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 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
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.”
Kalanick continues to stand by every decision he made at Uber
“I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber.”
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…”
Kalanick: Uber declined to acquire Lyft over cultural integration challenges
“That's why I didn't buy Lyft.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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 …”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
Kalanick: DoorDash held only 5% market share when he left Uber
“DoorDash was five percent market share when I left.”
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…”
Kalanick reveals he was Pronto's largest investor before acquiring it
“I was the biggest investor in Pronto. I'm like, let's go. So acquired Pronto, and now I'm in the mining business.”
Kalanick: Post-Uber founders are not scared of government regulation
“Entrepreneurs that are coming up since the Uber time. Are not scared of regulation the way that bits.”
Kalanick: Atoms does not build humanoid robotics or military applications
“No, no, no, we're like the non-humanoid guys. I don't have a problem with them, but that's not what we do. You're like, oh, do you do like some military thing? You're like, no, that's not my thing either.”
Kalanick says former Uber CFO and engineering VP joined Atoms
“Gautam, who was the CFO over at Uber has joined Adams. That's a recent thing. Ganesh, who was A VP or SVP of engineering over at Uber has just joined Adams”
Kalanick: a16z's initial Lyft investment was valued at $210 million
“And the deal on Lyft was two 10.”
Kalanick: Uber held secret meetings with a16z during Lyft rivalry
“There was also this other thing that would happen, so this is like, 2000, I think this really started in 2014, 15, et cetera, is Emile and I would meet up with Mark and Ben at this, Super undercover restaurant.”
Kalanick: CloudKitchens operates hundreds of facilities across 30 countries
“We have hundreds of facilities in 30 countries, many hundreds of facilities in 30 countries.”
Kalanick: Specialized robotics companies must own their own autonomy technology
“Because if you're going to be in the specialized robotics game, you have to have autonomy for yourself. You have to. Your robots are act, are moving and acting in the physical world, and you cannot depend of, on only one company that has an existence proof.”
Kalanick built Atoms in stealth to ignore media scrutiny
“Because remember, I wanted to build without worrying about what the New York Times was saying.”
Kalanick: Atoms currently focuses strictly on food, mining, and transport
“Look I tell people I'm very focused right now because it's only food mining and transport.”
Kalanick: Full-stack physical automation requires mobile robotics in every industry
“But like, actually what it means is every industry is moving things. There's some movement of things eventually. And you must have wheelbase as part of what they do if you want to automate Full stack.”
Kalanick: Hard to rehire executives after making them hundreds of millions
“When you make somebody hundreds of millions of dollars, it's hard to hire them again.”
Kalanick: Physical AI work continues the mission started at Uber
“We've been doing this for a long time, ok? This is a continuation of a lot of the awesome things we did back in the Uber day.”
Kalanick: Atoms deploys robotics to automate food production
“So we have robotics that basically do the production of food.”
Travis Kalanick: Atoms software is operating autonomous heavy mining machines
“And this is an autonomous mining machine operating on our stuff.”
Kalanick: I worked for eight years privately before launching Atoms
“A lot of folks, they say, hey, Travis is back, or, you know, I think it might have even been on your invite. But I've actually been working for eight years. I just haven't been talking about it.”
Kalanick: Uber's first venture round had a $4M pre-money valuation
“Our first round at Uber was four million pre.”
Kalanick: Scour was sued for $250B by 33 major media companies
“This is a couple of companies before Uber. I did a peer to peer file sharing system, got sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 of the largest media companies in the world”
Kalanick: Atoms uses TCP sawtooth algorithm to manage kitchen order demand
“In fact, we use TCP sawtooth, To basically manage how much demand to send to certain kitchens based on capacity and reliability, as an example.”