Emil Michael: Uber's acquisition of Otto destroyed its relationship with Google
Emil Michael · 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 · at 28:53
Emil Michael, former CBO at Uber, reflects on what he considers the worst deal made during his tenure: the acquisition of autonomous vehicle startup Otto.
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“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 reasons. It turned out to be a bad deal because of that ended up in that lawsuit with Google, but it was so complicated with multiple earnouts and who owned what entity. And I, as a lawyer, I come from a little bit start with start with simple and then complicate if you have to. And it was this complex kind of thing where it was a sort of a separate company. And I didn't like the ideas of other employees having different motivations at my company about what they were going to do. I want everyone to be motivated the same way. So I tussled with Travis on it. He won. We did that deal. We got some great people that, that are now running Uber Freight. So there was like a great talent migration there. But it ended up in destroying our relationship with Google. So the cost to that was quite significant.”
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