The Exchanges, every show

Q So, uh, genai.mil, I think was like a surprise and how quickly, um, it happened. Uh, uh, can you tell us the story of that and what the, like the goal is?

A So genai.mil, because if you're on a, on a, Department of War network. You, you know, even the unclassified networks are secure, right? And, and different levels of security as you go up. So you still have to figure out how to architect using AI in, into those networks. It's not as simple as going to chatgbt.com and, and signing up because those things are sort of generally prohibited because you have to have restrictions on how to use them. So we had to figure out what are the, the policies, how do you architect it in the network? So nothing goes Back into the pool of data that ChatGPT or Claude or any of these companies have, because we certainly don't want, no one in this country wants our data getting out into the general public, right? Into these models. So you have to architect a different, uh, data flow. So, but we moved really fast. I had some like Databricks engineers, former Databricks engineers, former Meta engineers, former AWS people, Tiger team, 60 days, Uh, good, great collaboration from Gemini, uh, from Google's Gemini, who already works at Department of Warsets, some familiarity with our architecture and our systems, and got that launched to three million people. And we've had over a million people Unix use it in the last 30 days, which is kind of awesome. We've got one third of the enterprise on one model. That's 2.5, not three point oh, three point oh is comi…

AI assessment note: “Tiger team, 60 days, Uh, good, great collaboration from Gemini”

Q for or procured. And, you know, that's somewhat different from how you think about innovation in terms of something new comes up. You want to rapidly be able to iterate, to launch it, to deploy it. And so if, how do you think about either flexible budget spend or reallocation of budget over time and how does that relate to the legislative process and how does that impact entrepreneurs ultimately?

A Yeah, it's been, it's been a problem, such a problem that they've given like an awful name to it called the valley of death, which I, which, uh, you'll hear eight ways to Sunday here. And the ways, you know, we've come at it and I've come at it is we have this defense innovation unit, which is rapid contracting, has a billion dollars, has like a reasonable amount of money to do things really fast to get startups off the ground and get them through. We have several other programs that have that same capability, one called AFIT that takes companies that have developed the product, but now need to scale their manufacturing. So there's a different line in the, you know, different point in the process. I have the Office of Strategic Capital, which has two hundred billion dollars in lending authority, um, low cost loans, and that both sends a demand signal to these companies that other private capital crowds around it, equity capital often, and it's, Low cost loans, right? It's treasuries plus a hundred bips. And in the last, I don't know, four or five months, we've done five critical minerals deals, like really fast. Cause that's an, that's a target area and we'll have other target areas. So if you're a company that's in one of the super critical areas, um, we have this huge lending authority there too. So I'm trying to collapse the valley of death by crowding capital around in diff…

AI assessment note: “we're reserving a bit of the budget every year so that we can make in-year budget decisions.”

Q What are ways, so we have a lot of listeners who are building things who, you know, interested in helping the Department of War. Like, like, what's the right way to engage? Like, I, I'm, I'm lucky I happen to know you. Like, people don't know you. Like, what's the right way to engage with your team and to, and to work with you guys?

A So we've tried to, uh, declare or tell people in the industry that we're open for business. And what does that mean? That means I've got funding mechanisms and entry points at each stage of the company's life cycle. So at the beginning, there's something called SIBR, Small Business Award. That's very, for early, early stage companies. Um, and then we have something called APFIT, which is, you know, a company, uh, low rate production for companies that have developed something that we need for the Army, Navy, Air Force. And then we have DIU, the Defense Innovation Unit, and the Office of Strategic Capital. So I can, I have many ways to get companies in, and then there's the traditional way. You go try to sell to a service, you build a product that they want, need, to spec.

AI assessment note: “I've got funding mechanisms and entry points at each stage of the company's life cycle.”

Q Can I be so bold and ask, was that the first real money that you made? I think when you first have your big hit, it does change a lot mindset-wise. Was that your first, and did it impact your mindset?

A Uh, yeah, it was my first. So I used that merger proceeds to pay down my student loans. So I was, I was student loan free in 2007. So call it, I was 35. Um, cause I've been with tell me now for, you know, eight years at that point. And, uh, it changed my mindset in so far as like, wow, this is possible, right? I was an immigrant from Egypt. My parents came here, you know, with nothing's crap, classic, great immigrant story for America. But it was sort of proof positive when you see that many zeros in your bank account, you're like, wow, this, this is actually the land of opportunity, and it really is. Um, so in that way, but, but I was sort of still someone who didn't spend the money, was afraid it would go away at any time. So my lifestyle didn't change, but, but my attitude, uh, did change.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yeah, it was my first.”

Q Yeah. Just listening to that. Um, uh, I, I do want to also, um, and Alfred asked this one. Okay. Moving on from the benchmark side, Dara today, what do you honestly think of Dara's management? How do you feel? Good? Bad? What are the thoughts?

A I mean, there's no, just let's start at a factual basis. 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%. So it just is. Then you're like, oh, what about ride sharing? Ride sharing is down. Well, what about e-commerce? Amazon up and Wix.com and Overstock are down. So Uber should have been the leader in this category and brought everyone up and showed them how to make an efficient business model. Um, there's been an enormous talent train. The company is loaded with debt right now. It's one of the only ride sharing the companies in the world with net debt. Um, is lost in food delivery to, um, DoorDash big. We went from a 60 point sort of gap to, you know, being the opposite. And that's a thirty billion dollar mistake if you think that, you know, Uber could have been DoorDash. So, um, you know, by all objective measures, it hasn't succeeded from a financial standpoint. So, you know, he's a nice guy. He cleaned up the company in terms of things that were sort of excess from a culture standpoint. 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.

AI assessment note: “by all objective measures, it hasn't succeeded from a financial standpoint”

Q Let me bring up one more headline. Um, there's a story this week that also says that you had some XAI stock. Do you have any SpaceX? Is that a conflict?

A No. I sold all my SpaceX. Okay. And I, so what happens when you take one of these jobs, you, you show your whole, whole sort of list to the Office of Government Ethics, nonpartisan. They go through it and they say, we think these things are, these things are red lines. You sell your defense company stocks, which you didn't have much. SpaceX was on the list, so you have to sell that. Um, and then depending on your role, here's the things you have to sell that might be specific to your role. And then based on the kind of connection to that, you could recuse yourself from dealing with the company. So I just recused myself from dealing with XAI until I could sell. And I was pretty, you know, active about it because I didn't have the AI portfolio until the fall.

AI assessment note: “No. I sold all my SpaceX.”

Q famously is one of the fastest moving companies ever. It's probably not possible for the entire Pentagon and three million people to move as fast as you guys did at Uber, but can you, can you bring some of that startup speed to the Pentagon? Like, is any of that working so far? Are you, are you, is that even a model at all that inspires you to push harder?

A Absolutely. I mean, every day I wake up And, um, and I think, you know, if, if they have this once in a moment lifetime, this once in a lifetime moment where you have a disruptive president, a disruptive secretary of war, and I'm in this job, I'm not going to do it forever. How do I leave my mark, right? And do, and my mark on behalf of the country. So I wake up every day thinking that way and trying to bring the Uber practices. And some of those are, they're actually kind of normal business practices. When something's not getting done, you call everyone in a room, you do standups every day until you get to the answer. You, someone says, well, you can't do that. I said, well, show me the policy. And you read the, you know, you, you find your way to answers, which is why in two months of owning, being the chief AI, having the chief AI office run in my world, which was a new move, we were able to launch, uh, gen AI, which is Google's Gemini for four million, every, every, uh, employee, military and civilian in the department. And they never had AI on their desktop before. Now it's on every single desktop in two months. So it can be done.

AI assessment note: “Now it's on every single desktop in two months. So it can be done.”

Q Just insanely cool to hear. Um, I, I do want to flip though. Uh, what was the worst deal you've ever done? We've all made mistakes. What was the worst deal you've done? And what did you learn from that?

A The worst deal I've done? Well, you know, they have to be material to be bad, right? So I'm not going to tell you about the small, the small, we call them SLDs, small shitty deals. Um, uh, uh, so shitty little deals. Um, so I'm not going back to that because every company sort of does deals. They make mistakes. I'll talk about big one. 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, was Uber acquiring, um, auto, which was the autonomous car division that, uh, that gets started out of Google guys. It was, and I didn't like it for different reasons. It turned out to be a bad deal because of that ended up in that lawsuit with Google, but it was so complicated with multiple earnouts and who owned what entity. And I, as a lawyer, I come from a little bit start with start with simple and then complicate if you have to. And it was this complex kind of thing where it was a sort of a separate company. And I didn't like the ideas of, of other employees having different motivations at my company about what they were going to do. I want everyone to be motivated the same way. So I tussled with Travis on it. He won. We did that deal. Um, we got some great people that, that are now running Uber Freight. So there was like a great talent migration there. But it ended up in destroying our relationship with Google. So the cost to that…

AI assessment note: “the deal that Was under my watch... was Uber acquiring, um, auto”

Q I have to start with, um, actually one from Dave Clark, but Dave Clark highlighted the breadth of your experiences pre Really diving into being the OG that you are today. We have, uh, Harvard, Stanford, Goldman, lawyer, uh, Department of Defense, and he asked, which of these best contributed to your success today, do you think, on Reflection?

A I mean, you know, sort of none of them. The best one was the Bill Campbell thing. When I got to the Valley, um, Bill Campbell was associated with Kleiner Perkins, um, and Kleiner Perkins back in that day was the VC. They did Amazon, Google, um, John Doerr was, was the man. There was no one, what he touched turned to gold, and he was buddies with Bill Campbell, and he invested in Tell Me, that first company I was telling you about, and Bill took a liking to me, and I was 25, and he became my mentor, and he's the one who sort of propelled the future startups. He's the one who propelled, you know, working at the White House for Secretary Robert Gates. The education stuff didn't propel me for much of it, except meeting the guys, Hadi, Ali, David, Alfred. Um, so those are the two sort of influence, I'd say, that got me there.

AI assessment note: “I mean, you know, sort of none of them. The best one was the Bill Campbell thing.”

Q What do you think got them over the line on that deal?

A Besides the industrial logic, I really believe that it was mine and Jean Lou's relationship. Um, we spent a week, a week together in a dark hotel negotiating this, and she trusted me at that point. And then we flew to Macau and we flew to Macau because, um, we didn't, she was well known in China. She was a family of a politician. And if they saw her with some American and be like, oh, this is DD Uber merger happening. So we flew this hotel room in Macau for another four days with lawyers and the whole thing. And we really just pushed it through. She and I, we got our teams on board. We got our CEOs on board. We got our lawyers on board to count. And this is a cross border M and a China, us consumer. It was so complicated. And every day I made sure at the end of the day, say, Jean, how are we doing? Are we, How are you and me? Did I say anything that you didn't like, that you thought was wrong? Let's clear it out. Sort of like a marriage. Before you go to bed, you clear your air. We cleared our air every day, and then we closed the deal, and I remember going, she asked me to go to dinner the day after the deal closed, and she's like, I heard you were such a tough negotiator. I was like, I am tough, aren't I? She said, no, but you're fair. You told me what you were going to do, and you did it every single time. No matter what it was, no matter what clause, you said, I'm gonna get…

AI assessment note: “I really believe that it was mine and Jean Lou's relationship.”

Q Dave Clark asked me a question to ask you, and I thought it was, and he did a crying laughter emoji face, and I was like, well, that tells me that I should probably adapt it slightly. Are SPACs over, and what did you learn from yours?

A SPACs are over. Um, what I learned from mine is that I relearned a lesson that I am not a financial engineer. I'm a deal maker. And SPAC, the SPAC world is not deal making. It's financial engineering. It's moving money around from one part of the ecosystem to another. And trying to get the IPO out fast and about disclosures and what you're allowed to say in this situation versus not. It is just, and this is, I think, unfortunately, what Dara does at Uber, what a company like Verizon does, they're all, they're all financially engineered. They're not innovating. And so when there's a market collapse, all these financially engineered Frankenstein products, like a SPAC collapse, and, and that's what's happened. And It used to be a backwater financial product, and Chamath brought it to be mainstream, and I think it's just gonna retreat back to being a backwater financial product.

AI assessment note: “SPACs are over. Um, what I learned from mine is that I relearned a lesson”

Q Can I be so bold and ask, was that the first real money that you made? I think when you first have your big hit, it does change a lot mindset-wise. Was that your first, and did it impact your mindset?

A Uh, yeah, it was my first. So I used that merger proceeds to pay down my student loans. So I was, I was student loan free in 2007. So call it, I was 35. Um, cause I've been with tell me now for, you know, eight years at that point. And, uh, it changed my mindset in so far as like, wow, this is possible, right? I was an immigrant from Egypt. My parents came here, you know, with nothing's crap, classic, great immigrant story for America. But it was sort of proof positive when you see that many zeros in your bank account, you're like, wow, this, this is actually the land of opportunity, and it really is. Um, so in that way, but, but I was sort of still someone who didn't spend the money, was afraid it would go away at any time. So my lifestyle didn't change, but, but my attitude, uh, did change.

AI assessment note: “yeah, it was my first... it changed my mindset in so far as like, wow”

Q How do you do that? Is it small talk? Is it, oh, have you had a nice trip?

A It was, it's exactly not that. When people go, oh, how was your flight? Where'd you come in from? Where are you staying? The small talk stuff is fine, but it's, 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. Um, it was more about Trying to build some trust. And so one of the ways I built trust with Jean Lou would say, Hey, I'd be interested to hear your perspective. We were in this competitive battle here. Here's how I saw it. What did you see? Um, something that wasn't sort of central to negotiation, but try to establish a rapport about how both of us saw the same incident so differently. And she's like, Oh, we didn't, we didn't shut off all your phones or send spam text messages to drivers saying they weren't going to get paid. I was like, you didn't? Who did? And then we'd have a joke about like, well, who is trying to sabotage both of us? Um, and it was a little bit of that until, and it took me four days of going to that dark hotel room until she allowed me to bring one of my colleagues to at least take notes so that I wasn't over man here. It was that kind of rapport that started it. So rapport matters and knowledge of what their problems were matter. And Sufficient humility, but sufficient strength projection sh…

AI assessment note: “It was, it's exactly not that... It was more about Trying to build some trust.”

Q Just insanely cool to hear. Um, I, I do want to flip though. Uh, what was the worst deal you've ever done? We've all made mistakes. What was the worst deal you've done? And what did you learn from that?

A The worst deal I've done? Well, you know, they have to be material to be bad, right? So I'm not going to tell you about the small, the small, we call them SLDs, small shitty deals. Um, uh, uh, so shitty little deals. Um, so I'm not going back to that because every company sort of does deals. They make mistakes. I'll talk about big one. 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, was Uber acquiring, um, auto, which was the autonomous car division that, uh, that gets started out of Google guys. It was, and I didn't like it for different reasons. It turned out to be a bad deal because of that ended up in that lawsuit with Google, but it was so complicated with multiple earnouts and who owned what entity. And I, as a lawyer, I come from a little bit start with start with simple and then complicate if you have to. And it was this complex kind of thing where it was a sort of a separate company. And I didn't like the ideas of, of other employees having different motivations at my company about what they were going to do. I want everyone to be motivated the same way. So I tussled with Travis on it. He won. We did that deal. Um, we got some great people that, that are now running Uber Freight. So there was like a great talent migration there. But it ended up in destroying our relationship with Google. So the cost to that…

AI assessment note: “was Uber acquiring, um, auto, which was the autonomous car division”

Q to ask is, um, and again, I can't remember who it was. Um, but someone asked this, and I liked it. Here you go, Emil. Travis, and you, you are back running Uber. You said, um, you know, before about, you know, the lost opportunity in, uh, food. You spoke about Uber Freight. What are the opportunities that you would have jumped on? What would you not have jumped on?

A Yeah. I think we, instead of buying, um, Kareem in the Middle East, Postmates, Jump Bike, um, I think all of those will be a hundred percent write downs. Those are some of the worst acquisitions done in tech. Um, maybe Postmates may be the worst acquisition done tech in the last five years. So it's for a three billion dollar company that was like going to be a zero within three months. And we got nothing out of it. No market share gain, nothing. So there was just a bunch of. You just bad, I guess, sort of, and I think Dari was trying to repeat the Expedia thing, which is like, buy all these random things, like stitch them together, and like, that's a platform. It's kind of not how it works. Um, so I would have beaten door, we would have beaten DoorDash, guaranteed. We were ahead by 30 points when Travis Knight left, so letting that atrophy was not an option. Um, I think we would have had an Instacart competitor way earlier, and we would have been, if not ahead of Instacart by now, but neck and neck with them. In every continent, just not one continent like Instacart's in. So even if you think Instacart's a fifteen billion dollar business, I think we could have built a sixty billion dollar business globally on that, on top of Eats, which was another, another 60 to a hundred billion if we'd won DoorDash, and we were going to beat Deliveroo, and then the rides business where Uber,…

AI assessment note: “instead of buying, um, Kareem in the Middle East, Postmates, Jump Bike”

Q Different use cases. One is an air war, one is a ground war. What are the main things that you've learned watching this in action, and what do you, how do you think it changes, again, the way fighting might happen?

A Yeah, two different, you're right to point out two different scenarios. So, in Russia, Ukraine, you have a battle over territory, and so that battle over territory, where the lines are drawn, means that with the drone warfare, the robots are the front line, and the humans are back, and the idea is Well, why risk a human going in front if you could send a machine first and see what, you know, see if you could fight it that way. Still a lot of destruction, death there that's obviously sad and unnecessary, but I don't know how much more there'd be if you had a civil war style thing where you have, you know, humans on humans. In Iran, um, the drones, I think the lesson from that is that, um, the imbalance of costs Right? You have a cheap drone going against very expensive targets.

AI assessment note: “with the drone warfare, the robots are the front line, and the humans are back”

Q say about this, and I'd be curious to get your thoughts on it, is that you can look at the history of companies that have been deemed a supply chain risk to the Pentagon, It's very rare if unprecedented for a company like Anthropic to be banned that way. So why do you think it rise to the level, and do you think it merits this, like, fairly unprecedented action?

A Well, I mean, on one hand, you can't say that they have this mo, this cyber nuclear bomb, and yet we shouldn't be worried about how those capabilities enter and remain In our supply chain. Those two things are inconsistent, right? And I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying that if you believe they're going to cause 40% unemployment, if you believe that, um, these things have a capability that you put 50,000 geniuses in a data center, they're going to coerce the world. They could create bio and chem weapons. Of course the Department of War is going to want to understand and constrain, uh, you know, those things so that they don't do something unintended on our side, right? So these companies are talking about their things in apocalyptic terms, which make it necessary for us to judge the management teams, judge their actions, Look at the terms of service. Understand how they fit in our supply chain. This technology is like nothing we've ever seen, so you can't compare it to, you know, a chip from a foreign chip manufacturer that gets put in the supply chain. This is a whole different thing because of just what you said, is the power of what they're saying it's going to do, the disruption might cause an American life. Um, and we don't, if someone developed a nuclear bomb in their In their garage, you don't think we'd have anything to say about it. Yeah, well, of course we would, rig…

AI assessment note: “These companies are talking about their things in apocalyptic terms, which make it necessary”

Q Let me just ask, Emil, the important question that I think triggered a lot of the news this week is why then designate them as supply chain risk? Why not just abandon them, move on, use the other vendors? Like, why take this kind of punitive action?

A Yeah, so I don't view it as punitive, and I'll tell you why. It's if their model has this policy bias, let's call it, Based on their constitution, their culture, their people, and so on. I don't want Lockheed Martin using their model to design weapons for me. I don't want the people who are designing the things that go into the, the componentry to come to me, because if that poison, if you believe the risk of poisoning inside a threat, yes, it can enter into any part of the defense enterprise, but it's just the defense enterprise. So Boeing wants to use Anthropic to Build commercial jets. Have at it. Boeing wants to use it to build fighter jets. I can't have that because I don't trust what the outputs may be because they're so wedded to their own policy preferences.

AI assessment note: “I don't want Lockheed Martin using their model to design weapons for me.”

Q chance, according polymarket, and by the end of the year, 51% chance. So Emil, I guess there are two questions people really want to know. I'll leave off why we're doing this. I think President Trump has been pretty clear now. But how long is this going to take is the one question. And are we going to have to have boots on the ground? Maybe what is success here?

A Um, I think the, the president talked about this is a weeks, not months kind of operation, and it's aimed at essentially disarming the, the regime, uh, or the country from, uh, in such a way that they can't supply Hezbollah, Hamas, um, Muslim Brotherhood, all the kind of terror groups that get sponsored by weapons and money from Iran, not to mention the nuclear bit. And that's why you see from the reporting, they're going after the depots, the, the, you know, we went after nuclear sites before. They're a prodigious drone maker. These like huge one-way attack drones that can go, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles. Um, lots of ballistic missiles, uh, that are aimed at every country in the Middle East, as you've seen, they've attacked them. So I think that's one. In terms of boots on the ground, there's no scenario where we have some protracted boots on the ground, Afghanistan, Iraq too, like scenario.

AI assessment note: “the president talked about this is a weeks, not months kind of operation”

Q related to moving fast is prioritization. And I think in another interview in the past, you said something like, 14 priorities mean no priorities at all. And you've kind of really honed down into a handful of key areas. Do you mind walking through sort of those key areas from an overall broader innovation focus? And then maybe we can touch on one or two of them as we go.

A Yeah. I mean, so just to analogize to Uber or any company that, you know, we worked on together, Imagine you went to a management team and you're like, what's your, how many product, you know, how's your product line going? You're a series B company. You're like, well, I've got 14 product lines. You'd say, well, what about sort of uninvestable, right? So, um, when I got here, there were 14 critical technology areas. So critical, critical to our national security. So I looked at them. I said, well, yeah, number one, that if, if there's that many, they can't be critical, but number two, Hard for people to hold in their head that many priorities and wake up every morning knowing that they have to get up and execute against those priorities and make progress because you get distracted, you get too much, uh, dispar, you know, uh, separation and therefore not enough resource to any one thing. So I cut them down to six after studying and I made it more action oriented. So we put sprints behind them like you would an engineering team. So, uh, you know, off the top of my head, the, the number one is applied AI. Because we're not building a foundation model at the DOW because there's being hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by the private sector on this. So how do I adapt or use what's being developed in the, in the private sector and apply it to the Department of War use cases?…

AI assessment note: “So I cut them down to six... number one is applied AI... number two is”

Q You mentioned that one thing you have to have, uh, to get these changes to happen is like some talent from Silicon Valley or just talent that is excited about this pace. Like who are you recruiting? Who do you want to be part of the Department of War?

A Big untold stories about Doge, which is, yeah, it did some, some aggressive actions in the beginning that were, um, controversial and all that, but the talent they brought into every department, um, could then be deployed on other projects like the AI action plan, uh, that we did with Gen AI. So, because they were already, like, Elon chose technically sophisticated people. There weren't all engineers, some were lawyers, some were Had from, but they all had a mentality of, of a fixer builder mentality. So I borrowed a lot of those people and then they attract more people on the way in. And then we have this U S tech force that, that Scott Kapoor from Andreessen Horowitz is deployed. And we were hoping to get thousands of people out of college for a two year stint, sort of make it, um, you know, this is your service to the country as a technologist rather than as a soldier. Um, so now we want both and we're going to try to, you know, make, try to make that a badge of honor so that you go back in the industry with some credit, you know, so additional credibility and be proud of your service here. So those are the ways I'm attracting talent and I'm dialing for dollars. I call everyone who's had just left a job and I'm like, Hey, do you have a year to spare doing the coolest stuff you could possibly imagine? Recruiting Tuesdays, I call them and I call my friends like you guys and sa…

AI assessment note: “we were hoping to get thousands of people out of college for a two year stint”

Q Is there a list published anywhere where founders who are listening in can go and see what they should be building or areas where there's more demand than either people understand or is anticipated or where the DOW is willing to help provide capital or other things to accelerate it?

A So the DIU for defensive issue has like four or five categories of things that they look at. So that's, that's sort of a published and public thing. The Office of Strategic Capital is a little more proactive. They're going to say, we have this whole, I'm going to go find companies that already exist that do this. So it's not for startups because it's a lending facility, if you will. So they're looking for companies that already exist and how do I expand their, their production? Um, but it's a good point. You know, at some point, I was talking to the secretary about this the other day. It's like, we should have some forum for, for talking about the things that we need more proactively so investors and entrepreneurs can think about them.

AI assessment note: “DIU for defensive issue has like four or five categories of things that they look at”

Q Tell me about immigration policy, because obviously it's a huge deal for you, I imagine, your family. You came here, you've been very successful in America. We have a lot of debates what's going on right now, like, like, you know, I think we have eight million people who have come across the border illegally. How do you feel about this?

A It's disappointing in so many ways because for two reasons. Number one, a country is not a country without a border, right? And, and not being able to control comes in means, means you can't serve those who come in very well. And if the idea is we have a melting pot so that everyone who comes in here, we take care of, they're entitled to a public education, to the resources to give them a chance to succeed. Well, you can't do that when it's uncontrolled. Um, so that's one piece. The second piece is, Um, you know, my family did it the right way. We waited, um, we couldn't bring our cousins and our families and we had to sort of go through all the rules that are required. And by the way, every one of those that in my family who eventually came in is doing something important and loves their work and is contributing back to the society and we all bought into this melting pot concept. We're all American. First, and then where we came from second.

AI assessment note: “It's disappointing in so many ways because for two reasons.”

Q You know, zooming out on the gig economy is something Term everyone used to use. We don't talk about as much anymore now. There's AI and stuff, but like, did the gig economy live up to its promise? Did it achieve what it was supposed to? Like, like, was it, was it positively impactful overall?

A I mean, I can't even see an argument in any way where it wasn't. And again, this is the political sort of view versus the actual reality view. Uber over time has probably paid a hundred billion dollars to drivers. A hundred billion dollars. The entire taxi system probably only ever paid You know, a hundred million dollars after 50 years of existence. So, so many people got access to money in a flexible way than the decades before them, in just the last decade. Um, and so, yes, are you saying that limo drivers now make less today than they would have ever? Sure, there are some casualties there, but you now can guarantee a ride to the airport. And do you remember trying to get a taxi in San Francisco, Joe, when we lived there?

AI assessment note: “I can't even see an argument in any way where it wasn't.”

Q What do you think got them over the line on that deal?

A Besides the industrial logic, I really believe that it was mine and Jean Lou's relationship. Um, we spent a week, a week together in a dark hotel negotiating this, and she trusted me at that point. And then we flew to Macau and we flew to Macau because, um, we didn't, she was well known in China. She was a family of a politician. And if they saw her with some American and be like, oh, this is DD Uber merger happening. So we flew this hotel room in Macau for another four days with lawyers and the whole thing. And we really just pushed it through. She and I, we got our teams on board. We got our CEOs on board. We got our lawyers on board to count. And this is a cross border M and a China, us consumer. It was so complicated. And every day I made sure at the end of the day, say, Jean, how are we doing? Are we, How are you and me? Did I say anything that you didn't like, that you thought was wrong? Let's clear it out. Sort of like a marriage. Before you go to bed, you clear your air. We cleared our air every day, and then we closed the deal, and I remember going, she asked me to go to dinner the day after the deal closed, and she's like, I heard you were such a tough negotiator. I was like, I am tough, aren't I? She said, no, but you're fair. You told me what you were going to do, and you did it every single time. No matter what it was, no matter what clause, you said, I'm gonna get…

AI assessment note: “I really believe that it was mine and Jean Lou's relationship.”

Q the complete retrenchment away from them, for sure. Um, I do have to discuss two final elements before we do a quick fire. Number one is Alfred Lin told me about, you know, fatherhood. And what a prominent part of your life that is now, which is amazing to hear. How did becoming a father change how you think, both as an ambassador, as an operator, how did it change?

A Without being You know, sort of saccharine about it. Um, it, I'm, I just turned 50, so I have a two and a half year old daughter. Um, I will say that I don't, it is now, you know, I knew this intellectually, but now I feel it viscerally. I don't know how I could have done the work that I would wanted to do at Uber, 70 hours a week, and no one was telling me to do it. It wasn't like, you know, hustle culture, blah, blah, blah. This was Emil loving my job, right, at Uber, doing 70 hours a week. Traveling all over the world trying to build something important and had a successful marriage and a kid. I just don't know how it's possible. And I don't think it is. So, um, it changed me insofar as now I know why tech, whether I like it or not, is a young man's game, young man and woman's game in that there is a certain reason that you, you know, young people start startups. It's because they have the time and energy to do it, and the risk appetite that you have, don't have as much when you have other important things in your life like I do now.

AI assessment note: “it changed me insofar as now I know why tech, whether I like it”

Q Do you remember he used to sleep with his BlackBerry on his chest? I want to finish on the final one. What are the next five years hold for you, Emil? 20, 27. Where are we at?

A Yeah. So I, I think that I'm, I'm going to be, I need to be doing something important, um, and singularly focused again. So I'm looking for that starting now. The SPAC is done as of last month. Um, and now I am looking for the next Challenge I could spend five to 10 years on. Um, and that's taking a lot of forms. I'm talking a lot of people. Is it starting something? Is it buying something? Is it taking something private and running it? Um, all those things, but I need to be running something because, you know, if we're, I'm 50, if we're going to live to a hundred, I might, I may be on the back nine, but just what, you know, the 10th hole, not the 17th. So I got, I got a lot of time to go.

AI assessment note: “now I am looking for the next Challenge I could spend five to 10 years on”

Q How do you do that? Is it small talk? Is it, oh, have you had a nice trip?

A It was, it's exactly not that. When people go, oh, how was your flight? Where'd you come in from? Where are you staying? The small talk stuff is fine, but it's, 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. Um, it was more about Trying to build some trust. And so one of the ways I built trust with Jean Lou would say, Hey, I'd be interested to hear your perspective. We were in this competitive battle here. Here's how I saw it. What did you see? Um, something that wasn't sort of central to negotiation, but try to establish a rapport about how both of us saw the same incident so differently. And she's like, Oh, we didn't, we didn't shut off all your phones or send spam text messages to drivers saying they weren't going to get paid. I was like, you didn't? Who did? And then we'd have a joke about like, well, who is trying to sabotage both of us? Um, and it was a little bit of that until, and it took me four days of going to that dark hotel room until she allowed me to bring one of my colleagues to at least take notes so that I wasn't over man here. It was that kind of rapport that started it. So rapport matters and knowledge of what their problems were matter. And Sufficient humility, but sufficient strength projection sh…

AI assessment note: “It was, it's exactly not that. ... It was more about Trying to build some trust.”

Q we've mentioned M&A, we've mentioned fundraisings. We're in this very kind of weird new world where, and most of us actually haven't kind of seen a recession or, you know, downtown like this. So I want to ask you with your kind of OG status, How do you analyze fundraising and M&A in the current market today? And I'm just gonna put the general question there for you to take.

A Yeah, so I'm, I'm deep in the capital markets now with a lot of the companies I work with. I'm on the board of our advisor, and I said, guys and gals, last year was FOMO. You want to create FOMO with investors if you're trying to raise a round or merger partners. This year is JOMO. Joy of missing out. They are happy to miss out on whatever deadline you put on them for whatever round. They're happy to not take a look if you've got something in hand. So those, that whole strategy of FOMO and Creating pressure and dynamics is over. Don't try it. Stop. It may, it's got, you are going to be disfavored and people are going to say, thank God I didn't have to look at that company and say no. So the humility factor from entrepreneurs has to come back in terms of what's realistic and we're getting there. Um, because you're starting to see some of these rounds not happen or you're starting to see things creak a little bit. 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, um, and then sales were, unfortunately, companies sort of not making it, and I think that'll happen in Q one, you know, the phase two will happen in Q four, Q one, and then Q two to Q three will be phase three.

AI assessment note: “last year was FOMO... This year is JOMO. Joy of missing out.”

Q the complete retrenchment away from them, for sure. Um, I do have to discuss two final elements before we do a quick fire. Number one is Alfred Lin told me about, you know, fatherhood. And what a prominent part of your life that is now, which is amazing to hear. How did becoming a father change how you think, both as an ambassador, as an operator, how did it change?

A Without being You know, sort of saccharine about it. Um, it, I'm, I just turned 50, so I have a two and a half year old daughter. Um, I will say that I don't, it is now, you know, I knew this intellectually, but now I feel it viscerally. I don't know how I could have done the work that I would wanted to do at Uber, 70 hours a week, and no one was telling me to do it. It wasn't like, you know, hustle culture, blah, blah, blah. This was Emil loving my job, right, at Uber, doing 70 hours a week. Traveling all over the world trying to build something important and had a successful marriage and a kid. I just don't know how it's possible. And I don't think it is. So, um, it changed me insofar as now I know why tech, whether I like it or not, is a young man's game, young man and woman's game in that there is a certain reason that you, you know, young people start startups. It's because they have the time and energy to do it, and the risk appetite that you have, don't have as much when you have other important things in your life like I do now.

AI assessment note: “it changed me insofar as now I know why tech... is a young man's game”