Travis Kalanick, Founder of Uber & Atoms

Travis Kalanick is best known for co-founding Uber and building it into one of the world’s largest transportation platforms. Before Uber, he spent years building Red Swoosh under extreme financial pressure. He says he took no salary for its first four years, repeatedly ran out of money and lost much of his social life to the company before eventually selling it. He later invested much of the proceeds in friends’ startups, becoming the first investor in Expensify. Kalanick started Uber at 33 and carried the intensity of those earlier years into the company. He describes operating with “precision, perfection and obsession” and continued running Uber with the mentality of someone worried about making the next grocery bill even after the company had reached a valuation of roughly $70 billion. Under his leadership, Uber expanded rapidly across cities and countries, creating a new category of app-based transportation and challenging the entrenched taxi systems that controlled many local markets. Uber’s growth depended on empowering young operators to build markets from scratch while maintaining tight control over the decisions that mattered most. Kalanick personally participated in the pricing process for the company’s first 20 to 30 cities, using each launch to refine a playbook that could eventually operate without him. He describes this management philosophy as finding the line between order and chaos: using the fewest possible rules while preserving the structure required to move quickly at scale. After leaving Uber, he returned to company building within months. His current company, Atoms, is developing artificial intelligence and specialized robotics for industries including food, mining and transportation. Kalanick describes his role as “problem solver in chief,” focusing on the most consequential problems that are not already being solved and pursuing what he considers his broader calling: digitizing the physical world. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/travis-kalanick Made possible by Ramp: https://ramp.com AppLovin: https://applovin.com/senra Deel: https://deel.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) Building Atoms & the Meta Problem of Management (00:03:51) The Appeal of Impossible Problems: Starting Over in China (00:12:19) Uber vs. Didi: Copycats, Hypergrowth & China's Rules (00:21:02) How Network Effects Become an Efficiency Fortress (00:31:48) Capitalism vs. the Taxi Cartel (00:44:05) The China War Goes Global & the Entrepreneur's Capacity for Pain (00:54:04) Life After Uber: Lawfare, Media Narratives & Reputation (00:58:21) What Founders Get Wrong About Venture Capital (01:08:35) The Fundraising Playbook: QED Storytelling & a Five-Room Auction (01:18:38) The Uber Coup, Radical Accountability & Outgrowing Fear (01:26:42) Why Specialized Robots Beat Humanoids at Industrial Scale (01:31:30) Finding Your Sport: Food, Mining & the Physical AI Stack (01:40:14) How to Build Many Companies Inside One Company (01:46:33) Entropy, Civilization & the Meaning of Progress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Senra?

  I want to start with Adams.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:04David Senra?

  You have this great line on the website that I actually love. It's this awesome sentence. It says, "Physical world autonomy requires AI for the physical world. This kind of intelligence requires computation we haven't invented at an efficiency we can't yet fathom with deep learning models to understand and act in the physical world that don't yet exist." Tell us what you're building.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Let's start the mission. It's easier that way. Physical automation to transform industries. So you start there. You can sort of go, it's almost Socratic, like, what does that mean? And sort of in the terms that people use today is physical AI and robotics to transform industry. And you go, okay, well, uh, so what is it? A humanoid? And no, it's not. It's not, it's, I wouldn't call myself anti-humanoid. It's just what we're doing is not that. It's specialized robotics. That it's not like we make robotics and anybody can have some. It's more like robotics and AI that go after an industry, one industry at a time.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  And in the industries, we think it makes massive moves. Big moves. And once we get our sea legs, we go to the next and the next. If you're doing it really well, I like to say that the only constraint on our imagination is management capacity.

• 1:27David Senra?

  What does that mean?

• 1:28Speaker 01

  We're solving problems every day. If I have to solve lots of small problems because I don't have a lot of management capacity under me, we're not going to do very much. I'm going to be constrained in what portion of my imagination can become possible, like real. But if you have lots of management capacity, lots of problem solving capacity, then those constraints unwind.

• 1:53David Senra?

  So how do you broaden and expand the management capacity you have?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so why don't we step back and talk a little bit about, like, I have a lot of frameworks for this kind of stuff. One of them, I call the meta problem. Imagine if you have this equation, which is the derivative of problem solving dt must always be greater than or equal to the derivative of problem creation dt. And if that's ever not true, you have a real problem. I call that the meta problem. So what's happening is, is that if you are creating problems faster than you can solve them, then you're kind of effed.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  But when you create problems, like in an Uber context, it would be like, let's go to China. That's creating a problem, right? Now, the way I think about problems, I don't think about them in a negative way. I think about problems the way like a math professor would think about a problem. Is a math professor without interesting problems to solve as a sad math professor? Yeah. So it's like a good thing. So you want to create interesting things to solve. You want to create problems to solve. You have to predict well the nature of the problem and your ability and capacity to solve it. You create a problem today. You may not understand the nature of the problem solving you're going to have to do. You have to predict it. And those problems start coming ashore in like six months

• 3:28Speaker 01

  in like a real heavy way and maybe even longer. And so you have to be good at predicting what it's the nature of that problem and saying, okay, well, what is my management capacity to solve it? If that equation gets out of balance, then you have to stop problem creation while you get the solving going so that you're not drowning anymore, right?

• 3:52David Senra?

  Can you give us an example of what happened in China then?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I mean, China was like amazing, but very difficult and in some ways impossible to predict. Let's go to China. Sounds like fun. It was a, it was a super awesome adventure because what happened was, is I was like, sounds cool. And I got, it was 2000, probably 2013 or early 13. Uber started in 2010. So it was still early crew. And I got a crew of folks, like super OG guys, and we stayed in an apartment in China for a week or two, a week and a half, two weeks, something like that. And met with everybody we could.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  It's actually when I first met Wang Qing at Meizhuan, actually. And he told me I was crazy. Don't do it. It's the worst idea ever.

• 4:46David Senra?

  What was your response when people tell you you're crazy? It's not going to work.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Like, that's the best thing ever. Okay, so, I mean, we're, there's many threads here. We're already poking through a bunch of them.

• 4:57David Senra?

  We're going to go everywhere, man. Let's go.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  So in engineering, we call this BFS, breadth first search. So I'm not able to go deep. We're like, we're painting the breadth of the tree before we're going deep. So we have a cultural value for that at Uber. And I've pulled it into our new value system into my value system at my current company. But it's called super pumped, which is about infectious enthusiasm about the hard things. The harder it is, the more weird, gnarly, whatever words, whatever superlative you want to put in front of it, the more awesome it would be to solve it,

• 5:42Speaker 01

  the more excited I get. And the problems that are more awesome to solve are the ones that people think are impossible to solve. Sometimes people think something is impossible. They perceive it that way, but it's very possible. But it's actually easy. And there's other ones that people think are impossible that are super difficult, but possible.

• 6:03David Senra?

  That's how you think about Adams now, right? When I hear you speak about it and when I read about it, you're like, this is going to be super difficult, but it is possible.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  So Adams is the name of my company. We just named it this. It came from a crazy obscure name that was done on purpose. We basically went ultra stealth. But the real question is, is coming out of Uber, what was the next thing and why? And it is Adams. We just started calling it that now. I was yearning or had a penchant for an affinity for something that's super hard, super complicated.

• 6:47David Senra?

  Have you always been like that? Or was the experience, like, was the experience of Uber that crystallized how important that was? When did this desire?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It's always been this way, which is, and I think it's funny how you got there because it's like that feeling when somebody tells you something that is impossible and you're like, is that right? And that, and I'm like, watch this. I've always had that. Like, remember when I was a kid? I'd always have a sparkle in my eye to do something. Somebody was like, shit, that kind of thing.

• 7:22David Senra?

  Did you know at, when you started it? Like, how, there's no way you could have known like how difficult it was. Or did you like, this is a hairy problem. I'm going to, there's going to be a fight every single regulator.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  There's a complexity to it that was part of the attraction.

• 7:34David Senra?

  Okay, and you saw that from the, from the first spot?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, from the very early days, I knew it was complicated. I didn't understand exactly how it was complicated.

• 7:41David Senra?

  I'm very curious what you said was very interesting. You're creating all these problems. Some of the problems you're creating are not coming ashore, I think is the word you use.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  It takes time to see what the nature of the problem is that you created.

• 7:51David Senra?

  So can you give an example of like a problem you're creating when you start in China? How long it takes to come ashore and what happens when it does?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Okay, so what you learn when you go and do what we did in China is you learn that when you go and take your business and go to China, you have to start over. So many people think that you can take your business and take it somewhere, which by the way, Uber kind of like trademarked that, if there's such a thing. Like, we made that a thing where like cities, countries didn't matter. We created a system that was inevitable. But China was different because of how that country works.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Everything's different and that means you have to start from scratch. Right? It's like something as simple as like the phones or let's say Maps, GPS. There's a different GPS system in China than there is here. What does that mean? Well, it's like different. So if I want to understand how cars are moving through space, I have to change my GPS system so I can do that. So I understand. And that's like one of like 100 things that are different in China, which means you have to start over. And so, yeah, you're starting a new business when you take it to China and you have to,

• 9:14Speaker 01

  you have to be in a very receptive like, I am going to learn how to do things differently in this very different place and be excited and interested in how different it is. Whereas most entrepreneurs, let's say, Western entrepreneurs that go to China, that almost none succeed.

• 9:36David Senra?

  Have any succeeded?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  At the time, like Apple. I'd say the two that you would come up with in our area, in our neck of the woods, there are others, but like in our neck of the woods, you're like, okay, Elon definitely did. Right? And Apple definitely did. Tim Apple and and Elon, right? Right? Those are the two guys.

• 9:57David Senra?

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• 10:40David Senra?

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• 11:22David Senra?

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• 12:05David Senra?

  Learn how they can help your business today by going to deal.com/cenra. That is deal.com/cenra. So you start getting in this war with Didi. Was there anybody else besides, was there multiple competitors?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  We, we eventually rolled out. So Uber Black was one thing, much smaller than like a Didi thing. There was another company called Qui D. And we were just in this corner, sort of doing a niche thing, which is a super high-end thing in China, which is like, so niche, right? Nest class in China at that time is like very, it's thin. I mean, we're growing, it was fun, but it was thin. But I think it was 2014, I believe it was 14. Yeah, I believe it was 14. Must have been. Where we, we basically said, okay, we're going to do ride sharing in China. Nobody had done that.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Didi was taxis. And if anybody who's used taxi app with taxis, the problem is you're a second-class citizen. Meaning taxis want people to wave them down. They don't want to take rides from an app where they have to give a percentage of the revenue to some middleman. That's not a thing. So it's sort of will fill in the gaps, but it's not their main jam.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  But we went to full ride share, which is like peer-to-peer ride sharing, where anybody driving a car could offer a ride to a citizen in the city.

• 13:31David Senra?

  Which before you did not exist at all in China.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Certainly not coordinated by an app. Yeah. This is now a ride sharing, what was at the time called peer-to-peer ride sharing. Think of, you know, some people would think of Lyft or Uber X, this kind of thing in the US context. But what we called it was the people's Uber. And so in the app, you'd open it up and it was red cars. But we became Chinese. We had a massive, awesome brand there because we cared and we were passionate about the user, the customer in ways that these other companies just weren't. But what was interesting about what was going on with Didi was that while we were inventing, innovating, they were copying.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  And these guys were so good at copying, it was kind of, it was almost an art form.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  To be able to copy as quickly and fiercely as they did was like warrior mentality in its own right. But it was like, I like to say like the, the place to be is it's like a Braveheart, which is like the warrior poet. These guys are just pure warriors. There was no poetry. They weren't creating the new thing. They were copying, they were copying. But almost to a level of poetry in their ability to copy and the speed at which they were able to do it. Right? But while they were getting ready copying it, it was a very wild sort of half-technology, half-regulatory arbitrage. Very bold. It took them a while to copy and while that happened, it went vertical.

• 15:13David Senra?

  Uber did.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, Uber did. And I'd say like so vertical, it almost leaned to the left. Like it almost started bending, the curve almost bent to the left. Okay?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And

• 15:29Speaker 01

  that was what it was. The opportunity was massive where we would basically at some point, probably our top 10 cities were all Chinese cities.

• 15:40David Senra?

  That's wild.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  In rides.

• 15:41David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Not in revenue. Because the rides, instead of like, in my day, 13 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever, they were, these were like three bucks, two bucks type stuff.

• 15:54David Senra?

  Right?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  I remember we were doing this fundraiser in China. We had to raise money in China because we,

• 16:02Speaker 01

  I mean, it was a huge, I mean, it was just pulling a huge amount of money.

• 16:07David Senra?

  You mean you were burning a ton of money?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  We were burning a lot of money.

• 16:09David Senra?

  Okay.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  But also we needed a partner. When we first went to China, everybody told us that we needed a partner. And they'll just tell you that. And we're like, what is a partner? They're like, well, that person or that entity has like 50% of your company in China. I go, why? Is this a law? They're like, no, but if you don't do it, you're totally screwed. And I just never got it. Nobody could tell me why and why I had to. I just said, I'm just gonna try, screw it. Which is like, again, Apple, Tesla, these guys said, screw it, and they just did it.

• 16:42David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Right? And we eventually did get a partner. But instead of giving up 50%, we gave up, I think it was 7%. And it was to Baidu. But it was because we were getting massive regulatory heat. And as long as we had a partner by our side, we could be Chinese.

• 16:59David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Right? And like, this is like when you start meeting with ministers in China,

• 17:06Speaker 01

  you know, like at the top, at the highest level, you have to be vouched for by somebody in China or things get, start to get weird.

• 17:13David Senra?

  And that's what the 7% is for?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  That's what the 7% was for.

• 17:16David Senra?

  Okay.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Baidu needed, we needed a partner inside China that was trusted, essentially. But like, I remember, you know, right about the time that we got that partner, you know, we of course were doing this and there was a, a strike, a pan-European strike for all taxis in all European cities. And at some point, I think there were like, I think this is 15, I believe, 2015, July, I think.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  You know, there were vehicles being lit on fire in Paris. You know? But it was like every major city and they just tried to shut the shit down. And

• 18:04David Senra?

  What are they protesting?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Progress.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  So I'm going and meeting with the Transportation Minister in China.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  And he throws down three newspapers, Western newspapers. That

• 18:22Speaker 01

  top of the fold, old-school newspapers, right? Remember those?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Pictures of this chaos across all these cities. And he's like, this is a problem.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is not gonna, you know, this is not something we're okay with. And I said, why? And, you know, there's obvious, I knew what, you know, I knew what he was gonna say. And I said, but this is all Western democracies. And I'm like, in Western democracy, is we know is it's a popularity contest. And what that means is that the politician succeeds by being popular. He doesn't succeed when progress comes. And the only way to get progress in a democracy is for that,

• 19:20Speaker 01

  for that politician who seeks to be popular, when he's under threat. When there is a threat of disruption or instability, is the only time you'll get progress in Western democracy. And I'm like, but so what? We're here in China and it's totally different. He goes, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, the only time I get, I'm able to get progress in China is when stability is in harmony with progress.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So, or let's say progress, those two must be harmonized. You will only get progress when it is in harmony with stability. And I said it in that way, those three words. And that was very Chinese, you know? And totally different. It's like, I'm like, if there was ever any hint of instability that we were to bring to China, we would be shut down immediately. But as long as we create a foundation of stability, progress is super welcome.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Progress must be in harmony with stability and totally different.

• 20:53David Senra?

  So when did they take the viewpoint, if they took the viewpoint that Uber is injecting instability into their city or area?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  They never did. But they, at some point, felt like we were, we may win. And instead of really seeing super problems at the, we didn't, for the most part, we were treated fairly at the cities, for the most part. Not completely, but for the most part. But what happened was the, I, what I would call, what I'd say at the time is that the China war went global. So we were spending, let's say, tens of millions of dollars a month fighting Didi in all these cities.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  And the fight was like, I needed to subsidize rides to gain market share. When I gain market share, there's network effect. Because if I'm bigger, then my system is more efficient. And if I'm more efficient than them, they have to subsidize more than I do to compete with me. So how do I subsidize, where, when, how? To get that efficiency edge, that network effect efficiency edge, so that I subsidize less than them? This is why, you know, like Lyft is smaller than Uber. Because we were better at this part of this, the thing.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  And people don't really know that's what it takes. It's, but like, how do you get efficiency edge? Efficiency edge starts when somebody even downloads the app and signs up. If it's easier to sign up on one versus the other, you have an efficiency edge. If it's easier to call a vehicle and like, get it to you without problems, you have an efficiency edge. Cause you'll have less support, you'll have less, like, people are getting their higher completion rates. Like, if the cars are moving to where the demand is, because they, the driver app has good sort of ways to point drivers to the right place, that means you have shorter pickup time, efficiency edge. Efficiency edge means you get bigger faster.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  You get bigger faster means you have a bigger network of drivers, which means wherever you are in the city, you are gonna get a faster pickup. And it will be cheaper because, well, if there's less dead time for the driver to pick you up, then if he's generally trying to optimize for a dollars per hour, then, then the whole thing just starts working better. That's the network effect. So you're like, okay, how do I get bigger? Well, I'll make the rides really cheap. That's one way of doing it. And if your rides are cheaper than them, then all of a sudden, your network gets bigger. Your network gives you efficiency, which then means you can get to a lower price point without subsidies, that the competitor still has to subsidize.

• 23:51David Senra?

  You'd make money, a profit at a place where they would make a loss? The Robert Barrens all understood this, like Rockefeller, Carnegie, all of them did.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 24:02David Senra?

  When you're talking, like, shit, this is Rockefeller.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Totally. So I, I read, I think it was a Chernow biography.

• 24:08David Senra?

  Of Titan?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:09David Senra?

  Okay, there's actually a better one I'm gonna send you. And what it is, is this book from 1970 by David Freeman Hawk. It's called Rockefeller, the founding father, John D., the founding father of Rockefellers. Titan is 800 pages and you got a lot about his like, family history. This is like 250 pages of how he built Standard Oil. And it's this shit. It is exactly what you're describing. I want to interrupt you one second before you go back to China. My question to you now is like, I spend thousands of dollars a month on Uber and I only use Uber at Black SUV. It's insane. What, in a, in a, a mature market in the United States, in these big cities that I'm using Uber? What would, how would the network effects of Uber be reversed?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so there's a couple of things. First is, a small player competing against Uber has certain advantages. Let's say a small player said, I'm going to have cheaper rides than the big player. Okay? The small player, let's say is one tenth the size, let's just say. Their subsidies on an absolute basis are somewhere around one tenth as much. So if I am the small guy and I go and subsidize rides, I'm gonna gain market share unless the big guy is spending 10 times as much as me. Now, the efficiency edge can make it, instead of 10x, can make it 7x. Okay?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  But you, you ultimately, a well-funded competitor, you have to let them grow to some degree so that they, they have to feel the weight of the size of what they are. So when they're subsidizing, it becomes a problem.

• 25:45David Senra?

  And it hurts them more.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I like to talk about situations where if we had a competitor, we weren't exactly sure what was going on. Because what happens is you have to guess. When you're subsidizing, you have to guess, do I have an efficiency edge on them or not? You try to make yourself as efficient as possible. But you don't know if you are more efficient than them or not. So you need signal to determine whether you're better. One of the ways you could totally do it is let the competitor get to 50%. So it's 50/50, you have the same network size. Then you would start to see, okay, is my price lower than theirs while maintaining a 50% market share? Or is my price higher than theirs while maintaining a 50% market share?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  If I can maintain 50% market share while having a higher price, then my system is more efficient than them. Then I could start dialing, because I know they'll lose. Because why? Because at some point, efficiency outstrips subsidy. What I mean by that is, when you're subsidizing, you go through huge growth. And at some point, you get so big that you can't really subsidize a lot. Like, if you're doing 10 billion rides a year, you can't subsidize two bucks a ride.

• 27:06David Senra?

  Cause you'll run out of money.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Just $20 billion a year, nobody's gonna fund that.

• 27:09David Senra?

  Okay.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Right? And so as you get bigger and bigger, the amount of subsidy you can actually put to it is smaller and smaller. And at some point, the amount of subsidy you can put to it realistically is smaller than your efficiency gain by just being better. And so then you, efficiency outstrips subsidy. Anybody who's a small player in a market has a natural advantage if they're well-funded. Is that you can gain market share very quickly and you can force the big guy to burn money.

• 27:38David Senra?

  But why wouldn't the big guy be able to drown the smaller competitor faster?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Well, there are, there are ways to reverse it. So for instance, the other way where there's asymmetric going the other way is recruiting drivers. So for instance, I could give subsidies to drivers, if I'm the big guy. I can give subsidies to drivers that are like, uh, they're like, uh, $1,000 if you join Uber and you're, you know, you do 100 trips in that first week. I could suck up that supply. The only way they're gonna be able to keep those drivers is they're gonna have to subsidize across all of their drivers.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Even though I just took a small number of them. So I'm gonna suck up all of their drivers unless they defend their driver base. It's like a lot of little things like this. And I'm almost like remembering, it's been 10 years since I did any of this. But like, I'm trying to remember all the ways where it's asymmetric one way versus the other way. And I'm, yeah.

• 28:43David Senra?

  I think you hit on, it's, it's this, paying attention to every single little detail. So like, when you were speaking about even the signup flow and like, how fast the ride comes and how easy to put in your credit card information, everything else. My, what I'm sitting here thinking is not necessarily about you and Uber in China. I'm thinking about Rockefeller walking by and saying, hey, you guys are putting 50 drops of solder, solder on these barrels. And you're doing that because you think it's 50 so it doesn't leak. Try 48. They tried 48, this is in fucking Titan. They tried 48, it leaks. What about 49? 49 doesn't leak. And he says, the first year, that only saved us $2,500 a year. Cause we got one drop. But we were tiny. Now it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he did that with a thousand different things.

• 29:26David Senra?

  So by the time he got to his scale, you're not competing at all. It's impossible.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And so that's super important. Now, I read Titan after Uber.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Okay. And I'm reading him going, holy shit. This dude was way more hardcore. But the reason why is because I got an anti, like there, we had antitrust attorneys at Uber and they're like very, making it very clear. Like there's certain things you can do, certain things you can't. They're like training me and educating me on antitrust law.

• 30:03David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Now, at first, when you hear that and you're just a startup kid, like literally just get, you're like, antitrust law, that's like, what are you? I can't wait to have that problem, you know? Uh, but it, it ends up being obviously very important. Um, but Rockefeller didn't have that.

• 30:21David Senra?

  No.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  He but.

• 30:22David Senra?

  The laws are passed because of him.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Of course. But it's like, he's the super, like people use OG. They use it the wrong way. It means original gangster. He's the OG, OG.

• 30:37David Senra?

  I found one of my all time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform. AppLovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. AppLovin allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin ads are full screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal and AppLovin achieves it.

• 31:19David Senra?

  There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and AppLovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increased their revenue by millions. So you want to get started quickly before all of your competitors are on AppLovin. And you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I think the other thing about monopolies too, is there's, there are different ways, there are different things because sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is so competitive. Sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is anti-competitive. And they're different.

• 32:08David Senra?

  That's interesting. Say more about this.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, where I ended up at Uber was it basically sort of, the motto was more like, the one who serves the customer best gets all the customers.

• 32:22David Senra?

  Very Bezos.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  That's where we ended up. So you can be highly competitive and look, we had never at Uber, we never got a regulation passed that would hurt a competitor. We never would do that. That's just not how we rolled. We never donated to a campaign, ever, to try to get something passed.

• 32:48David Senra?

  You wanted to win because you built the best service.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:50David Senra?

  I'm reading this biography right now. It was published in 1975. It's on the founder of Honda, who's competing in Japan. He founds Honda in 1948. Japan's in ruins.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:01David Senra?

  And they're, the technology in Japan is really low at the time. And so all these, all of his, the people that are building motorcycles and cars, they're like, let's, uh, let's get together and petition the government to not allow imports. And he's like, and he was the only one that voted against it. He goes, no, no, he goes, the way to win is to build the superior technology.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:20David Senra?

  Cause if we have the best product, that product will go, it won't just be profitable in Japan, it'll spread throughout the entire world.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27David Senra?

  Very much like what you're saying here is like, no, I don't want protectionism. I want to win because I built the best product and customers are choosing me.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And also remember what we were overcoming to do what we do was a system that was perfectly anti-competitive.

• 33:42David Senra?

  Can you explain?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  A government, a government condoned monopoly or a government condoned cartel called taxi.

• 33:51David Senra?

  People don't understand this. Can you explain the environment in which you started Uber?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Let's start with what is a taxi? Okay, what is a taxi? We'll do New York because it's the best, it's the best way to tell it. In the early 1900s, there were people that were picking up other citizens that needed a ride across town and charging them for it. And, um, eventually the city decided, hey, look, we want to have this to be licensed and controlled in some way, or like certainly rules of the road, just rules of the road. So you'd get a license, but anybody could get a license. You'd get that license for free and they would make sure like you weren't like a felon and like different things like this, which you'd go, that sounds great, good idea.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  But anybody could get a license and get it for free, a taxi license in New York. And eventually that number got to, I don't know, somewhere around 13,000. And then those 13,000 people who had licenses, this is now like, let's call it the 1920s, the 1930s, decided that they would lobby the city to give no more licenses out. And the city, they, they did some deals, who knows, you know, that era in New York, you know, how that went down, but no more licenses. And of course that was great for the people who had them because as the city was growing,

• 35:23Speaker 01

  there's more and more demand to get across town, but there are a fixed number of licenses, people who could do it, who are allowed to do it. Then taxi guys go to city council and they, they lobby again. And the next version of the lobbying is we want to be able to sell the license to somebody else. So now I have this thing, now it's known as a, and now I can, I can, it's, it's sort of artificial scarcity. And I can sell it to somebody else who wants to get a cash flow. That's an artificially high cash flow because nobody's allowed to compete essentially.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  And then they went to city council one more time and they said, we want to be able to lease out this license to an individual on a daily or weekly basis. And that is the modern taxi system today. When Uber rolled into New York, uh, the driver was getting a 12 hour shift, seven days a week, but there are two 12 hour shifts. Each of those drivers was paying $40,000 a year to rent a car for halftime.

• 36:42David Senra?

  Insane.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Which means the guy who had the license, whose grandpa got it for free, okay? All right. The guy who has the license, whose grandpa got it for free, is getting $80,000 a year renting a car to a taxi driver. And that taxi driver who's paying $40,000 a year for 12 hours a day, he's renting a car for $40,000 a year. For that privilege, he gets to be impoverished. That is the taxi system. And they are over a hundred years.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  So it's like Stockholm syndrome or regulatory capture is so fricking tight that the, the regulators, the difference between the regulator and the taxi company is almost indistinguishable.

• 37:36David Senra?

  And it had to be jarring for you to walk into a system where you just described, you're just describing corruption.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  That is, it is not.

• 37:43David Senra?

  Legalized corruption.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Legalized corruption. So remember, it is, so what is a taxi system? It is a government condoned cartel that outlaws competition.

• 37:53David Senra?

  But it had to be jarring for you because then you come in with a better product at a better, at a cheaper price that customers love a thousand, never taken, since I had Uber, you've had, you caught me in 2010.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:04David Senra?

  And whenever you opened up in New York, you've kept me since then. I've never opened up another app.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:08David Senra?

  Like 16, 17 years, however long, long it's been. It's just like, I'm choosing to do that. And then the governments are like, no, no, this legalized corruption is good. You, Travis and Uber, get the hell out of here.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  So what happens is, uh, being anti-competitive is illegal in the United States unless you get a government official or regulator to do it for you. Then it's legal.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Pretty interesting.

• 38:40David Senra?

  We were talking before we started recording about capitalism. And you have some interesting thoughts and ways to describe it. I would also say like, you know, this, this shows a love letter to capitalism. It's very pro entrepreneurship. I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant. I grew up meeting people that came over here in rafts. When I was nine years old, I knew.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:58David Senra?

  I'm obviously born into a very special place. If these people risk their lives to get here.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:02David Senra?

  And the wealth that this, this country has created. What I think also has to be called out is this crony capitalism where it's like, you don't, I like the Hondas of the world. Where it's like, no, no, I want to win because I'm the best.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:12David Senra?

  Not because I gave you a bunch of money and you've shut down my competitors.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:16David Senra?

  That shit should be called out.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  So it's super interesting because you go, okay, well, in this case, Uber was,

• 39:24Speaker 01

  was the symbol of hyper capitalism. If in many ways, like it was like embracing all of the values and

• 39:38Speaker 01

  principles of capitalism. But it started with the most important, which is an individual has a right to choose between different suppliers of a good or service. It's like a pro competition thing. The consumer has a right to choose between different offerings. The other side of that is an individual can start a business to provide that service or offering.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  So you go, okay. So capitalism at its foundation is somebody can start a legal business, like a, you know, any, make a product or a service and offer it to people. And the people have the right to choose which one they use. That's capitalism. So the question is, what's anti-capitalism?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Anti-capitalism is the constraint on people being able to start a business or a have a vocation that they choose. And/or individuals not having the right to choose which service or off or product that they buy. At the core, that's what it is. Now people get confused. Sometimes they think something is capitalism that is not. It's pretty obvious, you know, anybody watching any part of this conversation on taxis. It's super clear that taxis are definitely not capitalism. But it's why they are not very good. And it's why they are more expensive than they need to be.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  And if people are taking Ubers today in New York and wondering why it's so expensive. And why it's getting more unreliable. It's because after I left Uber, they started passing a bunch of laws that are turning Uber into the taxi system.

• 41:32David Senra?

  I didn't know this.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. They've, they have a limit on the number of drivers that can be on Uber. They've turned it into a medallion system that cannot be traded. And as people retire out of driving, the number of Ubers, I believe, I may have this wrong, but it's something, it's either fixed or shrinking right now. And that is why the prices are going up and the service is going down. But Uber is thought of as a capitalist thing, but actually the government is constraining it. This is a, and why? Because of the taxi owners who want their medallion prices to go back up.

• 42:09David Senra?

  This is madness. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged?

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah. I mean, a lot of people are like, what's happening now feels like the scenario, you know, the scenes in from that book.

• 42:19David Senra?

  I haven't, it was like recommended to me a million times.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:22David Senra?

  There's a bunch of people, guests that have been on the show that have talked to me about it in private. And finally, I was like, all right, the 12th fucking person that I've recommended, I finally read it. And I'm like, and then I went, looked up, I was like, wait, this was written from like 1946 and 1956, I think, the 10 year period she was writing. I was like, this sounds, the, the, the, the people in this book.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:38David Senra?

  It's exactly, it's the same kind of person today.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I agree with that.

• 42:43David Senra?

  The whole book is like, we have these prime movers. And then we have these people that are just trying to restrain their competitive and their, I love what you said, like, what are they protesting? Progress.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52David Senra?

  Well, what happens when the people building the progress then go on strike? That's a very fascinating, like, theme throughout the book.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we get to some pretty interesting places with this kind of thing.

• 43:02David Senra?

  In your career, did you only run into this government corruption in Uber? Have you run into any, I know you started, uh, city storage systems. Cloud kitchens was in city storage systems.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:12David Senra?

  Now you renamed it Adams. Have you run into, because your, your, your whole thing, what I love about you is just like, all physical world. I think you said it's a, you've considered a calling.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:21David Senra?

  To digitize.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  The physical world.

• 43:23David Senra?

  I love that you use the word calling though. I think that's really important. Have you run into other forms of?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  It's everywhere, but taxis is by far the most intense. Literally competitive, we, we talk about anti-competitive things and antitrust law and Rockefeller and things like this. No, no, no. Taxis, competition is illegal.

• 43:45David Senra?

  But why do they self-power?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  They've captured the regulators. Through lobbying, through donations, through legalized corruption. And it's not like the only industry where this exists. You know, there are obviously many other industries, but in terms of what I've seen, competition is outlawed.

• 44:05David Senra?

  How does the China Diddy Uber story end? Did they, the government put the hand on the scale and favored Diddy over Uber?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  So they ultimately did. What happened was is the China war went global.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  And what happened is the sovereign wealth, uh, their sovereign wealth funds in China started pouring billions of dollars into my competitors, Uber's competitors in different regions. So that they would subsidize in those regions and drain my resources.

• 44:38David Senra?

  Wait, before you go there, take me your mindset when you realize the game that they're playing.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you're like, damn.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 44:49David Senra?

  Were you like, not sleeping? Are you like?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the entire Uber thing was like a lack of sleep. You know, so it wasn't like this was a new lack of sleep thing. It was just, I mean, it was a new thing. But lack of sleep generally was a thing, just because I had a global business that was really intense. And, and very game theory oriented in the ways that I'm describing, which means it was always on. And crazy weird things happen in cars at night. So like, uh, the first time I got woken up in the middle of the night because there was a, a drive-by shooting from an Uber.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, that's not good. The, the thing is, is that what happens in a city

• 45:35Speaker 01

  happens in an Uber.

• 45:37David Senra?

  And so you're exposed to all the vagaries of human behavior.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the roads, the roads are the cardiovascular system for the city. There's nothing that happens in a city that the road doesn't touch. You know, people are people, they do things they shouldn't do. What we're, our goal was to make Uber the safest place in a city. And I think we accomplished that. We got pretty close to that. And I know they take it pretty seriously today.

• 46:02David Senra?

  But go back to the stress, like you wanted the stress, right?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  It was fun.

• 46:06David Senra?

  Okay. So Herb Kelleher, do you know who that is? Founder of Southwest Airlines.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:11David Senra?

  Most successful airline in history, 40 straight years was, was profitable.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:15David Senra?

  And, you know, he, he has, he was a gangster, right? Would drink a fifth of bourbon every day, smoke cigarettes on the planes. And he was, he, unfiltered guy. I would love if he was still alive. He'd be like one of my top, uh, you know, guests I want to talk to. And I love, he was giving, he was giving interview one time, they're like, you undergo a lot of stress, how do you handle it? And he goes, I don't handle it, I like it.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:39David Senra?

  I get that same vibe from you.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  The lifestyle of an entrepreneur, I, I believe at its core, there's a couple of things, but this is one, one prism, one, one, one part of it, one pillar of it. Is I can take more pain than the other guy.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  And I'll prove it.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Once you take on that lifestyle, I mean, it's a real thing. It's not just that I choose to take it on, it is the nature of the thing that I am doing. Then you are taking on it, a life of adversity and overcoming all the time.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  And once you are seeing adversity all the time and overcoming it, it just becomes normal.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  The downside of it is you can get used to adversity. It just becomes very normal.

• 47:28David Senra?

  Why is that a downside?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Because you almost start accepting it.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  You don't, like, something bad happens, you don't even get mad. You're like, huh, that's interesting.

• 47:41David Senra?

  But wouldn't it be beneficial to be like unruffled like that where?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  There are benefits.

• 47:45David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  But you need to make sure you don't get so used to it that it doesn't even bother you. You can get so zen, you're unbothered. Now you still act, but there's something special about the extra fierceness of being bothered.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Being upset about something that is wrong. Yep. Same things, when, what is adversity? What is adversity?

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Usually adversity is like some bad shit went down that shouldn't have.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  And it was done to you. It's adversity. You know what I mean? Like for a farmer, it's like a drought. You know, it's like terrible.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  So, or it could be a lot of things. Could be somebody stole his crops, could be, could be pests, could be, you know, it could be anything. So.

• 48:36David Senra?

  Were you just getting numb to it? Is that what you're saying? Like, was there parts?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, once you fully embody the lifestyle of

• 48:45Speaker 01

  adversity and overcoming it, you have to be careful of the ease at which you walk through it. Because there is an extra power in being bothered by something that is wrong. You can get too used to wrong things happening.

• 49:05David Senra?

  Have you reached that point in your career before?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Well, no, I, I would say today, there are very few things that actually stress me out.

• 49:14David Senra?

  Are you worried about that?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Of course. So I remember the things that are important.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And that's where I channel fierceness through. What is right and what is wrong?

• 49:29David Senra?

  You're almost telling me you've been inoculated.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  My, my point is.

• 49:32David Senra?

  From pain.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's something like, uh, there's a zen that can happen when a warrior has fought for a long time. You can get used to it.

• 49:44David Senra?

  Yeah, but you still, at least on the outside, you still have this like crazy, I told you, you're the most intense person I've ever met. And I've met almost all the top founders in the world.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  But imagine fierceness with calm on the inside.

• 49:55David Senra?

  That's what you want, or that's what you're wanting?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  That's what I got. That's where I'm at. Yeah.

• 49:59David Senra?

  You weren't calm on the inside when you were building Uber. That's what you're saying?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, as one entrepreneurs, longer and longer, and does it properly.

• 50:09David Senra?

  I've never heard it used as a verb.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  You get to that place. You just get to that place.

• 50:15David Senra?

  As one entrepreneurs for longer and longer, I'm using that line, man. You just get to that place. Well, I love what you said, though, about like the pain, because, you know, there's a bunch of maxims from the history of entrepreneurship that I love. Like, I think something that we both like support is like trying to win based on, you know, providing the best service. So like, one of my favorite maxims comes from Henry Ford, where he says, "Money comes naturally as a result of service." If you go read his autobiography, you see how he organized Ford Motor Company, he's just like, "We're gonna provide the maximum amount of service, and I'm not, the money will take care of itself." If I'm just delighting the customer, the bank account will be fine. But my favorite maxim from all of history of entrepreneurship is excellence is the capacity to take pain, which is exactly what you said.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Oh, this is a hundred, oh, I love that one. That is 100% true. So, once you say entrepreneurship is the lifestyle of entrepreneur-ing, the lifestyle of entrepreneur-ing is the, uh, this sort of pride, and I can take more pain than the other guy, you go, "Why?" Well, the best example is like, world-class marathoner on mile 21. You ever seen, you ever seen a marathon, you ever seen a marathoner on mile 21? Probably on TV. Is that dude smiling? Fuck no. Of course not. Why?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Because if he were smiling, if he were just not feeling pain, there's somebody else who will. What is the difference between feeling pain and not feeling pain? Is that extra push. That extra push means he loses if he's not getting into that pain. And that's what excellence is. Excellence is about pushing into the extent, the, what is a human capable of, that, the full potential. Because if you don't, somebody else does. And then that becomes the standard of excellence.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  And all of human progress is through that push towards excellence that is a push through pain. If it is not painful, you're clearly not pushing hard enough.

• 52:38David Senra?

  And I love that you've tied this to, if you're doing something that's easy, you're doing something that's not valuable.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  If you're doing something that's easy, it may be valuable, but you're about to get your ass whooped. Or it may not be valuable. It just depends. So, you know, easy could be sitting on the beach for six months. Now, it could be valuable to you. Respect. And that's all good. Everybody has that choice. That's all good. But you're not, you're, you're, you're not bringing human progress. And then you go, "Well, that's interesting. So if somebody sits on the beach for six months, they're not bringing, there's no, they're not participating in human progress." I'm like, "Well, how could they?"

• 53:26Speaker 01

  You're like, "Well, what if they start thinking deeply about life, and about philosophy, and about society, and they had really amazing thoughts?" I'm like, "Well, did they write them down?" I'm like, "Okay, he wrote them down. So now he's on the beach writing it down." And I'm like, "Okay, but there's lots of people doing that." He's gotta be better than those other guys if he wants to be about progress. So now he's really fucking writing them down. And he's honing those words to such a degree that it's beautiful and perfect before somebody else has that thought and does it themselves, and now he's in pain.

• 54:04David Senra?

  How long did you take from when you left Uber, which obviously had to be fucking devastating and heartbreaking, to jumping into the next thing? Did you sit on the beach for a little bit? Like, what did you actually do?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  No, so it was like, seven months, six, seven months, something like this. And most of it was fending off lawfare.

• 54:24David Senra?

  So wait, the lawfare, was it criminal? Were they trying to like?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  It was civil and criminal, for sure. Yeah.

• 54:28David Senra?

  Yeah. So you're fighting off that for a while?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a corporate cancel culture, lawfare, like all the things. On the corporate side of all of those things. Remember I said, remember earlier, we talked about, uh, business became politics.

• 54:43David Senra?

  We were talking about this off camera. Can you talk about this now?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there was a, you know, in the 2010s, there was something that happened in the media, and it was that business became politics. If you just think about your favorite politician, and just go on the internet today, do you think you're gonna see a lot of happy-go-lucky stuff about your favorite politician? Like, of course not. We know that. Because politicians, basically, there's the nature of what it is they do. There's a lot of mudslinging and a lot of stuff, and a vast majority of it is just untrue. Though I'd say with some of our politicians today, maybe a lot of it is true.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  But, but, you know, it's just a dog-eat-dog mudslinging thing, and the headlines are often not true, which I think we know that in politics. What we didn't know in the 2010s is that, or that was just starting to happen, was that business was becoming politics. That the headlines you were starting to read about business were just narratives, and often fabrications with substantial, material perversion of truth.

• 55:59David Senra?

  And you were Exhibit A for this?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  For sure. I would, I would say so.

• 56:04David Senra?

  Yeah, no, I would say so too.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, like, talk to anybody who knows me, they would basically say, the difference between, especially if you talk about 10 years ago, the difference between the public persona and the actual person couldn't be more different.

• 56:24David Senra?

  Well, I can, I can speak to this. And I know, when I, we, before we started recording, and I've been chasing you for a while, there was a dinner, and I saw you at Michael Dell's house and everything else, which was funny, by the way, when you walked up to us. And I was like, "Do you remember me?" And you go, you're like, "Yeah." And I go, "It's time to do the fucking show." And you go, "It's time to do the fucking show." I love that. But what I would say is, it's like, in terms of founders that actually know their shit, your reputation is perfect. Sterling. It's like, if you're a killer entrepreneur, you say great things about Travis. It's the only shit I've ever heard comes from like investors. This is why, again-

• 57:02Speaker 01

  I don't necessarily believe it comes from investors, but-

• 57:04David Senra?

  I'm saying what I hear.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  No, it's interesting, because where I, you know, yeah, a lot of times, it's from the, the gallery. Now, sometimes investors are in that category. But when I go and do pitches and fundraising, I don't feel like-

• 57:24David Senra?

  You're Travis Kalan, come on, bro. I'm just saying. Fucking Travis. Of course, like, you're basically unlimited. So this is one, I was texting Daniel Ek about, that I was gonna see you, and he wanted, he's like, "You gotta get him to talk about fundraising," which we'll get to in a minute. But I think we have to hit on something really important, because what I loved about our dinner is you just straight interrupted me, which I loved, because you should've. And, but I was trying to tell you, I was like, "Man, listen, there's just something weird that all the content in the podcasts that entrepreneurs and founders are consuming are created by VCs." And you, like, and then I went to say another thing, and you cut me off. You put your, like, your hand in my face, which is hilarious. You're like, "Real founders don't listen to VCs." We need to talk about this.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 58:05David Senra?

  Because if you're friends with founders, you hear atrocious horror stories and bad behavior by investors all the time, that they will not sit, talk about publicly. Right? You went through one of the worst of the worst. Like, going back is like, is it just, when you're doing Uber, is it just you raised money from the wrong people? What did you, how do you look at it now? And how could you, what would you tell like a young founder now that has to raise a ton of money?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I always, I gotta do the, I gotta first shoot the arrow, which is, you definitely shouldn't raise from Benchmark Capital. Gotta get that out there. And then, okay, let's get into the real stuff. Look, I think it's really interesting to start with what, where, where did it get weird? I mean, basically, at the peak, so 2017 was a, was my problem year, right? I mean, it was always hard, but this is when it got dialed up. And Benchmark was running a war room. They were an unspoken activist investor that was creating a once-a-week crisis.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  But without-

• 59:19David Senra?

  Against you?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, against me. Without speaking of it. Again, there's some things I don't know, but the best I can see is that they wanted liquidity, and they felt like I wouldn't give it.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  We were already preparing for an IPO, but I didn't tell him that.

• 59:37David Senra?

  Why didn't you tell him that?

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Because we wanted to sort of make sure we'd done the right thinking, got prepared, so we could just say, "We're gonna do it, and here's how we're gonna do it." And Bill Gurley's a bit of a catastrophist. It's always the end of the world.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  And so that forces you to do really weird things if you think the world is always going to end, including try to take me out. So instead of dealing with that catastrophism, let's just go do the damn thing. I give you lots of examples, like I think on the, we had a, we had a fundraise in 2014, mid 2014, where the last round we did was in August 13, was $3.5 billion. That's when we brought Google and, um, Google and TPG in. And then mid 2014, so nine months later, that was $3.5 billion.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Nine months later, we did a round.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Gurley was like convinced it was the end of the world, and we gotta raise and just take your first term sheet, just fucking take it. And you have a whole philosophy on this, which is like, if you want a round to go well and to go fast, you have to have a process. If you just go take the first term sheet, getting the round done will actually take longer, because there's no alternatives, you don't have alternatives, and then it gets weird. And then the VC will just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, getting more, more, more, more, and it gets weird to a point where it actually becomes highly likely the deal just blows up. So I like to say, I never get attached to a price, I get attached to a process. That process is about excellence in fundraising. Anyways.

• 1:01:29David Senra?

  Can you explain that process, though?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  We'll get there.

• 1:01:31David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:32David Senra?

  Don't let me forget.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  I won't.

• 1:01:35David Senra?

  BFS.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to sit here for 10 hours to cover everything. But he was convinced, like, hey, just take the first deal, like, just do a $6 billion. It was like, I think you could get a $6 billion round valuation done right now, it's nine months after the three and a half, just go take the first term sheet, make it happen.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Now, if you're a founder hearing that and you're just like, you're like, dude, I hear you, but even if the world is about to end, the best thing you can do is have alternatives, and the deal will actually get done faster.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  So we got to a place where like, I just wouldn't talk to him, and not, if he reached out to me, I would, I would talk to him, but like, I just wouldn't try to engage, because it was always that. So Emil Michael would handle this part, he would handle a lot of the investor relations, especially as it relates to him.

• 1:02:38David Senra?

  Shout out to Emil Michael, that dude is loyal as hell to you.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Well, he's just an awesome guy, not because of loyalty, but because he's just an awesome guy, but of course, that too. And he would do it in a genuine, authentic way, like try to handle the objections or whatever. Anyways, two months later, we got a round done at a $17.5 billion pre.

• 1:03:02David Senra?

  Whoa.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  So that's my point. So when you want to do things right, you gotta do things right, and VCs don't, not all, but many, most, they're just, they're worried about other things. So we were already planning IPO stuff, they didn't know it, but they also never expressed the desire to, like, hey dude, you gotta IPO, it's never brought up.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  So it was like this weird catastrophism, mixed with, if you think the world's about to end, and you've got this thing that's worth a ton of money, you could get to a weird place, especially when you're in a VC, you don't have any control, you're not like running anything. So now you're like, your entire holy shit big, your outcomes in life are due to this guy, and you think the world's about to end, and he doesn't. You're like, you could get into a place where you're running a war room to destroy him. And that's, that's kind of what happened.

• 1:04:13David Senra?

  What's the alternative scenario if you raised just from somebody that wouldn't have done that? Like, I'm just gonna make this up, but like, how Founder's Fund says, they, no matter what, they'll never remove a founder, they'll not do like a warfare, a war room against them.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's two parts. So first, I'd say the most, the, actually a super high bar for a VC is do no harm. There's a lot of reasons why that's hard for a VC.

• 1:04:35David Senra?

  Elaborate, please. This is important, man, no one talks about this shit.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Everybody wants to make a mark on the world.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Everybody wants to make a mark on the world. And you might believe one thing or another.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  You wanna make a mark on the world.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  And the, the way I think about it is, an operator who's running a company is a, if they're good, is a grandmaster of chess.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  The VC, and by the way, that grandmaster of chess, this operator, entrepreneur, is playing this chess match somewhere between 60 and 80 hours a week, and is like, really knows this thing, and it's like, knows many moves ahead, and just sees things other people don't see, and they're in it as well.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And the VC is a chess enthusiast, and they check in on the chess match once every three months.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  And they're like, trying to make a mark on the world, they have an opinion, they're trying to make a mark, hey, why don't you do this or that, and you're like, you know,

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  don't go to Jordan and tell him how to dunk, and definitely don't go to him and tell him how to dribble.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  But it's hard, because everybody has an opinion, and you believe, whatever you believe, you really believe it, but like, if you're not in the thing all in, all the way, every day, 12 to 16 hours a day, on this game, it ain't a thing. But that's a hard thing for most people to take, who aren't running shit.

• 1:06:38David Senra?

  Why do you think it's hard for them to take?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Because VCs are glamorized, and they have a seat at the table in some fashion, and there are certain powers, you can make a mark.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  And so it's sort of like, the way to think about it is, you're on the Serengeti, and,

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  like, if an antelope limps in the Serengeti, the lion will take it down, even if it's not hungry, can't even fucking help it.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  It's just what is, what he does. And that's kind of the nature of most VCs. This, the, the nature of it is, they will, if the, if you are on the Serengeti and limping, you will, you will be eaten. It's just the nature of it.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  And the lion doesn't even know why sometimes, he's just like, this is what I do. Yeah.

• 1:07:40David Senra?

  So when you're talking to other founders, younger founders, you're saying, priority number one is just find an investor that does no harm?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  That would be a high bar.

• 1:07:49David Senra?

  So achievable, what percentage of the time, then, you would guess?

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  10%.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  And then, the 1% is helpful.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  But it's hard, how the fuck are they supposed to be helpful? There's different times to be helpful, though. Helpful is hard times, is when you actually need real help, right?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Helpful is...

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  There, you know, maybe it's personnel, like you need epic people, but it's still like hard, hard for them to participate because they're just not in it that deep.

• 1:08:34David Senra?

  So can you explain excellence in the fundraising process? And how you think about it, the system you developed for this?

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it could be changing over time, but I like, I certainly have my approach. It's interesting because I've just, I'm just finishing a fundraise right now. And it's, it's interesting to see the world change. But I think part of what we're seeing right now is we're in a, we're in a super cycle or like a super high, we're in a hype, I don't want to call it hype, so but like in a very bullish cycle right now, which means different things happen than if it's sort of average. When it's average, it's super important to tell a beautiful story.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  That's woven, like that, that's, that's like a story that numbers are woven through. It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful, entertaining, interesting story.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  With analytical numbers woven through it. And you basically get to what I would call Q E D, which is

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  you've dissected the chess match to such a degree that it's very clear. What it takes to win and that you have the winning formula.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  And you get to the end of the thing and you're like, it's just proven. It's not even like a question anymore. It's Q E D. That's in normal times. And I think in super cycles or whatever we want to call, you know, kind of what's going on right now.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  That rigor is not as important.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  And if you go too far on that rigor, it could be too much.

• 1:10:22David Senra?

  Explain that.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  You hear stories of entrepreneurs that just sit down around a table and then

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  have an idea and they get money. That's the opposite of Q E D. But

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  if you have a two hour long presentation that goes Q E D in a super cycle, you probably should shorten that to 45 minutes.

• 1:10:48David Senra?

  Why?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  I don't know how to put it, it just looks like too much. Like, why are you going so far, dude?

• 1:10:54David Senra?

  What, what's Talk yourself out of the deal?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Something wrong?

• 1:10:56David Senra?

  Yeah, you'll talk yourself out of the

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Why are you so detailed? It's this weird dynamic. It's very funny. Like, it's cool, bro.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Maybe it's also because you're, you're projecting many years out. So, so the more super cycle you're in, the more forward you are, the more into the future you are. And that future can't really be presented as tightly with numbers.

• 1:11:26David Senra?

  Yeah. So what are you talking two hours for? You don't know.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  So then it's about the theory of the case. That's probably the way to think about it. Is that a mix of super cycle plus the speed at which technology is moving? And the sort of true exponential inflection that can occur. You're talking three to five years out. There's almost no set of numbers today that can Q E D the five year thing at this crazy 100x situation that's probably going to occur. So then you have to talk about the theory of it in many ways. And so maybe that's why it's a little bit different today.

• 1:12:03David Senra?

  What's the common, in your approach in a normal cycle and the super cycle you just described?

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Normal cycle is two hours Q E D.

• 1:12:10David Senra?

  What is something that you'll use in both, whether it's normal or super?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Well, I still do some version of, my style is Q E D.

• 1:12:17David Senra?

  And then the multiple bids thing is mandatory, correct?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Well, I would call it, so it's Q E D is the storytelling. And then there's sort of like a, an auction process

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  that you hone.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  If, when you're doing it right now, this has to be measured against how many resources you have to do Q E D? And how much deal resources you have to manage a full auction?

• 1:12:41David Senra?

  Explain that part to me.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Like if I have five rooms going at the same time, I have to have that, that's a thing that you, five rooms simultaneous for an entire week.

• 1:12:53David Senra?

  Where'd you even get that idea?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  It was just the expression of the right thing. It's, it's sort of like, if you keep incrementing on something and keep making it better and better, you will end up there.

• 1:13:07David Senra?

  What was the quality of the business when you were running this like five room process?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  That's peak Uber.

• 1:13:12David Senra?

  Peak. So it's like, it's like you can put money to this or nothing, nothing's even close.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  So there are other things. No, there are other things, but it was peak Uber. But the point was I did it Q E D. So I showed at the atomic level how the whole system works.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  With, with a very analytical view, but also sort of a bit of performance art. Cause you're storytelling.

• 1:13:38David Senra?

  Okay. Explain what's happening in these five rooms then.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Five rooms, 12 hours, one week.

• 1:13:44David Senra?

  Who's in the rooms? You don't have to say the people.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  No, it's okay. So I'm in the 250 million dollar checker over a room. Then there's like a hundred million dollar room and a 50 million dollar room and a 25 million dollar room. And there'll be a guy in the 25 million dollar room who's like,

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  who works for a guy who works for a guy who works for me. Right?

• 1:14:11David Senra?

  And what are you guys saying in all these rooms?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  We're telling the story. That story is the core. And now you have it being performed in four rooms at a time.

• 1:14:21David Senra?

  And there's a deadline, the price is going up.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's not prices going up. So that's the, that's the misunderstanding.

• 1:14:28David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  The right way to do it is to start with a low price.

• 1:14:33David Senra?

  Explain that.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  So a lot of entrepreneurs, they go and they say, they really have a, remember I said attached to a process, not a price. So a lot of entrepreneurs will get attached to the price and not the process. You have to be careful. It's very easy to get sucked into that. Where you're like, you get some signal that it should be a price and you get attached to it. And then that becomes your price, but you haven't cleared the market. So you have to be very careful about that. So you get attached to the price. And so then when I throw a price out, you're on the other side of the table and you like, you come in under it and now we negotiate. Right? It's a very bad place to be from my perspective.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Where you really want to be is you want to start at a low price and say, look, I don't know where the price is going to go, but I know it's at least here.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  And if it's low,

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  the meeting is like,

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  okay. Now, once they give you that read, once they lean forward like that, you're like, okay, we're good. You have a bidder.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  And then you go to the next guy.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  It depends on how, the nature of the round. If you're doing a winner takes all round, then you would just go to the next guy and you would then say, whatever that guy said, X plus five, whatever. X plus Y here, just say X plus five. And that guy does the same thing. And then you go to the next guy and then it's X plus five, plus five. And the next guy, X plus five, plus five, plus five. And all the while, while that's happening is a winner takes all deal. You go back to the original guy and you're like, dude, it's going up, it's going up. And you're telling people it's going up. That's a winner takes all approach. And then you sort of do a going once, going twice. Like when you start to peak out where it's like, people are getting a little, it's starting to get a little

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  high altitude, sweaty. Then you're like, okay, going once, going twice, sold. And then you close it down and winner takes all and they take the deal.

• 1:16:39David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  But most deals that are big deals today are not working that way. When you're doing multiple rooms at a time and something like this, it's more like,

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  how much would you put in at this price? And how much would you put in, let's call it, I'm just making this up, a billion. And how much would you put in at nine? And how much would you put in at 10? How much would you put in at 12? How much would you put in 14? Fill the sheet out.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  You decide how much you'd put in any, any price that we end up at. And you do that across everybody.

• 1:17:15David Senra?

  Is that what you're doing now?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Hold on, slow down, slow down. Then you aggregate how much demand I have at every price. So as the price gets higher, the demand goes down. You now have your demand curve. And you're like, okay, I want to raise a billion. So, but at the really low price, I have three billion of demand. At the higher price, eventually I have a billion dollars worth of demand. And I go, okay, that's the price that I could close at right now. Then you go and tell all the people that

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  that got cut out because they didn't get high enough of a price. There's less demand at this price, which means there's certain people that didn't bid here. You go tell them they're out. And you're like, but you could fill out another sheet if you want to make some moves. So they fill out the sheet, you do the demand curve again, everything moves a little bit to the right. And there's other guys that now get pushed out. And you do it one more time and then you clean it and you're done.

• 1:18:14David Senra?

  So what are you doing now?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  I'm about to close a deal.

• 1:18:17David Senra?

  Do you want to say how you did it though? You don't say numbers, but like

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  I can't do that. No.

• 1:18:22David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  I can't do that.

• 1:18:23David Senra?

  Okay. Come back on in a few months and

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of years ago, here's how this one went. You gotta put time in between because it's like you just did a deal, you know what I mean? But I would say I did a slightly different, slightly different this time around.

• 1:18:38David Senra?

  I'm very curious how you protect yourself from what happened with Benchmark and Uber from ever happening to you again. So how are you selecting, not just obviously the price? Look, you're not taking a high bidder, like how are you picking your partners?

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to also be careful, like

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  there can be

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  You gotta be really careful not to get into victim mentality. And what I mean by that is what was my part in that dynamic?

• 1:19:07David Senra?

  I was thinking while you were speaking, I was like, what if we could ask them? What would they want you to do that you weren't doing? Maybe say, hey, we were about to fuck an IPO.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  For sure, that probably would have saved me. But also, like, I didn't kiss the ring. I think Gurley wanted to feel like homey town with me and just never was.

• 1:19:29David Senra?

  Homie town to me is different than kissing a ring, though.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  But it's similar.

• 1:19:33David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Okay, let's put it in that category. We don't have to fucking go there. So that's, there's that. That's one thing I could have done differently, for sure. Would have changed everything. There are people inside of the company who became his partner to do the coup. Those individuals shouldn't have been there.

• 1:20:00David Senra?

  Did you suspect them at all before?

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:04David Senra?

  Wow.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  There was definitely something wrong, is what I would say. Okay, let's put it that way. Every decision I made at Uber, defend to this day. Like, I wasn't 100% correct, but always good intentions and always come from the right place. Generally, just did the right thing, yeah? One of my lawyers put it this way, he's like, you know, did you? If you're like, he sort of made a sporting or like a sports analogy, which is like, do you have chalk on your shoe? Would be like, kind of going out of bounds or doing something you shouldn't have done. And I'm like, never had chalk on my shoe.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  But in order to know, you would need an electromagnetic scanning microscope to see with reverse angle of slow-mo replay to verify that there's no chalk on the shoe. So the problem was that I ran too close to the line in too many situations. That it, it's, when you are big and important, the scrutiny and the expectation is that you don't run that close to the line, even if it's correct. And that is a thing I definitely did not understand. And it comes from what I did before Uber, which was I was doing a really hard startup.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  First four years, no salary, ran out of money several times. Like, super grind, like, lose all friends, like, everything's, it was just the hardest kind of, I like to say, the non-luckiest entrepreneur journey of all time. You can't call it unlucky, I eventually sold, but like, you definitely would never call it lucky. That's for damn sure. But basically, it was so hard that I had to be sort of epically precise and hardcore just to pay the bills and go to the grocery store next week.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  And that precision and intensity made Uber what it was. But I was running a $70 billion company the way somebody who thought he was gonna starve next week would run it.

• 1:22:29David Senra?

  That is fascinating.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Like, super intense, precision, perfection, obsession, because he's not sure that he's gonna be able to pay the grocery bill next week.

• 1:22:42David Senra?

  Did you understand you were, that was your approach at the time? You had that approach? Or you had to leave and look back and figure it out?

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  It's a little, probably a little bit of both, yeah. But I take pride in that. At the time, it was like a pride in going all the way. But like, not maybe understanding every, understanding it the way I understand it today.

• 1:23:09David Senra?

  I wonder how much of that is a benefit? Like, you're super, you're one of those most aggressive founders in history. You're wiser, more experienced now, more access to resources, better network. I wonder if this version of you could compete with that version or that aggressiveness is just what the, you created the entire category.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I understand. It would be super fun if there was a universe where I could compete with my younger self. That would be fucking awesome. I would love that so much. I would kick his ass.

• 1:23:37David Senra?

  You, okay.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Now, there'd be certain things he's doing because he's younger, and there's a, there's a certain thing to that. Remember, I talked about the, the, the passion for right and wrong, right? As an example, there's something to that. But also, what I noticed today is most of the things that would take me X amount of time 10 years ago, I can do an X divided by three today. And not because I got clod over there. Like, that's a whole separate thing. I'm just saying, like, like, I don't know, you read my Adam's vision note.

• 1:24:22David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Okay, that would have taken me, I don't even know if I could have written that back in the day. Like, not that good. I can just flow and get it done. Like, the core of that was written in an hour and a half. You know, that kind of thing.

• 1:24:42David Senra?

  What is it that caused you to accelerate now, though?

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  There's different things. So like, a lot of early founders have a fear of failure. But what that does is it creates blockage around progress and not making progress because you're, you're just, you're bogged down. The psyche around fear of failure fucks with your ability to, to get there.

• 1:25:13David Senra?

  Well, the fear of failure could either stand in your way or could push you from behind, right?

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  It could push you from behind, but ultimately, you will never be truly world-class if you have a fear of failure.

• 1:25:23David Senra?

  But how many entrepreneurs have you met where they said, like, the fear of failure is greater than the love of success?

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  I understand that. I'm just saying that it will get you places, but it won't get you all the way.

• 1:25:36David Senra?

  Okay, and that version of Travis, where you're running a $70 billion company?

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Well, no, I would say I was transitioning out of fear of failure.

• 1:25:43David Senra?

  Towards the end, in 2017?

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Just, just, just, just say, like, we don't have to put a specific date. It's just a spectrum. It's a, and just, I'm transitioning out of it. Because remember where I came from? It's just before. So I'm transitioning out of fear of failure.

• 1:25:58David Senra?

  How old were you when you started Uber?

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  33.

• 1:26:02David Senra?

  33, and you had a couple million bucks, right?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I put into all my friends' startups. I had nothing.

• 1:26:09David Senra?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  It's kind of funny. It's kind of funny.

• 1:26:12David Senra?

  Did that work out?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  So I was the first investor in Expensify. Uh, there's like a healthcare IT company that still hasn't gone public. It's really funny.

• 1:26:24David Senra?

  Okay, so not a lot of resources, still young, 33 is still young. So it makes sense why you felt the way you felt.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's, it's just about the background. It's just about what the previous experience was, not about my age per se. It was just about what experience I'd just come out of.

• 1:26:42David Senra?

  So I love where the conversation has gone, because what I'm hearing from you is like, there's just this theme that runs through you as a person and then your approach to company building throughout these companies. So we barely touched on what you're doing now.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:54David Senra?

  Like, let's get into Adams.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57David Senra?

  And you said you wanted to start with the mission, where it says, "Physical automation to transform industry and move the world."

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  AI and robotics to totally transform industries, but one industry at a time. And specialized robotics to do so. So, for instance, if you want to make 1,000 pancakes an hour, you wouldn't have a humanoid do it. If you wanted to get a car to move down the street, you wouldn't have a humanoid drive it. I think humanoids have their place, which is, let's call it, low-scale tasks in human design, environments designed for humans. So example, you're in a house.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Clothes need to be folded. But it's not like you're folding clothes all day long. It's one of the things, but there's no way you'd buy a robot for tens of thousands of dollars to just fold clothes because it's just not big enough of a problem. So now you need a machine that can do many different types of things in the home. So it needs to fold clothes, it needs to take out the trash, probably needs to wash dishes. There's like a bunch of things. But that's a very generalized thing. Has to be able to do a lot of different things and it's in a very human environment. The best form factor is a humanoid for this thing.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  But don't bring up the thousand pancakes an hour. Imagine a humanoid making pancakes. Well, it'd make it like a human. It would be like

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Okay. By the way, if you were just making pancakes at a home, once a week on a Sunday, because you need a machine that can do many different things, including make pancakes, it's all good. But if you needed to do a thousand an hour, you'd probably need like,

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  I don't know,

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  a hundred humanoids in a row doing this. Right versus a very simple iron apparatus where the batter gets pushed into it. It's hot already and it's pushing out like maybe even like a hundred pancakes every few minutes. You know what I mean? So specialized robotics, specialized machines that are specialized for the task at hand is sort of how I look at what we do. And so industrial scale where there's real change to an industry by automating the whole thing. And so you go, okay, well, I've got a lot going on in food already. The idea is, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you?

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  So efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going in the grocery store?

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Pretty awesome if you could. It's gotta be a high quality meal, of course. But like the question mark there, can you? Requires you to have what I would call industrial real estate for food e-commerce. What do I mean food e-commerce? We know what e-commerce is. It's got Amazon warehouses everywhere. Or like major hubs, like big distribution centers, DCs. But food e-commerce is a little different. It is a warehouse type. You need to do logistics from it, but you also need to do manufacturing. Like there's no manufacturing that's happening at an Amazon warehouse because everything's manufactured somewhere. It gets delivered to this big warehouse and then it goes from there. But with food, it has a 30 minute half-life.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  So the manufacturing, the logistics has to happen at the same place and it always has to be 15 minutes from where you are. So now you have a very different situation where you have real estate in urban and suburban environments. It's always 15 minutes from anybody. So you have an urban logistics fabric, production and logistics fabric across the city, which is I have the real estate, then I have robots, robotic food production. Cause then I'm taking the labor cost out and then I have robotic logistics. Because right now your $15 bowl that then gets delivered to you somehow became 30 bucks.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  It's of course expensive to produce, but every time there's a drop by a courier, that's another 12 bucks. Industrial real estate, robotic production, robotic couriers.

• 1:31:30David Senra?

  Was there a specific reason you started with food though?

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  It just caught me. I mean, like that is like, I don't have a list. Well, first of all, of course I did Uber Eats to like very familiar with this part of things, but nowhere close to the atoms that are necessary to do what I just described. You know, I like to say like, I have lots of ideas all the time. I mean, I'm an idea factory, but other people have great ideas too. But like an idea comes to you or comes to you, if that makes sense. And I'd like to say, you know, you go out on a date with the idea, like, was it a good date? Did it go well? Like, how did you and the idea get along?

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  And it's very much related to like, who are you is going to be a big part of which idea works for you.

• 1:32:22David Senra?

  You call this finding your sport.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, finding your sport or your business soulmate. Be in touch with who you are. And then when the right idea comes your way, you just know. You just know.

• 1:32:36David Senra?

  I thought I understood how you thought.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40David Senra?

  And now, you know, we've been talking for several hours. I'm, I think I'm getting a little closer there. But then I read what you wrote where you're just like, well, look around dude. Everything that you see in a city and a civilization has either been grown, mined or manufactured.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55David Senra?

  And so I'm like, oh, he like is, you're into details like you were describing the Uber signup flow earlier, but you zoomed all the way out.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02David Senra?

  So it's like, I'm going to start with the material constituents of everything that exists in the world.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  So when you look around you, everything around you is grown or mined, manufactured and moved. And that's how we look at the world. And then you go, well, when you think about physical AI, the automation of movement and action in the physical world. You look at the, what I call the physical AI tech stack. Real estate's part of that for the reasons I've described as it relates to food. If you didn't have the industrial scale, what I call high infrastructure, heavy duty energy, heavy duty mechanical systems, because you're extracting air and then tempering it and pushing it back in. Real estate is a big part. What is a mining company? It's actually real estate.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  So the ability to take land and turn it into productive progress essentially is a underappreciated and not understood thing. And it is most definitely a big part of the, what I would call the physical AI tech stack. You go like, look at, you know, you can look at Tesla and all the things Elon's doing like, it's obvious that real estate is his jam. Or certainly his team's jam. He doesn't talk about it as much, but it's a big part of what happens. He's got a fricking city. He's starting a fricking city, right? You know, the head of HR is basically the mayor of a city that he's building. You know what I mean?

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  So it's a really important thing, but also when you, you know, you can go further than that, which is everything we're seeing in technology. You know, a lot of times we talk about super intelligence is sort of the function of, I need to have energy and I need to have minerals. At the very base, lots of energy. We talk about data centers now in gigawatts or megawatts, you know? So I need to have energy and I need to have the minerals. And then I have those two things and I can get super intelligence eventually. Working those things hard. But where does the energy come from? You're like, oh, it comes from the sun. Okay, but how do you capture it?

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  Goes back to minerals. Like land is the whole damn thing.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  So there's a really interesting perspective about how land plays a role in the future of physical automation, physical AI.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  And just autonomy in the physical world is very dependent upon it. And that's why mining is so interesting.

• 1:35:43David Senra?

  You're not owning the mines, correct? You're just making them more productive with gainfully employed robots?

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah. What we call gainfully employed.

• 1:35:50David Senra?

  It was just hilarious, by the way.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yes. But it's like, because right now, you know, you know, look, I do think of course humanoids are going to be gainfully employed. They're not there yet, but they'll get there. But right now they're, the demos are dancing and martial arts. You know, I talk about the Beijing, there's a humanoid Olympics in Beijing and they're, they're doing a marathon. You're like, okay, they're not quite there. They're going to get there. But I kept thinking like, man, imagine if you put wheels on them. Right? And this gets back to humanoids being good at certain things and not others. And sort of having a purpose-built machine for the task is important.

• 1:36:31David Senra?

  So wait, you said two very interesting things. Your life's work is digitizing the physical world. And then you're saying for atoms, you're going to attack one industry at a time.

• 1:36:42David Senra?

  Physical world far outstrips the digital world. Therefore you almost stumbled into or picked, you didn't stumble into, you picked an infinite game. So there's no limit to what you, this company can expand into.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Look, I have a little bit of an issue of infinite, but like it's a very, it goes very far. Like the dream. Like, okay, look, the mission for mining is more productive mines to power Earth's industries.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Cause we can go to a gold mine right now, go to a gold mine CEO and ask whether he wants 20% more gold per year. Why? Because when you automate it, that's the output. And you make it cheaper to go to other places and even get more gold out of that mine that you wouldn't even get before. So it's getting more per year. It's getting more than you otherwise would in the totality of that mine. Plus being able to go and do more mines than you otherwise would because the OpEx is so much lower.

• 1:37:41David Senra?

  But if you're increasing the raw materials, then you're also increasing overall industry in the world, period. And then you could then go and automate and enhance those industries as well. Right?

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  The point is, is that if you get really good at minerals

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  and materials and land, you get good at automating, making land productive, empowering progress with land. It's sort of the lever that moves the world.

• 1:38:10David Senra?

  Exactly.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  So if you automate the thing that is the lever that moves the world, it's like the ultra lever.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  And this is kind of fun. It's just actually cool. If you see a picture of it, you know,

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  A machine that loaded is over 2 million pounds and it's the size of a building and it's autonomously moving around. Pretty cool. The dream in like this is like, it's really Elon willing, really. But like, one day, he's going to be sending, he's going to be sending missions to asteroids to mine them. Yeah, maybe we can help out in some way. That'd be a lot of fun.

• 1:38:50David Senra?

  You have mining, you have food.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Transport. And the thing we call it, the mission there is wheelbase for robots. So if you have specialized machines that, that, that act and move in the physical world, that's what we do for a living. You have to have wheelbase. You have to automate how they move. You know, some people think about ride sharing when they think about this, but there's just a lot of, there's a lot of things you're not thinking about. You know, like I was talking to one of the large food suppliers in the US. They supply all the food to the, to the restaurants. They're spending $3 billion a year

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  on the labor that moves the pallets on forklifts. This like, this is just like a little drop in the bucket of all the things that are moving. Right? But what about freight? What about parcel delivery? What about food delivery? So like, we talked about that on the food side. Once I knew I had to get into autonomy to complete the food story, this is when the Adams thing sort of came together beyond just food.

• 1:40:14David Senra?

  One of the things that I was talking to Daniel Ek about you, that he finds most fascinating about you, is your propensity to build a ton of separate companies inside of one company. You did this, obviously, at Uber.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27David Senra?

  You're doing it again at Adams?

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29David Senra?

  Is that just your natural, is that what you meant, like your business soulmate? That you're just like, I don't want to work on just one product or one business? Like, you want a conglomerate? Like, how do you think about this?

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  I mean, this goes back to, no, you don't, that's not how it works. It's, but it is, remember, the only constraint to our imagination is management capacity. So then the question is twofold. Do you have an imagination and is it any good? But if you do have an imagination and it's good, you're going to have interesting ideas that should happen. There's many ideas that maybe either shouldn't or somebody else should do, but there's going to be many ideas that you should do.

• 1:41:07David Senra?

  So what does an actual organization inside of Adams looks like with all, look like with all these different businesses? Like, does every business have a CEO? They report directly to you? Like, how did you actually structure this?

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Business unit line leader, and then you might even have sub-business unit leaders as well. You really try to empower and, you know, empower them to do their thing. That is, you know, I sort of look at that as alignment upfront, accountability on the backend. So what are we trying to accomplish? How are we going to try to accomplish it? What do we view as risky and what's sort of no brainer? And how do we do accountability as we go? And then sort of approach it with like a management style, which I call problem solver in chief. Which is, I spend my time on the most impactful problems that are not already being solved.

• 1:41:58David Senra?

  That's how you dedicate your time?

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00David Senra?

  Is that the directive that you give to everybody?

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:42:02David Senra?

  That's, okay.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Yes. So I've got a certain number of hours per day, but that's a tiny fraction of the problems that need to be solved.

• 1:42:08David Senra?

  Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out, like, how?

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  So that flows down. Now, everybody's got their, their, their, their remit, let's say. So they solve problems in this area. So it's flowing down, but they are the problem solver in chief deputized for their area. All the way down to the bottom.

• 1:42:26David Senra?

  Do you still put an emphasis, I've heard you speak about this in the past, an emphasis of hiring and empowering young people? Is this business different than like when you were launching new cities in Uber, for example? Where you gave a lot of responsibility to, you know, aggressive young people?

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Well, okay, again, so it, there's really interesting ways to do it. I, I sort of have this, this concept I call the line. In sort of the, maybe the framework is finding the line. So there's a line. On one side is order, lots of structure. Sorry, sorry, structured, like as you, as you pull away further, further back into order, you have lots of rules, lots of structure, lots of process. And eventually, lots of bureaucracy. And if you go too far back from that line, you're going slow and people are bummed. And if you go to the other side of the line, which is chaos.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Lack of rules, lack of process, lack of structure. And as you go deeper and deeper and deeper into chaos, you also get to a place where you're going slow and people are bummed. So that line between order and chaos is innovation at speed and at scale. And the job of every leader is to find that line. And it's not in two dimensions, it's like in 80 dimensions. Okay? And the best leaders are able to find that. And, you know, the probably the most approachable way to describe this is the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. Is the, is the approachable way to describe this.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  But you go to, back to like launch at Uber. You could think of it as like, okay, there's a bunch of 23 year olds launching cities. What happened was at the beginning, the first 20, 30 cities, I was deeply involved in whether that city was going to get launched. But what happened was, somebody'd go out, hey, go launch a city, make something out of nothing. And there'd be some kind of playbook there. But a lot of it was undefined. But nothing would actually launch until they got to a pricing call. Because pricing in the transportation space is the sum of all strategy. And so the pricing call then goes, well, what's the regulatory?

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  What's the car type that you're going to use because of that regulatory? What is the average wage in the city? Because that's on the driver's side and that's part of the cost, of course. You basically go through every aspect of the city that relates to transportation. How long does it take to get around? Like, where are people going? You ultimately get to a price, but it means you have to understand everything. And how you get to that price matters. So in the first 20 cities, I was on a pricing call. And some of those cities, man, it would be like eight pricing calls. It could be like eight hours, 10 hours of pricing calls before we launched London, as an example. But I never solved the same problem twice. Once we solved it, then it became part of the playbook. And eventually, we get to city 20.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  And that pricing call takes five minutes. I stopped going to them, didn't matter anymore. But the key that I was trying to get to is you have a 23 year old who then can go and launch a city. Even at the beginning, when I was still involved in that pricing call, they wouldn't see me till the pricing call, but they knew I was going to be at that pricing call. The one rule was, you can't launch until I say yes at that pricing call. So they would come ready to play at that pricing call. And they knew that if they didn't, I'd be like, no, and then they suck. And so they would put everything they into making that successful, which means all the other things that they're doing before are going to be organized towards doing it right.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Because they want to win. And so now I've got one rule, which is that pricing call. The fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. That if you didn't have that one rule, you now have 23 year olds running around doing crazy shit.

• 1:46:33David Senra?

  That's awesome. It made me think of another line that I love that you put on the Adams website, where you said, "That chaos was the law of nature and order was the dream of man." My interpretation of that line, now having spoken to you about this, it's like, I feel that you're imposing order on the chaos of the physical world. That's what your company's trying to do.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  I almost think of it as negentropic, which means, and it's kind of a, you could get into a very interesting sort of, very, I don't want to say, very energetic debate with certain people about negative entropy. But civilization is an attempt to locally slow down entropy. And maybe even go negative. It's building structure against the nature towards chaos. That's what civilization is. And so Adams is essentially the structure to defend

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  civilization and move it forward into progress.

• 1:47:42David Senra?

  There's another line, when you, when you speak, there's a lot of things that you say that remind me of Rockefeller. And when, in the early days of the oil refining industry, he used that word, that he thought it was a chaotic industry. It was, he's at the very beginning.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54David Senra?

  This is when the oil industry, the entire,

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56David Senra?

  It's solely concentrated in Pennsylvania, for God's sake. And he goes, "I'm going to impose order on this chaos." That's the line he used.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Progress is sort of the organization and structuring of the world towards human happiness and liberty and transcendence in some fashion. That's how I view what we're doing. It may be the very highest level.

• 1:48:24David Senra?

  I think that's an awesome place to close, Travis. It really means a lot to me, you taking the time.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you, man.

• 1:48:30David Senra?

  Thanks.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:48:32David Senra?

  I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.