: Eric Paley @ Founder Collective on Outliers, Inspirational Founders and Pro Rata
Nov 20, 2015 negative
Insight
Mitra: Competing against market giants like Uber without massive capital is wasteful
“If you are trying to compete with Uber without a war chest, you're wasting people's money and your own time.”
Ayan Mitra Nov 20, 2015 ▶ 21:01 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk
Dec 28, 2015 positive
Assertion Supported
Wertz: Uber seeded supply by paying idle drivers in new cities
“Uber has done a very good job whenever they launch a city to initially pay their drivers to kind of drive around idle just to have inventory and be quick to pick up the next passenger once there's an order coming in.”
Boris Wertz Dec 28, 2015 ▶ 16:55 20 VC: The Ultimate Guide To Marketplaces with Boris Wertz, Founding Partner @ Version One Ventures
Dec 28, 2015 bearish
Opinion
Wertz: On-demand 'Uber for X' startup business models are overhyped
“As much as we're excited about on demand I think it's also a little bit overhyped. At some stage, you know, kind of people said kind of, I'm going to create the Uber for X, for vertical X. So there was a lot of this on demand for here, Uber for X et cetera. I …”
Boris Wertz Dec 28, 2015 ▶ 25:08 20 VC: The Ultimate Guide To Marketplaces with Boris Wertz, Founding Partner @ Version One Ventures
Jan 11, 2016 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
West Coast tech hubs in NYC risk stifling local giants
“All the big companies from the West Coast have set up product offices here over the past five years, and I think that that might on one hand prevent the emergence of a standalone New York A monster, but it also brings more talent here, and so you've seen what …”
David Tisch Jan 11, 2016 ▶ 6:53 20 VC: David Tisch @ Box Group on The Future of Consumer Mobile, Developing Pattern Recognition and FOMO
Feb 22, 2016 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tim Draper: Bitcoin and blockchain will disrupt venture capital like Uber
“All of these things, Bitcoin, the blockchain, there are going to be new technologies applied to venture capital just the way file sharing was applied to the music industry, or Uber was applied to the taxi industry. I think venture capital is going to be change…”
Tim Draper Feb 22, 2016 ▶ 5:45 20VC: Tim Draper on Investing In Tesla, The Best Pitch He Has Ever Seen & The Evolution of Venture and Startups
Mar 2, 2016 neutral
Insight
Breakout consumer tech success is 80% luck and timing
“Number 10, which unfortunately you and I have very little control over, is luck and timing. And that's about 80%, right? You have to do all these amazing things, have the right vision, have the right team, have the right culture, have the right marketing, you …”
Jim Scheinman Mar 2, 2016 ▶ 16:18 20VC: Building a Game Changing Consumer Startup and Hunting His 4th Unicorn with Jim Scheinman @ Maven Ventures
Mar 11, 2016 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
De Masi: Uber and Airbnb are burning massive cash defending network effects
“Other than Uber and Airbnb, I can't think of you with the same sort of network effects. And you can see how much money it's taking them to defend that. I mean, even the private company info that's leaked there is they're all hosing through cash.”
Niccolo De Masi Mar 11, 2016 ▶ 16:12 20VC: Niccolo De Masi on The Bursting Of The Tech Bubble and What It Takes To Be A Celebrity Partner with Glu Mobile
Mar 18, 2016 bullish
Insight
Mehta: Messaging is the best transactional interface for infrequently used services
“Our thesis on that is that for infrequently used services, messaging is the best interface. So what I mean by that is that if you use Uber every day, you would take the pain to download an app, learn an interface, and use it. You know, the other services for t…”
Puneet Mehta Mar 18, 2016 ▶ 14:28 Pre-YC Demo Day: Msg.ai's Puneet Mehta on The Rise of AI, The Potential For Messaging and Life As A Current YC Startup
Mar 21, 2016 neutral
Disclosure
Uber's 2010 seed funding round was not overly competitive
“It wasn't, no, it wasn't a terribly competitive round. I don't think, I mean, it was a real negotiation around it, and there were a few other people around the table. You know, I don't think that, you know, it wasn't one of these crazy, I mean, this was You kn…”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 11:51 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Mar 21, 2016 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Ryan Graves built Uber's operational core and expansion playbook
“In Ryan's case, it turned out to be true. I mean, he, he's an amazing guy. And, you know, if you look at You know, the impact that he's had on Uber and the culture there and, you know, how they, you know, kind of started, you know, going from city to city and …”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 7:40 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Mar 21, 2016 neutral
Disclosure
First Round will not declare Uber a win until cash is returned
“I mean, my ultimate goal is to, you know, take money from my investors and invest it in companies and return multiples on that one. I haven't done that. Right. And so until that happens, I don't think I don't even call it a success right now. Come on. It's a m…”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 12:47 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Mar 21, 2016 bullish
Insight
Standard VC market size analysis failed to predict Uber's potential
“The market analysis that, that a lot of people were using was the wrong market analysis, because even though there was an actual car and it was black and it pulled up and it picked you up, this was not the black car market. This was something very, very differ…”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 8:45 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Mar 21, 2016 neutral
Insight
VCs passed on Uber due to a small market and unknown CEO
“A lot of the reasons that people didn't invest were one, at the time it was an unknown guy, Ryan Graves running the company and two, It was seen as not a very big market.”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 7:15 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Mar 21, 2016 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
No seed investor predicted Uber's ultimate scale except its founders
“Anybody that says that they did, other than, you know, Travis and Ryan, who actually did kind of have that vision early on would be lying to you.”
Rob Hayes Mar 21, 2016 ▶ 6:44 Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
Apr 8, 2016
Opinion
Biyani: Uber and Amazon have far weaker network effects than Facebook
“Uber certainly has some, and Amazon has some, but they're not nearly as strong as the network effects of, say, a Facebook.”
Gagan Biyani Apr 8, 2016 ▶ 7:52 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant
Apr 8, 2016 positive
Opinion
Biyani: Uber expanded more responsibly than Lyft in the early days
“I would say that Uber was a little bit more responsible in their growth than Lyft was, frankly.”
Gagan Biyani Apr 8, 2016 ▶ 9:13 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant
Apr 11, 2016
Disclosure
Felicis passed on investing in Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest
“Passed on Uber, passed on Airbnb, passed on Pinterest.”
Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 24:31 20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
Jun 27, 2016 negative
Insight
Cohen: Hot startup deals often turn out to fail
“But you know, it turns out that the hot deal, something I've learned is, is often the one that doesn't work. And when you see Uber for the first time, or you see, you know, a company that ultimately didn't do well, you're just as excited about both of them.”
David Cohen Jun 27, 2016 ▶ 9:28 20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid
Jun 27, 2016 positive
Disclosure
David Cohen: Twilio and Uber were Fund 1's first and fourth investments
“The first investment I made was in a company called Twilio. Fourth investment I made was in a company called Uber.”
David Cohen Jun 27, 2016 ▶ 5:46 20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid
Jun 27, 2016
Disclosure
David Cohen invested $50k in Uber after asking for a $100k allocation
“And I said, I was in sitting on that bar stool. I think I asked for a 100,000 dollars. And, you know, cause at the time I think that was the sort of up leveling that we were trying to do in that fund. And I got 50. It's fine. I took 50.”
David Cohen Jun 27, 2016 ▶ 20:31 20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid
Jul 8, 2016 negative
Insight
Mycroft: Copying successful business models into new verticals leads to failure
“I think that any entrepreneur, any starting company that is trying to simply apply what was a successful business model in a different space to their new vertical is setting themselves up for failure.”
Frank Mycroft Jul 8, 2016 ▶ 7:02 20VC: When To Transition From Growth to Profitability & The KPI's of The On Demand Economy with Frank Mycroft @ Booster Fuels
Jul 15, 2016 negative
Opinion
Kyle Hill: HomeHero is not the Uber for caregiving
“Hell no, we're not the Uber for caregiving, and I'll tell you why.”
Kyle Hill Jul 15, 2016 ▶ 6:39 20VC: Why Every Employee Should Re-Apply For Their Job Every Year & The Strategies To Prepare For A Successful Fundraise with Kyle Hill, Founder & CEO @ HomeHero
Jul 15, 2016 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kyle Hill: Homogeneous marketplace workers will eventually be replaced by robots
“I look at those and no offense to any of those companies, but you could probably replace those workers with robots.”
Kyle Hill Jul 15, 2016 ▶ 7:09 20VC: Why Every Employee Should Re-Apply For Their Job Every Year & The Strategies To Prepare For A Successful Fundraise with Kyle Hill, Founder & CEO @ HomeHero
Jul 27, 2016 neutral
Opinion
Flynn: Messaging platforms suit peer communication over single-player utility tasks
“The one use case that I find more compelling, at least in the near term, is around these applications that are really native to the communication experience, right? It's not booking a taxi or booking an Uber that I think is native to that experience, but it's …”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 18:21 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Aug 15, 2016 negative
Disclosure
McClure passed on investing in Uber multiple times, starting at seed
“Clearly Uber was the deal that I totally fucked up. Travis gave me the opportunity to invest in June of... The reality is I didn't invest multiple times, not just in the seed realm, so it's probably my mistake multiple times over.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 23:30 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Sep 14, 2016
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sarver interviewed with Travis Kalanick at 11 PM during Uber's early days
“I've been interviewing with Travis in kind of 2011 for a product role there. And I remember my interviews being at 11 p.m. At night. This is when they were probably, you know, less than a hundred people. 11 p.m. At night. The office is full. And Travis, my int…”
Ryan Sarver Sep 14, 2016 ▶ 8:47 20VC: Do VC's Really Hustle Enough? The Takeaways From Watching Twitter Scale From 30 to 2,500 & Why Chris Sacca Is Like Yoda with Ryan Sarver, Partner @ Redpoint
Nov 7, 2016 negative
Disclosure
Caldbeck: Passing on Uber at 10 employees was my biggest miss
“My biggest miss far and away was Uber. Far and away. I mean, I met Ryan when the company was 10 people, and I just, I didn't get how people could afford to be paying 50 dollars for rides that were, you know, eight, 10 blocks, and at that point, there was no no…”
Justin Caldbeck Nov 7, 2016 ▶ 21:42 20VC: Binary's Justin Caldbeck on Specialisation Being Key To Success In VC, The Biggest Problem In VC Today and Why The Future Is A Moneyless Barter Economy
Nov 9, 2016
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Future data ownership will be a hybrid favoring consumer control
“I think reality will be that data will remain proprietary to a certain extent. You know, you have entire ecosystems around Google and Uber and Facebook where they're effectively AI companies leveraging the large data sets, but you'll also see this push from co…”
Rudina Seseri Nov 9, 2016 ▶ 7:39 20VC: Who Will Own The Data? Is There An Incumbency Advantage in AI? When Will Artificial Super Intelligence Come To The Forefront with Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Director @ Glasswing Ventures
Nov 14, 2016 positive
Assertion Supported
Marini: Uber and Lyft valuations perfectly illustrate the 90/10 market value rule
“If you were an angel in Lyft, you're still very happy if they're worth, you know, roughly five billion. But you really want to be an Uber who's worth over sixty billion. Right. And that math actually, you know, kind of works out to that kind of 85, 10, and fiv…”
Rick Marini Nov 14, 2016 ▶ 12:38 20VC: Rick Marini on Lessons Leant From Naval Ravikant, Why You Need To Make 30 Investments Before You Know What You Are Doing & Why You Have To Earn The Right To Good Dealflow
Nov 25, 2016 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Srinivasan predicts Uber and Airbnb will become multi-hundred billion dollar companies
“I think it's quite possible that those become multi-hundred billion dollar companies.”
Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 9:43 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves
Nov 25, 2016 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srinivasan: Uber is a more closely regulated marketplace than taxi medallion systems
“Uber is a more closely regulated marketplace than the taxi medallion system. It's harder to abuse it. Right. It's actually better at achieving the aims of the early twint century progressives than this antiquated system. Right. So it's not deregulated. It's re…”
Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 20:49 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves
Nov 25, 2016 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srinivasan: Uber and Airbnb have created one trillion dollars in societal value
“The rest of it is probably on the order of a trillion dollars in value that's being created if you were to compare it to what happened before.”
Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 12:31 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves
Nov 30, 2016 positive
Disclosure
Farmer: SignalFire operates more like Uber than a database like Mattermark
“We're using technology to enable discovery, competitive intelligence, contextualization, collaboration, and ultimately support of our portfolio companies. So, so we look more like Uber than we look like Mattermark in that sense.”
Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 9:31 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire
Dec 19, 2016 negative
Disclosure
Lynn: Passed on early Uber investment pitch from Travis Kalanick
“The biggest miss was Uber and Travis Kalanick was actually in my office with Talking about his angel portfolio years ago, we both had a healthcare IT company. He was in Cario and I was in practice fusion. And I brought him in to talk about, you know, how we ca…”
Rebecca Lynn Dec 19, 2016 ▶ 25:29 20VC: Learnings From Mary Meeker & Larry Summers, Missing Out On Uber & The Changing World of VC with Canvas Partner, Rebecca Lynn
Jan 13, 2017 negative
Insight
Nelson: Simple chatbots provide worse UX than app buttons like Uber
“And unfortunately, bots today are not sophisticated. They don't understand nuance or complexity. And so the application for these bots tends to be things that are really, really simple. But of course, it's easier for me to click the Uber app, right, and get an…”
Maren Nelson Jan 13, 2017 ▶ 10:01 20VC: Building An AI Company For The Long Term? How Humans & Machine Learning Can Work Together? What Applications Are The Conversational Interface Best Suited To with Maran Nelson, Founder & CEO @ Clara Labs
Feb 27, 2017 bullish
Prediction Partly held up
Belsky: Uber and Lyft's data and route optimization will be their moat
“Because I think that the data that is being collected and the optimization of the routes based on the data is a moat, so to speak. And I think a lot of the technology for managing these dispatch systems and autonomous vehicles will be created by those companie…”
Scott Belsky Feb 27, 2017 ▶ 18:40 20VC: Benchmark's Scott Belsky on What Makes Truly The Best VCs? Why Entrepreneurs Must Focus on 'The First Mile' & The Key Ingredients To The Perfect Onboarding Process
Apr 5, 2017 bearish
Opinion
Breinlinger: Uber lacks lock-in because drivers routinely switch to Lyft
“Yeah, it's a big challenge for them. You know, I've certainly heard that Lyft is gaining market share, and that is a big problem for them, that almost, you walk around San Francisco, and every car has two stickers on it, One Uber and one Lyft. And so, it's rea…”
Josh Breinlinger Apr 5, 2017 ▶ 18:59 20VC: Why Spray & Pray Investing Is Wrong, Why Data-Informed VC Beats Data Driven VC & What To Look For When Investing In A Marketplace with Josh Breinlinger, Managing Director @ Jackson Square Ventures
Apr 5, 2017 negative
Insight
Breinlinger: On-demand 'Uber for locksmiths' models are terrible marketplace ideas
“Where people run into mistakes is where they might try to do the Uber for locksmiths. To me, that's just a terrible market because you just don't use locksmiths very often.”
Josh Breinlinger Apr 5, 2017 ▶ 14:41 20VC: Why Spray & Pray Investing Is Wrong, Why Data-Informed VC Beats Data Driven VC & What To Look For When Investing In A Marketplace with Josh Breinlinger, Managing Director @ Jackson Square Ventures
May 3, 2017 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Real estate tech represents $250B+ in public and private market value
“So if you just look at, you know, two of the three largest unicorns today are real estate and hospitality tech. We work in Airbnb after Uber. And then beyond them, there's another two hundred and fifty billion of real estate and hospitality tech companies out …”
Brendan Wallace May 3, 2017 ▶ 5:13 20VC: How LPs Can Add Strategic Value To Portfolio Companies & Why Real Estate Is On Every Whiteboard In Silicon Valley with Brendan Wallace, Co-Founder @ Fifth Wall
May 22, 2017 positive
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Kevin Hartz's Angel Portfolio Includes Airbnb, Uber, and Pinterest
“Kevin's also a prolific angel investor, with one of the most successful angel portfolios in the valley, with the likes of Airbnb, Uber, PayPal, Pinterest, and Yammer, all in Kevin's personal angel portfolio.”
Harry Stebbings May 22, 2017 ▶ 1:02 20VC: Founders Fund's Kevin Hartz on Why Investing In Silicon Valley Is Broken & Why Fearlessness Is What Makes The Truly Great Investors
May 26, 2017 neutral
Insight
Sean Rad says top tech companies begin as passion projects, not missions
“Evan Spiegel in, in starting Snapchat or Uber and Twitter and all these companies that tend to have an impact on society. Or Facebook, they start out as little passion projects. They don't start out as missions to kind of change the world.”
Sean Rad May 26, 2017 ▶ 8:03 20VC: Tinder's Sean Rad on Why Humility Is The Key Trait For Founders To Have, Why Today's Incumbents Are Stronger Than Any Before Them & How Leaders Need To Scale With The Scaling Of Their Company
Jun 12, 2017 bullish
Assertion Supported
Kevin Rose: GV deployed its entire $254M annual fund into Uber
“I definitely know that largest GVs ever done is Uber, where it was two hundred and fifty four million, I believe. So it was our entire fund into one of their rounds.”
Kevin Rose Jun 12, 2017 ▶ 6:55 20VC: Kevin Rose on Putting The Entire Fund Into Uber, The Future For Mobile & Whether Angels Should Have Super Pro-Rata Rights?
Aug 14, 2017 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter Could Be Profitable by Cutting Spend 10%
“Today, Uber or Airbnb want to be profitable, or Twitter wants to be massively profitable. If they were to cut their spending 10, 20%, all of a sudden those companies look massively profitable. The only reason they're losing money is because they've chosen to c…”
Jason Calacanis Aug 14, 2017 ▶ 11:47 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
Aug 14, 2017
Assertion Supported
Calacanis Invested in Uber as a Sequoia Scout
“Jason's also previously been a scout for Sequoia Capital, where he made the original Uber investment.”
Harry Stebbings Aug 14, 2017 ▶ 0:39 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
Sep 1, 2017 negative
Opinion
Tim Harris: Uber is a business model innovation, not a tech company
“So the venture capitalists have been investing in mostly business model innovations as a distinction from technology innovations, and those are things like, when you think about it, Uber isn't really a tech company, right? They build a, an app, so they use tec…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 3:45 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Nov 29, 2017 bearish
What-if
Waxman: Selling late-stage Uber stakes on secondaries makes sense to reallocate capital
“I think that there probably are some sensible situations that probably if I were an Uber now, not to pick on them, I would be ready to be liquid and figure that the, you know, maybe the next billion dollars I could catch somewhere else.”
David Waxman Nov 29, 2017 ▶ 19:11 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
Nov 29, 2017
Insight
Waxman: Analytical TAM models systematically miss startups that fundamentally change markets
“And I just think if you study the market, like any way you analytically go at that market, when you see an Uber kind of pitch, you're going to miss it if what the company does is change the market.”
David Waxman Nov 29, 2017 ▶ 8:06 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
Nov 29, 2017 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Waxman: No early Uber investor imagined it growing beyond black car industry
“I doubt that if you went back, and maybe some are revising history, I don't know, but I doubt if you went back to any of the investors who looked at Uber, I doubt any of them imagined that it could be bigger than the black car industry. And maybe a few imagine…”
David Waxman Nov 29, 2017 ▶ 7:43 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
Dec 11, 2017
Insight
Carlson-Wee: Companies launching tokens must stop extracting direct network revenue
“The second thing is that if you are launching a token and you're a private company, you should be ready to stop extracting any revenue from your network. So however you were extracting revenue from the network, whether this was advertising or paid subscription…”
Olaf Carlson Wee Dec 11, 2017 ▶ 15:51 20VC: Inside The World's Leading Crypto Fund, The Future Exit Environment for Crypto Assets & The Beauty Of Benevolent Dictatorship with Olaf Carlson-Wee, Founder @ Polychain Capital
Jan 8, 2018 positive
Assertion Supported
Tung: Uber turned $1B–$2B investment in China into $7B Didi stake
“They put in about a billion to two in, and they have a stake that's worth seven billion.”
Hans Tung Jan 8, 2018 ▶ 7:16 20VC: Why This Is Just The Start for Consumer Mobile, 3 Lessons China Taught About How To Invest Better In The US & How To Think About The Opportunity Cost of Capital Deployment with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
Mar 5, 2018
Assertion Supported
Uber's growth team drove Indian expansion by introducing cash payments
“There's a very good example in Uber where, you know, the whole premise was it's a cashless transaction app. And they went to India, which has no credit cards. And the growth team actually ran an experiment by turning on cash to figure out how much it helped wi…”
Anu Hariharan Mar 5, 2018 ▶ 22:36 20VC: Why, How and When To Think About Growth Teams, The Right Way To Think About Network Effects & Scaling from Phase 1 To Phase 2 of Startup Life with Anu Hariharan, Partner @ YC Continuity Fund
Mar 5, 2018 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber and Lyft have low user barriers to exit during surge pricing
“Now play the same thing on Uber and Lyft. I find the barrier to exit for the user on Uber or Lyft to be really low because I'm not the one choosing the driver. So if I'm on Uber today, and if the prices are surging, I'm going to check lift automatically, and a…”
Anu Hariharan Mar 5, 2018 ▶ 14:32 20VC: Why, How and When To Think About Growth Teams, The Right Way To Think About Network Effects & Scaling from Phase 1 To Phase 2 of Startup Life with Anu Hariharan, Partner @ YC Continuity Fund
May 21, 2018
Insight
The biggest sin in venture investing is missing outlier winners
“The biggest sin is missing that 10% deal that's the huge winner, right? Because no amount of mediocre kind of deals can make up for missing Uber or whatever, Zoom or Arista or whatever you want to say. No amount of things can make up for missing something that…”
Dan Scheinman May 21, 2018 ▶ 21:20 20VC: Why The Days of Spray and Pray at Seed Are Over, How To Compete In A World of Sequoia Seed Funds & Why Price Doesn't Matter with Dan Scheinman, Angel Investor @ Zoom & Arista Networks
Jun 4, 2018 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Vassallo: Intelligent in-car video will significantly impact driver insurance rates
“Uber Lyft drivers having something like this in their car, its impact on insurance rates is going to be important.”
Trae Vassallo Jun 4, 2018 ▶ 29:39 20VC: What John Doerr Taught Me About Great Investing, Why Not All A Rounds Are Post-Traction and Why Despite Overfunding, There Is Still Gaps In Venture Financing with Trae Vassallo, Founding Partner @ Defy.vc
Jun 25, 2018 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Motschwiller: Series A rounds for top consumer decacorns occurred pre-2012
“You look at the series A Funding times of the consumer decacorns that are out there, the Ubers, the Lyfts, the Airbnbs, the Snaps, the Pinterest, the Spotifys, those series A's were all done pre-二零 12.”
Max Motschwiller Jun 25, 2018 ▶ 26:28 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital
Sep 4, 2018 negative
Insight
Eggers: Maintaining 15% ownership in capital-intensive startups is nearly impossible
“Yeah, I think that it depends on some of these projects that require a ton of capital. It's really hard to get 15 or 20% of them over time. You look at the Ubers of the world, and some of the guys who are, you know, the electric bike companies and scooter comp…”
Barry Eggers Sep 4, 2018 ▶ 10:48 20VC: What It Takes To Found and Scale A Global Venture Firm Like Lightspeed, 3 Ways Firms Do Not Succeed in Generational Transition & What Makes The Truly Special Board Members Like Jim Goetz with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partn
Sep 17, 2018
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Frankel: Nobody could have predicted Uber's market size at seed stage
“Uber, which Eric participated in at the get-go, looked like a better way of calling limos. No one in their mind could have known how big that was going to be.”
David Frankel Sep 17, 2018 ▶ 14:01 20VC: Lessons Learned Scaling PillPack from Seed to Amazon Acquisition, Why Investors Should Spend More Time Assessing Human Capital Risk Taken by Founders & The Right Way To Think About Capital Efficiency in Scaling with David Frankel, Managing Partner @
Sep 24, 2018
Assertion Supported
Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon all launched in seemingly small niche markets
“All of those companies look small in the beginning, you know, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, like the lists, you know, even Uber in the beginning, they all looked like they were going after something small in the beginning, Amazon just doing books.”
Sarah Tavel Sep 24, 2018 ▶ 13:26 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Investing Success Lies In Small Markets Adjacent To Very Large Ones, Why You Have To Be Judicious On When To Pay Up vs Be More Price Sensitive & Why Crypto Investing Is Like The Early Days of AdTech Investing
Oct 15, 2018 neutral
Opinion
Phin Barnes: Entry Price Matters Even in Outlier Investments Like Uber
“The basic math is even if you invest in Uber at a five million dollar post versus a fifteen million dollar post, the return that you generate is three X, like the basic math still holds. And so while it's an Epic investment, if you invested in a fifteen millio…”
Phin Barnes Oct 15, 2018 ▶ 19:45 20VC: First Round's Phin Barnes on How The Best Founders Optimize for Learning Per Dollar Spent, What Makes A Truly Special Founder/VC Relationship and Why Pattern Recognition is Another Term For Intellectual Laziness
Nov 12, 2018 neutral
Insight
Polovets: Overpaying across a seed portfolio cuts overall fund returns in half
“I do believe price is important. I think everybody talks about if you invest in Uber, then the seed price doesn't matter. And I think if you invest in Uber, that's true. The seed price doesn't matter. But I think the challenge is that most investors think most…”
Leo Polovets Nov 12, 2018 ▶ 24:03 20VC: Why Warm Intros Are Mostly Dumb, Why Ownership is Built On First Check and 4 Crucial Elements To Make Cold Inbound Attractive with Leo Polovets, General Partner @ Susa Ventures
Feb 11, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: David Cohen's portfolio companies have created over $80B in value
“To date, David has backed hundreds of startups, including the likes of, check this out, Uber, SendGrid, Twilio, ClassPass, PillPack, and many more. In total, these investments have gone on to create more than eighty billion dollars in value”
Harry Stebbings Feb 11, 2019 ▶ 0:30 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room
Jun 10, 2019 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Kupor: Uber and Lyft expanded SF taxi market from $100M to $1.5B
“At the time, Lyft and Uber were raising kind of their first couple rounds of financing. I think the taxi market in the, in San Francisco was about a hundred million dollars annually. And I think today, the combined, the two of them do north of a billion and a …”
Scott Kupor Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 11:32 20VC: a16z's Scott Kupor on The Biggest Learnings From Scaling a16z from $300m to $7Bn AUM, The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching VCs & Why VC Is Simply A Customer Service Business
Jun 14, 2019 negative
Disclosure
Lime deliberately rejected Uber's playbook of launching without prior city approval
“When we started a company that the proven formula, which is a uncommon common practice, That idea to get into a city. Well, you know Uber established it, right? You just go to the city, you launch the service, and talk about it with the city after that. And we…”
Brad Bao Jun 14, 2019 ▶ 26:40 20VC: Lime CEO Brad Bao on How Lime Assess The Micro-Mobility Landscape and Competition Today, What It Takes To Launch and Win A New City & Why Lime Have Spent $0 on Marketing To Date
Jun 24, 2019 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Gurley: Uber in San Francisco was already 10x the local taxi market
“And at the moment he wrote it, the size of Uber in San Francisco was already 10 X the taxi and black car market.”
Bill Gurley Jun 24, 2019 ▶ 12:51 20VC: Benchmark's Bill Gurley on 5 Traits Benchmark Look For When Adding To The Partnership, Why The Abundance of Capital Is Today's Biggest Challenge in VC & The Right Way To Think About Market Size When Assessing Opportunities
Sep 6, 2019 positive
Disclosure
Alex Wang: Scale AI counts OpenAI, Waymo, Uber, and Lyft as clients
“We at scale, we work with Very innovative companies are actually using AI and machine learning and deep learning in particular. So we work with folks like OpenAI and Waymo and Uber and Lyft and all these folks.”
Alex Wang Sep 6, 2019 ▶ 9:22 20VC: Scale Founder Alex Wang on How To Hire Incredible Talent Before You Are A Hot Company, Why Beating Competition Is Not As Clear Cut As Investors Believe & Why AI Is Under-Hyped Today In Terms of Total Impact
Nov 1, 2019
Insight
Vlad Magdalin: Contractual board control is an illusion as startups scale
“The more a company scales, all that stuff gets away from you anyway, even if on paper you own more of the company. I mean, you see the stuff that we work, you see like Travis having to leave Uber. Even though they technically legally had control, like what rea…”
Vlad Magdalin Nov 1, 2019 ▶ 29:00 20VC: Webflow's Vlad Magdalin on The Journey To Breakeven and Raising A Monster $72m Series A, The Single Most Important Question To Ask When Determining Which Investor To Select & The Challenges of Founders Angel Investing
Nov 11, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cheap, unlimited capital allowed Uber and Lyft to take bigger risks
“So Uber and Lyft basically had an infinite financing pool, and they had a very cheap cost of capital. Therefore, they were able to experiment more and push themselves more out on the risk curve.”
Rick Heitzmann Nov 11, 2019 ▶ 8:50 20VC: Firstmark's Rick Heitzmann on The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, His Biggest Learnings From The Pinterest Board, 2 Things VCs Can Do To Prepare Their Companies For The Downturn and Why Now Is A Good Time to Be Contrarian and Invest In Consumer
Nov 18, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fontana: AngelList discovered Uber and Opendoor before other investors
“And at AngelList, we found companies like Ubers, Imogen, and Opendoor before anyone else, or before many others.”
Ash Fontana Nov 18, 2019 ▶ 6:02 20VC: Ash Fontana on The 5 Core Characteristics That Make Data Valuable, What VCs Can Learn From Italian Craftsmen and Howard Marks & The Importance of Vertical Integration In Scaling Today
Jan 6, 2020 positive
Assertion Supported
Jain: Uber estimated a $4.2B TAM initially, now handles nearly $60B
“Uber, of course, you've seen the first deck, right, talks about the TAM being 4.2 billion dollars. And they now do almost sixty billion dollars in bookings.”
Gaurav Jain Jan 6, 2020 ▶ 29:38 20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital
Mar 27, 2020 positive
Disclosure
Andreessen Horowitz's Andrew Chen gives Hipcamp operational feedback on landing pages
“Andrew Chen, who joined our board six months ago in particular, has been really helpful, like getting into the data with us, which has been fun. He just has that operational experience from Uber, and it's fun to like get him in there and have him actually prov…”
Alyssa Ravasio Mar 27, 2020 ▶ 22:14 20VC: How To Solve The Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? How Important Is Differentiated Supply? How To Prevent Leakage? How to Create Marketplace Defensibility and more with Alyssa Ravasio, Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp
Mar 27, 2020 positive
Disclosure
Ravasio: Hipcamp's Bay Area usage is driven by a two-to-three-hour regional radius
“One is that we have a really strong regional network effect. So this is kind of like an Uber or a Lyft, where, for example, here in the Bay Area, we have a lot of people who love and use the platform, and they tend to camp And stay with us really in called a t…”
Alyssa Ravasio Mar 27, 2020 ▶ 12:49 20VC: How To Solve The Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? How Important Is Differentiated Supply? How To Prevent Leakage? How to Create Marketplace Defensibility and more with Alyssa Ravasio, Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp
Apr 20, 2020
Disclosure
Suster passed on Uber and Box due to personal biases
“The obvious example, Harry, is Uber, where having lived in London and seen the taxi lobby and how strong the taxi lobby was in London, that clouded my vision for what was possible. Having lived in Los Angeles and seeing how few people ever use taxis, that clou…”
Mark Suster Apr 20, 2020 ▶ 34:13 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds
May 4, 2020 neutral
Opinion
Cuban: The same qualities built Uber and got Travis Kalanick ousted
“So on one hand, those qualities for Travis are what built Uber. On the other hand, those qualities for Travis are what got him kicked out of Uber.”
Mark Cuban May 4, 2020 ▶ 27:28 20VC: Mark Cuban on His Relationship To Wealth and Risk, Why Coming Out of The Pandemic Will Be The Best Time In The History of Mankind To Start A Business & Why Silicon Valley Investors Are Like Old Hollywood
May 4, 2020 negative
Disclosure
Cuban passed on Uber's seed round after negotiating valuation with Travis Kalanick
“And so I negotiated on valuation because I knew it was a great idea. I just didn't realize how big it would be going back to some of the earlier questions. You asked me, and so I said, here's what I would do, and he never came back to me, which pissed me off, …”
Mark Cuban May 4, 2020 ▶ 27:09 20VC: Mark Cuban on His Relationship To Wealth and Risk, Why Coming Out of The Pandemic Will Be The Best Time In The History of Mankind To Start A Business & Why Silicon Valley Investors Are Like Old Hollywood
May 4, 2020 negative
What-if
Cuban claims Uber and Twitter would be more successful outside Silicon Valley
“I think if you take some of the companies, Twitter, or almost any of them, Uber in particular, Lyft, and you move those to Kansas City, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New York, they would have been so much more successful, so much more quickly.”
Mark Cuban May 4, 2020 ▶ 17:18 20VC: Mark Cuban on His Relationship To Wealth and Risk, Why Coming Out of The Pandemic Will Be The Best Time In The History of Mankind To Start A Business & Why Silicon Valley Investors Are Like Old Hollywood
May 11, 2020
What-if
Maples: Lyft and Uber could not exist before the iPhone 3GS
“So before the iPhone three GS, you could have had the idea for Lyft and Uber. It wouldn't have mattered because you wouldn't have been able to connect drivers and riders accurately on a map.”
Mike Maples May 11, 2020 ▶ 11:49 20VC: Floodgate's Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework
May 18, 2020 neutral
Insight
Helmer: Uber's scale density power is local and non-transferable globally
“So for example, if you look at Uber's source of power that they might have versus, for example, an upstart, it would be the scale density, physical scale, regional scale density. In a particular region like the Bay Area, if they have enough riders and enough c…”
Hamilton Helmer May 18, 2020 ▶ 34:17 20VC: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: Deconstructing Economies of Scale, How To Assess True Market Size, Assessing Risk vs Uncertainty, What "Brand As Power" Really Means with Hamilton Helmer, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Offi
Sep 18, 2020 negative
Opinion
Allred: Lambda School Erred by Adopting Uber's Decentralized Operational Model
“But I think we picked the wrong one. We went with the Uber model. And the educational model is so sensitive to changes and so sensitive to experience that you can't Really get away with that.”
Austen Allred Sep 18, 2020 ▶ 17:37 20VC: Lambda School Founder, Austen Allred on How To Assess Your Relationship To Risk and Money, Why San Francisco Is A Case Study For The Greatest Squandering of Wealth in History & Why Complexity Increases Exponentially with Scale
Oct 19, 2020 positive
Insight
Cyan Banister: Uber could not build a world-changing company by being nice
“They pushed people to move fast, break things, and challenge all regulations, etc., but in order to be Literally a world-changing company, they had to do that, and they had to have those behaviors. They weren't going to be able to do it by being nice all the t…”
Cyan Banister Oct 19, 2020 ▶ 17:05 20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
Oct 19, 2020 neutral
Opinion
Cyan Banister: Lyft benefited from Uber doing the regulatory fist-fighting
“So Lyft has benefited from Uber, and Uber definitely helped pave the way for Lyft to exist. So Lyft had the luxury, if you will, of being the nice company with the pink colors and the fist bumping. So does that make them a better company? No. It was a duopoly,…”
Cyan Banister Oct 19, 2020 ▶ 17:19 20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
Oct 19, 2020 bullish
Disclosure
Cyan Banister says Uber is by far her highest-returning investment
“Well, that'd be Uber by far.”
Cyan Banister Oct 19, 2020 ▶ 45:05 20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
Nov 9, 2020 bullish
Disclosure
TPG invested in Uber's Series D at a $3B valuation
“And one of the very first investments we did was an investment into Uber's series D round. When it was valued at, you know, at the time felt like a very rich price of three billion dollars.”
Derek Zanutto Nov 9, 2020 ▶ 5:38 20VC: Lessons from Investing in Uber and Airbnb, How To Think Through Bundling vs Unbundling, Late Stage Funds Moving Earlier, Early Stage Funds Moving Later& The Mechanics of Venture That Founders Should Know with Derek Zanutto, General Partner @ Capital
Apr 29, 2021 positive
Disclosure
First Round Capital's Second Fund Included Uber, Square, and Roblox
“It turns out that fund had Uber and Square and Roblox in it.”
Chris Fralic Apr 29, 2021 ▶ 9:01 20VC: The Roblox Memo: First Round's Chris Fralic on The 17 Year Journey to Build a $41BN Market Cap Company, Why It Is Way Harder To Increase Ownership Across Rounds Today & What Happens Post SPACMania
Apr 29, 2021 neutral
Disclosure
Chris Fralic: First Round took secondary liquidity in Uber and Roblox early
“If you look at our investments in our two most notable returns with Uber and with Roblox, we had taken some capital off the table along the way at various points, Which made sense and drove great returns relative to that investment, and yet what was left was s…”
Chris Fralic Apr 29, 2021 ▶ 22:28 20VC: The Roblox Memo: First Round's Chris Fralic on The 17 Year Journey to Build a $41BN Market Cap Company, Why It Is Way Harder To Increase Ownership Across Rounds Today & What Happens Post SPACMania
Aug 2, 2021 negative
Disclosure
Lazerow passed on early angel investments in Instagram and Uber in 2011
“So, my biggest misses were really as a personal investor, you know, sitting in a hotel room in 2011 with Kevin Systrom and Travis from Uber and, you know, having the opportunity, but not raising my hand and saying like, hey, I'd love to invest, right?”
Mike Lazerow Aug 2, 2021 ▶ 38:14 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them
Aug 30, 2021 positive
Opinion
Claure: SoftBank disrupted venture capital just like Uber disrupted taxi drivers
“The same way Uber disrupted the taxi drivers, we disrupted the venture capital industry. While people used to write these small checks, we suddenly showed up with a hundred billion dollars, and we disrupted the way venture capital works today, and therefore, w…”
Marcelo Claure Aug 30, 2021 ▶ 21:30 20VC: Marcelo Claure, CEO of Softbank Group International on Lessons From Investing $1BN Per Week with Masa Son, How Softbank Could Have Up To 8 Companies Go Public in LATAM Alone Next Year & How Softbank Analyse Both Deal Pricing and Competition Today
Sep 20, 2021
Insight
Hans Tung: Venture scale requires replacing fundamental behavior, not just incumbents
“If you believe that is a substitution of gym membership and enlarging the pie, and you can argue for those that miss Uber or anything that drive sharing, it's a car ownership substitution, not just a substitution of taxi services, then the pie becomes a lot bi…”
Hans Tung Sep 20, 2021 ▶ 12:56 20VC: Investing Lessons From Rounds In Peloton and Square, Why Great Investing is Stock-Picking and Sector Penetration & The Next Decade in Venture, Is Tiger's The Right Model with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
Sep 30, 2021 negative
Opinion
Rabois: Copying Uber's distributed local market team model is a bad idea
“Second, and related to that, we built insanely dumb idea of building like a distributed team, like in local markets, which is the bad idea taken from Uber was never a good idea in the first place. It might have even been a bad idea for Uber, but it was a bad i…”
Keith Rabois Sep 30, 2021 ▶ 20:12 20VC: The Opendoor Memo: Keith Rabois on The Origins of Opendoor from a Conversation with Peter Thiel, Why Cash is Not a Competitive Moat for Startups Today and What People Misunderstand About Black Swan Events in Real Estate and How it Impacts Opendoor
Oct 11, 2021 bearish
What-if
Sacca: Uber's IPO would have gone differently without SoftBank's DoorDash funding
“Uber's IPO would have gone very differently if they hadn't funded DoorDash.”
Chris Sacca Oct 11, 2021 ▶ 1:08:46 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb
Jan 20, 2022 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Travis Kalanick was ousted after 13 senior Uber managers demanded his exit
“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter that said, dude, you've got to stay out of the company.”
Chris Sacca Jan 20, 2022 ▶ 26:01 Chris Sacca's True Unfiltered Opinion on Facebook and Softbank | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Bill Gurley presented six vetted public CFO candidates at an Uber meeting
“We were in an early Uber board meeting once, and we needed a CFO. And I kind of, I, They said, okay, we need a CFO. And I stopped and I think, okay, like who could be a CFO? And I'm thinking of like old Google people who were like director of finance and maybe…”
Chris Sacca Jan 20, 2022 ▶ 1:01:37 Chris Sacca's True Unfiltered Opinion on Facebook and Softbank | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Travis Kalanick tested Ed Baker with an Uber promo card case study
“So when Travis, the CEO of Uber was interviewing me, he actually gave me a challenge problem about Uber promo cards. And he just said, we have these promo cards. We haven't really figured out exactly how we're going to use these yet. Tell me how you would make…”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 21:42 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Partly supported
Ed Baker: Facebook and Uber growth leaders reported directly to CEO
“And in both of those cases, they had separate growth teams where the growth leader reported directly to the CEO. And these teams were structured cross-functionally.”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 15:13 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022 neutral
Disclosure
Baker: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick onboarded growth head without formal process
“So when I think back to my onboarding experience at Uber, for example, there wasn't much to it. I was basically told by our CEO, who was my manager, here are five people for you to start the growth team with. Go.”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 27:18 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022 positive
Insight
Major initiatives drive more growth than hundreds of A/B tests combined
“When I look back at my time at Uber, every year we maybe had one or two things like that that accounted for more growth than everything else combined.”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 8:55 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Supported
Ed Baker: Uber secretly ran India test against CEO orders, doubling conversion
“We decided to run a test In Hyderabad, India, where we said, let's let riders request their first ride without putting a credit card number in. In fact, we were told by our CEO not to run that test because he felt so strongly against it, but we had so much con…”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 36:16 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Supported
Ed Baker: Uber selected weekly trips as its North Star metric
“Similarly at Uber, our North Star metric, in fact, one of the first things I did when I started the growth team at Uber was said to the team, we've got to come up with our North Star metric. We decided on, instead of something like monthly active riders, We sa…”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 10:16 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Uber's rider app driver button matched all paid marketing driver signups
“By adding that little button in the rider app that said become a driver, suddenly we had as many new drivers signing up from that button as we did from all of our paid marketing efforts combined.”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 8:38 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 16, 2022
Disclosure
Baker: Uber growth team pulled weekly Thursday all-nighters for Kalanick
“And so we would have growth team meetings with him every Friday morning. We'd usually pull all nighters every Thursday night, preparing for our meeting with him on Friday morning.”
Ed Baker Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 31:20 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
Feb 23, 2022
Insight
Bill Gurley: Power-law returns make late-stage venture investors valuation-agnostic
“It's easy to become valuation agnostic to a certain extent, because you've seen, if you hit a winner, if you hit a snowflake, if you hit a Uber or whatever, it ends up being a hundred X more than where you are today, so you become indifferent.”
Bill Gurley Feb 23, 2022 ▶ 6:03 The Tiger Global Memo: From Sequoia Capital to Benchmark and Thrive: The World's Best on the Rise of Tiger Global
Mar 14, 2022
What-if
Friedberg: DoorDash succeeded because Travis Kalanick left Uber
“They do not think they would have as successful as they were if Travis was still CEO of Uber.”
David Friedberg Mar 14, 2022 ▶ 12:31 20VC: David Friedberg on The Framework for Business Value Creation, The Bifurcation in Venture Today That No One Talks About, The Impact of Interest Rate Hikes on Venture and Step by Step; How TPB Incubates, Funds and Exits The Next Generation of Companie
Mar 25, 2022
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Baker: Defying CEO to test credit-card-free signups doubled Uber's Hyderabad conversions
“We decided to run a test in Hyderabad, India, where we said, let's let riders request their first ride without putting a credit card number in. In fact, we were told by our CEO not to run that test because he felt so strongly against it, but we had so much con…”
Ed Baker Mar 25, 2022 ▶ 10:12 20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requ
Apr 4, 2022 negative
Disclosure
Thomas Tull passed on early Uber and Airbnb investments
“I had an opportunity to invest in Uber and Airbnb early. And to be honest, I completely missed the shared economy. I just thought, that's strange. You know, you would go and rent someone's room or you would, and obviously completely blew that and didn't have a…”
Thomas Tull Apr 4, 2022 ▶ 33:07 20VC: Founding Legendary Entertainment and Creating Batman, The Hangover and 300, The Importance of Luck vs Skill in Success, How Relationships to Money Change & Why Velocity is the Most Important Factor in Company Building Success with Thomas Tull
May 4, 2022
Assertion Contradicted
Sacca: Travis Kalanick was ousted by 13 Uber managers, not VCs
“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter and said, dude, you gotta stay out of the company. You know, that's really the only force that Silicon Valley leader…”
Chris Sacca May 4, 2022 ▶ 11:12 20VC: The Memo: Chris Sacca on Why We Are Breeding a Generation of Entitled Assholes, Harley Finkelstein on What Great Fatherhood Really Means, Deena Shakir on How Kids Make You a Better Investor and Anne Wojcicki on How Children Change Your Approach to R
Jul 2, 2022 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Yanisse: Checkr suffered 2019 headwinds when gig economy clients went public
“2019, you know, was starting to get some business headwinds because we grew very fast in the gig economy and with tech customers and those companies like, you know, Uber, DoorDash and others went public at those days and then started to suffer themselves. So t…”
Daniel Yanisse Jul 2, 2022 ▶ 29:42 Daniel Yanisse: Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in the Hiring Process | 20VC #903 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 15, 2022 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
Mohnot: Uber raised $25B in VC to reach a $50B enterprise value
“And you've seen it with the likes of Uber, you know, today, a fifty billion dollar enterprise value. There's twenty-five billion dollars of venture capital money that went into that company.”
Sheel Mohnot Aug 15, 2022 ▶ 31:32 Sheel Mohnot: Lessons from Investing in Flexport and Missing on Robinhood | 20VC #917 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 16, 2022 positive
Disclosure
Kanovich: Requests from Airbnb and Uber drove dLocal's expansion into payouts
“Airbnb came to us and Uber came to us and say, we want to do the opposite flow. We want to do payouts. Great. That's our product strategy. We are now going to do payouts.”
Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 9:31 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022
Assertion Supported
Emil Michael: Uber burned $100M monthly competing against Didi in China
“And we were spending A hundred million dollars a month competing there.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 26:01 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Assertion Supported
Emil Michael: Uber is among few global ride-sharing firms with net debt
“It's one of the only ride sharing the companies in the world with net debt.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 45:59 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022
What-if
Emil Michael: Uber should have forced scared early investors to take liquidity
“And so more, the thing we, I wish we did more of Uber is give more investors liquidity when they get scared. I would be like Venturex sell. Like, I'll find you someone to sell to sell, go get the second G six and the, you know, the whatever. The discovery prop…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 53:44 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Opinion
Emil Michael gives Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi an 'F' grade for performance
“He was a diplomat. He was able to get the company public, but in terms of hiring talent, innovating, and succeeding from a financial standpoint, you know, it's not, it hasn't happened. It's a, it's an F, you know.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 46:32 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022
Insight
Emil Michael: Hyper-growth startups must transition from tribes to governed civilizations
“Cause what I described companies when they're startups as tribes, And as your tribe gets bigger, you start to intersect with other tribes and you better become a civilization or the tribes are going to be at war. So you build these companies. They're actually …”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 1:12:01 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Emil Michael: Uber grew faster than any company in history, including Google
“We grew faster than any company in the world, both geographically And revenue wise, including Google.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 1:05:26 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 bearish
Prediction Partly held up
Emil Michael predicts Uber's Postmates and Careem acquisitions will be total write-downs
“I think we, instead of buying Kareem in the Middle East, Postmates, Jump Bike I think all of those will be a hundred percent write downs. Those are some of the worst acquisitions done in tech. Maybe Postmates may be the worst acquisition done tech in the last …”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 48:58 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Opinion
Emil Michael: Benchmark Capital lost its nerve ousting Travis Kalanick from Uber
“I was taken out with Travis because benchmark capital lost their nerve.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 38:57 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Emil Michael: Uber's valuation under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi trails the Nasdaq
“The company's valuation Is lower today than it was when Dara took over. And even if you account for the macro environment, the Nasdaq's still up 50%, he's down 50%.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 45:22 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Assertion Supported
Emil Michael: Uber's acquisition of Otto destroyed its relationship with Google
“I'd say that the deal that Was under my watch. I didn't like it at the time, but I, you know, it got done was Uber acquiring auto, which was the autonomous car division that that gets started out of Google guys. It was, and I didn't like it for different reaso…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 28:53 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022
Assertion Contradicted
Benchmark turned a $33M Uber investment into $10B in four years
“Bill Gurley was on our board, lost her nerve. And the reality is there's another economic principle called loss aversion, right? If you invest thirty three million dollars in Uber and it looks like ten billion four years later, ten billion on a thirty three mi…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 39:04 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 positive
Insight
Emil Michael: Loose capital cycles enabled Uber to launch Uber Eats
“For founders, it's more a good thing than a bad thing. That means that there's more capital out there. So if your business model requires more capital, you can get it. And look, people are going to say, oh my God, it's loose capital, free money, blah, blah, bl…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 56:28 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 11, 2022 negative
Disclosure
Escobari: General Atlantic passed on Uber's $2B round over market size limits
“So, one of my mistakes as an investor is Anton, my friend Anton Levy, co-president of the farm, invited me to look at Uber, the two billion dollar round, because of the international opportunity, and we went, and we met Travis, The entire black market industry…”
Martin Escobari Nov 11, 2022 ▶ 11:29 Martin Escobari: How to Invest During a Recession; Negotiation Tips; Developing Markets | 20VC #948 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 16, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Stebbings: 97% of capital invested in Uber will not return 1x
“Point being though, Jeff, like if we're just being blunt, I think I sort of start like seven, 97% of the money that's gone into Uber will not return one X, just given the quantum of money.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 16, 2023 ▶ 17:58 a16z GP Jeff Jordan: The Ultimate Guide to Two-Sided Marketplaces | 20VC #966 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2023 bearish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Stebbings: 97% of Capital Invested in Uber Will Not Return 1x
“97% of the money that's gone into Uber will not return one X, just given the quantum of money.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 24, 2023 ▶ 12:00 The Ultimate Guide for Building a Two-Sided Marketplace | a16z's Jeff Jordan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 13, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Loverro: Uber Proved Unit Economics by Highlighting Mature Cities Like NYC
“You know, Uber did this well, for instance, by showing, you know, yeah, hey, we're bleeding money left and right. But if you look at our oldest cities, these dense cities like New York, you know, the unit economics are actually fantastic.”
Tom Loverro Feb 13, 2023 ▶ 40:14 Tom Loverro: The Ultimate Startup Survival Guide for 2023 | 20VC #977 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber Burned Budget Shifting Driver Ads From Earnings to Flexibility
“We're like, great, we need to, like, shift all of our messaging away from dollars to flexibility, and we spent a ton of money on that type of messaging, and then it just burnt, right? Like, it was just, like, no one clicked, right?”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 36:20 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023
Assertion Supported
Uber Built Its Growth Team by Hiring Cross-Functional Leaders Simultaneously
“When we built growth at Uber, like we infused an entire team In one fell swoop, right? Like, and Ed was hired, and he hired myself, a head of product, a head of engineering, a head of design head of analytics.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 17:46 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Paid Acquisition Drove 40% to 50% of Uber's Global Growth
“When we were doing a billion dollars, that included China, and that was more than 50%, like paid drove a ton of our growth in China. And so, and it was like, it was nonsense. It was just wild. And so, like, let's say six, seven hundred million dollars on, like…”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 52:04 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Local Uber Teams Ran Facebook Ads on 200 Personal Credit Cards
“At any given time, there were probably, like, 200 personal credit cards buying ads on Facebook, and it used to drive me mad, and, like, initially I went out with, like, a very, like, firm grip on, like, you can't do that, like, stop doing that, like, we have i…”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 47:53 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023
Assertion Partly supported
Uber Expanded From 12 to Over 1,000 Cities During Grenier's Tenure
“Yeah, so, you know, I joined Uber, we had about a dozen cities, and when I left, we had probably a thousand plus cities, or, you know, the idea of cities kind of disappeared at some point.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 4:33 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Uber Used Completed Trips as Its Core North Star Metric
“The, like, trips was our metric, because it's like, okay, well, a trip can't happen without a rider and a driver, and so if trips slow down, it forces us to go into the weeds and say, like, well, why aren't they happening?”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 28:01 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023
Assertion Supported
Uber Spent $1 Billion Per Year on Growth Marketing
“I mean, we were spending a billion dollars a year at one point.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 40:36 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 negative
Assertion Supported
Didi and the Chinese Government Had Full Access to Uber's Data
“It became very clear that everyone had all our data. Didi knew everything we were doing whereas, like, Lyft and Uber always knew what each other were doing, because we were watching each other, we're friends, things like that, but, like, we never had each othe…”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 0:00 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023
Assertion Supported
Ed Baker Imported Facebook's Growth Organizational Structure to Uber
“Uber was really the first place that we called it growth, right? I was hired by Ed Baker. He brought over the kind of Facebook structure that they had built at Facebook.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 1:46 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber Never Solved How to Allocate LTV Between Drivers and Riders
“And there's like, this is one of those challenges that like we've had, we had like dozens of data scientists working with it and we never got a great answer to it.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 22:42 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Uber Dissolved Its Centralized Growth Team Prior to Grenier's Departure
“So like we actually, all of those functions within the growth team eventually actually merged back into the core business to where by the time I left, we actually didn't have a centralized growth team anymore.”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 13:10 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Australia is overall Uber's best geographic market
“Overall for Uber, I'd say Australia is, is the best market.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 20:48 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 neutral
Opinion
Khosrowshahi: Best Travis legacy was talent; worst was brand damage
“Best thing I'd say is is a bar for talent. Travis went after incredibly talented people, and I got to keep some of them, which is great. Worst thing, I think it was just the brand damage as it related to Uber, the enterprise.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 42:26 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber slowed feature updates for drivers to avoid payment errors
“We've actually slowed down in terms of some of the velocity of features that we ship for our earners, right? So it's, we're iterating constantly as it relates to eaters, riders, et cetera trying X out or trying Y out. But as it relates to earners, this is how …”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 29:54 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Khosrowshahi: Postmates backend integration enabled aggressive cost cuts for Uber
“While Postmates as an app is still in the app store, they've got millions of loyal customers, all of the backend is essentially being served by our infrastructure, which allowed us to save pretty aggressively as it related to the cost side.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 22:46 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Khosrowshahi: Kareem and Transplace acquisitions are or will be major hits
“I would say probably Kareem or there's a, we're pretty early on in terms of development, but a, an acquisition that we made in with Uber Freight Transplace, which really runs the logistics outsource logistics function of a lot of companies out there. Both of t…”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 23:28 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023
What-if
Khosrowshahi: Decision-making could have been faster when taking over Uber
“In hindsight, I didn't know what I was getting into. I needed to meet everyone. I needed to get input, but I think that my decision making could have been faster right up front.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 45:30 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber's investment in self-driving division ATG was a mistake
“Where we got it wrong was when we went outside of our core. So for example, we had a very large self-driving business, ATG, trying to develop autonomous tech, and that wasn't what we were passionate about every day, and it was outside of the core, and ultimate…”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 14:35 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Khosrowshahi: Uber completed two billion trips in the previous quarter
“Now in this last quarter, two billion times a quarter.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 12:09 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Khosrowshahi: Uber provides income to over five million earners globally
“You know, we are an incredibly important entity in terms of Transportation and cities in terms of earning power for over five million earners.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 12:22 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber's past allocations into hardware products were a mistake
“We're not particularly good in hardware, and I think our investment or the capital that we allocated in hardware in the past was a mistake.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 15:13 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2023 bullish
Prediction Held up
Khosrowshahi: Uber will focus exclusively on software moving forward
“I will tell you right now, based on everything I see, we're going to stay squarely in software, because we're really, really good at it.”
Dara Khosrowshahi Mar 27, 2023 ▶ 27:21 Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 17, 2023 positive
Opinion
Braun: Travis Kalanick Is One of the Best Founders Ever
“Travis is one of the best founders I've ever met my entire life.”
Scooter Braun Apr 17, 2023 ▶ 41:05 Scooter Braun on Being Enough, Insecurity, Wealth, Investing, Fame, Marriage and Much More | E1002 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 31, 2023 bullish
Disclosure
Claure: Three of Uber's Top Five Global Cities Were in LatAm
“When we were investors in Uber, you know, we had to keep it a secret that after New York, three of the top five cities were Latin American cities.”
Marcelo Claure Jul 31, 2023 ▶ 24:24 Marcelo Claure & Shu Nyatta: LATAM's New $500M Growth Fund; Investing Billions at SoftBank | E1042 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dara Khosrowshahi Promised Careem Autonomy to Finalize $3.1B Uber Acquisition
“The thing that really made it happen at the end was Dara saying that you guys can continue, continue pushing your purpose, keep your culture, keep your org. I'm just going to replace your shareholders and become a better shareholder.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 32:06 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023 negative
What-if
Sheikha Regrets $3.1B Uber Deal Didn't Financially Benefit Careem's Drivers
“I wish we could have done more for our captains. As a part of the exit process. You know, Kareem was built by these captains and we are close to many of them. And if I look at them today, they're still doing what they were doing 10 years ago. And that saddens …”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 36:47 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Careem Outcompeted Uber in Saudi Arabia by Enabling Cash Payments
“Early in Saudi Saudi Arabia, which is of course the largest market in the region not many people at that time had credit cards, or even if they had credit cards, they were not able to use credit cards, and people just preferred paying in cash. So this was some…”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 22:25 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Careem Employees Refused to Wear Black Due to Intense Uber Rivalry
“Was heading a company whose name was a four letter word at Karim. There were people at Karim that would not wear black because that color was black.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 31:04 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sheikha: Careem's Board Was Deeply Divided Over the $3.1B Uber Acquisition
“And it was a contentious process where there were some investors that wanted to sell and there were others that didn't want to sell. And it ended up creating a big divide in the port that made things quite challenging.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 28:32 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Sheikha: Careem founders feared Uber acquisition would erase company culture
“We felt that it would be a shame to lose such a unique and special start to a competitor who's most likely going to merge it eventually, and the Korean brand, and the Korean purpose, and the Korean culture will disappear.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 34:58 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Careem completed a corporate spin-out with regional investors and Uber
“We have done a spin out thanks to their help with some regional investors on board now.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 36:11 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Careem's $3.1B Uber Acquisition Created 75 USD Millionaires Among Employees
“I think in dollar terms, there were 75 millionaires. In that term, there were, I think, 300 plus.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 42:39 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sheikha: Lifestyle hasn't changed after $3.1B Careem exit
“My lifestyle hasn't changed too much. I'm still living in the same house that we lived before, largely driving similar cars, travel similarly, and so on and so forth. So we haven't done Too many changes in our life.”
Mudassir Sheikha Sep 4, 2023 ▶ 41:21 Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 2, 2023 bullish
Insight
Barnes: Analyzing Initial Market Size Causes Investors to Miss Market-Expanding Founders
“When you get stuck thinking through that and working through the hundred reasons why owning the black car market isn't worth it, then you miss That Travis would figure out UberX.”
Phin Barnes Oct 2, 2023 ▶ 44:18 Phin Barnes: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help | E1067 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lerner: Middle zone for marketplace network effect startups is empty
“You've got your Instacart, your Uber, your Lyft. They've kind of, like, gotten to where they need to be. There isn't actually very many people in that middle zone in terms of Marketplace network effects today.”
Ely Lerner Oct 25, 2023 ▶ 1:00:05 Ely Lerner: Should Startups Hire Advisors & How much should they be paid? | E1075 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 22, 2023 bullish
Insight
Fenton: Accounting startups win just by making the product somewhat enjoyable
“When Uber was going against the taxi industry, the NPS scores on taxis was so bad, right? Like even if Uber was mediocre, it would still be way better. And he said accounting gave him the exact same vibes. Like the status quo is just so bad that if you can mak…”
Jeff Seibert Nov 22, 2023 ▶ 18:54 Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 9, 2024 positive
Insight
Tisch: Small stakes in outlier companies outperform strict ownership targets
“Every VC's math works if you fund great companies. And so it's not about This, like, ownership threshold. If anybody owned one percent of Facebook, one percent of Uber.1% of Coinbase, your math works. Your math works really well, and it scales.”
David Tisch Feb 9, 2024 ▶ 22:53 20VC: Doug Leone, Bill Ackman, Bill Gurley and Orlando Bravo on "Does Price Matter"; When to Pay Up vs When to Stay Disciplined, The Biggest Lessons on Price Discipline from 8 of the World's Best Investors
Apr 8, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lehmann: Postmates prioritized deal structure over headline price in Uber merger
“And I think he came out with a number that was around 2.2 or something, and we negotiated it up a little bit, but I didn't want it to push too hard, because the two things that we negotiated for are no breakup, Absolutely no way out and no color on the deal be…”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 21:00 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Lehmann: Postmates-Uber acquisition returned nearly $5B to shareholders
“We negotiated the deal so well, there was no color on the deal. By the time the deal closed, it was almost five billion dollars.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 19:45 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Lehmann: Postmates operated standalone for 8-9 months post-Uber acquisition signing
“After we signed the paper, because we had to run the company as a standalone company for, I believe eight, eight, nine months. So we had to hit our quarterly goals. We did not want it to have a scenario where we lose market share because now we're thinking tha…”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 38:13 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Lehmann: I have sold almost none of my Uber shares
“And I have sold almost none of my shares.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 20:24 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Lehmann: Uber and Postmates planned shared backend tech with distinct front-end brands
“When we discussed the merger, we sort of had this idea that you leave these brands, you start uniting the tech underneath, and then at some point it's the same product, but it sort of has a, basically a different name. And that's literally like the one differe…”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 26:06 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Lehmann: Postmates acquisition has not been written off by Uber
“I see no signs of the Postmates acquisition being written off because I think the brand is very strong. It continues to be very strong in LA.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 25:39 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024
Disclosure
Postmates and Uber held preliminary merger talks 18 months before deal
“A year and a half earlier, there were some preliminary discussions with the Uber team, so there was some familiarity.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 16:15 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 positive
Opinion
Lehmann: Dara Khosrowshahi has made Uber his own
“And a for non-founder CEO, he really has, I think he has made this company his.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 23:56 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 21, 2024 negative
Assertion Supported
Uber, Airbnb, Meta, and Revolut didn't use event tracking early on
“I actually think that if you look at Uber, Airbnb, Meta, they don't use events, or at least not in the early days. We didn't use events at Revolut.”
Val Scholz Jun 21, 2024 ▶ 47:03 Val Scholz: How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users: Tips, Tactics & Strategies | E1168 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 21, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Revolut team handed out cards in Google and Uber cafeterias
“We went to all the big tech companies like Google, Uber in our lunch break to hand out cards in their cafeteria.”
Val Scholz Jun 21, 2024 ▶ 12:33 Val Scholz: How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users: Tips, Tactics & Strategies | E1168 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 29, 2024 bullish
What-if
Asparouhov: Uber would be a $1T company if Travis Kalanick remained CEO
“But perhaps those benchmark LPs would have made even more money if Travis was still CEO, And the future of self-driving cars lived within Uber rather than living within Google. And maybe Uber becomes a one trillion dollar company over the course of the 20 twen…”
Delian Asparouhov Jul 29, 2024 ▶ 44:28 Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 29, 2024 negative
Opinion
Asparouhov: Bill Gurley's firing of Travis Kalanick was morally depraved
“I wish that, you know, Bill Gurley's, you know, firing of Travis, you know, was, you know, sort of talked about more publicly about how morally depraved that entire basically situation was so that people can choose to opt into.”
Delian Asparouhov Jul 29, 2024 ▶ 42:16 Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Partly supported
Uber initially let Lyft launch first to absorb local regulatory risk
“And what a lot of people don't know about Lyft is when we started launching UberX, we let Lyft go first, and we had a policy that said, hey, if Lyft launches in a city, we are going to wait 30 days to see if the law enforcement comes after them, and then we're…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 17:44 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber's early city expansion playbook was a 180-step Asana checklist
“And the playbook was probably a 180 steps. We should probably open source it at some point. It's on an Asana checklist somewhere.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 20:41 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 negative
Opinion
Replacing Travis Kalanick with Dara Khosrowshahi was a mistake for Uber
“I don't think so. I'm a big fan of founder led businesses, and I think Travis is an incredible founder who, you know, should have been given the opportunity to lead Uber into the next generation. It's really unfortunate how things happened and played out. And …”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 31:55 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Supported
Uber paid early city drivers $20-$30 per hour in guaranteed subsidies
“In the early days, we paid a driver 20 or 30 dollars an hour to sit there, right? And you know, this lasted probably 60 or 90 days into a market launch, and then after, you know, it became clear that the driver was making 20, more than 20 or 30 dollars an hour…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 6:09 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 negative
Assertion Supported
Uber's unit economics worsened in 2014 due to intense market competition
“Even though we were in 2014 and the business was five years along, like, the unit economics as we launched Hooper X and had more competitors actually got worse over time because you started spending so much money to acquire drivers, to acquire riders”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 11:38 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Partly supported
90% of early Uber drivers worked under 10 hours weekly
“For like, 90% of drivers, it's very part-time, right? Less than like, 10 hours a week.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 14:23 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Early Uber cold calls converted roughly 75% of targeted drivers
“Probably like 75.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 4:42 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 bullish
Assertion Supported
Uber's advertising business has reached a $1 billion run rate
“I think the ads business is a monster. I think ads is really interesting because it's, I think, in a billion dollar run rate now, and what's really interesting is if you think about Uber as a platform, It's the app where you go from, like, point A to point B. …”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 38:06 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber Atlanta driver utilization surged from 20% to 100% in 10 minutes
“And within like 10 minutes span, we went from like two out of 10 cars utilized To, like, all 10 cars utilized, and like hundred people in the app.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 0:24 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Insight
Ride-hailing market share swings were driven by pure price, not product
“On early demand, not really much, right? We were in a market and we had wild product market fit. Once competition came in, you could start to see market share swings based on the specific rider promo that Uber was offering in a city In a given week, and then w…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 27:14 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Uber offered free UberX rides throughout South by Southwest 2014
“So, what we decided to do Was we decided to do free UberX for all of South by Southwest.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 25:13 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Supported
Uber manually onboarded its first million drivers without major digital ad spend
“For probably the first million drivers that we onboarded, a lot of our processes were manual, right? So we weren't doing a lot of like paid spend on Facebook. We were doing a little bit on Craigslist. We weren't doing a ton on Google, but it was really the ope…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 7:19 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 negative
Opinion
Uber Elevate distracted from the core mission and hindered company growth
“We tried to do too much. Simply put specifically, you know, we were looking at like doing like a vertical takeoff and landing type, like helicopter play. We were doing Uber elevate. There were just a lot of things that became distractions from the core mission…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 28:09 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Scott Gorlick managed 1,500 Uber drivers in Atlanta during year one
“For the first year in Atlanta, I was the only person handling the driver side. We had Keith overseeing the city as a general manager, and he was incredible, and we had a marketing manager. But, you know, I probably had, like, a thousand or 1500 drivers that we…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 10:12 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Insight
Early rideshare growth was driven by driver acquisition, not rider marketing
“It wasn't really about like growth marketing in terms of like growing the rider side. It was just how many drivers can you get? And that sort of drove the network effect and helped you get bigger.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 19:56 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Partly supported
Good annual driver retention for early Uber was 25% to 30%
“I would say, if you started the year with a hundred drivers, I think you would probably have 25 or 30 of them left at the end of the year. That would be good, right?”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 14:37 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Uber's 2021 acquisition of Drizly made little strategic sense
“There were some deals we did in 20, 20, 21 that didn't make a lot of sense. I know Emil talked about Postmates. I think the Drizzly acquisition probably didn't make much sense either.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 32:53 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber was evicted from early coworking spaces due to driver traffic
“We probably got kicked out of every office that we joined early because, you know, we were renting like space and like coworking spaces. And a lot of these coworking spaces weren't too happy with drivers coming by like all hours of the day and sort of disrupti…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 9:31 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Uber is the top global food platform but lost US to DoorDash
“Uber's the number one food delivery platform in the world, but I think we really fumbled the bag in the US with DoorDash. I think we missed out on a huge opportunity.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 37:35 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Supported
Uber deployed permanent local teams while Lyft used central launch teams
“I think the big differentiation in Uber versus Lyft is that we had on the ground teams in every market. And, you know, we had an Atlanta city team, we had a Philadelphia team, we had a Chicago team and Lyft operated completely out of San Francisco. So while th…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 19:28 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Uber partnering with Waymo and Cruise is the right long-term strategy
“I think the decision to partner with You know, the leading AV players in the space, doing things with, like, the Waymos and the Cruises of the world, and trying to bring their fleets onto Uber is the right long-term strategy.”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 36:46 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Uber built its initial Atlanta driver supply by cold-calling Yelp listings
“When we went into the initial market, we got a Yelp list of all the drivers in the city and sort of like called through and trying to get them to sign up with Uber and, you know, got our initial list of drivers that way and launched a few weeks later with some…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 3:40 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 20, 2024
Insight
Carter: Interview Assignments Should Take Under Two Hours on Ubiquitous Companies
“What I found works best is pick an assignment that truly shouldn't take more than an hour or two before you hit diminishing returns. On, you know, spending more cycles on it. And that number two is either more of like a hypothetical scenario or it's a company …”
Phil Carter Sep 20, 2024 ▶ 12:10 Phil Carter: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Discounts, Paywalls... | E1204 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 4, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Uber-Instacart partnership strengthens their position against DoorDash
“I was reading about the deal that they made with, between Uber and Instacart, and I think that's brilliant, like, both of them, right? Like, it positioned them much better in restaurant delivery against players like, you know DoorDash.”
Maria Angelidou Oct 4, 2024 ▶ 52:13 Maria Angelidou:Product Lessons Leading Facebook App Monetisation Team to Billions in Revenue |E1210 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Frankel: Founder Collective regrets selling any secondary shares in Trade Desk and Uber
“Well, Trade Desk, I regret every single share I sold. Uber, I regret every single share I sold.”
David Frankel Oct 14, 2024 ▶ 1:02:13 David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Frankel: Trade Desk was a bigger outcome for Founder Collective than Uber
“Trade Desk was a bigger outcome for us. Coupang returned the fund, right? Like if, and multiple times.”
David Frankel Oct 14, 2024 ▶ 30:10 David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 21, 2024 negative
Opinion
Hamid: Prefers capital-efficient startups over capital-intensive models like DoorDash
“I, I'm, those are not my kind of businesses. I like more capital efficiency but I can get behind them.”
Mamoon Hamid Oct 21, 2024 ▶ 58:31 Mamoon Hamid: AI - Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws | E1217 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 13, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Villig: Bolt raised $1.5B while competitors raised up to $30B
“There's about seven companies left. What they've been doing better than us is raising money. They've just all raised multitudes of how much we have raised. Many of them have raised five billion. Some of them have raised 15, even thirty billion. Well, we have r…”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 1:15:40 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Hommels: Uber's San Francisco revenue exceeded the total initial taxi market
“So at, look at my famous quote always is when Uber started in in San Francisco, people said, but the taxi market is only two hundred fifty million, and today Uber's revenue in San Francisco is six hundred million.”
Klaus Hommels Nov 27, 2024 ▶ 21:49 Klaus Hommels: Why "Portfolios are Merely a Construct to Make LPs Happy"? | E1231 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025
What-if
Pishevar: Uber allies should have staged OpenAI-style employee revolt for Kalanick
“What I wish I had done or had the wisdom to know to do was what, you know, Sam and his allies did in getting the employees at OpenAI to back Sam and say, if he doesn't come back, we're gonna leave. . It was very powerful, and if we had done that at Uber, becau…”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 1:20:52 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 negative
Opinion
Pishevar: Benchmark ousting Travis Kalanick was one of worst VC decisions ever
“I believe that it was, you know, one of the worst venture, ah, decisions ever.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 54:39 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Open
Pishevar: Closed Uber, Warby Parker, Tumblr, and Machine Zone in 90 days
“In my first 90 days, I closed Uber, Warby Parker Tumblr, and Machine Zone.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 6:26 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Menlo's $26.5M Uber investment grew to nearly $6.7B
“For twenty million at the time, later I got another six and a half million through secondary for Menlo. So that investment at today's prices is worth almost seven billion dollars.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 12:01 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 negative
Assertion Supported
Benchmark sued Travis Kalanick in Delaware court over Uber board seats
“About in early August They then sued in Delaware courts after they had already gotten rid of Travis. They then sued to get rid of him and his two board seats that he had gotten that he hadn't appointed yet. So three board seats. So they wanted, you know, effec…”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 42:02 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Benchmark invested $10M in Uber at $50M valuation in 2011
“Benchmark invested in March, 2011 at a, I believe it was a fifty million dollar pre-money valuation. They put ten million in.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 51:42 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Pishevar: Sherpa Capital raised $200M in SPVs for Uber
“So I ended up doing, we ended up doing two hundred million dollars of SPVs for Uber, on top of these other investments, and”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 27:47 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Pishevar: TPG generated nearly $2B return on $83M Uber investment
“I think TPG on that eighty-three million made close to two billion.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 29:38 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Holder's investigation report found no personal wrongdoing by Kalanick
“And the report, by the way, didn't find anything wrong that, you know, Travis did, or I did, or there was nothing, nothing in there about, you know, him, you know, directly and the recommendation was like to go hire a Sheryl Sandberg, like a chief operating of…”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 39:29 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Pishevar: Made couple hundred million dollars from Uber investment
“Couple hundred million. Yeah.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 1:11:06 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 negative
Opinion
Pishevar: Firing Kalanick from Uber was tech's worst mistake since Jobs
“And so they got two, two of the greatest minds in Silicon Valley were taken out of the company. This is the greatest value destruction that's happened since firing Steve Jobs at Apple. And it was a massive mistake.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 48:12 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025
Assertion Open
Pishevar: TPG bought $83M of Garrett Camp's Uber shares via Waverly Loan
“Solution was I introduced them to Waverly Loans, and we did the largest Waverly Loan in history, which was eighty-three million and bought Garrett Camp's shares for TPG for that amount.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 29:11 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 negative
Opinion
Pishevar: Bill Gurley was the wrong VC on Uber's board
“We had the wrong venture capitalists on the board. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was Bill Gurley at Benchmark.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 0:17 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Uber nearly acquired Lyft, but Lyft demanded too much ownership
“Andreessen, having lost the Uber deal, ended up doing the Lyft deal, and we had, you know, Travis and Emil, you know, they were close to acquiring it acquiring Lyft which, you know but they wanted too much ownership so that luckily didn't work out”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 20:35 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
What-if
Pishevar: Uber would be worth $1T if Travis Kalanick stayed
“I believe if Travis and Emil had stayed at Uber, Uber would be a trillion-dollar company by now.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 48:33 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Emil Michael architected Uber's $15B fundraising efforts
“He architected the fifteen billion dollar raise he had a massive impact on the trajectory of Uber, and he became really Travis's right hand and sparring partner in building, building Uber.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 25:46 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Kalanick and Michael initiated SoftBank's $12B Uber deal
“So the SoftBank conversations, ironically, Travis and Emil started those conversations, the ultimate twelve billion dollar investment from SoftBank Vision Fund.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 47:48 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 negative
Assertion Contradicted
Pishevar: Bill Gurley hired PIs and met weekly to oust Travis Kalanick
“We found out in our investigation that he hired Some private investigators had weekly meetings about how do we get rid of Travis.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 0:24 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Uber's Series D valuation was negotiated up to $17B from $10B
“So that Series D, like a year after the Series C, which Google and TPG did, that was at three billion. This was at seventeen billion, and we started off at 10. So, Emil was able to negotiate from, like, 10, eleven billion valuation to 17, because there was so …”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 31:04 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Pishevar sold all Facebook shares to bet everything on Uber secondary stock
“He allowed me to buy secondary shares from another early person, so I sold all my Facebook shares that had gone public at like, 53 bucks, 58 bucks a share, and I put it all I bet it all, everything I had, I put it all into Uber.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 13:25 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Pishevar purchased secondary Uber stock at effective 33 cents per share
“It was 33 cents a share, effectively based on today's prices, so it would be 33 cents a share.”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 13:58 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Uber Provided Under Half of Lime's $140M Emergency COVID Funding Round
“I think the total round was a hundred and forty million dollars. Not all of it was from Uber. In fact, I think less than half is from Uber.”
Wayne Ting Jan 27, 2025 ▶ 32:42 Wayne Ting, CEO @Lime: From Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | E1252 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 27, 2025 positive
What-if
Lime Would Not Have Survived the Pandemic Without Acquiring Jump
“Line wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal.”
Wayne Ting Jan 27, 2025 ▶ 43:50 Wayne Ting, CEO @Lime: From Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | E1252 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 7, 2025 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Tolkin: UberPool launched with post-hoc pricing before upfront pricing was built
“When we first launched, it was variable pricing, depending on whether you matched or not. You open the Uber app, you say, this is where I'm going, and it was just like, okay, and then based on minutes and miles, the cost would post hoc calculate until we built…”
Brian Tolkin Feb 7, 2025 ▶ 0:05 Brian Tolkin, Head of Product @Opendoor: How to Hire the Best Product Teams | E1257 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 7, 2025 neutral
Assertion Open
Tolkin: Uber Eats was created as an entirely separate app and org
“In, you know, Uber's case, even more extreme is you do what Uber Eats was, which was like a totally separate app, a totally separate org and totally separate, separate everything.”
Brian Tolkin Feb 7, 2025 ▶ 14:53 Brian Tolkin, Head of Product @Opendoor: How to Hire the Best Product Teams | E1257 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 7, 2025 negative
Opinion
Tolkin: Defaulting the Uber app to UberPool was a poor product decision
“And for a little bit the default was Uber pool. And I think that was a poor product decision. Because even if you had chosen Uber X on your last ride, it defaulted back to Uber pool. And so the UI wasn't clear enough what was happening. And so people were acci…”
Brian Tolkin Feb 7, 2025 ▶ 4:51 Brian Tolkin, Head of Product @Opendoor: How to Hire the Best Product Teams | E1257 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 7, 2025 neutral
Insight
Tolkin: Uber's early success relied on speed, availability, and price
“For a second, there's a ton of things that make that product work or in the early days that made that product work. But at the end of the day, is there a car available? Can it get to me quickly, you know, within, within five minutes at a price that's reasonabl…”
Brian Tolkin Feb 7, 2025 ▶ 18:27 Brian Tolkin, Head of Product @Opendoor: How to Hire the Best Product Teams | E1257 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 26, 2025 negative
Insight
Delivery Giants Can Crush Local Rivals With a €20M to €30M Investment
“Because they have so much scale that they can just go into your home market and destroy your business with maybe like 20, thirty million investment.”
Oscar Pierre Feb 26, 2025 ▶ 33:59 Oscar Pierre, Glovo CEO & Founder: Selling 30% for €100K |The McDonald's Deal That Saved Them |E1263 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 12, 2025
Insight
Östberg: Uber proved food delivery companies can succeed as late entrants
“Uber and others entered the market and proved that you can start this business way later than we did”
Niklas Östberg Mar 12, 2025 ▶ 35:19 Niklas Östberg, Founder @ Delivery Hero: Competing with Uber and Doordash in a Capital Arms Race · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 12, 2025 negative
Opinion
Östberg: Large competitor balance sheets are not a threat in food delivery
“I don't think that the balance sheet matters. I don't know. In the end, that is not what limits any compared to spend money. It's going to be the return that is going to limit a compared to spend money. So it's going to be hard for a door dash or Uber or somew…”
Niklas Östberg Mar 12, 2025 ▶ 51:37 Niklas Östberg, Founder @ Delivery Hero: Competing with Uber and Doordash in a Capital Arms Race · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 26, 2025
Assertion Contradicted
Green: Only three $100B+ companies were created post-iPhone
“You know, since the iPhone came out in 2007, 2006, whatever it was, there's only been three companies built that did not exist before. That were a hundred billion dollar companies. ByteDance, Pindo Doe, and Uber.”
Mitchell Green Mar 26, 2025 ▶ 7:49 Mitchell Green, Founder @ Lead Edge Capital: Why Traditional VC is Broken · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 16, 2025
Assertion Supported
Yamashita: Uber structured all team KPI trees under trip count
“At Uber, at the very top was trips. Everything cascaded from there.”
Yuhki Yamashita May 16, 2025 ▶ 12:07 20Product: Figma CPO on How Figma Builds Products: What Works, What Does Not | How Figma Does Testing and Product Reviews | The Future of Design, Engineering and Product with Yuhki Yamashita
May 19, 2025 negative
Insight
Hacker: Opening an SF satellite office creates a talent drain to local giants
“It creates this internal funnel of your best employees moving from your HQ to Silicon Valley. Which by itself is not a problem. The problem is then they get recruited away by the whatever the hot Silicon Valley company is at the time. You know, like it could b…”
Severin Hacker May 19, 2025 ▶ 1:11:24 Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 16, 2025
Disclosure
G Squared lost 20% on Uber and made 3x on Lyft
“We lost I think we made, we lost like 20 cents on the dollar, and Lyft we made like a three X.”
Larry Aschebrook Jun 16, 2025 ▶ 31:32 Larry Aschebrook, Founder & MP @GSquared: How We Lost Money on Uber and Made Millions on Lyft · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 31, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Ferriss was one of the first three advisors to Uber
“We're trading emails and that becomes Uber cab LLC. And I become one of the first three advisors.”
Tim Ferriss Oct 31, 2025 ▶ 47:18 20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
Dec 15, 2025 negative
Insight
Using massive capital as a weapon rarely succeeds in consumer tech
“Capital as a weapon in consumer, most of the time it's, it doesn't really work. Like I would say TikTok is maybe the exception, maybe Uber.”
David George Dec 15, 2025 ▶ 36:56 a16z's David George on the Most Controversial Bet at a16z & Do Margins and Revenue Matter in AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 9, 2026 positive
Insight
Acharya: AI foundation and app markets resemble AWS and GCP, not Uber
“I think the foundation model companies look a little bit like that. And I think in the apps layer, you're just going to have people that want to Consume the code they generate through a rich IDE and those that want to be closer to the metal, and that's probabl…”
Anish Acharya Feb 9, 2026 ▶ 13:01 a16z, Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead? Do Margins Still Matter? Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 16, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Siemiatkowski: Klarna built an Uber-style gig model hiring customers for support
“Is we actually built like our own Uber model, which means that we encourage today, we recruit our own customers, the most passionate customers that live in rural areas and so forth. And we say, Hey, do you want to work extra? Would you want to work part-time i…”
Sebastian Siemiatkowski Feb 16, 2026 ▶ 17:28 Klarna CEO: SaaS is Dead: Why Systems of Record Will Die in an Agentic World · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 16, 2026
Assertion Supported
Rajaram: Uber expanded margins continuously by altering driver pay economics
“Uber, I have to say, I don't know how, if they have raised price or not, but I know that they have basically changed the economics of how much they pay drivers over time so that their margins have just expanded continuously. And they've also raised prices in d…”
Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 40:44 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 19, 2026 positive
What-if
Lemkin: Uber would be worth $1 trillion today under Travis Kalanick
“I think Travis Uber would be a trillion dollar company today because it would be five years ahead of where it is today.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 19, 2026 ▶ 0:21 NVIDIA Predicts $1TRN in Revenue: Everything You Need to Know From GTC & Anduril Lands $20B Contract · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 19, 2026 positive
What-if
O'Driscoll: Uber should have re-hired Travis Kalanick in 2022 for autonomy
“Actually, it turns out, in retrospect, they should have done the Steve Jobs thing. They should have swapped them out, got it public, got a cash flow like crazy, and sometime in 22 should have gotten back and said, now, Now is the time to do autonomy”
Rory O'Driscoll Mar 19, 2026 ▶ 58:05 NVIDIA Predicts $1TRN in Revenue: Everything You Need to Know From GTC & Anduril Lands $20B Contract · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 18, 2026 negative
Assertion Supported
Geoffrey Woo: Uber Burned Tens of Billions on Paid Marketing
“I just saw that Bill Gurley was tweeting that you know, paid marketing is, like, the worst form of marketing, and I'm just like, hey, Uber, like, he's most well known for kicking out Travis from Uber, and Uber burnt, like, tens of billions of dollars on straig…”
Jeffrey Wu Apr 18, 2026 ▶ 12:00 Jake Paul: Traditional VC is Toast & Attention is More Valuable than Cash · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 11, 2026 negative
Opinion
Lemkin: Uber Leaders Are Justified in Hating Benchmark Capital
“I think the folks that hate benchmark from Uber, I think they deserve to hate benchmark.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 11, 2026 ▶ 33:25 SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO | OpenAI Files to Go Public | Uber Cuts 23% of HR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 13, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Grinberg: Dozens of Factory clients privately capped employee AI spend
“What's happened with Uber publicly has happened privately with a lot of customers of ours.”
Matan Grinberg Jun 13, 2026 ▶ 19:19 OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 13, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Uber placed a $1,500 individual budget cap on employee AI spending
“Uber announced last night, I think it was, or yesterday, that they were having like a 1500 dollar budget. Per individual.”
Harry Stebbings Jun 13, 2026 ▶ 18:12 OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 15, 2026
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SF Uber driver built AI app generating more income than driving
“So as honest as I can get, an Uber driver in San Francisco once told me that he watched one of my YouTube interviews Where I explain how you can build a product or a web app with an AI from scratch. I went on to do it and use AIs to add like billing and all th…”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 15, 2026 ▶ 1:13:56 Perplexity CEO: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta & How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 16, 2026 neutral
Insight
O'Driscoll: Major Startup Breakthroughs Rely on Boundary Pushing Legalized Upon Success
“So many breakthroughs rely on a little bit of pushing the boundaries. I mean, Uber did with taxi regulation. Airbnb did with regulation. You're right. Polymarket did in terms of how they're regulated. So I'm actually going to get off my high horse and say you …”
Rory O'Driscoll Jul 16, 2026 ▶ 59:52 Zuckerberg Back on X Challenging Codex & Claude Code | SK Hynix’s $26BN IPO · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 29, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Benchmark returned roughly 640x on Uber versus 25x on WeWork
“Uber made benchmark roughly 640 X versus around 25 X with WeWork.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 29, 2026 ▶ 52:47 Jensen's Open-Weights Letter | Google Cloud Grows 82% But The Market Tanks
Aug 5, 2026 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Arora: Consumer applications will be rewritten for AI agents within a decade
“I think every consumer app will get rewritten in the next five to 10 years. You know, why would I not have my agent talk to my DoorDash app or Uber app?”
Nikesh Arora Aug 5, 2026 ▶ 1:00:25 Leo Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up | Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
What-if
Frankel: Following On in Every Round Boosts Absolute Returns, Not Multiples
“If we follow, our view would be we'd had, we would have had to have followed on in everything, and I think that the absolute return would be better. I don't think that the multiple would necessarily be better on the fund.”
David Frankel Aug 7, 2026 ▶ 33:32 The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
Aug 7, 2026
Disclosure
Frankel: Founder Collective sold some Uber early near $10B valuation
“You know, in retrospect, we probably sold a little too early, so this was early on, you know, this is a business that's getting close to ten billion dollars in valuation, and there's an opportunity to take some off the table, and you're very new.”
David Frankel Aug 7, 2026 ▶ 52:22 The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
Aug 12, 2026 bearish
Assertion Open
Uber president's biggest fear is ChatGPT routing rides purely by price
“I just interviewed the president of Uber. What is his single biggest fear? It's actually the disaggregation of UI or the removal of UI where you say, I want a car, and ChatGPT automatically routes you to Lyft, Uber or another provider based on price.”
Harry Stebbings Aug 12, 2026 ▶ 13:56 Canva Slashes Growth | Talent Exodus at Google | Revolut's $50B CEO Package | Musk's $55B Terrafab
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Disclosure
Mac: Autonomy is Uber's largest single standalone investment area
“It's the largest single sort of standalone investment we make. Now don't be, you know, don't get me wrong with at a PNL our size, we're moving billions of dollars around every month, but yes, it's the largest single area of investment.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 19:12 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Macdonald: New Uber products must show a multi-billion dollar GMV path
“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 little bit.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 10:52 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026
Insight
Variable-Cost Model Makes Uber's Loyalty Perks Uniquely Difficult to Build
“The beauty of our model is we're primarily a variable cost model, right? It means when demand drops, great, our costs scale down with it, but it also means that we just don't have a fixed capacity to give away, and so it just makes the challenges for building …”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 9:54 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 negative
Insight
Macdonald: Corporate incubation is slower because teams get fat on resources
“The other challenge of standing up a new business with a big company with a big P&L and a big balance sheet is people just get fat on the resources, right? And so you don't build it the way you would build it if you were a startup because you just have more re…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 13:10 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber's Human-Driven Rides Grow Faster in Top AV Markets Than Nationally
“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.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 23:47 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
What-if
Mac: Uber Could Run Today's Scope in Five Years with Fewer People
“If you took everything Uber does today and held it static and said, you know, in five 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 five years because of the power of AI, but we're going t…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 45:27 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Autonomy Will Take Decades to Match Human Labor Costs in Brazil
“Two of our large, three largest countries by volume are India and Brazil. You know, the average fare in Brazil is like, Three 54 bucks USD and India it's two 53 bucks or something like that. It's going to be decades until the cost of autonomy compresses to the…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 24:09 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026
Assertion Supported
Mac: Uber is doing about 300 million trips weekly on core platforms
“We're doing like three hundred million trips a week on our core platforms.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 23:16 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Mac: Uber refuses API access to third-party price-comparison aggregators
“We've not participated historically in the aggregation apps where some, you know, somebody will come to us and pitch and say, hey, you know, give us APIs that give us real-time info on Every car, every Uber car in the network what the price of that ride is, wh…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 48:58 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 neutral
Insight
Enterprise AI ROI Requires Top-Down Headcount Constraints, Not Bottom-Up Cuts
“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. Like, if we really believe that AI is making our employees 10% or 20% or 30% more effi…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 39:12 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Macdonald: Waymo, Tesla, and Multiple Other AV Players Will Win Globally
“I think there's going to be more than two winners. Do I think Waymo 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.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 25:25 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2029
Food Delivery Will Soon Be Significantly Larger Than Uber's Mobility Business
“And for us, like when this deal, you know, we have to go through the sort of requisite regulatory and shareholder processes, but delivery will be a much bigger business for mobility.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 56:38 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Macdonald: A US Tech Company Winning Chinese Mobility Was Geopolitically Implausible
“I don't think it was plausible that we were ultimately going to be the market winner. I mean, even for geopolitical reasons alone, like the notion that a U S tech company would ultimately be the largest mobility service in China. I just don't think it's someth…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 32:25 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2031
Waymo and Tesla Will Eventually Have to Partner With Uber
“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 P apps, even if they work with our competitors on the rideshare side or on the delivery side. I think everyone …”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 27:01 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Mac: Uber secretly began working on autonomous vehicles around 2012-2014
“When we started our autonomous efforts, you know, this is a secret project within Uber... You know, this would have been, you know, I don't know, 2013, 2012, 2013, 2014, we would have quietly started working on this”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 20:10 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Macdonald: Missing Out on Autonomy Would Be Existential for Uber
“If Uber doesn't have autonomy on our platform, and we will we will, we are investing actively and aggressively to bring it to market, but if we didn't, then it certainly would be existential for our core business.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 18:52 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 negative
Assertion Supported
Uber Mobility Revenue Dropped 84% in Three Weeks During COVID
“Our mobility business had lost 84% of our top line in three weeks. The company was burning billions annually. We didn't have a core business producing cash.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 21:48 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mac: Autonomy will eventually be superior to human rides in all use cases
“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.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 17:46 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Uber Burned $52 Million Weekly on Subsidies Before Exiting China
“I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning fifty two 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 u…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 30:26 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Macdonald: Membership is Uber's most efficient long-term consumer lever
“I think membership is the most efficient long-term consumer lever that we've got.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 6:33 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 positive
Insight
Macdonald: In the End, Distribution Wins Over Autonomous Technology
“I think in the end, distribution wins.”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 27:28 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
Aug 17, 2026 bullish
Assertion Supported
Macdonald: Uber's delivery business is nearly mobility's size and growing faster
“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 around the world. We get almost z…”
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) Aug 17, 2026 ▶ 54:44 Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
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