Dara Khosrowshahi
CEO, Uber. On 7 shows, 9 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveinvestor@dkhos ↗LinkedIn ↗uber.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Since taking over as CEO of Uber in 2017, he led the company's cultural turnaround, public listing, and sustained profitability. Prior to Uber, he served as the CEO of Expedia Group from 2005 to 2017 after executive leadership at IAC and investment banking at Allen & Company.
7shows
9appearances
176statements
48resolved
45supported
0contradicted
94%fully supported
167said about them ↓ Everything Dara Khosrowshahi said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Khosrowshahi: Tesla's camera-only approach to autonomous vehicles will fundamentally struggle near-term
“I think in the near term it's going to be very difficult, and Elon would tell me I'm wrong, and never bet against him, but it's my instinct that in the near term it's going to be very difficult to build a camera-only product
That has superhuman levels of safet…”
Khosrowshahi: Uber's investment in self-driving division ATG was a mistake
“Where we got it wrong was when we went outside of our core. So for example, we had a very large self-driving business, ATG, trying to develop autonomous tech, and that wasn't what we were passionate about every day, and it was outside of the core, and ultimate…”
Khosrowshahi: Uber meters headcount increases as AI makes engineers far more productive
“We are going to meter headcount increases because to the extent that my engineers are getting Much more efficient. Their throughput is increasing. They're becoming superhuman in terms of their output. We, you know, one, there's a cost to that and it's a signif…”
Khosrowshahi: Autonomous vehicles will have multiple winners, not a single monopoly
“You know, just like you're seeing in the foundation model space, there isn't going to be a single winner. There are going to be many players on the foundation models. There'll be open source, smaller models as well. We're seeing the same kind of acceleration i…”
Khosrowshahi: Waymo robotaxis in Austin and Atlanta increased human Uber driver earnings
“Now drivers in Austin and Atlanta, where we have two big partnerships with Waymo, Drivers on the Uber platform, they're making more money. The number of drivers joining the platform is increasing because it looks like AVs are actually adding incremental demand…”
Khosrowshahi: Traditional OEMs will scale L4 AV manufacturing in 2-4 years
“So I think you'll see the traditional players get there over the next, you know, two to four years, and they'll start, you know, right now the cars are being manufactured in the hundreds and the thousands. It'll get to the tens of thousands. It'll get to the h…”
Khosrowshahi: Chinese manufacturing quality and cost are unrivaled
“The Chinese capabilities in terms of manufacturing, both in terms of quality and cost at this point is unrivaled.”
Khosrowshahi: Food and grocery drone delivery will scale in 2-5 years
“And I think drones for food and other grocery are going to start hitting real scale over the next two to five years.”
Chinese autonomous vehicle developers take safety as seriously as Western firms
“They take safety just as seriously as the Western companies do, so I think their safety record is excellent.”
Tesla's camera-only autonomy strategy trades hardware savings for software difficulty
“Elon is doing camera only. Tougher on the software, cheaper for the hardware, ok?”
Financial firms will own large autonomous vehicle fleets within ten years
“10 years down the line, you know, there are these things called REITs, real estate investment trucks. You're going to have fleets. You're going to have financial owners that own big fleets of cars that are on our network, maybe on other networks.”
Austin Uber drivers earn as much or more following Waymo's local launch
“Austin drivers now are making as much or more money than they were before we introduced Waymo.”
Uber expects to employ more human drivers in five to seven years
“So I think for the next five to seven years, we're going to have more human drivers and delivery people just because we're going so quickly.”
Autonomous vehicle job displacement will become a real issue in 10-15 years
“But I think, you know, 10 to 15 years from now, this is going to be a real issue.”
Khosrowshahi: Rapido is Uber's toughest Indian competitor while Ola trails distantly
“So I see now the tougher competition in India is Rapido. You know, they're the upstart. They got into two-wheelers and three-wheelers really aggressively. Super simple model, just kind of the subscription zero commission model. Very scrappy as well. And they h…”
Khosrowshahi: Uber rival Rapido is highly unprofitable and far from making money
“Rapido's not making money, so the real test of the business isn't how fast you can grow if you're spending it's actually how fast you can grow while you're profitable, and I think Rapido's a long way away from that.”
Khosrowshahi: Shah era in Iran was absolutely better than current Islamic regime
“Now, do I think that the time under the Shah was a better time? Absolutely. I think what's happened with the Islamic regime you know, there's a regime that isn't I think doing the Iranian people right and cares about things other than the benefit of the people…”
Khosrowshahi: OpenAI and Google will completely dominate AI travel inspiration startups
“I would not go after the inspiration side, because I think the inspiration side, thank you very much, is, is going to be served really, really well by an open AI or a Google.”
Khosrowshahi: An umbrella AI agent above all OTAs will win travel booking
“The ultimate solution is going to be an agent that can sit above it all, and can kind of scour the internet and scour all the booking services and then surface the results, which may be a mix and match of all of them for you based on your tastes.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber will inevitably overtake DoorDash in the US delivery market
“They're beating us right now in the U.S., but not for long, and we're beating them outside the U.S., and the two companies going against each other makes both companies better and actually builds a better service for consumers and couriers and restaurants all …”
Khosrowshahi: Founders should completely ignore TAM and obsess over unit economics
“I don't believe in overthinking TAM. I think TAMs are like you build those for IR and you build those to raise money. You may want to create this wonderful dramatic TAM to go raise, you know, a couple of million bucks, but that's not what should be processing …”
Khosrowshahi: Quick commerce fundamentally fails in America due to high labor costs
“With quick commerce you can't automate that much because the cost of the automation doesn't bear out in a small box. So you have to use human labor the car. And so in markets where the cost of human labor and is not there and the concentration of customers isn…”
Khosrowshahi: Global EV market share will favor China for a while
“My expectation is overall share, especially in the EV sector on a global basis of EVs is going to be is going China's way for a while, but individual innovative OEMs, they're going to do fine.”
Khosrowshahi: Culturally misaligned top performers become destructive as companies scale
“If the smartest person in the organization isn't aligned with you culturally, that can actually be pretty dangerous. And so as an organization grows, you make allowances certainly for your most talented people. But if from a cultural standpoint, they're not al…”
The other half of the tape: Dara Khosrowshahi's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 155 times in 47 episodes across the shows. 12 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 58Jason Calacanis 31David Friedberg 10Shervin Pishevar 6David Sacks 6Wayne Ting 5Mudassir Sheikha 5Ben Gilbert 5
Statements about Dara Khosrowshahi, by other people (12)
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.”
Replacing Travis Kalanick with Dara Khosrowshahi was a mistake for Uber
“I don't think so. I'm a big fan of founder led businesses, and I think Travis is an incredible founder who, you know, should have been given the opportunity to lead Uber into the next generation. It's really unfortunate how things happened and played out. And …”
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%.”
Lehmann: Postmates prioritized deal structure over headline price in Uber merger
“And I think he came out with a number that was around 2.2 or something, and we negotiated it up a little bit, but I didn't want it to push too hard, because the two things that we negotiated for are no breakup, Absolutely no way out and no color on the deal be…”
Calacanis: Kalanick was banned from stage at Uber IPO bell ringing
“He was disinvited. So he was there on the floor. It was very awkward. And then they didn't have him go up and ring the bell or be even there when Dara rang the bell. It was because it was so controversial. They didn't, they banned him.”
Friedberg: Uber went from $9B loss to $5B EBITDA run rate
“When he took over that business, I think it was an eight to nine billion dollar net loss in 2019. Five billion dollar EBITDA run rate right now.”
Lehmann: Dara Khosrowshahi has made Uber his own
“And a for non-founder CEO, he really has, I think he has made this company his.”
Gilbert: Munger and Huang were Acquired's biggest episodes ever
“Charlie and Margaret was by far our biggest episode ever. Jensen was bigger than any previous season episode. Dara and Daniel were right around the ballpark of what our season episodes were doing at that point in time when we had interviewed them.”
Hoffman: Khosrowshahi faced tech's most extreme pirate-to-navy transition at Uber
“In accepting the role as Uber CEO, he's taken on the most extreme pirate to Navy transition I've ever seen.”
Hoffman: Dara Khosrowshahi rebuilt Uber's cultural values by polling its employees
“And that's exactly, even as an extreme position as Uber, what Dara did, which was, you know, run a poll saying here, what are our virtues, what are our values, and then selected the next set of stuff.”
Dara Khosrowshahi and Jeremy Liew Ran IAC's Strategy Team in 2001
“I joined the strategic planning team who, interestingly enough, we were just talking about this, was then being run by Dara Khosrowshahi, who's now the current CEO of Uber, who hired me into IAC, as well as a guy named Jeremy Liu, who you may also know who led…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 89
All-In 52
Acquired 10
WTF is with Nikhil Kamath 2
Invest Like the Best 1
Sourcery 1
2026 22 mentions in 6 episodes 4 per episode
- Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash
- AI Sovereignty Wars, Palantir-Nvidia Deal, SCOTUS Birthright Ruling, Newsom’s CA Budget Lie
- Exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi: Transition Plan and the Fight for Iran's Freedom
- OpenAI vs Anthropic IPOs, Anthropic $3T, Zuck's Price War, China Ends Open Source?, Trump Accounts
- Palo Alto Networks CEO: "AI Found 5 Years of Bugs in 6 Weeks"
- NVIDIA Predicts $1TRN in Revenue: Everything You Need to Know From GTC & Anduril Lands $20B Contract · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 32 mentions in 16 episodes 2 per episode
- Wayne Ting, CEO @Lime: From Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | E1252 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Bernie Sanders Says Stop All AI, China's Breakthrough, Inflation Down, Golden Age in 2026?
- Tira, Bombay Shaving Co., Inde Wild | WTF is Fueling India’s Beauty & Skincare Revolution? | Ep. 25 · Nikhil Kamath
- Alibaba's Joe Tsai on US-China Rivalry, AI Future, Owning the Nets/Liberty, Caitlin Clark's Impact
- How Barry Diller Built Entertainment Empires · Invest Like The Best
- Every Investor Needs To Understand This Concept - David Friedberg
- AI Psychosis, America's Broken Social Fabric, Trump Takes Over DC Police, Is VC Broken?
- 8 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 50 mentions in 9 episodes 6 per episode
- Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Dueling Presidential interviews, SpaceX’s big catch, Robotaxis, Uber buying Expedia?, Nuclear NIMBY
- Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Travis Kalanick | All-In Summit 2024
- Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Chase Center + Summer Update (Audio) · Acquired
- Nikesh Arora: Lessons from $102BN Market Cap & How to Create & Sustain Competitive Advantage | E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E164: Zuck’s Senate apology, Elon's comp package voided, crony capitalism, Reddit IPO, drone attack
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 28 mentions in 6 episodes 5 per episode
- Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023
- E146: Did the Fed break the VC model? Plus IPOs, M&A, revaluing unicorns & more
- E151: WW3 risk, War with Iran?, 4.9% GDP, startup failures growing, new Speaker & more
- Bill Ackman: SVB Collapse; Biden vs Trump; How I Lost $400M on Netflix; Bill's 10-Year Long | E991 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 21 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
- Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E83: Market slide continues, and how to address Uvalde
- Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E80: Recession deep dive: VC psychology, macro risks, Tiger Global, predictions and more
- Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner) · Acquired
- E109: 2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ
- E103: Tech layoffs surge, big tech freezes hiring, optimizing for profits, election preview & more
- E101: Ye acquires Parler, Snap drops 30%, macro outlook, VC metrics, valuing stocks & more
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Dara's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INVEST LIKE THE BESTLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 | 35 | 89% 8/9 | full record on Invest Like the Best → |
| WTFLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 | 35 | 89% 8/9 | full record on WTF is with Nikhil Kamath → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | CEO, Uber | 3 | 26 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
| ACQUIREDLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 | 23 | 90% 9/10 | full record on Acquired → |
| 20VCLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 +1 | 22 | 100% 6/6 | full record on 20VC → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 | 19 | 100% 7/7 | full record on All-In → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | CEO, Uber | 1 | 16 | 100% 4/4 | full record on Sourcery → |