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 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Khosrowshahi: Autonomous vehicles will take 10 years to become material in transportation
“My instinct is that you will see small scale continued experiments kind of get bigger over the next five years, but it's going to take a good 10 years for it to be a material part of our network or transportation at large. But that's a guess.”
Khosrowshahi: Son threatened to invest billions in Lyft if Uber rejected SoftBank
“SoftBank wanted in, and in typical MASA fashion, it was like, hey, if you don't let us invest in you, we're going to invest in that pink company, right?”
Khosrowshahi: Uber Is the Largest Source of Work in the World
“I think we're the largest source of work anywhere by far, and growing pretty fast.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber will never cap driver onboarding to protect earnings
“No because one of our core philosophies is this is an open platform, and if your background check comes in okay, et cetera, then you can have access to earnings opportunities.”
Khosrowshahi: High Take Rates Are Dangerous for Marketplaces
“So, I will answer somewhat seriously, which is high take rates are dangerous. So, our job as a company is to grow volume as much as we can, as fast as we can. And make your shareholders happy enough. Yep. Minimizing the take rate, which is taking as much of th…”
Khosrowshahi: Uber intends to wire up every single taxi globally
“There are four and a half million taxis in the world who would imagine that Uber will be working with taxis, but we're going to wire up every single taxi in the world.”
Rosenthal: Companies Stayed Private for Opacity and Profit, Not Sarbox
“Sarbanes actually raised the cost and complexity of being a public company. No doubt. I think, though, probably not as much as the stay private longer proponents were saying. And this might be related to what you're saying. I suspect, again, to the incentives …”
Suing Travis Kalanick did not directly harm Benchmark's investment business
“I think pretty unambiguously at this point, both in my opinion and just looking at what's happened in the intervening, god, it's been five years since then, the answer to that, like, does this meaningfully negatively impact benchmark is no. Directly, no.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber eliminated all dual-class super-voting shares for SoftBank deal
“We literally had to, like, get everyone to agree to blow up the high vote shares. I think it's actually the only time when tech, a tech company like, they blew up all of the high votes.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber's ML matching efficiency yields roughly 5% annual throughput growth
“Every year when I can't speak to how our competitors are matching and pricing, but every year matching and pricing probably improves by five percent a year. So you improve your, the marketplace throughput by about five percent.”
Khosrowshahi: Year-over-year Uber ride prices are down as supply outpaces demand
“Now, in this environment, where we are adding supply faster than demand because the supply is really coming into the marketplace, prices in Uber now, year on year, are down.”
Calacanis: I did not change Uber or Robinhood's trajectory
“A, that is not the case with Uber or Robinhood. I was along for the ride, let's be honest. I did not change the trajectory of those companies.”
The Uber crisis precipitated the end of Benchmark's 'Fab Four' GP era
“Indirectly, yeah, very little doubt in my mind that this precipitates the end of the Fab Four era.”
Gordon-Levitt: Former colleagues found Travis Kalanick inspiring, contradicting his media portrayal
“A lot of people said how much they liked, how inspiring he was, how compelling he was, how much energy he would bring to a room. And that was really fascinating because that's not always evident when you read articles about him or even when you read Mike's boo…”
Rosenthal: First Round Capital's first institutional fund achieved a 50x return
“The first institutional fund that first round ended up raising was a 50 X on a hundred and twenty five million dollar fund. It had Roblox, Uber, and Square.”
Barry Diller helped edit Khosrowshahi's Uber CEO presentation
“He's like, show me the presentation. It was a PowerPoint. So I showed him PowerPoint. And he actually helped me in the PowerPoint. He's like, this is good. This is good. You have to add, add this page. So it's just, it shows you the kind of person he is, which…”
Daniel Ek referred Khosrowshahi for the Uber CEO role
“And then I was at the Sun Valley Conference, the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference. And having drinks with Daniel Leck. And he's like, Dara, you know, did you get the call from a headhunter about the Uber job? I think you'd be perfect for the job. And I di…”
Khosrowshahi: Rides drives more new Eats customers than all external ads combined
“Yeah, we get more new customers from Arise than we do From Google, Meta, Instagram, you know, all of these other channels combined.”
Khosrowshahi: Travis Kalanick sold all his Uber shares after lockup expired
“After the IPO, after the lockup, Stayed. Travis sold all his shares.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber lost 85% of mobility volume while bleeding $2.5B during pandemic
“85% of your mobility volume, which was the profit driver of the company falls off a cliff. And Other CEOs, you know, they lost a ton of business, but most of these businesses were profitable. We were losing two and a half billion dollars, and then it just got …”
Benchmark's equity stake in Uber was valued at $8 billion in 2018
“In 2018, when that Wall Street Journal piece came out, their holding in Uber was worth eight billion dollars, so that alone would have sixteen-xed the fund.”
Benchmark led Uber's Series A at a $60 million post-money valuation
“20 11. A ten million dollar Series A at a, 10 or 11, at a sixty million dollar post money valuation.”
Benchmark lacked an eBay-sized investment win until backing Bill Gurley's Uber
“Benchmark did not have an eBay-sized win until Bill's big marketplace.”
Uber Killed Ben Gilbert's Ride-Sharing Meta-Search Startup by Cutting API Access
“At one point I started a startup that actually got killed by Uber, not willing to play ball with us and cutting off our API, but it's effectively a meta search for ride sharing to be able to find the fastest, closest ride to you independent of who's actually p…”
Koppelman: Mike Isaac brought off-the-record Uber sources into the writers' room
“And then he was reading every script and giving us notes, and what was great in the room is we'd be in the room and we'd go, what do we really think happened in that room? What's your sourcing? And he would go, and he wouldn't reveal his sources, but he would …”
Khosrowshahi: Walmart uses Uber's fulfillment services without joining its marketplace
“So for example, Walmart, Isn't in our marketplace because they're Walmart, they have an incredible brand, et cetera, but they use our fulfillment services”
Khosrowshahi: Uber treats a rideshare fulfill rate below 98% as a disaster
“If you look at our ride share service, for example, if our fulfill rate Which is the percentage of the time someone asks for a ride, and then there's a car available, if that's less than, call it, 98%, that's, like, all hands on deck. Like, it's a disaster.”