The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 296 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 8 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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.”
Emil Michael: Benchmark Capital lost its nerve ousting Travis Kalanick from Uber
“I was taken out with Travis because benchmark capital lost their nerve.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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, …”
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 …”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
Macdonald: In the End, Distribution Wins Over Autonomous Technology
“I think in the end, distribution wins.”
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.”
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?”
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”
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…”
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…”