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 48 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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: Companies Seek Federal Preemption to Achieve Regulatory Capture
“Federal preemption is good
When you are pro regulatory capture.”
Kalanick Claims Uber Never Pushed Regulations to Advantage Itself
“I never did that.
Like we never did that.
We basically never ever
Proposed or pushed any rule that would be beneficial to us versus somebody else.”
Kalanick: 2017 Would Have Been Different If Uber Partnered With a16z
“If we did it business at Uber, my 2017 would have been a different year.”
Pronto's Autonomous Tech Has Surpassed Human Productivity in Mining
“The pronto technology has got gotten past human productivity, which means you go to a gold mine CEO, you talk about go to market, you go to a gold mine CEO and you say, would you like to have 20% more gold per year?”
Kalanick: Bad Transport Regulations Are Pushed by Trial Lawyers and Insurers
“So look, every bad thing that you see in transport, like systemically and any, anything in transport that you view as systemically bad,
Was most likely pushed by the trial lawyers and the insurance companies.
Every single bad rule that's weird and dumb, the in…”
Kalanick Predicts Autonomous Food Delivery Will Cost $0.75 Per Drop
“When the food is coming out of our facilities, there's probably like a machine that holds food at temperature. That's like a box on wheels. I call them autonomous burritos and It brings it to your home, and it costs 75 cents instead of, like, the 12 dollars pe…”
Cheap Food Delivery Will Disrupt Kitchens Like Uber Disrupted Cars
“Can you get a meal, ah, that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store. Because if you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.”
Competing With Atoms Requires Buying $100M of Real Estate Per City
“So like, if you want to compete with us, go buy a hundred million dollars of real estate in every major city in the world. And then we're going to go head to head.”
Grocery-Priced Meal Delivery Requires Automated Food Production and Delivery
“A meal that's efficient, you know, so efficient it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store. A meal that's prepared and delivered to you. That's real. You must do automated production of food. You must do automated delivery of the meal.”
Specialized Wheeled Robots Vastly Outperform Humanoids in Industrial Applications
“Because if you're gonna do specialized robots, not humanoids, but specialized robots, They need to have wheels. Right? I like to say, like, if you saw the Beijing, in Beijing, they had the humanoid Olympics. And the half marathon, and you're watching the human…”
Capital Is a Strategic Weapon Required to Win AI Platform Wars
“Capital becomes a strategic weapon, which means you must be the best at getting capital in order to win. And we realized that early on in the Uber days, of course, that's happening times 10 in the sort of, let's call the digital AI wars.”
Uber's Historical Operational Execution Remains Superior to Modern Tech Startups
“I still think we probably did things better than anybody that some of those things probably are still better than anybody even today. But obviously the check size much bigger.”
Human Labor Will Become Increasingly Valuable Until Super AGI
“Until we get super AGI. Humans are valuable, and they are going to become more and more valuable because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress, and that progress is going to accelerate and get faster and more, you know, more robust, except If you'…”
If a Strategy Feels Easy, You Failed to Maximize Competitive Advantage
“If anybody comes to me and says a strategic thing was easy, I'm like, you messed up. You could have been way better and gone way further. More competitive advantage. More differentiation.”
Travis Kalanick Announces $1.7 Billion Raise for Adams
“I announced earlier today we did a 1.7 billion dollar raise.”
Kalanick Consolidated Mining, Transport, and Food AI Ventures into One Holding
“So then what we did is we put the companies together and then sold the equity in a singular entity.”
Kalanick: Adams Automates 2-Million-Pound Machines Rather Than Building Apps
“This is why the Adams thing is cool. Because you're not dropping a fucking app in the app store. You're like, automating a two million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.”
Travis Kalanick: Never Ask Enterprise Customers for a Direct Revenue Cut
“You never go to a customer. I don't care what you're selling. Okay. I don't care if it's enterprise software. I don't care if it's widgets. I don't care what it is. You never go to a customer and say, give me a percentage of your stuff. You go to a customer an…”
An Unnamed Supply Chain Giant Spends $3.5B Annually on Forklift Labor
“I know a company, remain unnamed, that's spending three and a half, this is on the supply chain side, three and a half billion dollars a year on forklift labor in their facilities.”
Kalanick Barred Thousands of Stealth Employees From Listing Atoms on LinkedIn
“Till today, employees were not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn. We have thousands of employees.”
Media Was More Negative Toward Tech in 2017 Than Today
“This sounds crazy, but 2017, the media world was actually more negative then than it is today.”
Elon Musk's Twitter Acquisition Created Space for Tech Optimism
“Elon owns Twitter now. It's X. Yeah. Right. Pre post is like a massive difference in the mix of sort of ideas that can get out there. And again, you're allowed to be optimistic about things where maybe before everything had to be negative”
Atoms Is Expanding Beyond Food Into Industrial Mining and Transport
“We're still doing the food thing, but then we're adding mining and transport.”
Uber Priced Private Mega-Rounds Using Internal Iterative Auction Mechanisms
“We would basically, once they said they were interested, we would then give them a piece of paper. It was like digital, but it was like, you need to fill out this table, which is This valuation, how much money you want to put in this valuation, how much money,…”
Manufacturing, Real Estate, and Transport Are the Physical Computing Stack
“But if you're treating atoms like bits, digitizing the physical world, CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B, what moves atoms? Transport, lo…”
Kalanick Mandates Employees Work From Physical Offices 5 to 7 Days Weekly
“There's a difference between Between remote work where somebody works at home and they're like in boxers and then a suit. Okay. Versus we have an office in every major city in the world and whatever city you're in, you're going to that office every day, five d…”
Kalanick: Multi-Vertical Startup Fundraising Eases Once One Unit Reaches Profitability
“There has to be a theory of the case of how you put it together, how you allocate capital across, and honestly, once you're starting to get to profitability on one or more, then that conversation starts to get easier.”
Vale Is an Autonomous Mining Customer of Travis Kalanick's Pronto
“Massive iron ore mine that we're operating in there. And you see, like we took, we were there for a couple of days cause we already have customers there. Sure. A customer is called valet. It's a massive mining company.”
Kalanick on Uber's Growth: 'We Didn't Acquire Shit, We Just Built'
“It's like not, I guess you were, it's different today, but in my world, we didn't acquire shit. We just built.”
Kalanick: Executive Problem-Solving Ability Is More Important Than Organizational Skill
“The problem solving is the most important thing. If you get somebody who organizes and manages well, but cannot solve a problem. They're going to be doing ridiculous stuff in a super organized way.”
D.C. Regulators Pushed $1.5M Insurance for Uber Versus $25K for Taxis
“Like I remember we went to DC and the taxi system, the liability on a ride, if you took a taxi, it might still be this way to this day was like 25,000 dollars in a taxi.
But we went to, we being Uber at the time, went to DC and they pushed a one and a half mil…”
City Storage Systems Operates as a Food Conglomerate Across 30 Countries
“I was running a company called City Storage Systems. Okay, which was basically about the future of food, a conglomerate operating in about 30 countries”
City Storage Systems Emerges From Stealth Mode and Rebrands as Atoms
“Today we sort of came out and we renamed the company. We renamed what we do. We call it Adams.”
Stealth Startups Need High-EQ Builders Who Can Reject Public Validation
“You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous when they do it, which basically means emotional intelligence. Now it's a human nature. I want to be acknowledged for the things that I do. I'd like the things I build to be seen and…”
Mastering Direct-Sales LTV-to-CAC for SMBs Is 'Life in Hard Mode'
“When you go from consumer to B to B, the number one mega challenge that you must master is called LTV to CAC. Yes, you can make that argument on consumer, but when you have a sales funnel that starts with, I'm going to talk to customers and I'm going, I have t…”
Uber Ran Parallel Fundraising Rooms Segmented by $25M to $250M Checks
“The last round of funding that I did at Uber, we were like a seventy million or, you know, I don't know, it was like a 60, seventy billion dollar pre Let's see that. Yeah. When that used to be a thing. Now I go, that's small stuff, but we had four rooms. This …”
Drew Houston Pioneered Late-Stage Institutional Fundraising for Tech Startups
“I have to give credit to Drew at Dropbox. He was like the first guy in that game.”
Job Interviews Should Simulate Actual On-the-Job Collaboration
“When you interview, simulate what it's like working together so that day one is really like week two and you're already pumped because you saw them in action.”
Atoms Is Finalizing an Acquisition of Autonomous Vehicle Startup Pronto
“I was the largest investor in pronto. And then we just were basically right in the final, like, We're checking off the list, maybe closing today or tomorrow on that deal.”
AI Is Currently Incapable of One-Shotting Physical Machine or Robotics Design
“It's like one shotting on software. Do you have one shotting on designing a machine or a robot? We're just not there yet.”
Kalanick: Simulating Actual Work During Interviews De-Risks Executive Hiring
“On the interview process, simulate what it's like working together so that day one really feels like week two. And day one, you better be excited. So if you're excited in day one, after simulating what it's like working together in the interview process, then …”
Selling Red Swoosh for $19M Remains Kalanick's Happiest Day
“And I sold it to Akamai for like,
I think it was like nineteen million bucks and probably to this day is still the happiest day of my life.”
Atoms Operates Physical Kitchen Facilities Housing 30 Restaurants Each
“So right now I have these facilities. There's 30 restaurants in each of them.”
Ex-Uber ATG Head Eric Meyhofer Runs Atoms Robotics Unit Lab 37
“My head of the advanced technology group at Uber is running my robotics division at Adams. It's called lab 37 in Pittsburgh. No, no, that's Eric, my offer.”
Jason Calacanis Turned a $10,000 Early Uber Check Into $100 Million
“There was like a angel group that I pitched to. There were like 30, 40 people in the room. I think it was like three or four that invested. Okay. The 10 grand check became like a hundred million bucks.”
Atoms Built a Fully Operational Restaurant to Deploy Its First Food Robot
“So my roboticist team in Pittsburgh made a restaurant that is the restaurant that our first robot went into because we had to make sure that we understood how a restaurant worked. We had to make sure that this wasn't just a machine that made food, but a machin…”