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.
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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 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 predicts Benchmark's fixed $435M fund model will fail
“That's why I think Benchmark ultimately is going to, is, has no innovation. Forget the reputation, which most entrepreneurs, if they do their deals, will find out about, but just not innovating stuck at four hundred thirty-five million for the next 10 years is…”
Emil Michael: Benchmark's Bill Gurley is a catastrophist who constantly fears crashes
“I believe he's a catastrophist. Catastrophists are one who the sky's always falling”
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: Startup board seats should have term limits after 10x returns
“So, so, or when early stage investors Get to this point where there's just a lot of paper gains. We, there should be sort of term limits on board seats, like term limit out. If I get to, you know, a 10 X return and can get you some liquidity, then you can move…”
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 predicts tech down rounds in Q4/Q1, shutdowns in Q2/Q3
“I think we're at the end of the beginning, though, not the end of the end. The next phase is structured rounds, down rounds, like true down rounds and then sales were, unfortunately, companies sort of not making it, and I think that'll happen in Q one, you kno…”
Emil Michael: Pay-to-play recaps never work for tech startups
“These pay to play things never work. It didn't work at bird. It didn't work at Lime.”
Emil Michael would have told Travis Kalanick to reject Benchmark's coercion
“Had I talked to him that day, I would have said, Travis, walk out of the room. If you want to rip up the papers in front of them and we'll get, you know, get a lawyer and whatever. This is ridiculous. You know, there's, this is unfair. This is coercive. And we…”
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: Uber Eats would have beaten DoorDash under original leadership
“So I would have beaten door, we would have beaten DoorDash, guaranteed. We were ahead by 30 points when Travis Night left, so letting that atrophy was not an option.”
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: 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: VC funds must go multi-stage to survive fewer mid-tier exits
“And to win big, you've got to try to invest across multiple stages. And that's what Sequoia can do. That's what age can do. That's what rivet can do. That's what DST can do. And I think if you can't, You're just going to get, have to get lucky because there's …”
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 predicts 90% of active SPACs will disband and return capital
“18 months, you're going to see dead spat. Literally, they're going to disband and give the money back to investors. Maybe 90% of them.”
Emil Michael: Business executives are not top of Silicon Valley's hierarchy
“I was a business guy, and as you know, business guys are not top of the totem pole in Silicon Valley, right, in general.”
Emil Michael: Staying emotionally regulated gives leverage over uncentered counterparties
“I never get emotional back and that gives me power, right? It gives me power to, because I'm regulated, They're unregulated and uncentered, and that means they make more mistakes than I would. And so if you could be a shock absorber to emotion in negotiations,…”
Emil Michael: Small talk during serious negotiations betrays naivete
“The small talk stuff is fine, but it's, it sort of betrays a little naivete, like that you care, or they care, because if there's, you're in a serious negotiation, no one cares about that. They just care about, like, what you're trying to do.”
Emil Michael: Uber burned $100M monthly competing against Didi in China
“And we were spending A hundred million dollars a month competing there.”
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: Antitrust pressure will sharply reduce mid-market tech acquisitions
“There are going to be fewer tech acquisitions in this antitrust environment. Fewer, much fewer. So your outcomes for mid, middle companies like tell me are going to be farther, you know, fewer and farther between.”
Bill Campbell coached Steve Jobs and Google founders simultaneously
“They call them the coach, the trillion dollar coach, because he would, as you know, coach Steve Jobs, who no one in the world thought was coachable, and then he would coach Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and Sergey at Google on two of the most important companies…”
Microsoft offered Tellme Networks an acquisition term sheet for $800M
“By the end of the weekend, three days later, I had a term sheet for seven hundred sixty million dollars. Plus the cash and imbalances. So just about eight hundred million dollars.”
Emil Michael: Outworking the counterparty is the most important negotiation rule
“Number one thing in negotiations is outwork whoever you're negotiating with.”
Emil Michael: Uber China was valued at $7B in Didi acquisition
“And then tried to charm them into buying my company for a seven billion dollars.”
Emil Michael: No US consumer tech company operated in China before Uber
“Think about what consumer tech companies operate in China. Zero. There was, there's enterprise tech like Hewlett Packard and IBM and all those guys, but no one else had done that.”
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: Andreessen Horowitz continues to rise due to rapid innovation
“If you want to talk institutional brands in recent Horowitz is certainly on the way up despite whatever's happened in crypto. And I'll tell you why, because they're innovating. They're innovating on how they communicate their PR stuff. They're innovating on th…”
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 …”
Tellme Networks raised $150M across four rounds in 12 months
“We started telling me in 1999. So if you think about the timing of that, we were unbeknownst to us, 18 months from the world coming to an end from a technology investing standpoint. So we had done the things four rounds in one in 12 months. Raised a hundred an…”