Opinion
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…”
Opinion
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…”
Opinion
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.”
Opinion
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2028
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 …”
Insight
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 …”
Insight
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…”
Prediction Held up
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.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Khosrowshahi: AI agents will never fully automate travel bookings without human approval
“The cost of a bad decision in travel is very high. So I don't think you're going to get to a place, and I'm certainly not going to get to a place where I tell an agent to find me a hotel in San Francisco and just book it, and then, you know, on the day when I …”
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber sold India Eats business because it couldn't win
“We didn't think we could win in India, and we wanted to really focus on mobility.”
Insight
Khosrowshahi: Startups can beat platform network effects by dominating local niches
“So I think if you find a niche Where you believe that you can build liquid supply and demand on a local basis, and then you can rinse and repeat that over and over again. It's essentially what Travis did when, with Uber when he founded it. That is something th…”
Assertion Supported
Khosrowshahi: 70% of Uber drivers work under 20 hours weekly
“70% of our drivers and couriers are working less than 20 hours a week.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Khosrowshahi: Significant autonomous vehicle deployment in developed markets within 10 years
“You know, within 10 years, you're gonna see a significant number of autonomous vehicles, especially in developed markets.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Khosrowshahi: Uber is adopting EVs five times faster than the public
“Within Uber, you know we are moving to EVs five times faster than the general public, so EVs inside of the Uber system are definitely increasing”
Insight
Khosrowshahi: Major business mistakes stem from information filtering, not bad judgment
“And the biggest mistakes that I see with businesses is not usually errors of judgment, but you just didn't really know what was going on in the organization.”
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber divested Zomato stake because it is not an investment company
“We got out not because of some deep thought as it relates to the Indian market, but my belief that We're not a holding company. We're not an investment company. I am, that is not my core competency to take Uber investors capital and invest it really well. My c…”
Assertion Partly supported
Khosrowshahi: COVID-19 destroyed 85% of Uber's volume overnight and doubled massive losses
“We lost 90% of our business, and by far, you know, the profitable piece of the business, and overnight, we lost 80, 85% of our volume. Couldn't be worse. And we went from, we were already losing two billion a year. We went from losing two billion a year to, li…”
Disclosure
Khosrowshahi: Uber pitches recruits high individual impact over top tech pay
“We hire from a lot of big tech companies and we say like, come here, you're going to work your ass off. You'll probably make a little bit less money, but you're gonna like the work that you do can truly an individual engineer at Uber can have huge effect acros…”
Insight
Khosrowshahi: Internal team competition drives early growth, but cannot scale without automation
“It works as a growth tactic, but it doesn't scale. So to some extent, what you want to do is you want to have these humans and teams compete against each other to hack your way Into the best solution possible. Then after they get to that best solution possible…”
Disclosure
Uber CEO: All AV partners use cameras, radar, and LiDAR combined
“All of our partners that we're working with now are using a combination of camera, radar, and lidar.”
Disclosure
Uber CEO: Uber collects data using Lucid vehicles in multiple cities
“We actually now have, ah, we're collecting data using Lucid cars in a bunch of, ah, cities as well.”
Insight
Khosrowshahi: The middle ground of the restaurant industry will struggle
“And so I think the, those two, the utility and the romance are going to be separable and you as a restauranteur have to understand where you want to be, because I think the middle is going to be a difficult place to live.”
Dara Khosrowshahi