Pod Insights The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20VC: Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi on Why Uber Eats is Not Losing the Fight to Doordash | Uber's M&A Strategy; A Scorecard Analysis from Careem to Postmates & Skip | Why Uber's Investment in Scooters was a Mistake | Secret to Marriage, Parenting & High Per About this episode Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, where he has managed the company’s business in more than 70 countries around the world since 2017. Dara was previously CEO of Expedia, which he grew into one of the world’s largest online travel companies. Dara was promoted to Expedia CEO after serving as the Chief Financial Officer of IAC Travel. Before joining IAC, Dara served as Vice President of Allen & Company and spent a number of years as an analyst. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Expedia and Catalyst.org and was previously on the board of the New York Times Company. In Today's Episode with Dara Khosrowshahi We Discuss: 1. From the Iranian Revolution to One of the Most Powerful CEOs: What is Dara running from? What is he running towards? How did seeing his family lose everything impact his mindset to life and business? What are 1-2 of Dara's biggest lessons from working with the legendary Barry Diller? How did Daniel Ek @ Spotify convince Dara to take the CEO role at Uber? 2. Dara Khosrowshahi: The Foundations of Great Leadership: What does high performance in business mean to Dara? Does Dara agree, "the best CEOs are the best resource allocators"? Does Dara believe he is a better peacetime or wartime CEO? Which is he at Uber? What decision-making framework does Dara use to make really hard decisions? How does Dara does what to focus on and what to prioritise? 3. Investments and Acquisitions: The Scorecard: Why did Dara decide to make the Kareem acquisition? Has it been successful? What was the thinking behind the Postmates acquisition? What does Dara believe is the single best acquisitions he has made at Uber? What has been the worst acquisition he has made at Uber? Why does Dara believe that Uber entering scooters was a mistake? 4. The Future: Food Delivery, Parenting, Marriage: What does Dara say to those who suggest Uber Eats has lost the war to Doordash? What does Dara believe is the secret to a happy marriage? How does Dara define great parenting? What does Dara do to be the best father he can be? What would Dara like to improve or change about himself? Why?
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Uber definitely has been wartime, like it's wartime every day. I think the first thing, we haven't lost a lead. Uber Eats is actually as big as DoorDash on a global basis. And so when we think about Uber, we think globally. We are the global leader along with DoorDash. I think we're winning and we've learned our lessons locally in the US and we're going to operate accordingly.
0:19 Harry Stebbings? This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And what a show we have in store for you today. I've wanted to do this one for a long time. And so I'm so excited to welcome Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, where he's managed the business in more than 70 countries around the world since 2017. Dara was previously CEO of Expedia, which he grew into one of the world's largest online travel companies. Before Expedia, Dara was the CFO of IAC Travel. If all of this wasn't enough, Dara also sits on the Board of Directors of Expedia and Catalyst.org and was previously on the board of The New York Times. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Daniel Ek, Ali and Harry Portovi, Avid at Ontario and many more for some amazing questions, suggestions today.
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3:31 Speaker 02 You have now arrived at your destination.
3:34 Harry Stebbings? Dara, I am so excited for this. I've heard so many good things. As I said, Ali, Handy, there was Daniel Eck, Aved, I know your whole family history now, but thank you so much for joining me, Dara.
3:45 Speaker 00 Happy to do it. With that introduction, I hope I don't disappoint.
3:48 Harry Stebbings? I think it'll be fantastic, but I want to start with something from Ali actually, because Ali told me about your family in Iran, losing everything way back. And I all believe that it works of our past, and so I'm really diving in at the deep end. But what would you say you're running from when you think about that and think about what you're running from?
4:04 Speaker 00 I do think that the events of Iran and our family losing everything, and we had a huge family, big family business, et cetera. I don't know if it's something that we're running from, but I think the whole family to some extent is running to rebuild.
4:20 Speaker 00 Essentially what we lost in Iran. You've got a next generation that is incredibly passionate and ambitious. If you look at my cousin's Adi and Hadi, et cetera. It's just an example, which is, I think we just have this immigrant chip on our shoulder. We very much look up to our parents who built this incredible business in Iran. And we all want to do our parts to rebuild again. And I think that's definitely shaped the ambition that my family has. I will tell you that while we lost all of our money in the business, so to speak, the thing that we never lost was family. And so for me personally, having the family around us, having that sense of love and belonging and protection is something that I treasure.
5:01 Speaker 00 Building that collective and having that shared success, for example, in business, for me is something that really draws me. Celebrating your success as an individual is not nearly as fun as celebrating as a family or a team. So for me, I think family shaped how I look at success. And for me, success is joint success, is shared success.
5:22 Harry Stebbings? My family actually lost everything too when I was young. But for me, when I lost everything, I equated rebuilding with worthiness. When I rebuilt it back, I would be worthy again. Trouble is, Dara, I've kind of rebuilt a little bit of it back now. And I don't really feel that worthiness. How do you think about worthiness in that rebuilding and whether that's part of it?
5:42 Speaker 00 I think for us, there's always been this sense of pursuit of excellence. So I don't think with my family, it's about rebuilding or worthiness or money, one way or the other. But it's about pursuit of profession. My dad told me, hey, you can be two things. You can either be a doctor or an engineer, pick one. So there's always this drive that my parents instilled in us. But for us, being worthy is not about an end state. It's about going all in, putting in the effort, being diligent, working hard. And that's what drives me. If I feel like I put in the hard work, sometimes it's going to work out, sometimes it doesn't. But if I put in the work, then I'm worthy that day. And then the next day I got to come back.
6:23 Harry Stebbings? Speaking of putting in the work, Dara, you had an incredible run at Expedia. And I chatted to our mutual friend, Daniel Eck, before the show. And he said, Yedara had this incredible run in Expedia and then the Uber opportunity came up. I was wondering, can you take me to that decision? What were you thinking? And what was that decision making process for you?
6:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, I actually have Daniel to thank or blame, depending on how they relate to introducing me to the opportunity. I had been reading about Uber's troubles in the news, just as everyone else, and to some extent had been watching in amazement. And Daniel had, I think, pointed the company or headhunter to me. And we were having drinks and he let me know. He said, Dara, did they give you a call? And they had given me a call. And my first answer was hell, no. But I was talking to Daniel. I'm like, listen, I've been here for 13 years. I'm having a great time. I'm happy. And I still remember Daniel staring into my eyes with his cold skin and ebony in his eyes. And he said, Dara, since when is life about happiness? It's about impact. It's about impact. And you can have an impact
7:23 Speaker 00 on Uber. And Uber is a truly important company in our society. And for me, hearing that really flipped a switch. By the way, I do want to be happy. And I think happiness is important. But everyone that I talk to, all of our employees who are here at Uber are here because we can have an impact, because they believe Uber is a different technology company, and that the tech that we build shows up in the real world. We've got 5 million earners earning on our platform. The impact that we can have as a company is enormous. And I was lucky enough as an individual to be in a position to come in and have a big impact on the company as well. I will still believe that when you think about your career, think about three things. Whom are you going to work with? Do you like them? Can you learn
8:04 Speaker 00 from them? Can you have an impact at the company that you're going to? And does the company itself have an impact on the world? If you can check all three, then don't hesitate. And after I thought about it, after that initial moment of, oh, my God, why would I do this? I was like, yeah, this is really cool. I can make a difference. And it's an important company. So I jumped at the opportunity.
8:25 Harry Stebbings? I think when you have such a big transition, you learn about yourself in many ways. What did you learn about yourself as a leader, as a person, when making the transition from Expedia to Uber?
8:35 Speaker 00 Harry, honestly, I haven't had time to think about that. I'm not. Introspective and it may be a strength, it may be a weakness. I'm here to do a job. I love it. A friend of mine was asking me, are you having fun? I'm like, no, I'm not having fun. It's too hard, but I love what I'm doing. But we're mid path. In another five years, I'll have time to think and learn and be introspective about what I learned about myself. Right now, I'm just learning about the company, about the opportunity and just going as hard and fast as I can.
9:04 Harry Stebbings? Speaking of going as hard and fast as you can, how do you define high performance in leadership? You said about leaving nothing on the field before. How do you define high performance in leadership?
9:13 Speaker 00 I think ultimately in leadership, high performance is about throughput and output. It's like no excuses. What are the results? And for me, when I think about performance at a senior leadership level, for me, it's sustained results. There's no glory that's short term glory. If you think about the best CEOs in the world, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Jamie Dimon, their greatness has taken time. So for me, I'm not looking for that bullet high performance in a particular quarter or any year. But to me, high performance is sustained excellence over a long period of time. One thing that really stuck with me is that one person said that the hallmark of a great CEO
9:55 Speaker 00 isn't necessarily how the company did while the CEO was there, but also how the company performed after the CEO left. And so for me, putting a great team together and then sustaining performance over multiple years in the end is what defines high performance.
10:07 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask, it's almost a little bit like investing, where see I'm an investor and it's sustained over long periods of time with portfolios and duration. A lot of that time, people can think you're wrong or crazy in a lot of ways. What do you tell yourself when actually you have that criticism, but you believe that you're being patiently right?
10:24 Speaker 00 I think you have to have the heart to stick it out as a leader and you have to be willing to be misunderstood for a long period of time. Otherwise, it's difficult to lead. I still remember a discussion I had with my former mentor Barry Diller, my former boss, and I was having trouble a little bit because I fundamentally disagree with the decision that the team was making. And Barry said, listen, I didn't bring you here the average. If you're agreeing with your team. And you're doing what is obvious, then essentially you're going to perform in an average way. Your output will be average. As a leader, you have to be willing to bust out of the obvious, do something non-obvious, different, surprising, and then stick to that decision, obviously live with the consequences of that decision.
11:08 Speaker 00 So I'm quite comfortable with going against the grain. If I'm not going against the grain, then I don't think I'm doing my job. I think I'm missing something. The minute that the whole market believes in one trend, that's when I think to myself, there's something wrong here, there's group think going on. How can I either avoid group think or how can I take advantage of it? What's the opportunity here for me? So I'm just, I actually, if I agree with everyone, it makes me distinctly uncomfortable.
11:35 Harry Stebbings? Speaking of that kind of discomfort with going with the crowd, would you say that you're a wartime CEO? Do you say that's your natural preference?
11:42 Speaker 00 I was at Expedia 13 years and it did feel like wartime. It was a big turnaround and turnarounds in business are difficult. Turnarounds in technology are harder. And for example, with Expedia, we had to undergo a giant replatforming of the whole technical platform. So you had to keep the business going and then rebuild the technical platform, which was pretty tough. Now, it was wartime, not in the public eye. And then Uber definitely has been wartime, like it's wartime every day. Although I think we're really getting a handle on the business and I'd say we're winning. I do feel comfortable in difficult situations. I don't take setbacks too seriously and I just keep pushing. So am I comfortable in wartime? Reasonably.
12:25 Harry Stebbings? I had Toby from Shopify on the show the other day. And in his brilliantly Germanic and disciplined way, he said to me, Harry, the best businesses, they have constraints. I'm clearly an impersonator for a second job. When you think about the constraints on Uber, what do you think of the natural constraints? And are there any artificial constraints you place on the business or the team?
12:46 Speaker 00 Tons of constraints and I think it's what makes the business interesting. I think the first constraint that comes up is that we are a marketplace business. So our supply and demand is variable, but it is on a real time basis, spatially, time based, et cetera. And that variability and predictability make it very challenging to make the marketplace work, so to speak. So. The natural constraint, we talk, for example, at Uber about being customer obsessed. But the thing is, we have multiple customers. So actually, you value the company as being trip obsessed. The magic happens when you match supply and demand. You bring that rider and driver together, or you bring that eater together with a restaurant with a courier.
13:29 Speaker 00 And that magical match happens, and that magical match can happen only when it's on a basis that makes all two or three parties happy. That's a very interesting business challenge. And so for us, for example, our value is being trip obsessed. It's about what do you have to orchestrate to bring together that connection on a real time basis? Now, in this last quarter, 2 billion times a quarter. That, to me, is a super interesting constraint. Related to that is what I talked about earlier, which is the impact that Uber has on the real world. We are an incredibly important entity in terms of transportation in cities, in terms of earning power for over 5 million earners. That's a responsibility that we have to take super seriously.
14:12 Speaker 00 It's a responsibility that we've got to really hold dear and act accordingly. It sometimes slows us down, it sometimes changes decision making. But I think ultimately, it helps us do the right thing and make the right long-term calls versus, let's say, a short-term call that might be good for us, but not good for our ecosystem, so to speak.
14:30 Harry Stebbings? And speaking of making the right short-term versus long-term call and how to balance it, often it's said that the best CEOs are the best capital allocators. Do you agree with that statement?
14:40 Speaker 00 I think from a long-term basis, yes. From a short-term basis, you've got to earn the right to invest your capital. So if you insert capital with a resource allocator, I absolutely agree with that, right? It's up to you to decide where to allocate your resources, where to make bets, where to pull back, et cetera. And then tactically, you've got to earn the right to then allocate capital over the long term. So over a 10, 15-year period, capital allocation becomes really important. But tactical resource allocation and finding the right team to actually execute on those plans, that, I think, short-term is incredibly important. And you've got to take care of the short-term to earn the long-term, so to speak.
15:19 Harry Stebbings? When you think about capital allocation decisions today and what you've made today at Uber, where were you like, yes, we nailed it there and actually we were right? And where were you like, in hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have done that?
15:30 Speaker 00 I think where we are very good at Uber and we spend a good amount of resources and capital, if you want to call all that, is in our marketplace tech. We have a very talented, large marketplace team that is constantly training these ML algorithms to balance supply and demand on a geo, in a temporal and geographic manner. I know we have the most capable team there and that has been a bet that we've made that has really resulted in significant returns. Where we got it wrong was when we went outside of our core. We had a very large self-driving business trying to develop autonomous tech. That wasn't what we were passionate about every day and it was outside of the core.
16:15 Speaker 00 And ultimately, that was capital that we shouldn't have been allocating. Another example might be Bikes and Scooters, you know, hardware business. We have an investment now online which is succeeding in that, but it's the only thing that they are doing their passion about every single day. We are a network company, we connect supply and demand. We're not particularly good in hardware and I think our investment or the capital that we allocated on hardware in the past was a mistake.
16:39 Harry Stebbings? How do you think though about focus and prioritization? I totally understand that, but it almost defending you. You can't just focus on the core and what's working today and you have to have an eye for the future and alternative markets and products. So how do you think about as a leader, that decision between focus on the core today and then adjacent products and future innovation?
16:57 Speaker 00 I think that, and by the way, you always want to be expanding the course, so to speak. The investments of tomorrow then defines where the core is going to be five years from now. For us, those future investments are in places where we believe we have a core skillset or an advantage or a right to win. We built our Uber Eats business essentially organically from a rides business. There are very few companies that have built a organically a second business just as large as a base business and then the Uber Freight business as well, the vast. Majority growth there has been organic and it's because it went to the core of our understanding how to match supply and demand in a real time basis in a particular city.
17:41 Speaker 00 The extension of that was Uber Eats into a three sided marketplace, which is eater, restaurant, courier. And then with freight, just like in the olden days, when you had to hail a taxi, you had to call a dispatcher. People are still doing that in freight. So we're digitizing that connection as well. These are not eats and freight are now core, but at the time they were projects that were outside of core, but they utilized a skill set where it was a core skill set that we had. And as a result, they succeeded.
18:10 Harry Stebbings? You mentioned Uber Eats there. And again, I'm not a journalist. And so this is very un-British of me and very unlike me, but your friend asked Uber Eats, why does Dara think you lost the lead to DoorDash? And what would you do differently?
18:23 Speaker 00 I think the first thing that I would tell my anonymous friend is that we haven't lost a lead. Uber Eats is actually as big as DoorDash on a global basis. And so when we think about Uber, we think globally. We are the global leader along with DoorDash. We're a very, very good company. Ultimately, I think we could be more profitable because of the platform that we have, because of the breadth that we have in terms of rides and eats coming together. Now that's it. In the US, we made a bet on speed and we made a bet in the urban centers. This is Uber. We grew up in the big cities. And so the natural extension of Uber Eats was in the big cities. And the magic of Uber was push a button and a car shows up in five minutes. And so we made a bet on the fastest
19:08 Speaker 00 delivery possible. As it turns out, DoorDash made a bet in the suburbs. They went to where the market was in the suburban markets have proven to be much larger than I think people expected early on. Kudos to them. And they also made a bet on selection, which is the number of restaurants. Selection and speed are to some extent inversely correlated. If I reduce the rate I I get you a delivery in 15 minutes, I probably can't show you as many restaurants as if I allowed, let's say 30 or 45 minutes. So I think the biases that we had, which is coming Urban rides business that was all about the five minute ETA made us early on bet on the wrong thing. We've since corrected and we've got huge selection in the markets in which we operate.
19:51 Speaker 00 And where we learn our business, especially in those international markets, DoorDash and some of the competitors are having a very tough time. And we are the number one player in the vast majority of those markets. So sometimes you win, sometimes you lose the global game. I think we're winning and we've learned our lessons locally in the US and we're going to operate accordingly.
20:09 Harry Stebbings? So I understand. So that means then you actually think about increasing selection and then increasing delivery time. Cause you spoke about the inverse correlation there. Is that the lesson that you take away?
20:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think in addition to suburbs versus urban, so we're going after the suburban markets. But what we found is that as long as you're accurate in the prediction of the delivery time, as long as you let the person know, Harry, your delivery is going to come in 35 minutes. If it gets you in 35 or 40 minutes, most people are fine with that because then they can plan accordingly. And so the trade off of, hey, should I give you a hundred restaurants in 25 minutes? Or 200 restaurants in 35 minutes with a predictable ETA, the latter wins. And that has definitely been a lesson for us.
20:56 Harry Stebbings? You acquired Kareem. Talk to me about the decision making process there. And another anonymous friend, in hindsight, are you happy you made the acquisition?
21:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, very happy. For me, it was a bet on Madasa and Magnus, who were the founders at Kareem. And they're still with the company. They're incredibly talented entrepreneurs. And Kareem actually early on was looking to build a mobility business, delivery business, and a payments business in the Middle East. The Middle East, it's the demographics in the Middle East are great demographics. It's a young demo coming online. And the bet that Kareem was making in this platform, building out a mobility, delivery and payments business, was something that we can learn from. And the Middle Eastern business for us has been enormously successful and Kareem is absolutely part of that success.
21:44 Harry Stebbings? Tell me, Postmates, the other one, that was an odd one. I wasn't expecting that. I was quite envious of the venture investors who were in it, but I wasn't expecting it. Talk to me about that one.
21:52 Speaker 00 That was really about consolidation of the delivery space in the US. Postmates had a very strong position on the West Coast, especially in LA. Super attractive market for us. So we wanted to scale faster in that market and we did so. And then we went after a very fast integration. So while Postmates as an app is still in the App Store, they've got millions of loyal customers. All of the backend is essentially being served by our infrastructure, which allowed us to save pretty aggressively as it related to the cost side. So it worked out in the end, but it wasn't about new capability as Kareem was. It was really about the go-go days of delivery, ultimate market size,
22:37 Speaker 00 and our getting access and building out our West Coast selection especially. If it's like end of term and we have a report card, you've got children. Which one are you like, A star, Dara nailed it and this was my best acquisition? I would say probably Kareem. We're pretty early on in terms of development, but an acquisition that we made in with Uber Freight Transplace, which really runs the outsourced logistics function of a lot of companies out there. Both of those, I think, are either hits already or are going to turn out to be big hits. On the flip side, which ones are you like, oh, Dara, pass me the tequila? There was a company called Jump that we bought, which was electric bikes. And it just didn't work out.
23:20 Speaker 00 We just sucked at hardware and it's just not software people. You're iterating, you're building incredibly quickly and then you're like, we're going to teach these hardware people how to move fast. And then there's a reason why hardware is so difficult. There's a reason you screw up your firmware. Just everything has to come together in terms of both the hardware and the software. You're dealing with shipping issues, manufacturing issues. It's just a lot more difficult than it looks. So we bit off more than we could chew on that one. It's so fricking hard. Whenever I get hauled by companies, I'm like, I'll peace out. I prefer consumer social than this. I have developed a healthy respect for companies like Apple or even the Tesla. It's actually amazing.
24:02 Speaker 00 Building a scale software slash hardware business from the ground up. It's an extraordinary accomplishment.
24:08 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask, how do you keep a plastic mind? And what I mean by that is in business or in investing, you make mistakes and it's very easy to let that plague your future decision making process. Ah, we'll never do anything in hardware again. That might be wrong and it might be a good thing for Uber to do something in five years, 10 years, who knows? How do you keep a plastic mind with each new decision?
24:28 Speaker 00 I think that if you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing your job. You're not taking risks. If I didn't want to make mistakes, I'd be a treasury bond manager. My job is to make mistakes and learn from that. So I don't mind when people make mistakes. What I mind is if they're not self reflective. First of all, they don't recognize it and they don't make excuses. The problem with excuses suck anyway, but the problem with excuses is you're not learning. Face up to the mistake, identify early, take responsibility, learn from it. Help that shape who you are going forward and that who you are hopefully is a little bit better. And the same applies to companies. We absolutely should be making mistakes. If we're not making mistakes, we're playing it too safe.
25:13 Speaker 00 We're not growing. That is part of being an organism. So I'd say for me, I don't mind making mistakes. I just feel fail fast. There are some decisions where really have to take your time. So decisions that it's the old one way door, two way doors, two way doors, moving fast through them. And then taking your time on the one way door to make that considered decision. And maybe it comes back to something that we started with, which is I don't like moving with the herd. So that again, makes me a little bit willing to make mistakes. And actually you're absolutely right, which is we failed in hardware, but I always want to keep my mind open, eyes open, see what's going on, be curious. Because there's probably a reason why we failed and maybe the next time we can do better.
25:58 Speaker 00 I will tell you right now, based on everything I see, we're going to stay squarely in software because we're really good at.
26:03 Harry Stebbings? Do you think Wall Street appreciates that willingness to make mistakes and learn? Wall Street is unforgiving and it doesn't have that iterative mindset, generally speaking. Do you think that's fair?
26:14 Speaker 00 I think that's fair. The translation layer to that decision making by Wall Street is the financials that you report on quarterly basis. Does it make sense on a theoretical basis to have more volatility but more growth? That does make sense on a theoretical basis, but capital allocators hate uncertainty. The demand of Wall Street is predictable earnings. Tell me what you're going to do and then do an inch better than what you're going to do. And that's just the game that then you have to either be comfortable with or not comfortable with. But if you want to play that game, you've got to play that game effectively. So I think as it relates to mistakes is we always go in with a cushion.
26:55 Speaker 00 The way I put it is there's a budget of mistakes that I can make and I can't overspend on my mistake budget. And as long as I'm staying within my mistake budget, I'm doing well. And by the way, if I'm not spending my mistake budget, then probably I'm not learning enough. I'm not going fast enough. It's that balance that you got to figure out and it's part of the art of being a public company. Some parts of it suck, but some parts of it are really fun.
27:18 Harry Stebbings? So you're not going to buy my hardware startup? Is that what you're saying?
27:21 Speaker 00 Tomorrow. Sit by the bitch, Harry. I'll take a look.
27:25 Harry Stebbings? You mentioned the one way door, two way door there. My only pushback would be, or not even pushback, but I had the amazing CMO from Facebook, Alex Schultz, on the show recently. He said, actually, there are so few decisions that are actually one way door. All acquisitions are two way doors. It's okay. What's a one way door, do you think?
27:42 Speaker 00 I think one way doors, either big mistakes. So if you make a big acquisition, then that can be fatal for you. So size matters in this case. I think a second one is what's the blast radius of the mistake? Does it affect third parties? What's the appetite for those third parties to recover, let's say, from that mistake? An example that I'll give you is we've actually slowed down in terms of some of the velocity of features that we ship. Earners. We're iterating constantly as it relates to eaters, riders, et cetera, trying X out or trying Y out. But as it relates to earners, this is how they're making a living. This is how they're earning.
28:24 Speaker 00 And we've got to be more careful in terms of earner facing innovation because of the possibility of making a mistake. And a mistake for an earner is, hey, they didn't get paid the way that they thought they were going to get paid. Or you've changed something about your pricing or routing algorithms. And many earners, they're on the platform 20 hours a week, 40 hours a week. So the blast radius, the consequences of the mistake is bigger. And there are third parties that you really have to take care of. These earners are incredibly valuable to us. Is it a two-way door? Sure it is, but there's a lot of friction in going back, which makes you more careful and caring in how you build in those circumstances.
29:04 Harry Stebbings? When you have those one-way door decisions, you sit on your own CEO, but very often there's a person that one calls. I have someone when times are really hard and they know, if I when they get the call from me, they'll fuck. Who do you call when you have those one-way door decisions?
29:17 Speaker 00 I'm lucky enough actually to have someone that I don't have to call, which is my wife. I just talked to her. She really helps me out in thinking about issues, definitely people issues. I've made a rule if I hire someone, I'm always going to have her meet this person because she's an incredible judge of people. I love people in general and I'm always going to look at your best side. She takes a much more judgmental view and she's got a very high bar for people that she engages with. And she just is able to call bullshit in point one seconds. I like people. I want to like you. I want to believe in you. I want us to do something really cool together.
29:57 Speaker 00 That's my natural bent. And so she really helps me. She can be critical. She's sometimes critical of me and herself as well. But we're great partners and even on business stuff, like I talk through business issues with. Listen, if you can't explain simply deep business issues or even deep technical issues. One of the things that I always look for in terms of engineering and technical talent is I'll ask them questions. And if there are some of them that try to use their technical talent to Lord over you as power over you. They demonstrate to you how much smarter they are than you. And then there's a different kind of person who explains things simply. They want you to understand. They want to share their knowledge. That latter kind of technical talent is a kind of technical talent that I'm looking for, which is tell me why, tell me how this works.
30:40 Speaker 00 If they are able to simply explain a deep technical problem, then they've got clarity of thought. And they're generous in terms of their information sharing, which is something that I'm looking for. So most of the time I talk to Sid, she helps me out. I talk to my chairman, Ron Sugar, Barry Diller, a couple of other folks as well. But I'd say my top advisor is my wife.
31:00 Harry Stebbings? Well, at least you've got some brownie points for that one.
31:03 Speaker 00 She listens to your podcast. I'm sorry to say she and the French apparently may not be your target audience.
31:08 Harry Stebbings? Do you know what? Then this is a good thing. We have an expansion market to go to. My question to you is, you mentioned there about trust and team. Do you start with full trust and it's there to be lost? Or do you start with no trust and it's there to be gained? And how would you advise on that?
31:22 Speaker 00 I start with full trust and hopefully you can deserve that trust. I give a good amount of autonomy to my team and then I hold them accountable. Again, accountability doesn't mean don't make mistakes, but it means moving fast and taking responsibility for those mistakes. And then learning and iterating and getting better every single day.
31:41 Harry Stebbings? Do you ever lose your shit, Dara? I do.
31:43 Speaker 00 I don't lose my shit. I'm pretty calm. My wife calls me a robot. I'm pretty level headed and it's helped me in life, sometimes default. So I don't lose my shit, but I'll get pissed off once in a while.
31:53 Harry Stebbings? You mentioned your wife many times. This is something that I'm looking to learn over time. What's the secret to a great marriage, do you think?
31:59 Speaker 00 Oh gosh. First of all, I'd say every marriage is different, but what really works for Sid and me is that we're in love, but we're in like. Like we like each other a lot. We hang out together. We laugh. I've seen lots of couples who are in love, but they don't like hanging out as much. The husband will go play golf on the weekend. I'm like, no, I want to spend time with my family on the weekend. So I think the secret for us at least is that we like each other. We like each other a lot.
32:24 Harry Stebbings? You mentioned family there. I also think bonding parenting is one of the greatest joys in life. What does being a great father need, Dara?
32:30 Speaker 00 Oh, I'm still figuring that out.
32:32 Harry Stebbings? The CEO shit's easy. These are tough questions and you can't iterate with kids because it's a giant one way door.
32:39 Speaker 00 I'd say for me, it is to be engaged. One of the things that is really important to me is when I'm at work, I'm all in at work. When I'm with my family, I'm all in with my family. I think when you do things halfway, you do it really poorly and that is true in business and it's true in your personal life. So when I'm with my kids, I'm with them and we have a great time and I think that shows that engagement with them. I push them hard. It's not like I'm easy all the time, but when I'm with them, I'm with them 100%.
33:10 Harry Stebbings? Do you think we've all got a bit soft? We all talk about the work life balance. I'm with you on being all in and the importance of it. Hence my very single status permanently. Do you think we've got a bit of soft and is that a bit hard for you as a leader today? Where you think the entitlement of a generation, which is, oh, I want to have kombucha and I want to have that offsite retreat and I want the yoga in the mornings, but I also want to be paid really well and I want that big equity grant and blah, blah, blah. And then my favorite thing is they go, and this is the first generation. We don't have as good a living standard as our parents. Are you fucking kidding me? Your parents didn't have Uber Eats delivered to their door every night. What? Sorry.
33:42 Speaker 00 Harry, tell me what you really think. No, that's what, listen, I agree. I think that I'll start with parenting, which is, I was actually much too soft with my kids as a parent and it wasn't doing them any favors. That is one thing that I learned from Sid is if you're protecting your kids from adversity is not doing them any favors because the real world can be really difficult. And I think the same applies with our generation, which is have we gone too soft? Yeah, of course we've gone too soft. It's about adversity. It's about discomfort, making mistakes. All of these things are going to shape you going forward. I like the people that we see at Uber and I think they're capable.
34:21 Speaker 00 They work hard. They rally to their occasions, but sometimes I do feel like the old crummy guy is criticizing the new generation. But I think they'll be fine.
34:29 Harry Stebbings? I'm very comfortable being that guy. Don't worry. After that rant, trust me, I'm the one who looks back.
34:33 Speaker 00 Harry, for you, you are the new generation.
34:35 Harry Stebbings? Oh, I'm not anymore, Dar. I'm 26 these days. There's 21 year old founders that, you know, thoroughly think I'm old. So I remember I.
34:42 Speaker 00 If you think you're old. Then I'm dead.
34:46 Harry Stebbings? That's got to be the title for the show. I love that. Tell me, my friend, you inherited this bluntly quite challenged board, a conflicted board. What did you learn in terms of board alignment, board management from this very unique situation?
35:00 Speaker 00 I was actually pretty clear in terms of the board, which is, you're absolutely right. There was a giant conflict and a struggle for control of the board. And one of the first things that I told the board when I became CEO is that I need the board to be about the success of Uber versus control of Uber. And that's going to result in some pretty significant changes. The most important change was bringing in Ron Sugar, who's our chairman. And then we reshaped the board. And I think I was lucky because with the new CEO, it gave me permission to work with Ron to reshape the board. And board now is they're all in, it's all about Uber, it's not about control. But I had the opportunity, I had called the stage to make a change. And as a result, we were able to move pretty fast.
35:45 Speaker 00 And I think our board at this point is second to none.
35:47 Harry Stebbings? Final one before we do a quick fire. Was it hard in terms of like naturally with any change of leadership, there are the old guard and there is the newer team. Is that tough making that transition elegantly, but also if you don't like it?
36:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, definitely. And, and the cool thing about Uber is I think we're now a combination of call the old guard and the new team. And it's become a new team, there's really no difference. But literally there's a ton of my directs who were here way before me. And then some newer managers that we brought in. And I think actually in hindsight, the pandemic shared giant crisis really brought us together as a team. But at the time it was difficult because part of my job was to communicate and then act accordingly in a very clear way, a delineation between what we call Uber 2.0 versus Uber 1.0. So I had to very publicly talk about how we were different and how we were changing.
36:44 Speaker 00 We were changing our culture, it's about doing the right thing. And I do think that was difficult for some of the old guard because not everything about old Uber was bad. It was incredibly entrepreneurial company, innovative, very high bar for talent, et cetera. So I think that natural conflict was challenging. Ultimately, now I think we've come together as a company. An old guard, new guard, who cares?
37:07 Harry Stebbings? Tell me, I want to do a quick fire around ours. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Tell me, what's the favorite book and why?
37:14 Speaker 00 Favorite book? I'd probably say favorite book is Isaac Asimov's Foundations. Just because it got me into sci fi and my passion around science and engineering. It really had an impact on me. I was a kid just here from Iran and it just captured my imagination. A more recent book that I read that really was great was Splendid and Vile. It's about Churchill during the Battle of Britain, one extraordinary person. And he really lifted that nation up on his back. It was absolutely delightful book.
37:42 Harry Stebbings? What's the best and the worst thing you inherited from Travis?
37:46 Speaker 00 Best thing I'd say is a bar for talent. Travis went after incredibly talented people and I got to keep some of them, which is great. Worst thing, I think it was just the brand damage as it related to Uber, the enterprise. People still love the brand itself and the utility of the brand. But it's taken a while for us to rebuild and rebuild public sentiment. That was tough, but I'll take the trade. I'll take the talent because the talent has helped us rebuild.
38:13 Harry Stebbings? Do you guys hang out? Do you guys like do brewskis together, a little high five?
38:17 Speaker 00 No, we don't hang out. He's in LA now, but we talk every once in a while. He's built a dark kitchen company that we do work with. And I think it's the biggest dark kitchen company out there. So if anyone succeeds in that area, I think it'll be Travis.
38:31 Harry Stebbings? How did Barry Diller influence you as a leader or the hero?
38:34 Speaker 00 Oh, in every way, in every way. I worked for him for over 20 years. I think that I'm here because of him, because of the shots that he took, because the opportunities that he gave me. And I think what's extraordinary about Barry is despite all of his accomplishments, he is still unbelievably curious. He has a thirst for knowledge that I have never seen. But also as you get older, you think you figure it out? I think if he has Barry, he's, I haven't figured anything out. I'm still going. And that curiosity and that drive is pretty extraordinary and it's definitely shaped me.
39:08 Harry Stebbings? What's the most painful lesson that you've been through and you're actually quite pleased to have been through because of the lessons?
39:14 Speaker 00 I think the biggest one professionally has been the pandemic. We lost eighty five percent of our volume overnight and the business was already losing two billion dollars. It was a incredibly important moment for us and we took some really tough medicine in terms of selling certain businesses, in terms of significant layoffs for the company. But I think it allowed us to come out lean and mean and focused, allowed the Uber Eats business to really expand in extraordinary way. And I think we're coming out of the pandemic much stronger than we were going in. And I think now, especially with tech companies cutting back on spend, et cetera, we learned our lesson at the pandemic. So I think on a relative basis, we've been performing pretty darn well, both top line and bottom line, and we've got to keep that going.
39:59 Speaker 00 It was an ugly, tough lesson, but it was one that I think we've learned from.
40:02 Harry Stebbings? You can call Dara the night before your first ASC of Uber and give him some advice. What advice do you give him?
40:09 Speaker 00 Go faster, go faster. In hindsight, I didn't know what I was getting into. I needed to meet everyone. I needed to get input. But I think that my decision making could have been faster right up front.
40:22 Harry Stebbings? What's on your tombstone in terms of one word? So mine is persistence, clearly.
40:27 Speaker 00 Oh God, I don't want a tombstone. I want like a big ass oak tree that people can sunbathe beneath and read a book.
40:32 Harry Stebbings? What was going to be carved, what's carved into it, a word that describes you best?
40:37 Speaker 00 Survived.
40:39 Harry Stebbings? But number one is where do you think Uber could be more efficient?
40:42 Speaker 00 I think it's actually on the decision making side. Ours is a complex business in that we're building tech that shows up in the real world, right? You push a button and a car shows up in five minutes, a hamburger shows up in half an hour. There's a lot that needs to happen to orchestrate all of that in an artful way without any mistakes. So as we build product, you have to have a lot of input from product folks, tech folks, ops folks, legal folks, et cetera. As a result, the decision making sometimes isn't. Is clear like who we call who wants a decision and I think that's something that we can continue to improve on.
41:18 Harry Stebbings? Final one for you, Dara. Next five years, so it's 2028. Where will we be then and where will you be then?
41:24 Speaker 00 Oh, I have no idea. I'm not a planner, Harry. I feel like if I have too clear a sense of what's going to happen in the next five years, I'm going to ignore any input that disagrees with that picture and I'm going to be like holding on to input that agrees with that picture. So I actually very specifically, I'm very open minded in what's happening in the next five years. Think about five years ago, could you have ever predicted where we are now? And so predictions that are valuable, the obvious stuff you can predict, but the most valuable input is actually quite unobvious and very difficult to predict. As opposed to trying to predict, I want to be open. I'm very humble and I don't know what's going to happen five years from now,
42:07 Speaker 00 but I want to see signal. I want to talk to everyone. I want to read anything and everything I can so that I can see that signal sooner than anyone else. And I don't want to have a bias because if you're human, if you see signal that goes against your bias, you're going to tend to ignore it at least the first couple of times until it becomes unignorable, so to speak.
42:24 Harry Stebbings? Dara, as I said, I can't thank you enough for this. I stalk the shit out of you. I know far too much about your family history and everything in between now, but it's been such a joy. So thank you so much for joining me.
42:34 Speaker 00 Thank you. It was really fun. Appreciate it.
42:38 Harry Stebbings? I just love doing that show. I want to say huge thank you, Dara, for agreeing to do it and also for agreeing to move with the flexible schedule, shall we say? If you want to see more from us, you can of course find us on YouTube by searching for 20VC or you can add it over to 20vc.com. But before we leave you today, Secureframe is the leading all-in-one platform for automated security and privacy compliance. Secureframe simplifies and streamlines the process of getting and staying compliant to the most rigorous global privacy and security standards like SOC 2, ISO 2701, HIPAA, GDPR and others. Secureframe's industry-leading compliance automation platform, paired with their in-house compliance experts and former auditors, helps you get audit ready in weeks, not months.
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Previous 20VC: Three Core Lessons for Founders From the SVB Crisis From Financial Agility (Banking) to Constructing Scenario Plans and Mastering Crisis Communications | How The Western World Has Not Been Responsible with its Money & Why The Fed Is Backing Itself I Next 20Product: Nubank's CPO on Why Product is 90% Science and 10% Art, Why Execution is Overrated and Strategic Clarity is Under-Appreciated, Why You Should Never Fall in Love With Your Own Ideas & Nubank's Biggest Product Challenges Scaling to 80M Users Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
