Pod Insights Moonshots with Peter Diamandis Uber Founder on AI, Risk, and Building the Future w/ Travis Kalanick | EP #164 About this episode In this episode, recorded at the 2025 Abundance Summit, Travis and Peter discuss what it takes to disrupt a whole industry, tips from founding Uber, and more.
Recorded on March 12th, 2025
Views are my own thoughts; not Financial, Medical, or Legal Advice.
Travis Kalanick is an American entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Uber, the ride-hailing company that revolutionized urban transportation globally. After stepping down from Uber in 2017, he launched CloudKitchens, a startup focused on ghost kitchens and food delivery infrastructure.
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Transcript 8,973 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Will robots and AI replace all of our jobs?
0:04 Speaker 01 If somebody wants to go and make a thing that doesn't make people's lives better, they should count on failing.
0:11 Peter Diamandis? In your seven-year tenure, zero to 70 countries, 5 billion rider trips, 7.5 billion revenues, a $70 billion valuation.
0:19 Speaker 01 I didn't think of it exactly like this at the time, but basically I was digitizing network for the physical world.
0:25 Peter Diamandis? When you're trying to do something disruptive, there's a massive immune reaction that occurs.
0:29 Speaker 01 One of the best ways to deal with resistance to change is to build a massive amount of trust with those you're asking to change or that you're asking to bring along with that change. Because then you can turn your adversaries into advocates. Nobody's in control of the world. So you have to see into where the world is going and build for that world.
0:56 Speaker 03 Now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.
1:07 Peter Diamandis? This is a group of entrepreneurs running 10 million to 10 billion dollar companies. Their focus is on getting clarity on their massive transformative purpose and then using that for a moonshot to do something extraordinary, to go from success to significance in the world.
1:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25 Peter Diamandis? And when we've talked about, you know, understanding the process of reinventing an industry, transforming it, making it efficient. I think there are only a handful of individuals that make that possible or have done that successfully. I want to read the numbers on Uber, just as an example, because I want to dive into the founding of Uber and then obviously what you learned in building Cloud Kitchen as well. But in your seven-year tenure, zero to 70 countries. Pretty impressive. 5 billion rider trips. I mean, that's a debt.
2:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know where that number came from.
2:08 Peter Diamandis? It came from ChatGPT or some site like that.
2:12 Speaker 01 So when I left, when I left, so mid 2017, we're probably doing, I don't know.
2:22 Speaker 01 Hundred and thirty million a week.
2:26 Peter Diamandis? Okay.
2:26 Speaker 01 So that would be like seven weeks for every billion.
2:31 Speaker 01 So maybe it's, you know.
2:32 Peter Diamandis? Seven and a half billion in revenues, not bad. Thereabouts.
2:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, the gross, the gross at that time was probably about fifty billion. That would be GMV. And then how you calculate revenue from there could be tricky, but yeah.
2:48 Peter Diamandis? But a seventy billion dollar valuation, not bad.
2:53 Peter Diamandis? Can you take me back to that, first of all, that founding aha moment? And then we talk about purpose as a critical part of building a company that's a moonshot company.
3:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, the, the aha moment, I mean, it's kind of interesting. So you hear a lot of the founder, what do they call them? Founding, founding fables, founding.
3:17 Peter Diamandis? Yes.
3:18 Speaker 01 There's something along, there's some, or like.
3:19 Peter Diamandis? It get the public sort of like generates.
3:21 Speaker 01 This whole made up thing, we, I don't, we don't have one of those. So, um, but it sounds like one. So we were, we were in Paris. We were at, if you guys remember way back in the day in oh eight and oh nine, there was Louis Lemerz's web summit.
3:37 Peter Diamandis? Yes.
3:38 Speaker 01 I think it was called that.
3:39 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, it was one of them.
3:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I was there in Paris, I was sort of in between gigs. I had sold my recent company to Akamai and I didn't know what was next. So I was there with a guy named Garrett Camp and we were walking back before Uber in Paris. You, you'd have to walk back, you, you would, I want to go faster here, but basically you, you had to walk home in Paris back in the day. You go out to dinner, you're walking home. That's just what it was. And so we were on a three mile walk back to our hotel after dinner. And, um, he said, man, I wish we could just push a button and get a ride.
4:18 Peter Diamandis? That's a prophetic wish.
4:21 Speaker 01 And I'm like, pretty good. And he, he, he's like, yeah, let's just go back to San Francisco, make the app. We'll have, let's buy 20 S classes, get 40 drivers in a parking garage and we're off to the races. I'm like, look, there's enough cars out there already. We don't need to buy the cars. We don't need to, we don't need to get a parking garage and we probably don't even need to hire the drivers. And that was kind of the, the balance at the beginning was, he was the classy and I was the efficiency. If that makes sense.
4:55 Peter Diamandis? Purpose, we talked about this in advance. How critical is purpose in driven, in driving sort of a, a company at this scale?
5:05 Speaker 01 I mean, it's super important. I think there's, you know, you could probably have a whole conference on purpose. The, so you could take it many different ways. The first is, I think every individual, like you, sometimes I'll talk to executives where they're like, making the move to the next thing, ideally the one I'm trying to recruit them for. And my advice, even when I'm not recruiting them is you gotta be really self-aware of who you are. If you get really, really self-aware of who you are, then when the next thing comes, you will know. When your, when your professional soulmate presents itself, you will know.
5:48 Peter Diamandis? Fascinating.
5:48 Speaker 01 And so.
5:49 Peter Diamandis? And if you're honest with yourself.
5:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, you gotta be. So you got, it's like, I shouldn't be running Pinterest. Just wouldn't work out, but that's because I know myself. And so, um, and so if you understand your nature, you need to find a thing that you do that matches that nature.
6:09 Peter Diamandis? So when we talk about your massive transformative purpose, what wakes you up in the morning, what keeps you going? And that as the foundational. Found foundational, if you foundation for building a company that.
6:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:23 Peter Diamandis? And then how does that translate then to your team that you build?
6:27 Speaker 01 Well, there's a we before we even get it to is sort of like, there's a couple more layers to it. I like to say, you know, my sort of space is digitizing the physical world. But let's say that's the sport that I play, that I'm meant to play. Meaning if you play basketball and that's your thing and you're really great at it, don't go play tennis.
6:47 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
6:47 Speaker 01 So you got to know the sport through that self-awareness, you know, your sport. Digitizing the physical world, I'd also say innovation at speed and at scale. This is the stuff that gets me fired up. And then the final layer is like, who are the people that I'm serving? Whatever you're going to do, you're serving somebody. You should be, you should be fundamentally passionate about them and what, what, what the thing you're going to do is going to do for them.
7:14 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
7:15 Speaker 01 Um, so, so, yeah.
7:17 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, no, and I think that's when, you know, just in the nomenclature here, we talk about in your MTP, who are you serving? Right? Who do you want to be hero to?
7:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:26 Peter Diamandis? Everybody, I hope you're enjoying this episode. You know, earlier this year, I was joined on stage at the 2025 Abundance Summit by a rock star group of entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, focused on the vision and future for AGI, humanoid robotics, longevity, blockchain, basically the next trillion dollar opportunities. If you weren't at the Abundance Summit, it's not too late. You can watch the entire Abundance Summit online by going to exponentialmastery.com. That's exponentialmastery.com. So you get clarity on that.
8:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:01 Peter Diamandis? And then you start building an organization. And I guess the challenge is if you're bringing in people who don't share that, you're going to very quickly.
8:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:13 Peter Diamandis? Start going the wrong direction.
8:14 Speaker 01 This is when you get like a culture clash internal is if there are people who don't see things the same way you do, at least the values. And look, you know, most of us here have. Personal relationships of one kind or another, friends, loved ones, partners in life, the whole thing, and it's very similar. You know, opposites can attract, but the core values you need to believe in, you have to share.
8:40 Peter Diamandis? So how do you, how do you use that as a filter for who you're bringing in? Are you dogmatic about it, or are you allowing those who naturally gravitate that way to come in?
8:50 Speaker 01 I mean, those two are, I think, very similar. So sometimes somebody who doesn't, who shouldn't, who, sometimes a tennis player goes to a basketball court and you're like, yo, whoa, whoa, we don't, we don't do rackets here, you know, we have this much larger ball that we, we put it in this hoop that's different. So it doesn't have to be a judgment, it's just a, an assessment, a factual sort of thing. And so you have to understand what the values are, and if the values are the same, and again, it's those things that I just went through. And you, this gets codified into sort of what you might call cultural
9:30 Speaker 01 values, or things like this. And if your cultural values are really, really good, then it becomes really clear who's not supposed to be there. And you, you don't want to get to that place where it's not supposed to be there. You, when somebody comes in, you want to make it work. It doesn't always work, but you want to try to make it work, but it becomes really clear, ideally in a recruiting process. And if it, if a mistake happens on the way in, it becomes clear super early, whoa, this is, I play tennis, not basketball.
10:04 Peter Diamandis? Right. You, you said a few minutes ago that you are focused on sort of optimization, getting rid of inefficiencies, and is that your sort of, your superpower for finding opportunities?
10:20 Speaker 01 Well, it, it goes to that digitizing the physical world. So
10:26 Speaker 01 We know what the digital world is. It's called a computer.
10:28 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
10:29 Speaker 01 Right? CPU manipulates the bits. Storage stores the bits. Network moves bits from point A to point B. These are like the three core computing resources in a computer. But digitizing the physical world, if that's your sport, then you've decided that treating atoms like bits is what you do. So you go, okay, well, CPU manipulates the bits. What manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? That's real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? You're like, that's logistics or transport. So my last company, Uber, I didn't think of it exactly like this at the time, but basically
11:14 Speaker 01 I was digitizing network for the physical world. Digitized transport.
11:19 Peter Diamandis? Yes.
11:20 Speaker 01 One of the three core computing resources in an atoms-based computer. And you're like, well, that's well on its way. It's not all the way done. We need autonomous cars and all of this to really be out there, but we've got light at the end of the tunnel. But what about digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate? And so that's how I see what I do. So what I do is I make atoms-based computers. And if you are treating atoms like bits, it will naturally be about efficiency. It's very different than say, oh, I make a social media app. A social media app is going to win when it takes your time. Gets your attention, takes your time. And that's how they make money.
12:02 Speaker 01 Atoms-based computers typically are giving you your time back.
12:06 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
12:07 Speaker 01 And so that becomes sort of the foundation of what it is I do.
12:13 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, we talked this morning about the idea of looking into your business and finding everything that's not been digitized yet and dematerialized yet.
12:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:23 Peter Diamandis? As somebody is going to eventually do it if it's doable.
12:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:27 Peter Diamandis? What advice do you have to folks about doing that? It's, you know, another part of it is companies that are born as digital native companies, like you bought Uber.
12:38 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
12:38 Peter Diamandis? And those are trying to retrofit themselves.
12:42 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, these are very different things. So if you are digitizing a business that exists, let's assume that business is profitable, has some sort of competitive mode, etc. It's in some ways, the starting point is very straightforward. It's like you just take all the line items where there are humans and you try to find ways to get more leverage on those humans. So you start with like customer support, account management, any workflow where people are doing things, filling in data, workflow type stuff. That's the easy starting point. It's not as innovative per se.
13:25 Speaker 01 Like, it doesn't get to the core product, but it's sort of how you start surrounding the core if you have something that's not digitized. But the radical thinking is to really digitize it from the inside out is not always the domain of an existing profitable business with a competitive mode usually doesn't have the DNA to do it again. It sometimes does, but most of the time does not.
13:53 Peter Diamandis? I mean, we didn't see Verme, other pre-existing transportation companies copy what you did, even though you gave a very clear model.
14:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:05 Peter Diamandis? Timing on this. You know, Bill Gross was here this, well, here with us today, but he spoke yesterday morning. One of the talks he's given, looking at the most successful companies and the companies that failed, and was it their CEO, their capital and so forth.
14:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:22 Peter Diamandis? And his conclusion, it's timing.
14:25 Speaker 01 That's a...
14:26 Peter Diamandis? And being too early is identical to being wrong.
14:31 Speaker 01 It's worse.
14:32 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, because you waste a lot of money.
14:34 Speaker 01 And time.
14:35 Peter Diamandis? And time.
14:35 Speaker 01 I mean, it's the worst. So the company I did before Uber was like networking software. I sold it to Akamai, but I was like, I was probably wrong and too early, which is like the really the worst. So first four years, no salary.
14:54 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
14:56 Speaker 01 And I didn't have anything, right? So I like to say, you know, I actually at some point had socks that said, "Blood, Sweat and Ramen." You know, so it will grind you to dust if you're early. And if you're early and wrong, that's intense.
15:16 Peter Diamandis? By the way, please take your, you know, make your questions, right? We're going to be going to your questions in a little bit. I really want you have a chance to ask Travis for his wisdom.
15:28 Peter Diamandis? You hit a key point when, you know, the theme of this session is technological convergence, but the convergence on the smartphone and, you know, Google Maps and GPS and the 2008 recession. How important was that recession for this?
15:48 Speaker 01 For what?
15:48 Peter Diamandis? For getting the gig economy, people willing to drive.
15:53 Speaker 01 I don't think it had, I don't think it had much to do with it.
15:57 Peter Diamandis? Was the concept Uber tried before you?
16:00 Speaker 01 What's this?
16:01 Peter Diamandis? Did some, did people try?
16:03 Speaker 01 I mean, the main thing that existed before us was there were a couple taxi apps out there. But the problem was it was just a broken model. So a lot of times people, when they make, they see an opportunity, but they go after it the wrong way. Taking a slice of the taxi market, A, is sort of very small. And B, you are, it's sort of like, you know, when Zynga built on Facebook. It's like you're on somebody, you're on somebody else's platform and they can squeeze you. And you're basically getting yield optimization from like the 20% that doesn't matter. So if a taxi guy agrees to go pick somebody up, but then gets a call that he doesn't have to pay any commission on,
16:48 Speaker 01 or, you know, somebody waving their hand, hailing them, you're done. So the reliability, the quality of the product you're going to be able to offer sucks. Which you could say is similar to where online delivery of food is right now. Like the restaurants are like the, Uber Eats or DoorDash on a restaurant is like, it's like a taxi app. You're getting yield optimization on a thing that's built for something else.
17:14 Peter Diamandis? I remember my first Uber ride. In San Francisco, when you were just running the black car service.
17:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:21 Peter Diamandis? And someone said, oh, I was going for a party. He goes, let me, let me show you this new app.
17:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:25 Peter Diamandis? Right? And, and what's interesting was you didn't try and boil the ocean in the beginning. Uh, you began really with the black car in San Francisco. Can you talk about staging a moonshot, start, you know, staging a, um, something that would scale? Cause just that mindset of just let's get it working here right before we grow it.
17:49 Speaker 01 Hmm. Well, look, we were in San Francisco for a year before we went to our second city. Our second city was New York.
17:57 Speaker 01 And we didn't even do the low cost products, what we call Uber X. Uh, we didn't do that till.
18:05 Speaker 01 Was that, must have been early 2013, maybe mid, mid 2012 was sort of halfway and then early 2013 was the all, all the way.
18:18 Speaker 01 So yeah, getting it right matters. In my current company, there are a couple of situations where, where we went too big, too quick. Because you can learn the wrong lessons from the last thing. I'm like, oh, this.
18:34 Peter Diamandis? Scale is easy.
18:35 Speaker 01 Works. So I did this thing. It was like, uh, the acronym was PMD. Was, I didn't, basically I didn't want to happen in my current company, what happened at Uber, which was I'm, we invented this thing and then we had copycats everywhere that we, in different countries and continents that we had to then go fight.
18:56 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
18:56 Speaker 01 Because they copied our thing before we got there.
19:00 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
19:00 Speaker 01 Even though we went to so many countries so quickly, we got there after the clones got there. Right? So we didn't want that, that to happen again. So I, I came up with this acronym. It was called PMD. Parallel multi continental deployment.
19:14 Peter Diamandis? It sounds like a nuclear war.
19:16 Speaker 01 And, uh, we did it. Uh, but we went to some places we shouldn't have gone. Like, just so happens, you can't make money on kitchens in India, which is not possible. Uh, we also found places that were amazing. So we went to Kuwait. We went to like a lot of places you, you wouldn't go. They ended up being, we went to Saudi. We went to lots of places that we wouldn't have otherwise gone without that mentality, but.
19:46 Speaker 01 Yeah. Don't go to Indonesia, don't go to India, don't go to Colombia. Those are the main ones.
19:52 Peter Diamandis? I remember when France made Uber illegal.
19:55 Speaker 01 Yes.
19:55 Peter Diamandis? That's my, you know, don't start a tech company in a country that made Uber illegal. That was my motto.
20:05 Peter Diamandis? How important is getting the system, the operation working really buttoned down before you start moving to additional new territories?
20:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, there's a balance. I mean, there's a couple of issues that I have right now that are like, you know, they talk about the moonshot inside the moonshot. You know, that there's things like that that make the overall thing win. We've got a couple right now that are very much in that category. That balance between when to, when to cook it and when to, when to scale it is a tricky one. There's a, there's a judgment and instinct, but you basically, you don't want the overall effort of winning to get, this is kind of maybe tautological and kind of obvious, so I'm not sure it's going to be helpful, but you don't want the overall effort of winning to be dragged down because you went too big.
20:58 Speaker 01 Okay, obviously. So, so you're like, well, what does that mean? So, right now I have this one project where it's still operationally intensive because we haven't gotten the tech right yet. And it's, but it's growing. It's perfect. We're like two six-month periods in a row where we grew 6X year over, or we grew 6X in that six-month period.
21:23 Peter Diamandis? Wow.
21:24 Speaker 01 Now, you're low base, okay, but it means it's 36 times bigger than it was a year ago.
21:28 Peter Diamandis? Yep.
21:29 Speaker 01 It's not going to be small for long. When do we push and start expanding?
21:36 Speaker 01 And, uh, but I know we'll drown if I don't get those core workflows tight. We're going to drown in ops.
21:46 Peter Diamandis? Yep.
21:47 Speaker 01 Uh, so there's just, we're almost there. We're right about to click in and sort of expand.
21:51 Peter Diamandis? Scaling something that's broken is not fun.
21:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I like to say, let's not scale failure, is what I say at the office.
21:58 Peter Diamandis? Uh, when you're trying to do something disruptive, I mean, there's a massive immune reaction that occurs. Uh, sometime the immune reaction is when in your own organization, if people, if people have been doing something else all along. And then sometimes, obviously, it compares. How do you deal with resistance that you had?
22:18 Speaker 01 Just general resistance, yeah. I mean, well, I like to say that that one of the most important things that innovators do is they are really good at finding valuable unknown truths. Things that are true and very valuable that nobody else knows. So if you create a machine that's finding valuable unknown truths, then you start to know a lot of things other people don't know. And if you know a lot of things other people don't know, you can start doing things that other people can't do.
22:56 Speaker 01 So that's called change making.
23:00 Speaker 01 You start to be able to do stuff other people aren't doing, which means you're doing some stuff nobody's seen. So you start doing a lot of it because you're really good at that core thing, which is finding valuable unknown truths. You start doing a lot of it. You're basically in the change making business. And there is this thing in nature that is everywhere around us. It's called resistance to change. It's in nature. It's nature. It's natural because nature abhors a monopoly and nature abhors change that can cause bad, cause harm. So it's a natural mechanism to slow down progress to make sure it's the right kind of progress.
23:42 Speaker 01 And so one of the best ways to deal with resistance to change is to build a massive amount of trust with those you're asking to change or that you're asking to bring along with that change. And so then you really have to have a philosophy around how to build trust while change making because then you can turn your adversaries into advocates and you actually will end up moving much faster. So a lot of times, people learn, again, learning the wrong lessons. They're like, oh, man, the Uber thing, just go crack some skulls and kick some ass, you know? But actually, the lesson to learn is different,
24:24 Speaker 01 which is if you're building, if you build trust as you make change, you can actually go even further.
24:34 Peter Diamandis? When I knew you at Uber, we were talking about-
24:38 Speaker 01 That doesn't mean don't crack skulls.
24:40 Peter Diamandis? I get it.
24:40 Speaker 01 Still gotta do that, too.
24:41 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
24:42 Speaker 01 Just make sure.
24:44 Peter Diamandis? It was about 13 years ago, I had my two kids, my two boys, and I remember at that moment in time, I made a decision to double down on my health. Without question, I wanted to see their kids, their grandkids, and really, you know, during this extraordinary time where the space frontier and AI and crypto is all exploding, it was like the most exciting time ever to be alive. And I made a decision to double down on my health. And I've done that in three key areas. The first is going every year for a Fountain upload. You know, Fountain is one of the most advanced diagnostics and therapeutics companies. I go there, upload myself, digitize myself,
25:25 Peter Diamandis? about 200 gigabytes of data that the AI system is able to look at to catch disease at inception. You know, look for any cardiovascular, any cancer, neurodegenerative disease, any metabolic disease. These things are all going on all the time, and you can prevent them if you can find them at inception. So, super important. So Fountain is one of my keys. I make that available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, because, you know, health is a new wealth. But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and about another 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, viri. And we, you know, don't understand how that impacts us.
26:08 Peter Diamandis? And so I use a company and a product called Viome. And Viome has a technology called Meta Transcriptomics. It was actually developed in New Mexico, the same place where the nuclear bomb was developed, as a biodefense weapon. And their technology is able to help you understand- What's going on in your body to understand which bacteria are producing which proteins? And as a consequence of that, what foods are your superfoods that are best for you to eat? Or what food should you avoid? Right? What's going on in your oral microbiome? So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements.
26:53 Peter Diamandis? And Viome really helps me understand from a biological and data standpoint, what's best for me? And then finally, you know, feeling good, being intelligent, moving well is critical. But looking good, when you look yourself in the mirror, saying, you know, I feel great about life is so important. Right? And so a product I use every day, twice a day, is called OneSkin. Developed by four incredible PhD women that found this 10 amino acid peptide. It's able to zap senile cells in your skin and really help you stay youthful in your look and appearance. So for me, these are three technologies I love and I use all the time.
27:36 Peter Diamandis? I'll have my team link to those in the show notes down below. Please check them out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. Now back to the episode. We were in the midst of working on a Uber X Prize for flying cars.
27:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:53 Peter Diamandis? And that was part of your initiative as well as the autonomous car program at Uber.
27:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:00 Peter Diamandis? Uh, do you wish, do you think it was the right thing for those not to continue? Uh, or do you think they would have had gotten, uh, gotten the technology going faster? What are your thoughts? I know it's, I know it's retroactive.
28:14 Speaker 01 No, it's okay. It's okay. Uh, look, they, they, they, they killed the autonomous car project we had going on.
28:22 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
28:23 Speaker 01 Uh, at the time, we're really only behind Waymo, but probably catching up. And we're going to pass them in short order. Uh, so my guess is there's probably some, you can look back 2020. And say, maybe, you know, I wasn't running the company when that happened. But, you know, you could say, wish we had an autonomous ride sharing product right now. That would be great. Uh, yeah, I think the same thing here.
28:53 Speaker 01 I think it's, you know, there's still some lack of clarity on where flying cars or let's say at VTOL like vertical takeoff and landing, like when, how does it exactly play out? But it's pretty clear if you can get from here to there at 150 miles an hour, you know, and it's kind of like a very fast commute, I think it changes the game in a lot of ways. And I think there are companies that are doing some interesting stuff. I think Joby's probably one of the more interesting ones.
29:20 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, Joby, Archer, a number of them. I mean, it's packet switch humans where you're moving people through.
29:24 Speaker 01 Sure. Well, this is what you just did, right? That's network for the physical world.
29:29 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
29:29 Speaker 01 You just went into atoms-based computer, right?
29:32 Peter Diamandis? Yeah. One last question before we go to your questions here. So get them ready. Iterating under pressure. I mean, one of the things that you fabulously did was iterate the company, the models, the products, the services and so forth. You talk about how important iteration is.
29:47 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, I mean, it's, I guess, that's like, how important is breathing? You know, it's like, um, so then it's really what, how do you breathe really well? What's your, what's your mantra?
30:06 Peter Diamandis? Okay, so how do you iterate?
30:08 Speaker 01 But yeah, so, so then it's like, um...
30:10 Peter Diamandis? How hard did you push your teams to iterate? Or were you the one, you know, sort of divining the iteration?
30:17 Speaker 01 No, I mean, I, yeah, the, my companies, my companies generally run in an empowered way with checkpoints. We would, we like to say let builders build, but you need alignment and accountability in order to empower. So iteration, look, I, yeah, there's a lot to be said there. I'm trying to think of some nice pithy things to say that I figured it out. But, but it's, you've got, you know, it's, our three cultural values at my current company are truth, trust and passion. So you really, again, you have to find those valuable unknown truths.
31:00 Speaker 01 You have to have a passion to get it over the line fast and first. And you have to build trust with those that you're bringing it to. But I think one of the things about iteration is really lowering risk. Here's an interesting way to go with this. Is that a lot of people say, I want to be a risk-taking company. Or I want to go to, I want to go work for a risk-taking initiative or whatever. And I'm like, no, I want to be a not risk-taking company. Or a risk mitigating company. I like to say as innovation, I have this like fun formula. Innovation equals big P divided by little r.
31:45 Speaker 01 Big P is progress and little r is risk. Risk comes in the form of time, money and reputation. So I need to squeeze down risk. If I get it to zero, then innovation goes to infinity. And hold on to that progress while getting risk down. And iteration is a big part of that. It's about, in some ways, finding those valuable unknown truths while minimizing the risk of doing so. In the form of dollars, time and reputation.
32:20 Peter Diamandis? As you go to the mic, so I'm going to ask one more question. And of course, we've got questions coming up on Slido and on Zoom here. You have really been passionate about a customer-centric focus. Speak to that for a moment.
32:37 Speaker 01 Well, look, I think, you know, look, who's the best of the best of the best at this is probably Amazon under Bezos. I mean, that's just next level. Just done so beautifully. It's so clarifying to.
32:52 Speaker 01 To make a person's happiness or a company's happiness your target. It's visceral. And so if you start there and work your way through it, it gets, you just get clarity. Now, a lot of people go, oh, I'm going to be customer obsessed, I'm going to lower the price. Well, if you don't exist in business next year because you went out of business, you aren't customer obsessed. So customer obsessed means you have to have a lot of heart for the customer. You have to have a lot of love for them. But you also have to have a lot of ROI. And if you get a lot of ROI with that heart, then you can put in even more heart.
33:35 Speaker 01 And I think that's one of the things that it's sort of like that, the sort of, the feelings and the numbers coming together, if that makes sense. And I think sometimes people forget that it's about both.
33:48 Speaker 04 Simone? This is not about technology. It was about your mindset when you had so much trouble pushing the taxi syndicates. And every day, like, it seems like you have another issue. How did you keep resilient in your mind and your team? And what's the mindset you can recommend to us? That we always are seeing challenges every day and changes like you did.
34:15 Speaker 01 Well, it's interesting because every once in a while I'll get an entrepreneur that comes to me and will say, when do I give up? Like, when do I move on? And I've sort of formulated a three-step program. I'd love to know the answer. Okay. I've held on too long a few times. I've never given up early, but I've held on too long. I have too. This applies to, well, I don't know if it applies to all areas of life, but it might. I haven't thought about it. Okay, so step one, do you still believe? Like, if you don't believe... Move on.
34:47 Peter Diamandis? Yeah.
34:47 Speaker 01 Obvious, okay. Um, step two. Are you the right person to do it?
34:54 Peter Diamandis? Hmm.
34:55 Speaker 01 So this goes back to self-awareness. And just knowing like, okay, what sport are we playing? Am I a support player or I'm the main player? Like, where do I land? Where am I in this? And super, hyper-transparent honesty with yourself about it. Okay? And then, okay, so let's say we check that box two. Step three. Am I about to do significant mental or physical damage to myself by continuing?
35:25 Peter Diamandis? I remember one of my companies, it was a-
35:27 Speaker 01 And that's the hardcore entrepreneur way. That's like, that's when you're really right on the edge.
35:31 Peter Diamandis? I was running a launch company in the late eighties, way before SpaceX. And in the last days of the company, I was making journal entries saying, "The patient's on life support, four days left to live." You know, it's like just this, you know, emotional-
35:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:46 Peter Diamandis? Richard?
35:47 Speaker 01 If you start having apocalyptic dreams or nightmares, you're probably getting pretty close.
35:55 Peter Diamandis? (laughing)
35:57 Speaker 01 In my experience.
36:00 Peter Diamandis? Uh, Richard, please.
36:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, hi, everybody. I'm Richard Medcalf. The question is on my mind is the inner journey. So you've led this industry disruption at scale. Uh, and as it got bigger, were there moments where there was some kind of inner story, fear? Or did you stop playing the big enough game? Or I'm just kind of wondering what those kind of pivotal inner moments as a leader was or were?
36:26 Speaker 01 Uh, I'm not sure I understand the question.
36:29 Speaker 05 So you were leading change where there was no playbook.
36:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:35 Speaker 05 Right? Where you were kind of out there at the forefront, kind of writing the rules as you go. A lot of pressure from various states. So I'm just kind of wondering like, what that did for your own personal leadership? Were there moments where you lost your nerve or-
36:49 Speaker 01 Never.
36:50 Speaker 05 Doubt in yourself?
36:51 Speaker 01 Never happened. Never lost my nerve. Just kidding. Okay.
36:55 Speaker 05 Yes, it's just the inner game, kind of what's the unheard story of what goes on-
36:59 Speaker 01 Look, um-
37:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's something to be said. When I finished that company before Uber,
37:08 Speaker 01 that one where I did four years, no salary, like all this stuff, ran out of money a couple of times, had apocalyptic nightmares, you know, this kind of thing. I then would do, I did a couple of talks, you know, like entrepreneur talks, things like this. And one of my sort of aphorisms was, money will not buy you happiness, but it will pay for therapy.
37:30 Speaker 01 So, look, the clearer you are, the more centered you are, the more you can do.
37:39 Speaker 01 Go to one of our teens, Omar.
37:42 Speaker 06 Thanks, Peter. Hi, Travis. How do you see cloud kitchens evolving in the near future? What role will AI and automation play in its future growth? And do you foresee cloud kitchens merging with any other AI company to become even more cutting edge?
37:59 Speaker 01 Look, the high level of that question, okay, so look, I'll do the food part and then the AI part. The idea about cloud kitchens is, can you get a meal that is prepared and delivered to you, so high quality, and so cost efficient and so convenient, that it is approaching the cost of you going to the grocery store? Yeah. And if you do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. And you turn this thing that we all do for ourselves into a thing that a service does for you. That doesn't
38:39 Speaker 01 mean we don't cook. Like, I like horses, but I don't ride a horse to work. And really, this kind of infrastructure will be so much more healthy. I like to say you don't have to be wealthy to be healthy, and that's one of those things we talk about.
38:54 Speaker 01 You, you, you basically get, again, that you, what you get in return for this is you basically get your time back to do all the other things in life you love. You cook when you want, that's great. But you don't have to. And similar to what happened in the Uber situation is that, of course, this used to drive, everybody used to drive themselves and more and more every year, somebody else is doing it for us, or there's a service that does it for us, and ultimately, an automated one. As it relates to AI on this question, I think everybody is very familiar with ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok, this kind of thing.
39:35 Speaker 01 I call that Bits AI. That's AI for bits. There's a whole other thing that we're probably going to start seeing more of, which is what I call Adams AI, AI around the physical world. You could say the first iteration of that is what you see with the Waymos rolling around, right? And autonomous cars generally, but what about humanoids? What about, it's basically, how do, how does, and how does a machine move through the physical world and act in the physical world? There is very, there's a whole other
40:12 Speaker 01 set of models that are going to need to be invented to make that real. Sometimes borrowing from the other side, but it's a, it's a different ballgame.
40:25 Peter Diamandis? Thank you. Gustavo on Zoom. What's your question, Gustavo?
40:29 Speaker 03 Hi, hi Travis. I'm from Brazil. I am a serial entrepreneur. I have a $1 billion companies in my track record I co-founded. In my experience, luck plays a bigger role than my vision and ability. In your view, does luck significantly contribute to the success of a business? Could you venture a percentage?
40:49 Peter Diamandis? How important is luck, Travis?
40:53 Speaker 01 Um, okay, so I like to play backgammon. Does anybody here like to play backgammon? Anybody? All right, there we go. In any given game, luck plays a real role.
41:04 Peter Diamandis? Sure.
41:05 Speaker 01 But if you play 100 games, it doesn't.
41:09 Speaker 01 That's a really good analogy. So the way to think about it is, is the success that you have, is it due to 10,000 decisions, or is it due to two? If it's due to just a couple, then you're lucky. If it's due to 10,000, you're not.
41:29 Speaker 01 Love that. Kartik?
41:31 Speaker 07 Thanks, Peter. Travis, thrilled to have you here. So my question, actually, and I'm gonna reference George's question up there, if you don't mind, is about what framework do you have and that you're deploying to determine to assess timing, but also valuable unknown truths?
41:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, timing, you know, you get burned. What, you know, a lot of, the other question I get a lot of is, how do you, is, what'd you learn? What did you learn at the last thing? Or what did you learn? And I'm like, well, I learned all the things I shouldn't do.
42:08 Speaker 01 And that usually, I mean, a bit, all of that is about really seeing the future, right? So a valuable unknown truth is, means you see something nobody else does. It means you believe something that is against what everybody else believes. It means you have to see the future. You have to see the difference between perception and reality, where everybody thinks reality is here, that's their perception. They think reality is here, but it's actually over here. The distance between the two is the innovator's playground. So you have to get good at seeing what the future really is and being very skeptical of everything coming in and analyzing in a very truthful way, and getting good at it.
42:53 Speaker 01 What is actual reality, not what do people think reality is? And look for those moments when what people think is very, very different than what is real. That's where all the good stuff is. Hmm. Beautiful.
43:09 Speaker 01 Yeah. Keep it up, Scott.
43:12 Speaker 01 John?
43:15 Speaker 01 Yes?
43:15 Speaker 08 Me? Hi. Travis, thanks for being here. I have a really important question.
43:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:20 Speaker 08 How has your leadership changed since everything that happened at Uber?
43:26 Speaker 01 Yeah. Hmm, great question. So before Uber, the largest company that I had run was a 12-person company. So kinda everything.
43:36 Speaker 01 Okay, so everything I'm saying right now is from a journey
43:43 Speaker 01 where you learn every day and you sort of deeply commit to getting better every day.
43:50 Speaker 01 So like, everything from 12 people, running scrappy, don't know what the hell you're doing, you know, not paying yourself for four years. 15,000, how big was Uber at that point? It was like 15,000, 20,000 people, yeah? And then, you know, several million drivers, it was a lot, you know, it was... So what I learned is just like, like, everything I'm saying, you know? And you iterate on all those things as you go. We'll go to Elchen. Elchen?
44:15 Speaker 09 Thank you, Peter. What's your advice on industry that's super segmented?
44:21 Speaker 01 I missed you. What's my advice on one?
44:23 Speaker 09 What's your advice on segmented industries such as construction materials?
44:30 Speaker 09 Digitize that industry, and I've been wrong for the last five years.
44:37 Speaker 01 Look, I've played around, so we buy property and do construction. That's part of what we do. And I've sort of dabbled in modular construction. The promise of it is so beautiful.
44:54 Speaker 01 Of course, the issue is called local contractors and subcontractors. And like, we did this thing where we made this beautiful, we would manufacture these facilities, these kitchen facilities, off-site.
45:09 Speaker 01 Just really epically, just wonderful, but then it turns out like, okay, you have to put them together like Legos on site. But now I have to train a set of contractors to build it. In the first go, we had one that could do it. He wakes up one morning, he's like, you know,
45:29 Speaker 01 I don't feel like doing it today. And you're like, please, pretty please, we signed a contract, you're supposed to do it. And then he's like, you know, I think if you paid me half a million dollars more, I would do it. So you get into this world where it's against the contract you signed, but like, they got you. So then you're like, okay, now I have to train all these contractors to do this thing, so that I can manufacture somewhere else and then put the pieces together. You know, my point is, is like, there's a lot of change that needs to happen. It may be that we only get there when we get into true robotic construction on site, or I don't know. I haven't solved this one yet.
46:11 Peter Diamandis? Vertically integrate everything again.
46:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know. I don't have the answer for this one, but I have so much hope.
46:17 Speaker 10 Thank you.
46:19 Peter Diamandis? Jacob, one of our teens again.
46:21 Speaker 10 Hello, Travis. So do you believe that the mass disruption of currently existing industries happens based off of factors within or out of your control when you're creating a business based on your experiences at Uber?
46:36 Speaker 01 Look, nobody's in control of the world. So you have to see into where the world is going and build for that world. And sometimes the world changes in ways that you didn't expect, and you have to adapt to that. So.
47:03 Speaker 01 We're only in control of what we do each day, but most definitely, most of what's going on, we're not in control of. And I think that's a super important thing for people to realize. Because I think a lot of people get really attached to this idea of controlling stuff, and they get into weird spots when you do that. Now, there's the other side of it. You get so used to not being in control. Like, as an entrepreneur, you wake up and you're like, "What crazy effed up thing is happening today?" And you just go, "Yeah, I guess that's what's happening today. Let's go." But then you almost lose your spine. You almost become invertebrate because you're like, just like this blob that's just cool with whatever's happening. So you have to sort of keep the fight to try to make the world the way you want it,
47:46 Speaker 01 but you can't get attached to trying to control it. It's like this balance.
47:52 Peter Diamandis? Amazing. Varun, on Zoom, please.
47:58 Speaker 11 Thank you, Peter. Hi, Travis. Dialing in from Dubai. My question is, the global consulting industry is highly fragmented, and as we live longer, there's going to be a lot more people who work in the industry who will become consultants. It's really fragmented, and it's a large industry. Is it a good idea to consolidate this industry using the Uber model?
48:25 Speaker 01 Push a button, get a consultant. I was just kidding. Okay. I feel like, okay. No, I think that the consulting world is so much about what can be done with AI.
48:41 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, I think consulting is about to get radically transformed with AI right now.
48:46 Speaker 01 Like, you're like, okay, if you're sort of a traditional consultant and you're just, you're doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble.
48:56 Speaker 01 If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff, you know, and you're basically going to those, like I previously mentioned, profitable companies with competitive moats and like making their moat bigger and making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view.
49:19 Peter Diamandis? I think consulting is a scarcity mindset business. You build a wall around these consultants and you meter them out a little bit at a time and that will get completely disintermediated by AI.
49:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:32 Peter Diamandis? Ted?
49:33 Speaker 12 You can push a button now and get a consultant. It's called deep research. We've been talking about it for the last two days.
49:37 Speaker 01 Let's go.
49:38 Speaker 12 Travis, what advice do you have, please, for investors and board members who want to make entrepreneurs like you successful or working with people like you?
49:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:49 Speaker 12 What are the tailwinds? What are the headwinds that they create?
49:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna say some provocative things.
49:56 Speaker 12 I was hoping you would.
49:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, all right, let's go. I think there are a lot of investors who make the pitch a founder-friendly. They make the pitch as if their job is to, that serve the founder, but that's not their job. Their job is called capital allocation. And once you make that leap, that you understand that your job is capital allocation and not happiness of a founder, then I think a lot of things actually get into a much better spot. And generally, from a founder's perspective, the way a founder should look at an investor is not which investor's
50:41 Speaker 01 gonna be founder-friendly or help me, you know, this kind of thing, because I've just never seen that work. It's, it's which investor does the least amount of harm?
50:55 Speaker 01 So the way I look at it is, okay, you're playing a chess match. You're like a grandmaster chess player, right? And you're playing another grandmaster chess player. And you're playing this game like 60 hours a week, this match, 60 hours a week is what you're doing. And you're like, pretty exhausted from doing that, but like, you're passionate about it. And then there's this chess enthusiast that doesn't actually play chess, is trying to tell you what moves to do on the chessboard and you're like...
51:26 Speaker 01 Homie, let me tell you the 18 reasons why that's not a thing. And it's not their fault. They're not playing chess. It's okay. But, but the do no harm's a real thing. Look, governance matters. But a lot of times I think investors get in the mode of thinking they're the idea guy. It's, if the investor is the idea guy, you have the wrong company.
51:52 Peter Diamandis? Hmm. And getting a board that supports you as a, as a moonshot entrepreneur that gives you the freedom to do riskier things.
52:02 Speaker 01 It's gotta be smart risks.
52:03 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, of course, but still.
52:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, like you still, as a board member, should be like, are you smoking something? You know, the response should be very good, but you should be asking, are you smoking something? Cause things can get weird. Yeah.
52:19 Peter Diamandis? Thanks.
52:21 Speaker 00 Thank you. This is such a wonderful conversation. So we were having dinner last night. It was a group of founders and we started to brainstorm around what's happening over the next five years and 10 years. Will robots and AI replace all of our jobs? How do we prepare for that future? I'd love to get your thoughts because it's coming up fast.
52:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, this is a hard one to answer because the history of technology basically says we're fine. But a lot of times history says you're fine and then things change, you know? So it's like, I don't know. The one thing we
52:58 Peter Diamandis? We're gonna find out.
52:58 Speaker 01 The one thing we got going for us, this is a weird one, the one thing we got going for us is that robots don't have bank accounts.
53:05 Peter Diamandis? Yet. We had a, we had a
53:08 Speaker 01 Easy.
53:08 Peter Diamandis? Two hour session on crypto last night.
53:10 Speaker 01 Easy, easy. Okay, hold on. Let me just roll with this for a second, okay? Let's just assume robots don't have bank accounts, all right?
53:19 Speaker 01 Why does that matter? Because if you're making something cheaper, it's cheaper for a human.
53:27 Speaker 01 It means that they have more money than to spend on other things. And when they spend it on something that's powered by AI, it doesn't go to a robot's bank account. And when some founder makes a shit ton of money doing whatever, and they're gonna spend that money, it doesn't go into a robot's bank account. So, so I'm in a weird way, I know this is a little bit, you know, sort of nichey with the way I'm answering this. I'm more optimistic than pessimistic. I'd say the other thing that I'd put out there that I think it might be more generally applicable or make more sense, to be honest, is um, I've done companies that have failed.
54:12 Speaker 01 And the main thing when the company failed that I experienced or that I saw was that nobody wanted the thing that I made.
54:23 Speaker 01 So if somebody wants to go and make a thing that doesn't make people's lives better, they should count on failing. And if you want it to succeed, you better be making somebody's life better and probably a lot of people's lives better if you want it to succeed. And so that's where things ultimately go, is that the machines are serving, are by its nature, its DNA are serving us.
54:54 Speaker 01 Just throwing it out there.
54:55 Peter Diamandis? Time for one last question, Rachael.
54:57 Speaker 13 Thank you. And Travis, Uber changed my grandparents' life, so thank you.
55:01 Speaker 01 Oh, that's awesome. Thank you.
55:03 Speaker 13 My name is Rachael Eldon and I am an Ascend Fellow and also a new founder. I am building an AI-driven company to revolutionize how we form, sustain, and grow our most intimate relationships. And the question I have for you is that Uber wasn't just a company. It was, it introduced entirely new market. It was disruptive innovation. So how did you balance needing to educate people on the market with building your product, refining your business model, and scaling?
55:36 Speaker 01 Well, you know, it's like, um, it's, you know, you hear about somebody's first experience
55:44 Speaker 01 with Uber and the fortunate part is, is the product itself is the education. They're like sitting at a dinner table and you're like, "Check this out." You know, you're at a restaurant, you're like, Viral. It was naturally social. A large percentage of the app installs were at restaurants. Right? A large percentage of the app installs were due to one person introducing the thing with a link, like, "I get a free ride when I give you a free ride." We call that give-get. It was like a third of all of our new users up till like 2015 or 16. So, the product itself was the education.
56:28 Speaker 01 You know, look, I think it's pretty weird that one citizen taking another citizen across town became somehow really controversial. It's kind of weird that that was controversial. But it was, so we had to sort of deal with the controversies we went. Maybe it gets back into that change-making thing and trust or lack thereof. Yeah.
56:54 Peter Diamandis? All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for Travis Malanick. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to be releasing all of the talks, all the keynotes from the Abundance Summit exclusively on exponentialmastery.com. You can get on-demand access there. Go to exponentialmastery.com.
Previous Apple’s AI Crisis & ChatGPT’s World Domination w/ Dave Blundin & Salim Ismail | EP #162 Next Why This Billionaire Is Bringing Back the Dire Wolf, Woolly Mammoth & More w/ Ben Lamm & Salim Ismail | EP #165 Page updated October 12, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
