What-if
Kalanick: Uber's 2017 board battle would differ with Andreessen or Horowitz
“That wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kalanick continues to stand by every decision he made at Uber
“I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber.”
Disclosure
Kalanick: Uber ran internal program 'shoplifting' to recruit Lyft drivers
“We had this thing where we would, against Lyft, we would we would recruit the drivers on Lyft to bring them over to Uber, so that it was hard for Lyft to build supply. And we would aggressively do it, and we had a program for it internally, which we called sho…”
Disclosure
Kalanick: Uber declined to acquire Lyft over cultural integration challenges
“That's why I didn't buy Lyft.”
Insight
Kalanick: Companies should operate just inches away from legal boundaries
“I like to go to the line. We should be like a few inches off the line. That's a good thing to do.”
Disclosure
Kalanick: Atoms is one of the main companies building industrial AI systems
“Systems of software, sensors, robotics, and AI used to automate operations of entire industrial sectors. Ok, that's what we do. I don't know if anybody else does it. I mean, there are people doing it that they don't call it this. We're one of the main guys doi…”
Insight
Kalanick: Leading 20,000 people requires being hardcore without being bad
“How do you lead 20,000 people and get them oriented towards a beautiful mission? And those 20,000 people are great minds, optimistic, good people. How do you do that? You can't do that by being a bad person. But you have to be hardcore.”
Opinion
Kalanick: Not acquiring Lyft was right due to incompatible corporate cultures
“I wouldn't do anything different. And it's easy to say now, but I got a lot of shit for that for a long time. But it was basically, I would sit across the table from the guys, and I just didn't It was just clear that we were very culturally different, and you …”
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2031
Kalanick: Automated food delivery will eventually undercut grocery store costs
“Is production of food going to get automated? And is the delivery of food going to get automated? I think we'd all say yes. And if that's the case, then there will be a service that, that prepares and delivers that food at cheaper than going to the grocery sto…”
Opinion
Kalanick calls Elon Musk the undisputed leader in industrial AI
“Who's the best of the best at industrial AI? Anybody want to guess? It's really obvious. His name rhymes with Shmilon, ok? He's the best of the best. And he'll just keep going and keep doing lots more, even if what you do now is not what he does now. So if you…”
Opinion
Kalanick: Musk buying Twitter enabled tech founders to speak their minds
“Elon buying Twitter is like the beginning of us being able to speak our minds and for disagreeing to not be illegal.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kalanick: Efficient meal delivery will replace home kitchens like Uber replaced cars
“The meaningful thing about Adam's food is, can you make the preparation and delivery of a quality meal so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? If it does, You do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kalanick: a16z agreed to $375M pre-money valuation for Uber in 2011
“In this particular case, Yuri was almost coming over the top, so we got to three 75, with a three seven hundred seventy five million pre, with a 16 Z. Yuri almost came in at 400, but he was like, nah, I can't do it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kalanick: Marc Andreessen cut a16z's Uber Series B valuation to $210M
“And he said, look, I know we talked about three 75, but went to the partnership. They don't agree, or they just didn't think it was the right number. We're the best we're going to be able to do is two 10.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kalanick: Uber's autonomous driving program was second only to Waymo in 2017
“Our timing program was like second to Waymo, but catching up at the time.”
Disclosure
Kalanick: Uber renamed Lyft recruitment program from 'shoplift' to 'NACS'
“The way you call projects, it has to be appropriate for, like, a ten-year-old basketball team. So it went from shoplift to the national, sorry, the North American Championship Series. We call it the NACS. And we had a whole very heavy-duty initiative called th…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kalanick: Autonomous couriers will drop food delivery costs to under $1
“Once we get the couriers, the robotic couriers, you go from 12 dollars a drop for each meal to 50 cents. A dollar of distribution cost per meal.”
Insight
Kalanick maps manufacturing, real estate, and logistics to computing infrastructure
“CPU manipulates the bits. Storage stores bits. Network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits. And you're like, well, I know that CPU manipulates the bits. What manipulates atoms? That's…”
Opinion
Kalanick: Industrial tasks require specialized robotics, not humanoid robots
“Humanoids are like low scale, do low scale tasks in human environments. If you're doing high scale tasks, industrial scale tasks, you are going to make specialized machines that move and act in the physical world.”
Insight
Kalanick: Avoiding confrontation forces teams to settle for mediocre ideas
“There's so many people that are not willing to fight for the best idea because they're going to upset somebody else. And if you don't fight for the best idea, then what idea are you fighting for? You're fighting for the mediocre idea, the politically expedient…”
Assertion Supported
Kalanick confirms Anthony Levandowski and Eric Meyhofer joined Atoms robotics
“Anthony Lewandowski, of course Eric Maihofer, who ran Uber's advanced technology group. He's running food robotics.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kalanick barred thousands of employees from listing his company on LinkedIn
“We had thousands of employees who were not allowed to put our company on LinkedIn.”
Assertion Supported
Kalanick: DoorDash held only 5% market share when he left Uber
“DoorDash was five percent market share when I left.”
Assertion Supported
Kalanick reveals global brand pseudonyms used by CloudKitchens in stealth
“So people know it as cloud kitchens in the U.S., but it's Casinos Aqueltas in Latin America. And we have different names. That means, like, magical kitchens, essentially. We have, like, Kitchen Valley in Korea. We have Flash Kitchen and three other names in Ch…”
Travis Kalanick