The Exchanges

Q What did Uber get most wrong, do you think? When you look back now, what's the, that was the mistake?

A I think our aggressive stance with writers and politicians clearly worked because we were able to create a lot of fans of Uber over the years. But if I could go back or we could go back and do it all over again, I think we would have found a way to present our image in a way that was less combative, right? Especially with media. I wish that, you know, we could have built like a, a better story. Um, because I think like when you come out and, you know, I think we had a lot of bravado, we had a lot of swagger. I think when you come out like that, everybody wants to build you up on the way up and then they want to tear you down on the way down. You know, I probably would have been combative in the areas that we were with, uh, with like writers and And politicians, but a little bit more humble and gentle with sort of media.

AI assessment note: “we would have found a way to present our image in a way that was less combative”

Q What's your favorite lesson from working with Travis? You saw him across different stages, across different expansion segments. When you look back, what was your biggest takeaway or lesson from seeing him operate?

A I think what Travis is really good at is speed, right? He has a quote that's, fear is the disease. Hustle is the antidote. And I think what he did better than anybody else and does better than anybody else is he sees something and he moves quickly, right? It's, hey, like, let's try this out. If it works, amazing. We're going to pour more gasoline on it. And if it doesn't, we're going to keep trying until we figure it out. And I think what's really unique about Travis is as a CEO, Is he, he's just level of understanding across like product and operations is very unmatched. Like he could dive into the weeds with engineering, but then he could nerd out with you on sort of like positioning cars in different cities and like talking to drivers, uh, like 30 seconds later. The context switching and just the, the ability to kind of create things at speed and empower his teams to think that they can run through walls was unmatched.

AI assessment note: “I think what Travis is really good at is speed, right?”

Q What did you say to them when you called them up? What did they say? What percent said yes? Just take me to that.

A Yeah. So I'd be like, Hey, this is Scott. Um, I work at Uber in Atlanta. We're starting a new ride sharing service where, you know, you can pick Pick up, uh, riders between your trips to the airport. Um, and, you know, we help you fill your downtime. Um, is this something you might be interested in? And, you know, while most drivers hadn't heard of Uber and were a little bit skeptical, they were willing to give us a shot because it didn't cost them anything to join, right? They would come to our office and, you know, we'd give them an iPhone, which is a story at some point. When we gave them the iPhone, they'd be able to pick up a rider 20 minutes later, right? So we'd say, hey, if you don't like this, bring it back and no skin off our back.

AI assessment note: “while most drivers hadn't heard of Uber and were a little bit skeptical, they were willing”

Q Was it very clear when you were winning a market early on?

A Yeah. I mean, I think what was interesting about like the Uber Lyft dynamic is when, when we went into a market like Atlanta, we had been operating for 18 months before we launched UberX or 12 or 18 months. And Lyft was kind of new on the scene, so they didn't necessarily have the brand that we did. So for us, it was a brand extension. Of saying, Hey, now it's the same Uber, but better, faster, and cheaper. And Lyft had to kind of come in and sort of build that brand equity. So I think that was challenging in Atlanta for them. And some of the markets where Uber was more established, but if you go to a place like the center of the country, where both services are launching at the same time, like in Oklahoma city, it was more of a dogfight in the early days. And, you know, we certainly cranked up our spend to make sure that we were winning early market share. Um, and sort of getting the drivers quicker. I think the big differentiation, um, in Uber versus Lyft is that we had on the ground teams in every market. Um, 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 they would fly in launchers to a city who would stay for a couple of weeks or a month, they're kind of like pop in and pop out. We were with the drivers every single day and sort of working closely with them. So I thin…

AI assessment note: “our speed and proximity to them gave us the edge”

Q When you get a regulatory warning, when you get regulatory controls put on you, how does that feel? What does that look like? Can you take me to one?

A South by Southwest, Austin, um, the mecca for all things tech. And in Austin, we were not allowed to operate because there were two rules in Austin that prevented us from doing so. If you ordered a black car in Austin, The minimum fare, whether you're going a block or a mile, was 55 dollars, and if you ordered a car and it showed up in one minute, you had to legally stare at it for another 29 minutes before being allowed to get in. So, it made absolutely no sense, Harry. So, what we did in twenty-fourteen was we decided that we were going to do South by Southwest if we'd done the previous years, And this year we decided to do black cars, and we actually did the 55 dollar minimum fare, um, which was a bonanza. A lot of drivers did very well, um, and we brought in drivers from Austin, from Dallas, from Houston, from San Antonio, and it was incredible. Um, the authorities weren't super concerned about, like, the pre-reservation, like, get a car, and then it shows up 29 minutes later, et cetera. But what we did on UberX really inflamed them. So, what we decided to do Was we decided to do free UberX for all of South by Southwest. But what ended up happening was that, you know, we paid the drivers a set dollar amount per hour. So the drivers were paid. And then we basically said, okay, cool. We're going to let the riders ride for free. Right? So what ended up happening was the regula…

AI assessment note: “South by Southwest, Austin, um, the mecca for all things tech.”

Q How do you think it would have been different though? Do you think it would be more products? Do you think it would be more countries? Different brands. How do you think about a Travis versus a Dara in terms of how it would be different?

A So yeah, I think things probably would have been different had Travis stayed. I think specific things would have been on the M and A side. There were some deals we did in 20, 20, 21 that didn't make a lot of sense. I know, um, Emil talked about Postmates. I think the Drizzly acquisition probably didn't make much sense either. And some of the tie ups that we did strategically in different regions probably weren't the right bet. Um, and then I think that, you know, on the, each side of the business, things would have been different. Right. In, when we launched Eats, it was growing really fast, but if you look at DoorDash versus Eats in the US, the market share is pretty pronounced. I think DoorDash has something in the sixties. Uber has something in the twenties. Um, well Uber Eats is still like the top food delivery brand, uh, worldwide. I think we missed a big opportunity and we're distracted by everything that was going on. Um, When Travis left to really execute. And like, I think the narrative is really around the DoorDash focused on the suburbs and like Uber focused on the cities. And I think part of that is true. But I also think we were probably going, we were going through a really hard time, and it was hard to grow that business at a hard, at a fast rate when all this change around us was happening.

AI assessment note: “I think things probably would have been different had Travis stayed.”

Q Was it very clear when you were winning a market early on?

A Yeah. I mean, I think what was interesting about like the Uber Lyft dynamic is when, when we went into a market like Atlanta, we had been operating for 18 months before we launched UberX or 12 or 18 months. And Lyft was kind of new on the scene, so they didn't necessarily have the brand that we did. So for us, it was a brand extension. Of saying, Hey, now it's the same Uber, but better, faster, and cheaper. And Lyft had to kind of come in and sort of build that brand equity. So I think that was challenging in Atlanta for them. And some of the markets where Uber was more established, but if you go to a place like the center of the country, where both services are launching at the same time, like in Oklahoma city, it was more of a dogfight in the early days. And, you know, we certainly cranked up our spend to make sure that we were winning early market share. Um, and sort of getting the drivers quicker. I think the big differentiation, um, in Uber versus Lyft is that we had on the ground teams in every market. Um, 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 they would fly in launchers to a city who would stay for a couple of weeks or a month, they're kind of like pop in and pop out. We were with the drivers every single day and sort of working closely with them. So I thin…

AI assessment note: “in Oklahoma city, it was more of a dogfight in the early days.”

Q Okay. Listen, like not hugely dissimilar to consumer subscription to be honest. How did the product offering look when you were doing Atlanta and the subsequent city rollout in terms of the different tiers of Ubers in terms of luxury? What did that look like?

A Yeah. So when I started at Uber, we were only black cars. Um, so when we were launching cities, it was really only black cars. So for the first year in Atlanta, we were only black car. Um, and What was challenging about that is there are only a certain number of black cars in a given city, right? Like in Atlanta, there might've been a thousand black cars. And while you can create more and get more on board, you're never going to build like the massive TAM business unless you open it up for UberX. So we started launching UberX more probably in late, early, early, early, and then sort of, as we started rolling out UberX in more markets, um, that was probably in That's when the business really started to explode.

AI assessment note: “So when I started at Uber, we were only black cars.”

Q Can I ask what didn't work? What was some early mistakes in driver acquisition specifically actually that were like, oh, that, that was a bad one.

A Yeah. So we made a lot of mistakes, right? So I would say like the number one mistake we made in a lot of cities is We probably got kicked out of every office, um, 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 disrupting the flow. So I, I think that was sort of a major error that we made early on. Um, I think other things that we did that were kind of a little bit challenging, um, in markets is I think that. You know, where, where we messed up was, it was a very, like, 2407, three 65 operation. There were people in cars every single hour of the day, and we probably understaffed a little in the early days, right? So, you know, for the first year in Atlanta, I was the only person handling the driver side. We had Keith, uh, 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 were just me, and, like, You know, we didn't have any of the AI tools that we did today. It was just like on a Google voice and sort of back and forth textings and desk. We, we let a lot of things slip through the cracks, but the business on the foundation was working.

AI assessment note: “the number one mistake we made in a lot of cities is We probably got kicked out”

Q Okay, so they're sitting in an office day to day, and they have complete, complete free reign over the city. How does that control and decision making look like from their perspective?

A Yeah, so everything was pretty autonomous, right? In the early days, uh, we all, I think, reported in, all the cities reported to Ryan Graves, uh, who was the first CEO before Travis. Incredible guy. And, uh, basically what happened every city had like the freedom to experiment and try things. And I think we had a pretty flat work structure in the early days. Everybody reported into gray. And later became the COO. Um, and he's an incredible guy. Um, love grades. And what's really interesting sort of about that is we, we all kept each other accountable, right? We were all doing really hard things. And every week we would get on like a city call, um, where an all hands call and every city would go down the list and say how much gross bookings you did it last week, how many trips you completed, how many drivers you onboarded and sort of general highlights from the city. And we had everything in a dashboard. Everybody at the company could see exactly what city was doing what, who was growing fastest, and it became like a really competitive dynamic that all just kind of, like, pushed each other forward, um, which was a really interesting approach.

AI assessment note: “every city had like the freedom to experiment and try things.”

Q Why? Where, where would it be now if he was still there?

A 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 I think that, you know, well, Dara has done, Dara and the team have done a good job kind of building the business, and it's a hundred fifty billion dollar company today. I think that founder led businesses do better over the long term. And, you know, I'm really encouraged by what I've seen, um, from Dara and the team, but I do think, you know, you lose some of that founder's edge, um, without Travis and some of that magic. And I think the speed slows down.

AI assessment note: “founder led businesses do better over the long term”

Q Were there cities that were clearly behind and struggling, and what were the reasons for those struggling cities?

A I think there were definitely cities that fell behind, um, but in a lot of cases, like, the teams were just incredible, um, It was more a function of the regs. So a lot of times, you know, if a city was struggling, it would be due to the regulations and the laws. So, you know, they would make it really difficult to operate. They would take your drivers. They would try to shut us down. And over time that regulatory situation cleared up where, you know, we were able to operate more freely or, you know, we ended up moving the teams to other cities or sort of working on other projects. But I would say like, it wasn't, it wasn't like certain markets were underperforming because of, you know, the, Sort of like underperformance. It was more like external factors that people couldn't control.

AI assessment note: “if a city was struggling, it would be due to the regulations and the laws.”

Q Would you say now, with the benefit of hindsight, Free UberX Week was incredibly, incredibly instrumental to the success of UberX?

A I think it would have worked no matter what. Um, I think, like, we had strong product market fit, but I think, like, what was particularly interesting about Free UberX Week, looking back on it 10 years later, uh, in hindsight, was the competitive dynamics, right? So, in a lot of ways, when we launched UberX, the main competitor was Lyft, and Lyft's flagship product was UberX. 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, uh, launches in a city, we are going to wait 30 days to see if the law enforcement, uh, comes after them, and then we're going to launch after that. So, as you probably know from Uber, that was a very abrupt, uh, sort of, It was a very different tack than we had taken on other launches and it didn't last very long, right? We probably did that for like three or four or five cities, and then we just started launching at the same time. So when we launched UberX, it was about market share and it was about getting as many drivers as possible as quickly as possible so that we could win that market and carve out a position, uh, that we felt really confident in.

AI assessment note: “I think it would have worked no matter what.”

Q Why? Where, where would it be now if he was still there?

A 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 I think that, you know, well, Dara has done, Dara and the team have done a good job kind of building the business, and it's a hundred fifty billion dollar company today. I think that founder led businesses do better over the long term. And, you know, I'm really encouraged by what I've seen, um, from Dara and the team, but I do think, you know, you lose some of that founder's edge, um, without Travis and some of that magic. And I think the speed slows down.

AI assessment note: “you lose some of that founder's edge, um, without Travis and some of that magic.”