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Uber President on Travis, China & Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash

Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:51 How Andrew Retains Execution Drive While Being Liked 03:07 Where Andrew Has Been Wrong: Resisting Membership Longer Than He Should 06:32 The Most Efficient Dollar at Uber: Why Membership Beats Price Incentives 08:34 Why Uber One Is Not Yet Amazon Prime 10:08 New Revenue Lines: The Innovator's Dilemma at $250B Scale 11:54 How Uber Incubates New Businesses From Inside a Giant 18:33 Waymo vs Uber 23:56 The China Exit 34:09 Uber Blew Its AI Budget in 4 Months 36:49 The Real AI ROI Question 39:32 How to Budget for AI When Usage Is Vertical and Unpredictable 43:44 Will Uber Have More or Less Employees in 5 Years? 45:44 Should Enterprises Fear Frontier Model Providers? 51:00 How Uber Is Using AI Agents Internally 57:25 Andrew Now Running Uber Eats Directly: The Three-Sided Marketplace Problem 59:45 Why Uber Eats Is Not #1 in the US 01:02:29 Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Andrew Macdonald on X: https://twitter.com/andrewgordonmac Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #andrewmacdonald #uber #traviskalanick #ai #ubereats #doordash #waymo

Andrew MacdonaldguestHarry Stebbingshost
Aug 17, 20261h 9mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:51

    Intro

    1. AM

      We're doing like 300 million trips a week. We were burning 52 million a week in China. We were competing in China with one hand tied behind our back.

    2. HS

      Andrew Macdonald, he's the President and COO at Uber. He is Uber's longest tenured active employee, and today Uber's an absolute monster. They have a market cap of 160 billion, revenues of 52 billion in the full year of 2025. They have 200 million consumers that use the app monthly. This was a behind-the-scenes on Uber like we haven't seen before.

    3. AM

      Autonomy is as bad as it's ever gonna be today, right? And every single day it's gonna get better. Like, in the end, distribution wins. We could do everything we do today with less people in five years because of the power of AI. No one's been at the company longer than me at this point.

    4. HS

      Ready to go? [upbeat music] Mac, I am so excited for this, dude. I've wanted to make this happen, and we've been DM'ing for, like, a long time. It's, it's so good to do it in person.

    5. AM

      So great to be here, and you're right. I remember the first Twitter DM from you, and I was a bit of a fan from afar, as you probably hear often, but, uh, great to be here now, and so glad to do it in person.

    6. HS

      So I spoke to Dara before the show and I said, "What's his superpower?" He's been here for, like, over a decade, whatever 12, 13 years.

    7. AM

      14 years.

    8. HS

      Four-

    9. AM

      It'll be 15 in May.

    10. HS

      My God.

    11. AM

      No one's been at the company longer than me at this point.

    12. HS

      My God. Um, and I said, "What's his superpower?" And he said, "Ah, very simple. People really like him, but he is an execution machine, and he is very good at driving people." And I, I suck at that.

    13. AM

      [laughs]

    14. HS

      So can you... No, seriously, how do you do that but retain people liking you?

  2. 1:51 – 3:07

    How Andrew Retains Execution Drive While Being Liked

    1. AM

      I get the question in the context of career advice. People start, they join Uber, they say, you know, "You've been very successful at Uber. How do I, you know, how should I be successful here? Or what did, what did you do to get successful?" And it, it's hard because, like, every formula's different. Um, but there's a couple things I say. One is, and I think the most important thing is if you genuinely are just trying to do what you think is the right thing for the company and that is your filter, and you kind of build, uh, trust that that's what you're optimizing for all the time on every decision, big decisions and small decisions, that you are using the lens of what is the best thing for Uber. You're not always gonna get the decision right, but if people know that you're filtering on that, then I think that builds followership and trust over time, and then you can move people. Because if you're pushing on something, they know it's because you genuinely think it's the right thing to do. And then if you pair that with a deep knowledge of the business, and I've, I've grown up in this business, so I know, especially ride-hailing, like I know that better than anyone in the world at this point. Um, those two things together I think are pretty powerful.

    2. HS

      You do literally know it better than anyone else in the world. Yeah.

    3. AM

      It's hard. I mean, it's only been around since 2009. I've been working on it since 2012, and, you know, most folks from that time period are not working on it anymore,

  3. 3:07 – 6:32

    Where Andrew Has Been Wrong: Resisting Membership Longer Than He Should

    1. AM

      so.

    2. HS

      You, you said when you genuinely believe it's the right thing for the company.

    3. AM

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      What did you genuinely believe was the right thing for the company and it turned out you were wrong?

    5. AM

      Uh, I mean, first thing I'd say is like I, I am wrong every single day. Um, big things and small things, right? I actually love the... I think it's a Bezos quote, which is, "If you wanna be right most of the time, you gotta change your mind a lot" or something, something to that effect, right? Which is e- effectively like you're gonna be wrong a lot, and actually the people who are successful over time are willing to change their mind. So I, I think that's true. So I, I'm wrong a lot. This is probably the most common running debate that Dara and I will have as I think of his tenure as CEO, which is... And I, and thematically it's like the tension between short-term levers and long-term levers for the business. So like a short-term lever for ride-hail is like price, right? Um, e- every dollar that we can put back into lower pricing I think is valuable. Even, uh, e- even if long-term there may be other things you wanna do like acquire new users or build a membership program or build new business units, you should be weighing those investments versus I could just put a dollar back into price. And so I think I have been too short-termist on certain issues like membership, U- Uber One for example. When I was running the mobility business, I... You're smiling, so I s- I, I suspect you maybe thought... I, I don't know, like-

    6. HS

      Well, I'm smiling because I said to Dara, "What is the single..." When I say, like biggest disagreement that you've had with Mac, that comes to mind first. And he's like, [laughs] "Say it's from me. Say it's from me." Normally people are like, "Anonymize this."

    7. AM

      [laughs]

    8. HS

      He's like, "Say it's from me." He was reticent about membership programs-

    9. AM

      Yeah

    10. HS

      ... and I think now he's changed.

    11. AM

      Totally, and, and I've, I've turned out to be wrong. I mean, the, the, the, the reason I've changed is because our... First of all, Uber One is, I, I think on many metrics one of the more successful membership programs in the world. I mean, we're not at like Amazon Prime or Costco levels, but we're, we're not... We're within, getting to within spit, spitting distance. And from a company lever perspective, it's highly efficient. And when we look at efficiency, we usually look on like if I put a dollar in, you know, what am I getting back in terms of top line? And it's one of the best levers we have, and the longer out we can measure it, the more efficient it gets and the better it stacks up versus other levers. So you're like, "Okay, Mac, well, like how did you get that wrong? Like if that's what the data showed you, then why, why weren't you just sort of all in on membership?" When, and when he says like, when I say I wasn't all in on membership, what I mean by that is like, you know, I would constrain the capital envelope that we would have in the mobility business to invest in this. So if I had 40 million bucks next quarter to invest, you know, my gut was always like put as much of that into pricing as you can or put as much of that into driver supply to improve the health of the marketplace so that service is more reliable. Because like ride-sharing at the end of the day is price, reliability, and safety. That's all it is. That's what it was 10 years ago. I think that's what it's gonna be 10 years from now even when it's autonomous vehicles. It's like price, reliability, safety. Um, and putting money into something like membership where people get a suite of benefits or, uh, part of which is price, but a whole other host of things, like you're explicitly choosing not to put that dollar back into price, and that, that's just the tension. And I probably was short-termist in my thinking there.

    12. HS

      You said there about dollar leverage, putting in dollars to what you get out. What is the single most efficient dollar in to dollar out business for

  4. 6:32 – 8:34

    The Most Efficient Dollar at Uber: Why Membership Beats Price Incentives

    1. HS

      you today?

    2. AM

      I think membership is the most efficient long-term consumer lever that we've got. Uh, and the reason for that is like ultimately we, we are looking at like IGB as a critical input metric for any dollar I deploy.

    3. HS

      What is IGB?

    4. AM

      Incremental gross bookings. Think of it as incremental revenue.

    5. HS

      Okay.

    6. AM

      Right? Like if I put a dollar of incentive into the market, if I give Harry a dollar and I give a million other consumers a dollar discount, how much incremental revenue do I get back of that? And by the way, like the ROI on that is different because ROI is like if I get $2 of revenue back from Harry by offering you a dollar, um, you might be like, "Okay, that's great. That's a, you know, a 2:1 ratio." But actually we only make 7.5% of your dollar from a profit margin perspective, so you're still negative ROI, but you make those sorts of investments to grow the platform over time because, you know, I've increased Harry's engagement and then your LTV goes up over time. So, um, we're, we're typically looking at like a very baseline IGB type or incremental revenue type metric for any, any, uh, any dollar we're putting into the marketplace. Membership just gets better over time. The reason it gets better over time is, you know, if Harry becomes a member, not only do you ride more next month, but actually that cohort of members we acquired in that month tends to ride more over time. They consol- and part of that is because they're consolidating more of their mobility business onto Uber. Part of it is because actually that you get some Uber Eats benefits with your membership program too, so now you start using Uber Eats instead of DoorDash or Deliveroo. And so the LTV of Harry just goes up over time with membership. You're less likely to churn. You're more resilient from a market share perspective. Like there's all these downstream long-term impacts that sort of multiply the value of that first dollar I put into membership. Uh, with, with shorter term levels like price or promotion, there's some tail, like, you know, if I give you a dollar to take a trip next week, there's some value in the following weeks, but it tends to sort of dissipate faster, and so that, that's often the debate.

  5. 8:34 – 10:08

    Why Uber One Is Not Yet Amazon Prime

    1. HS

      You said it's not quite Amazon or Costco, say, in terms of membership dominance.

    2. AM

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      I think that's fair. They've had a little bit more head start than you. When you look at that chasm between you, what do you not have that you would need to have to reach their dominance?

    4. AM

      From my perspective, we need to put more consumer value into the membership program. So today, uh, I think especially if you're a mobility rider, so on, typically on mobility you're getting like 5% cashback, right, is, is our standard, standard sort of offer. The consumer comprehension of that is still relatively low. Like for a membership program as big as we are, I think there's still a lot of people who have Uber One and don't actually fully realize the benefits they're getting on mobility. The other thing we need to do is like we're looking for, for features that are sort of high perceived value, low cost, right? Like that's the sweet spot of any membership type program or rewards program for, for example. Uh, with our business that's tough because I don't have a lot of free to give away on the platform, right? If I wanna give you a ride because you're a loyal member, either through a membership program or a rewards program, I still gotta pay the driver to provide that ride, right? I, I don't... It's not like a hotel where you might have excess inventory and so your marginal cost of giving away a room night is pretty low. Um, the beauty of our model is we're primarily a variable cost model, right? Means when demand drops, great, our costs scale down with it. But it also means that we just don't have a, a fixed capacity to give away, and so it just makes the challenges for building a membership or a rewards program a little

  6. 10:08 – 11:54

    New Revenue Lines: The Innovator's Dilemma at $250B Scale

    1. AM

      tougher for us.

    2. HS

      What line of revenue do you not have today that will be very significant in five years' time?

    3. AM

      I mean, it's hard, right? 'Cause significant for us is-

    4. HS

      What is significant?

    5. AM

      ... really fucking big at this point, right?

    6. HS

      Like a billion?

    7. AM

      So we're, we're a, um, you know, approaching a quarter billion dollars in GB, right? So if you think about that top line metric, what is our GMV or GB number, we're not far off from being a $250 billion company. So for anything to pass the like significance test, it has to be a multi-billion dollar business in terms of transaction volume, right? So I'm thinking of a new product, I wanna stand up and it's a mobility service that we're gonna offer through the Uber app. For that to even be interesting, I have to see a path within a few years to multiple billions of dollars of GMV, and it just actually constrains your thinking a little bit.

    8. HS

      Yeah. Does that... Do you worry that that prevents you trying new things? Is it like, "Ah"-

    9. AM

      Yeah, totally. Totally. Because-

    10. HS

      Do, do like a Google Labs, like go on, try some, try Gmail, Paul Buchheit. Or do you know what I mean?

    11. AM

      Yeah. I mean, we do. We try to set up structures to solve this problem. Um, I mean, it's like a class of in- a classic innovator's dilemma problem, right? Which is like the thing you've already built is so big that it just swallows up your organizational capacity to do anything else. And even if you're able to stand up other businesses, it's impossible for those businesses to get the resourcing, attention, distribution, marketing dollars, engineering capacity. Whatever it is, it just gets swallowed up by the whole. And, and part of it is just even management focus, right? Like it's very hard to focus on the new thing when you've got this like $225 billion blob that you've gotta manage over here. So how do you solve that? I mean, we, we, we run a program called Growth Bets, which is, you know, intended very much to incubate new businesses

  7. 11:54 – 18:33

    How Uber Incubates New Businesses From Inside a Giant

    1. AM

      within Uber.

    2. HS

      How does that work?

    3. AM

      So basically what we try to do is, A, um, create dedicated resources. So, you know, if I've got 2,000 p- you know, made up number, but 2,000 people that work on our mobility business, I wanna try to have You know, 100 to 150 of them working on the new stuff, the small stuff, the stuff that we don't have product market fit or unit economics figured out, but that could be a big future business. Um, but it requires like dedicated capacity and thinking. If you try to do it like as 5% of your job, like, you know, I run the marketplace for UberX in the US, but I'm also trying to incubate this other thing with 2% of my time, it's really hard, right?

    4. HS

      Do you know who the best in the world is at this? Nick Staronsky from Revolut.

    5. AM

      Oh, interesting.

    6. HS

      Like I've interviewed 1,000 founders.

    7. AM

      Yeah.

    8. HS

      He's the single best founder I've ever interviewed.

    9. AM

      Yeah.

    10. HS

      And it's because he runs 26 product experiments at once. He gives them $2 million, tells them to run for a year. Every single week he checks in for 20 minutes [laughs] with each of the leaders, and then he determines whether to fund their next round or not.

    11. AM

      Yeah. I love that. I mean, we have a version of that. It's not the... I love the cadence of that, by the way, the 20- like operating on weeks, not months or quarters, is how a new business should run. I think also having to sing for your supper-

    12. HS

      Mm

    13. AM

      ... like come back and ask for money. Like the challenge-- Again, the other challenge of standing up a new business within a big company with a big P&L and a big balance sheet is people just get fat on the resources, right? And so you don't build it the way you would build it if you were a startup because you just have more resources. So you end up moving slower, consuming more cash, s- taking more, like getting more heads than you otherwise would if you, if you were actually starting up from a zero to one. And as a result, like it's not that you necessarily build something better, you, you just are slower and you're constantly actually chasing the people who are doing it from first principles. And so I, I think that's hard. Now we should... You, you have advantages. We have distribution, right? Distribution is-

    14. HS

      Which is the mother of invention

    15. AM

      100%. And so if you can take-- if you can actually build something interesting and then plug it into 200 million consumers who use our app monthly, you're just gonna be able to scale way faster than anyone who's doing it without that distribution advantage. And even figuring out how to do distribution right, like the 200 million number is attractive, but even within that 200 million, of course, there's tons of internal discussion and debate around how we, how we spend our pixels, right? Ev-every new product wants CRM support. Every new product wants to be featured on the masthead of Uber Eats or wants to be in the product selector for rides. And so like how you make those decisions as an organization is tough. But you still have this built-in distribution that is super interesting, and so it's an advantage, but you've got to figure out the other stuff, which is like how do you stand up new products in a company?

    16. HS

      Other than time, what is the one inhibitor to getting to 500 million users? You mentioned 200 million.

    17. AM

      I mean, I would say like our, our IR team is not gonna love this answer because I, I would say price.

    18. HS

      Yeah.

    19. AM

      Um, and the reason our IR team won't love that answer is because when you start talking about price in the context of public markets, people are like, "Oh, you're gonna get into a price war, and like margins are gonna come down, and like it's a less attractive business." But that's not really what I mean. What I mean by price is when you think about the businesses we operate, um, primarily, you know, mobility and delivery, the vast majority of the transactions and delivery of things, or the vast majority of, of the transactions in transportation broadly happen at a price point that is like way lower than our core products, right? Like taking an UberX to and from work every day in New York City for like 35 bucks a direction, that's still a luxury product, right? The vast majority of transportation in New York City is not happening at that price point. And so if we wanna get to 500 million users and we want to go from people using us on average, you know, six times a month to using us on average 25 times a month, the average cost of that transaction has to come down. And so how do you get that down? There's all sorts of ways in doing that. You have more modes that are cheaper. You can get trains on Uber here in London. You have, uh, alternative modes like bikes and scooters, et cetera, because, you know, once you deconstruct car ownership, y-you're actually not... It's not just about UberX, it's about all the other things you do. But you have to get price down.

    20. HS

      A la pubel. I fucking hate these bikes that litter the pavements. I-- Oh my God, they're so annoying.

    21. AM

      You do?

    22. HS

      Oh my gosh. I'm an old man.

    23. AM

      But you know Londoners love them generally. London is such a significant market for micro mobility.

    24. HS

      I know. I know. It's why I don't get out much. Um-

    25. AM

      Would you rather have more cars on the road?

    26. HS

      Would I?

    27. AM

      Yeah.

    28. HS

      I, I... To be fair, I, I live around the corner.

    29. AM

      Yeah. [laughs]

    30. HS

      Uh, but to be fair, I use Uber as an argument every single day because I don't have a driver's license-

  8. 18:33 – 23:56

    Waymo vs Uber

    1. AM

      and being able to, um, work or sleep or talk with your partner or whatever it is you wanna do, like that is better and people prefer that for the most part. So when you have a better product that is only gonna get better over time, and autonomy is as bad as it's ever gonna be today, right? And every single day it's gonna get better. Um, then that's gonna be the business, and that's gonna be how people get around. And if Uber, uh, doesn't have autonomy, our platform, and we will, uh, we will, we will-- we are investing actively and aggressively to bring it to market. But if, if we didn't, then it certainly would be existential for our core business.

    2. HS

      Is it the largest investment that you make?

    3. AM

      It is. I, I, I mean, I, I think it kinda depends how you define it a little bit. Like if you look at our autonomy investments, we are making a mix of equity investments in companies, vehicle commit- purchase commitments, building out autonomous infrastructure, building out data collect fleet. Like there's a lot of different ways we're spreading the dollars, um, and, and we're pretty confident in the ROI on those dollars long term. So yeah, it's the largest single sort of standalone investment we, we make. Now don't be, you know, don't get me wrong. With, at a P&L our size, we're moving billions of dollars around every month. But yes, it's the largest single area of investment.

    4. HS

      I'm a venture investor also-

    5. AM

      Yeah

    6. HS

      ... which means, um, I love to pontificate, and I also say I love to say I told you so.

    7. AM

      Yes.

    8. HS

      Um, you and Travis kinda went down this road already. Do you look at that with annoyance that you stop-started, and would you be materially ahead had you just been able to continue as planned?

    9. AM

      I, I mean, fir- first off, I'll say, um, when we started our autonomous efforts, you know, this was a secret project within Uber. I, I was not involved in starting that. I don't wanna take any credit for having that foresight, 'cause I think it was foresight, right? I think-

    10. HS

      This was 2016?

    11. AM

      No, well before 2016. Um, you know, I, I, I, you know, I think Travis had... I, I, I don't wanna get it wrong, but, um, y- years earlier than that knew that this would be the future. And, and like many sort of visionary founder types, he, he could see ahead of where the rest of us could see and, and started taking the company in that direction. Um, so you know, this would've been, you know, I don't know, 2013 to, you know, 2012, 2013, 2014, we would've quietly started working on this. And I, and I wasn't involved in it at all. Um, and at that time, like autonomy, the narrative was ahead of the reality by a lot, right? I mean, you can go back and read various prognostications, um, and not just from Elon, from many people in the industry saying, you know, "Next year, next year, next year," and it was never next year. Um, but I-- look, I think it would be rose-colored glasses to say, "Oh, see, if we just stayed in the game, we'd have the leading autonomous vehicle company and this existential threat for us wouldn't, wouldn't exist, or we'd completely control our own destiny." I mean, when, when we ultimately, uh, divested ATG, which was our auton- uh, internal autonomy group, we were in the depths of COVID. Our mobility business had lost 84% of our top line in three weeks. Uh, the company was burning billions annually. Uh, we didn't have a core business producing cash. It wasn't-- The billions were not coming from investments and other stuff. Our core was burning money. Uh, we, we did not believe we were leading in autonomy at the time. Uh, we were trailing. You can debate about whether we were trailing the field or whether we were just trailing Waymo, but we were, we were not in the pole position. And you know, Uber had a lot to prove that we could just lead and win and make money in our core business. And so we divested ATG. Uh, we turned the core businesses into cash flowing machines. We took the company public. We've grown the value, grown the business. Almost any metric you pick from that point in time is up and to the right. And so on all those dimensions, I think the sort of focus strategy played out. But yes, of course, today do I wish we, uh, if you could sort of snap your fingers and say ATG would turn into one of the leading autonomous players globally and we completely control our destiny, yeah, I think that would be a good thing for us.

    12. HS

      Can I ask you, when you fast-forward five years' time, what percent of rides will be human driven versus robotaxi driven?

    13. AM

      It's, it's so hard to predict, I mean, for a few reasons. One is our, the denominator is huge here, right? We're doing like 300 million trips a week, uh, on our core platforms. That is just massive scale. So we do a few million trips in AVs on that platform today a month, but it's just such a small part of the business that it's gonna grow triple digit percentage months on months and months and months, and it will still be a relatively tiny drop of the overall bucket. The second thing it's re- makes it hard to predict is our human driven business is gonna keep growing, right? And so, um, you know, we, we found-- Like in, even in the largest AV markets, where today we don't have AVs like San Francisco and LA, our human driven business

  9. 23:56 – 34:09

    The China Exit

    1. AM

      is growing faster than the rest of the US. So it's hard for me to know what the tar- It's a moving target. The third piece is Uber is so global, right? In, in mobility, we operate across 75 countries. Two of our large- three largest countries by volume are India and Brazil. You know, the average fare in Brazil is like 350, four bucks USD. In India it's 2.50, three bucks or something like that. It's, it's gonna be s- decades until the cost of autonomy compresses to the point where it compete with that cost of human labor. And those markets make up the majority of our trips. And so if you wanna say, when will the majority of trips at Uber be autonomous? I, I can't tell you, because I can tell you it's probably not gonna be until autonomy gets to Brazil and India, and I can tell you that's gonna be a long time, so-

    2. HS

      So what's really interesting there is actually it could still be a very low volume of trips-

    3. AM

      Low volume, but significant

    4. HS

      ... but in terms of dollar amount, it could actually be significantly higher.

    5. AM

      Dollar amount, yeah, 'cause if it's in the US and if it's in the largest cities in the US, then, like, that's where the rubber meets the road.

    6. HS

      The $35 meal.

    7. AM

      So that, that's the-- For sure that's the counter to what I'm saying. You know, I'm saying, "Oh, it's gonna be more complex, and we have all this other..." Well, but yes, of course, if autonomy starts to make up the majority of markets in San Francisco, LA, DC, Miami, New York, Boston, Chicago, like, that's a big chunk of our bookings. Uh, that's a big chunk of our dollars, and so that's kinda the ultimate question.

    8. HS

      Can I ask you, who do you think is a bigger threat, Waymo or Tesla?

    9. AM

      That, that's, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm, I, I don't know how many spicy takes I wanna have here, but I think there's going to be more than two winners. Do I think Waymo and Tesla will ultimately be winners? Yes, I do. Um, I don't know who y- who's gonna bet against either of those, but I think there will be more winners. I also think even in a world of, of strong winners, like a very natural question or often feedback we get from investors or smart types who follow our business is like, "So yeah, I believe that there will be a few players that get to autonomy, and I think they're ultimately gonna work with you guys, but they're gonna have such strong leverage in the market that your share of every dollar is gonna get squeezed." And so I, I just don't know, even in a world where you have access to autonomy, like, you know, uh, how are your margins gonna look? Because today you guys benefit from fragmentation. And that's true. I, I think it's a true statement, but there's a couple counterpoints to that. One is if you look at delivery as a sort of comparable vertical here, McDonald's and Starbucks also are strong leaders in their individual verticals. They've spent billions building out fixed assets in terms of stores and that, all the infrastructure that goes into their supply chain. They have 1P channels. You can walk in the front door of a McDonald's. You can order through the McDonald's app. But they also ultimately work with the marketplaces and were able to come to a good economic agreement that works for both sides. 'Cause at the end of the day, they have expensive fixed assets, and you wanna drive as high utilization as possible. And whether that's a store or a car, I think that's gonna be true. And so I think whether Waymo or Tesla ends up being the bigger threat, I don't know. I think ultimately it's in both of their interests to put their vehicles on our network, even if they have their own robotaxi apps or their own 1P apps, even if they work with our competitors on the rideshare side or on the delivery side. I think everyone will work with us because ultimately we have distribution, and ultimately they have expensive fixed assets that need utilization.

    10. HS

      What's interesting there is you say then that distribution is more important than superior technology.

    11. AM

      I think in the end, distribution wins. And look, of course, if only one player gets to the finish line on the technology side, then that is a problem for us. But that is not the future that I think, we think will exist. And even if you look at what's happened in China, there's not one AV company that is emerging as a winner there. There are already four or five. So I don't know why China would have four or five, which by the way will over time become eight or 10, and the rest of the world would converge around one player. I, I just don't see it emerging that way.

    12. HS

      You were at Uber when you did Uber China, no? Like-

    13. AM

      I was. Yeah, we exited our China business in 2016.

    14. HS

      Y- y- you've got kids, right?

    15. AM

      It was gnarly. I do.

    16. HS

      Yeah.

    17. AM

      I have three daughters. Yeah.

    18. HS

      Okay. See, with kids you tell them story time.

    19. AM

      Yes.

    20. HS

      Yeah.

    21. AM

      Yeah.

    22. HS

      I, I, I pretend like, you know, it's story time. What's the wildest story from Uber China?

    23. AM

      So I was only, like, sorta over China for a few months before we ultimately did the de- deal with Didi. And, like, even just those few months were like I felt like I lived years, right? Just seeing the deal process play out, all the regular emotional highs and lows that come with the deal process, but also then the specific, you know, China specific, Travis specific, like it, it was just crazy. And ultimately we got a successful outcome that I think, you know, folks would say like most Western companies did not have this. Even though we didn't win, even though we took the silver medal in China-

    24. HS

      Hmm

    25. AM

      ... um, I think we got a better outcome than the vast majority of Western companies and the vast majority of Western technology companies that try to do business in China.

    26. HS

      Do you have a crazy story, like story time for the girls?

    27. AM

      So in, in China, the, the crazy thing was you'd be negotiating-- And, and to be clear, like others were running the negotiation. I was-- We were running the business. But the, the sort of mandate behind the scenes in the negotiation was like we gotta push on investment because, like, it gave you leverage at the table, right? So if, if one side saw the other was gaining share as you were negotiating this deal, it kinda gave you relative strength, and this was happening like day by day, and both sides were just so well capitalized, right? I mean, Travis used to have a, a saying, which is like, "We need to raise more money than all our competitors in the world combined," because the basis for competition for rideshare, which is like product market fit was clear, so it was just a land grab at that point, and money helped you solve the land grab. And so we had raised immense amounts of capital. On the other hand, like so had Didi, right? And, and, and the notion that we were gonna be able to raise more than everyone in the world combined, it, it was just never gonna happen, um, past a certain point because you had players like SoftBank investing in the market as well and, you know, you, you remember those days.

    28. HS

      Yeah.

    29. AM

      Like, that was free money era, and Uber was best in the world at, at capitalizing the free money era, but there were many others that were good at it as well and ran the same playbook as us. So all that is to say, I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning 52 million a week. In China just on price subsidies because there was this heated behind-the-scenes battle happening to get to the best economics and the ultimate sort of surrender or ultimate sort of truce. Um, so that was crazy. Another story I heard which I thought was nuts, and this was not an Uber story, but, you know, before, like, when, when Uber and DiDi did our deal, um, we were the two largest players. But before there was a third player, I think it was called Kuaidi, and DiDi and Kuaidi merged, um, and they sort of merged the companies. They did a deal. You're combining HR systems, and they realized that, like, of, like, the 2,000 employees here and the 2,000 employees here, there were, like, 200 employees that were on both payrolls. And so you sort of had [chuckles] this dynamic where you started to, like, realize like, "Oh, okay, like, you know, this, this is, this is, like, real, like, deep competitive, gnarly... Like, you have employees that are wearing both hats," which was crazy to me to hear because that notion just in, like, competing in the US, it just, it's not something that I c- in a million years I could see happening.

    30. HS

      Feels like a frontier AI lab, lab employee.

  10. 34:09 – 36:49

    Uber Blew Its AI Budget in 4 Months

    1. HS

      f- what was it? A year's budget for AI in four months. [laughs] Sorry. I'm just laughing at this.

    2. AM

      No, it's, it's-

    3. HS

      Like, you go to this meeting and you're like, "So how's the budget going?" [laughs]

    4. AM

      [laughs] Well, first of all, it's not like that was like a spre- a big spreadsheet reveal-

    5. HS

      [laughs]

    6. AM

      ... and you're like, "Oh, it's gone." I think, like, budgeting for new stuff is tough, right? I mean, like-

    7. HS

      It's like me and my mother in Chanel. I'm like, "Oh, that one's gone." [laughs]

    8. AM

      I'll stay away from that.

    9. HS

      Yeah, yeah, terrifying. Um, is that evidence of incredibly effective tools, or is that evidence of a desperate need for guardrails?

    10. AM

      I firmly believe multiple things can be true at once, so let, let's come to that. Let, let me give a little bit of backstory on this 'cause we, Uber had two big AI headlines in, in the first half of this year, um, I think both of which caught at least the people involved [chuckles] by surprise. One was Praveen, um, was speaking at an event and, you know, generated this headline by saying we were through our, our AI budget in the first few months of the year. Praveen's our CTO. Um, and then I did, uh, another podcast and said, um, you know, uh, it was hard to draw a direct line from our AI spend through to useful consumer features. And both of those comments, like, caught fire i- in a way that I think neither of us expected, right? Uh, Praveen wasn't making a comment about, like, runaway spend, like we're gonna bankrupt ourselves. He was just saying, like, hey, you know, effectively, like, it's, it's hard to predict usage. Usage has been more than I thought. We've been trying to drive usage, and here we are, um, blowing through a budget. But you're setting a budget number in, like, November for a tool that's growing vertical in terms of usage. Of course, it's hard to, like, pinpoint where you're gonna be. And then my comment, h- honestly, first of all, it wasn't insightful at all. Like, it was, like, held up as this insight either as if you... It, it, it sort of showed to me the power of people reinforcing their preconceived notions, like taking a statement which is fairly innocuous on its surface, and either using it to prove their point on one side or the other. So on the one side, it was kind of like I think AI skeptics were sort of like, "See? The Uber COO is saying there's no return on AOI, or on, uh, on AI," which is obviously not what I was saying. On the other side, there was sort of this like if you were, like, a fundamentalist AI evangelist, you were saying, "This guy has no idea what he's talking about. They're obviously doing it wrong because AI is God, and, like, I, I don't touch my computer without engaging AI," right? And obviously, like, there's just nuance in the middle that is true. So m- m- the point around, like, ROI for me, it's a couple things. One is- At the end of the day, you, you, we do wanna get efficiency or we wanna get new and cool stuff built,

  11. 36:49 – 39:32

    The Real AI ROI Question

    1. AM

      and we are seeing examples of that every single day. We have stood up a pod of 30 of our best AI engineers that are partnered with business people or partnered with folks in the GNA functions to go in and go process by process and start sort of ground up with AI, how do you improve that process? And if you can take like a capital allocation process, like every week we're allocating s- pricing dollars across thousands of markets globally, and I can take that from being a 15-hour process to a two-hour process, which is what we've done, that is tremendous tangible ROI 'cause now you get two days of someone's time back. Um, if you're able to take a forecasting process, which our finance team is constantly reforecasting every inch of our business, uh, and you're able to turn that from, uh, eight hours of work into two hours of work, you're able to now do that not only with more precision 'cause you can put, um, add an additional layer of nuance into those forecasts, but you're just able to have your folks do other stuff. There's clear ROI there. If you're able to take marketing QA from two weeks to two days, like there's so many examples of that, um, that we see. And, and the, the way we've done that again is by pairing the business folks with the AI engineers. The, the second thing I think that-

    2. HS

      Are you actually seeing that today? Because Alex Karp came on CNBC or CNN and, and said like, "No, the, the ROI question is still there." Like, to, to validate what you said, to be clear. Outside of coding and customer support with the greatest of respects, I think anyone who runs a budget in a large enterprise today would say, "Yes, it, it's still not material at best."

    3. AM

      I think it's just hard to know. Like these things are just hard to quantify, and so you do have to be a bit top-down, um, and belief-based about it, right? I, I think three examples I just gave there. Assume there are dozens of more of those. The natural question is, okay, great, like how many of those people can I take out of my organization so that I get the cost back and that flows through to the bottom line or I can put it into other things? But formulaically doing that is really hard 'cause guess what? The, the eight hours of value that was created or the eight hours of excess time gets filled with some other activity, which is also like presumably high value, and maybe before wouldn't have got done to or wouldn't have been done to a level of precision. So it's just very hard. So I think the way companies ultimately have to extract AI efficiency, at least from like a pure OpEx perspective, is just in your target setting hold the constraints tighter. Like if we really believe that AI is making our employees 10% or 20% or 30% more efficient, then next year we should just not increase head

  12. 39:32 – 43:44

    How to Budget for AI When Usage Is Vertical and Unpredictable

    1. AM

      count, or we should increase it by 2% instead of 10%, or we should decrease it by 5% and say, "You all should be getting more done with less, and here are all these sub-examples of, of people doing that." But drawing the direct line between I transformed this process and therefore like I need two less operations analysts is, is really tough to do. So I do think there's ROI there, but to be able to like precisely quantify it is, is challenging.

    2. HS

      How do you think about effective budgeting then, having been through what you've been through with this kind of blowing through it in four months with the difficulty of budgeting and us both acknowledging that?

    3. AM

      Well, I, I think what you have to do is you, you have to, um, you have to create combined pools of budgets and then let the people that you trust allocate where they see a high, high ROI. So if you're talking about, you know, our, our CTO, I think it'd be totally reasonable for Dara to say, you know, "Your, your head count budget is X, our compute budget is Y. Just add X and Y together and then spend it as you see fit." And so if you want to spend relatively more, more money on compute, on inference, on whatever because you believe that's the highest ROI, do that, but it means you have less for heads. If you actually think it's more efficient to just add more engineers because there's sort of a, a compounding value to the new and novel, uh, products they will build or it's not just about, you know, throughput, then do that. But like if you make-- if you combine the pools, I think, I think that's an interesting approach. The other thing I'd say is like remember like even at the beginning of this year, the idea that you would be doing things like smart routing internally in terms of which models you're using for which tasks, the idea that you would like not only publish a AI usage leaderboard, but also a associated cost leaderboard just so people were aware, the idea that you might choose different models for different tasks from the outset or give different levels of employees different models for different tasks from the outset. Like all these things were not really happening.

    4. HS

      Do you work with providers-

    5. AM

      And so I think-

    6. HS

      Do you work with providers like Fireworks to enable efficient routing?

    7. AM

      Yes. So we, we work with external providers.

    8. HS

      Yeah.

    9. AM

      We also do some of this internally. We've done things like build dashboarding so folks are aware. I mean, we have an internal-

    10. HS

      Is that helpful? Like usage and costs. Like I, I might be brilliant, but I'm number one on the cost and I feel a bit guilty and I'm using an intense amount of compute. Is that, is that good or is it bad?

    11. AM

      Well, I think, I think at some point it's wasteful. I, I mean, you do not need the latest and greatest model from Anthropic or OpenAI to ask like, you know, "Tell me who the president was in 1945." And then like run that again for the next five presidents and then run it again for the next five. Y- you know what I mean? Like-

    12. HS

      But do the leaderboards help? I don't understand the point of them. Why would I create them?

    13. AM

      I, I definitely think visibility helps for both the usage and the cost side of the equation, right? So if I literally, you know, imagine a counter in the top right of whatever I'm... tool I'm using that is just showing me the equivalent cost of what I'm doing and as that scales, that will make you more cognizant as a user, right? If you're at the, if you're at the grocery store and you-

    14. HS

      But do I wanna be number one or do I wanna be bottom?

    15. AM

      Well, I think either extreme is probably wrong at this point, right? Because it's a question of how much value you're creating.

    16. HS

      So I wanna be mid-

    17. AM

      That's, that's where human judgment still matters.

    18. HS

      Well then there's a bad leaderboard, man.

    19. AM

      Well, I do agree that like the, sometimes tools can be so blunt as to become useful- useless because, um, folks are optimizing for the metric versus the outcomes. And we-- I do think though, there is value in everyone in our organization using the latest and grading greatest tools in their, in their spec- specific domain, right? I don't need every person in the company using Claude Code, not, not every, you know, customer support rep needs to be doing that. But for the AI assistant agent that is helping them be a better c- customer support agent, I want every single agent using that tool. And so an adoption leaderboard for that is helpful, right? And if you're not, I wanna ask the question as to why.

  13. 43:44 – 45:44

    Will Uber Have More or Less Employees in 5 Years?

    1. HS

      When you think about size of companies then in terms of people, will you have more or less people in five years?

    2. AM

      I think it's, it's interesting 'cause I'm, I am tempted to say I think we'll have less. And I think one of the reasons I'm tempted to say that is when you look at the largest teams from like a numbers of people perspective, you do have, uh, sort of disproportionate headcount in like more producing type functions, right? Um, whether it's customer support, whether it's, uh, sales, uh, or even sort of content production or analytics where you're producing reports and dashboards and these sorts of things. And I think, you know, those sorts of functions lend themselves well to first augmentation by AI and eventually I think, um, at least partial replacement by AI. And so I'm tempted to say less. The reason I won't emphatically state that is because I think that's sort of been proven wrong the last few years as AI's rolled out and employment in companies continues to grow and, uh, you find new and different ways-

    3. HS

      Does it, I mean, it really does it. Like if you look at your Shopifys and the generation that you're in, actually it hasn't, headcount stayed flat and the companies have just become much more efficient.

    4. AM

      Yeah. No, I th- I think that's... I think you could probably find examples to prove any point that you wanna believe, right? I mean, I'm not an AI doomerist from like an economy perspective. I think there's gonna be like productivity benefits, but I also think there's just be like whole new industries and fields stood up that we can't predict today, um, just like every other industrial revolution that's happened. But I can't tell you exactly what that, what that's gonna be. So within companies, I think if you thought-- if you took everything Uber does today and held it static and said, you know, "In five years you're gonna need more or less people," I'd say, "Well, we could do everything we do today with less people in five years because of the power of AI, but we're gonna be doing a whole bunch of new interesting stuff, and so maybe we need more employees to

  14. 45:44 – 51:00

    Should Enterprises Fear Frontier Model Providers?

    1. AM

      do that stuff."

    2. HS

      You said about the AI ROI question, and that was one thing that Alex Karp mentioned. The other thing that he mentioned in this kind of, um, very pertinent kind of interview was that the biggest companies would be nervous to work with Frontier Labs. Do, do you agree with that a- as someone who runs the P&L for one of the biggest businesses in the world?

    3. AM

      I mean, we, we, we work with the Frontier Labs. I, I think i- if I, I, I... You know, I, I think I watched some of the same, um-

    4. HS

      He's brilliant to watch.

    5. AM

      Yeah. I mean, amazing and I think insightful and, um, you know, the, the risk-- one of the risks that I saw him highlight was this notion that, you know, you feed all of your data to the Frontier Labs and then they stand up a competing product effectively. And so you're sort of, um... What's the expression? Like y- you know-

    6. HS

      No, but you're getting cannibalized.

    7. AM

      Y- yeah. You know, the, the, the fox in the henhouse, like you're, you're sort of opening the gate. Um, for, for us, like our experience of working with the Frontier Labs has been great and, and, um, I think we have, uh, experimented on multiple fronts. We are moving from experimentation to implementation and scale on a bunch of areas where we're seeing ROI. So I haven't seen that yet, but I certainly get that argument, and I think there are companies that have fallen victim to that, and he gave a bunch of examples.

    8. HS

      I totally get it. I think you put Uber in the less, um, penetrable by Frontier Labs. I would really give you-

    9. AM

      Look, I, I mean we, we have this like physical world component to our business-

    10. HS

      Yeah

    11. AM

      ... that, that makes it challenging to do that. Like I, I don't know that I see OpenAI launching a ride-sharing service anytime and going around to tens of thousands of cities around the world and getting locally, locally licensed and then putting boots on the ground to run a physical world service. I, I, you know, I, I think, you know, many of the places we play, it's just doesn't lend itself well to that extensibility of their model.

    12. HS

      See, I disagree. I, I've always known that Dario in particular was very passionate about last mile delivery in Barcelona for convenience food.

    13. AM

      Yes. [laughs]

    14. HS

      One of his big things. [laughs] AGI-

    15. AM

      Well, they don't have to be on the watch out for that. Totally

    16. HS

      ... AGI and refreshments in Barcelona. [laughs]

    17. AM

      No, look, the physical world a- aspect to our business is like hard, but also-

    18. HS

      So hard

    19. AM

      ... it also means like I think some of the worst prognostications haven't come true, right? I mean, even the transaction level, right? The, the big conversations we were having in our leadership team like 18 months ago is like, "What's gonna happen to the consumer front end?" The disaggregation risk on both delivery and mobility is that people wanna start their, uh, you know, their Uber ride with a, a plain language query and like it hasn't-

    20. HS

      Well, that's interesting. Where, where, where do you land on that, like... 'Cause I, I was speaking about this with really smart people. Um, and they talk about kind of agents and how agents will route you to provider and you have no customer loyalty. How do you think about the disaggregation of UI and an agent-led decision making?

    21. AM

      So this is, this is where I think there's some interesting questions about what information do you provide to the various consumer front ends, uh, e- either from the Frontier Labs or others, because at some point maybe you're giving away that, that c- Front end of the consumer experience in a way that is non-strategic. So, you know, I don't want to be aggregated on price, right? I, I, I, you know, we've not participated historically in the aggregation apps where some- you know, somebody will come to us and pitch and say, "Hey, you know, give us, give us, um, APIs that give us real-time info on every car, every Uber car in the network, um, uh, what the price of that ride is, whatever other characteristics you can feed us. And because we're gonna build an app, and then we're also gonna put Lyft in there, and we're gonna put other providers in there, and then that'll be incremental business for you." I- I've been against that. I mean, I, I wanna be the front end. I want people to start at the Uber app for the Uber experience. Um, and I think today we, we win that front e- uh, that, that first look with 200 million consumers and growing, uh, every month. So there's a real question there. Like, a- and, and we were... W- we've been worried and discussing like, "Hey, you know, if I've-- Is somebody gonna just put into ChatGPT or Claude like, you know, 'Get me, get me my usual Uber.'" Um, and I could imagine a world where like the query starts there. The challenge is like we have a very managed transaction, right?

    22. HS

      Does that damage your business though? Get me an Uber. The transaction is still you.

    23. AM

      It, it doesn't damage the business, and I would of course fulfill that query, right? I think there's a question as to, you know, compare the prices of Uber, Lyft, and Waymo and get me the cheapest one. Like does that damage my business? Well, no, if we're winning on the cheapest price every time. But if today 80% of people just start with Uber, do I, do I need-- do I want them to merge to, to migrate over to a service where they say they go to a comparison app, whether that's a, a-

    24. HS

      Or they just say, "Get me a car" and then-

    25. AM

      Get me a car and then they're different

    26. HS

      ... time of the day and price and then just-

    27. AM

      Yeah. I think the challenge though is that like it's a managed transaction, both on delivery side and on the transportation side. All the little things that happen between saying, "Get me an Uber," and you being done that ride that can, that go wrong, the interaction between the driver and the rider, the visual experience of the pickup experience. I left something in the car,

  15. 51:00 – 57:25

    How Uber Is Using AI Agents Internally

    1. AM

      your payment creden- like all these pieces that you sort of take for granted, um, that needs to be figured out, right? This is not a e-commerce transaction where you sort of set it and forget it. You don't think about it until the package is on your doorstep. It is a managed transaction, and so I, I... That, that, that sort of worst fear hasn't played out yet, and I'm not saying it won't. I mean, Brian Chesky got kinda roasted, but I thought it was an insightful point when he said it's not clear to him that like the, the right interface for hotel booking is a chat interface, and he was kinda called a, a Luddite and this and that. But like I, I think he was right. Like some experiences are more visual, some experiences are more managed. Um, and-

    2. HS

      But I think it depends if it's transactional.

    3. AM

      It depends.

    4. HS

      Like which is like, "Hey, get me a hotel for my trip to London to see Harry." You probably don't care about it having a sea view and being romantic for you and your wife, but you want it close to the office and efficient from a pricing perspective and compliant with your HR-

    5. AM

      Yeah

    6. HS

      ... requi-

    7. AM

      Yeah.

    8. HS

      That denigrates the market.

    9. AM

      Yep.

    10. HS

      Like, you know, I, I host a show which is very popular actually, um, with, uh, two other investors who are much more insightful than me, and they talk about the Fortnitification of markets, which is just like the shrinking of markets.

    11. AM

      Yeah. Yeah.

    12. HS

      And like, don't get me wrong, Airbnb is an amazing business.

    13. AM

      Yeah. No, I think it's-

    14. HS

      But if you remove the transactional booking travel, well, then it just becomes experiential booking travel.

    15. AM

      Yeah.

    16. HS

      Smaller.

    17. AM

      Yeah. No, I think it's a reasonable perspective, and it hasn't happened yet, but I think-

    18. HS

      What, what do you do then to get ahead of it?

    19. AM

      A, like I, I wanna be where the consumers are. So like ultimately we've chosen to participate.

    20. HS

      Participate with the like OpenAI's.

    21. AM

      The, the... Yeah, but, but like really any of the large companies if they wanna do something interesting with us on the consumer front end, we'll have that conversation. Um-

    22. HS

      And can you participate though if you won't give them the data?

    23. AM

      Well, I think that's always a negotiation or discussion around like how much do you need? Where does the trans... Like there's a, a... There's 15 different flavors to this, right? The transaction can originate in different channels and then end in the Uber app. You have to define who has responsibilities for things along the way. What is the consu- so i- if you, if you go into ChatGPT and say... Or even this hotel booking example. What happens if the hotel needs to send Harry a message because, uh, you asked for early check-in and they can't give it to you? Is that back through the AI? Is that coming directly from the hotel? Who bears the cost of that? Like th- these sort of like there's operational elements to the experience that it needs to be sorted. And I'm not saying this can't get sorted, but it's not as simple as the... Y- y- you shouldn't picture the experience that goes right as the sort of archetype of what this usually looks like because it's the experience that goes wrong or requires some level of management that needs to be solved for.

    24. HS

      One of my very dear friends is CEO of one of the largest airlines in the world. He says, "You have no fucking idea how hard my business is. If your baggage is 12 minutes late, I will have 50 fucking emails, and I do five- 5,000 flights every single day."

    25. AM

      Yeah. Totally. And I'm not like, um, you know, I'm, I'm not like... We're not naive or being like, "No, no, our business is different. It's hard." Like every business is hard, but I do think these things need to be sorted out.

    26. HS

      Can I ask you one... You, you bought Delivery Hero.

    27. AM

      Yeah.

    28. HS

      Um, I know Niklas really well. Interviewed him. Really like him. Brilliant guy. Know Oscar from Glovo. Really like him. Why buy it, not just dominate? Like is it not just like a market maturation question and you will slowly crush over time?

    29. AM

      Look, I mean, I think it, it's s- so first of all, I'll say like Uber has been on this journey, right? I, I, I often get asked the question of, you know, what business is gonna be bigger long term or like where is there a larger TAM? But like-

    30. HS

      What food or mobility?

  16. 57:25 – 59:45

    Andrew Now Running Uber Eats Directly: The Three-Sided Marketplace Problem

    1. AM

      look, I grew up in the mobility business, right? For, uh, from 2012 to 2025, I spent 90% of my waking hours and most of my sleeping hours thinking about mobility. Uh, and rideshare primarily, but all the other mobility verticals we've built. Um, as I said, I don't think there's anyone in the world who spent more hours thinking about rideshare. Um, delivery, I've kind of managed teams over the years that have serviced the delivery business. It, it came into like my portfolio, quote unquote, "14 months ago." Um, actually for the last couple months I've been directly running the delivery business. We, we had our, our, our leader of the delivery business left and, uh, I took her role and I've been doing sort of two jobs, my day job and my night job, and I literally had to, have had to schedule an evening shift 'cause there's just no way to fit my operating cadence in.

    2. HS

      Are you just a machine? You are an efficient executor.

    3. AM

      [laughs]

    4. HS

      And even the way that you present, it's like it's efficient.

    5. AM

      It's, it's... Well, look, I mean, everyone is like struggling to find enough hours in the day. Um, the... And, and Uber right now, like the teams are pushing hard and, and I'm, I'm worried that like some of our teams are, are gonna run out of gas. Like, you know, you can only push above the red line for so long, um, 'cause, you know, we just have a lot of opportunity, but also a lot of challenges. And we're, we're best in a crisis. We're best with a challenge in front of us. We're best when we feel like, um, we're up against the world a little bit. That's our DNA, and so I, I'm kind of inspired by that, but it's hard right now. And, and, and personally I'm, as I said, I'm working sort of two jobs that... But, but back to your like, which is your favorite business. I'm, I'm working in the delivery business and directly pulling the levers myself for the first time ever in, in my tenure at Uber, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a very complex business. Uh, you know, three-sided marketplace versus two. I think much more complexity in terms of what the consumer actual values. The inputs that matter, you know, the, the speed, uh, the sort of, uh, sort of price, reliability, safety on the mobility side. It's a longer list on the delivery side of things that you have to nail. And so it's interesting. Uh, it's hard. Uh, we are not number one in the US, which also makes it harder because I think operating from a position of strength just gives you a nice tailwind. And so we're having to play the challenger role, which

  17. 59:45 – 1:02:29

    Why Uber Eats Is Not #1 in the US

    1. AM

      we relish, but it also changes the game a bit.

    2. HS

      Some of my friends who are old Uberites, who I'm sure you know, but I'll keep them out, um, say, "If Travis were here, we'd be number one in food." Is that true?

    3. AM

      Well, I mean-

    4. HS

      I love Dara. I love Dara. Like-

    5. AM

      No, no. I, I-

    6. HS

      I don't know Travis, so like... [laughs]

    7. AM

      No, I, I... and look, like the reality is I think anyone who operates anything that says, "If X were this, this would be different." Like, you know, it's a little bit of that like in the arena quote. Like if you're not in the arena, it's easy to sit on the sidelines and say, "Oh, if, if I were in the arena, or if so and so were in the arena, it would be different." And it's fair to have that opinion, but when you're operating a business, it's hard and you have trade-offs to make, and you get things wrong, and you get things right, and you don't get credit for the things you get right. You certainly feel the blame and take the blame for the things you get wrong. So I, I don't know that there's an alternative history. Like DoorDash is an excellent company. I think Tony's a tremendous entrepreneur and founder. They operate really well. They move quickly. They're aggressive. They take risk. They're well capitalized. Like We have lots of competitors and-

    8. HS

      Did you ever have the chance to buy them?

    9. AM

      Uh, you know, you, you hear things. As I said, I was on the mobility side of the business. I, I don't know if that was ever a realistic possibility or not. Um, of course, there's always speculation, but I, I, I, I don't, I don't know. Um-

    10. HS

      Do, do you know one of the best answers I got advised on? Dear friend Shakeel Khan, who is, um, Daniel Ek's right-hand man.

    11. AM

      Okay.

    12. HS

      He says, "If you ever you get a question you don't want, just go, 'Hey, mate, that's above my pay grade.'"

    13. AM

      [laughs]

    14. HS

      "I'm just, I'm just a podcaster, me." [laughs]

    15. AM

      That's a good way to handle it.

    16. HS

      "Hey, it's just like me? Nah."

    17. AM

      Um, no, I mean, I, I honestly don't know the answer to that question. The, the-

    18. HS

      Was Postmates a good acquisition? 'Cause that seemed like a bit of a nuts one, to be honest. Like, they were running out of cash. It was a, it was a challenge business. When I saw that, I was like, "Phew, they've got balls at Uber."

    19. AM

      I, I mean, look, I think it's, it's, um... We, we've, we've-- In, in my opinion, I think we probably get a harder, uh, a, a harder rep on M&A than, than is deserved because in many cases, a deal that from the outside, like, you question or you're not sure what you got out of it, like, actually leaps forward internal capabilities that you, you didn't know. You learn things from the acquisition, you get good talent, you see where you have gaps, et cetera. Um, I think in the case of Postmates-- And again, this is where, like, I'm a sideline observer, right? I could sit here and tell you that was the greatest deal in the world or no, we shouldn't have done it, but the reality is, like, I wasn't in the game at that time on the delivery side, so I don't actually know the answer to that. But, um, Postmates has a strong brand, a strong follow-- uh, followership, and some strong geographic pockets, and I think we've been able to build on

  18. 1:02:29 – 1:09:33

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. AM

      those.

    2. HS

      Are you ready for a quick fire?

    3. AM

      Sure, let's do it.

    4. HS

      Otherwise, I'm gonna get in trouble from Nerf taking too much of your time-

    5. AM

      [laughs]

    6. HS

      ... and you actually have to be productive in London. Um, what have you changed your mind on most significantly in the last 12 months?

    7. AM

      [sighs] I mean, I'm a, I'm a humanity bull, and I'm, I'm really sort of becoming more interested and obsessed with longevity, and I actually do think we're gonna solve, you know, all of human disease at some point, and the idea of, I don't know if live forever, but live a very long time is gonna be a possible thing, and I've gotten more conviction there over the-

    8. HS

      I, I saw the whoop. OpenAI or Anthropic?

    9. AM

      OpenAI. For, for me, I use both. The, uh, as we were chatting about earlier, I use voice so much. Like, it's my single most used AI feature by a mile, probably 50X anything else, is I record notes, emails, thoughts, lists. Like, I'm constantly working via voice, and I f- I find OpenAI's voice engine incredible.

    10. HS

      I write my investor updates by voice. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Um, okay. What's one thing that you most took from working with Travis? Like, single biggest lesson.

    11. AM

      I'm gonna give you two.

    12. HS

      Ooh.

    13. AM

      He, he's a problem solver. Like, he, he, he will define what, what he is and what he looks for in others as creative problem solving. The ability for him to walk into any meeting on any topic, ask a few pointed questions, float a few ideas, and in 15 minutes sort of change the minds or change the thinking or evolve the thinking of the people in the room who have spent, like, weeks as experts on this topic is amazing. And to then go through every day, every week, half an hour, half an hour, half an hour into the evenings and just, like, do that muscle over and over and over again is so value add. And so I think if, as leaders, we can play that role on-- like, do a microcosm of that, maybe not that good, you can move the ball forward a lot. So sort of creative problem solving as, as a skill that is valued in an organization is probably the top thing I took. Um, I think the second is... And, and I think back to sort of the all-hands that, that he would host, where he would not only give an answer to a question, but he would explain his thinking on why that was the answer. I think that's exceptionally value- valuable in leaders, to take people through why what you say is, is, and it helps them. It creates mini versions of yourself, right? And so I think if you can do that across your organization where you tell people how you got to an answer, you, you, you're amplifying the power of the organization. So the way I try to do that is by setting down principles, right? For having principles for how I wanna think about a given problem, a given solution area, or whatever, and then having my people try to use those principles as they think about the problem themselves.

    14. HS

      What's your biggest takeaway from working with Dara on the flip side?

    15. AM

      I think the, the most impactful quote I've heard from Dara that I think speaks to who he is, is, "Management comes from an org chart. Leadership comes from the heart." And, and what he means by that is w- we can create rules and structures and hierarchy, and we can try to follow what the bureaucracy says, but at the end of the day, we have leaders at all level of the company that are the ones who actually push the company forward, and those are the people who are leading with both the head and the heart, and those are the people that build followership, and that's exactly who Dara is. He, he will not ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself. He's the first one over the fence. He's the first one on the plane to go where the company needs him. Low ego, lots of heart. He pushes, but it generally comes from a good place, which makes people wanna be successful for him and makes people wanna say, like, "What do you need me to do?" And that's really powerful.

    16. HS

      You worked with both. We both know the politics that was around. Very few people were able to work with both, and they were like, "I'm a Travis," or, "I'm the Dara era," with the greatest of respect. I didn't wanna get in... What made you able to be a OG with both?

    17. AM

      I, I think, um- For me, like first of all, I think they're both excellent-

    18. HS

      Yeah

    19. AM

      ... in, in their own domains. And I think Dara is exact- was exactly the right leader for Uber when he came in and continues to be exactly the right leader for the company today. And, um, they're different, but it's not any easier. Um, the... You know, for me, it's like it kind of comes back to where we started, like, like almost your first question in the interview, which is like when, when times have been hard at Uber, I've not wanted to leave because I didn't-- I felt like it was the wrong thing for Uber. I'd be leaving my teammates behind, and it just didn't feel like the right thing to do. And then when times are good at Uber, I want to stay because this is fun. We're building, we're conquering the world. And so it's been hard for me through the worst times and the best times to ever think about leaving, and that's true regardless of, of who the CEO has been. Um, I also firmly believe that you-- like people need to take what they can get from their leaders, from their managers, from their boss. And you're not gonna get everyone from-- everything from any one individual. And so I've been able to learn a lot from both of them, and I think that's been really great.

    20. HS

      Final one for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

    21. AM

      We, we hired a, a, a woman, Rachel Whetstone, to run our, um, communications and policy team, I want to say around, uh, 2015 or 2016, and she sent a, the speech of a commencement address she gave, uh, to the whole company in her first week. And in that, the, the sort of central thesis was always say yes, just jump at the next adventure. And it really resonated with me because I think you can always analyze a career opportunity. Should I tackle this problem? I'm being asked to do X. I'm not sure if I'm going to be good at it. Seems like there's a lot of risk. And I always just tell people, just say yes, because, A, bet on yourself. You're gonna get in there. It's gonna be hard. You're gonna figure it out. You're gonna be better off for it, and the company will be better off. Or maybe it will be too much for you, but you'll learn a lot from that failure, and you'll just be a better version of yourself. So I, I think just say yes.

    22. HS

      Honestly, dude, I, I've really so enjoyed this. Yeah, I do lots of shows and ep- episodes like this remind me why I love what I do so much. So thank you so much for doing it-

    23. AM

      I appreciate it

    24. HS

      ... and for being so brilliant. Honestly, amazing.

    25. AM

      Thank you. Awesome. So great to be here.

Episode duration: 1:09:44

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