David SenraTravis Kalanick on Building Uber, Fighting China & Losing Control
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
95 min read · 18,500 words- 0:00 – 3:51
Building Atoms & the Meta Problem of Management
- DSDavid Senra
[instrumental music] I want to start with atoms.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You have this great line on the website that I actually love. It's this awesome sentence. It says, "Physical world autonomy requires AI for the physical world. This kind of intelligence requires computation we haven't invented, at an efficiency we can't yet fathom, with deep learning models to understand and act in the physical world that don't yet exist." Tell us what you're building.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Let's start with the mission. It's easier that way. Physical automation to transform industries. So you start there. You can sort of go, it's almost Socratic, like what does that mean? And sort of in the terms that people use today, it's physical AI and robotics to transform industry. And you go, "Okay, well, uh, so what is it, a humanoid?" And no, it's not. It's not-- It's-- I, I wouldn't call myself anti-humanoid, it's just what we're doing is not that. It's specialized robotics, that it's not like we make robotics, and anybody can have some. It's more like robotics and AI that go after an industry, one industry at a time. And in the industries, we think it makes massive moves, big moves. And once we get our sea legs, we go to the next, and the next. If you're doing it really well, I, I like to say that, um, the only constraint on our imagination is management capacity.
- DSDavid Senra
What does that mean?
- TKTravis Kalanick
We're solving problems every day. If I have to solve lots of small problems because I don't have a lot of management capacity under me, we're not gonna do very much. I'm gonna be constrained in what portion of my imagination can become possible, like real. But if you have lots of management capacity, lots of problem-solving capacity, then those constraints unwind.
- DSDavid Senra
So how do you broaden and expand the management capacity you have?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Okay, so why don't we step back and talk a little bit about... Like, I have a lot of, uh, frameworks for this kind of stuff. One of them I, I call the meta problem. Imagine if you had this equation, which is, uh, the derivative of problem-solving DT, uh, must always be greater than or equal to the derivative of problem creation DT. And if that's ever not true, you have a real problem. I call that the meta problem. So what's happening is, is that if you are creating problems faster than you can solve them, then you're kinda effed. But when you create problems, like in an Uber context would be like, "Let's go to China," that's creating a problem, right? Now, the way I think about problems, I don't think about them in a negative way. I think about problems the way like a math professor would think about a problem, is a math professor without interesting problems to solve is a sad math professor. Yeah. So it's like a good thing. So you wanna create interesting things to solve. You wanna create problems to solve. You have to predict well the nature of the problem and your ability and capacity to solve it. You create a problem today, you may not understand the nature of the problem-solving you're gonna have to do. You have to predict it, and those problems start coming ashore in like six months in like a real heavy way, and maybe even longer. And so you have to be good at predicting what it's the nature of that problem and saying, "Okay, well, what is my m-management capacity to solve it?" If that equation gets out of balance, then you have to stop problem creation while you get the solving going so that you're not drowning anymore,
- 3:51 – 12:19
The Appeal of Impossible Problems: Starting Over in China
- TKTravis Kalanick
right?
- DSDavid Senra
Can you give us an example of what happened in China then?
- TKTravis Kalanick
I mean, China was, like, amazing but very difficult and in some ways impossible to predict. Let's go to China. Sounds like fun.
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles]
- TKTravis Kalanick
It was a, it was a, a super awesome adventure because what happened was, is I was like, "Sounds cool." And I got-- it was 2000-- probably 2013 or early '13. Uber started in 2010, so it was still early crew. And I got a crew of folks, like super OG guys, and we stayed in an apartment in China for a week or two, a week and a half, two weeks, something like that, and met with everybody we could. It's actually when I first met Wan Xing, uh, uh, at Meituan, actually. Um, and he told me I was crazy. "Don't do it. It's the worst idea ever."
- DSDavid Senra
What was your response when people tell you, "You're crazy. It's not gonna work"?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Like, that's the best thing ever. Okay? So I mean, we're-- there's many threads here. We're, we're already poking through a bunch of them.
- DSDavid Senra
We're, we're gonna go everywhere, man. Let's go. [chuckles]
- TKTravis Kalanick
Okay. So in engineering, we call this BFS, breadth-first search, so I'm not able to go deep. We're like we're painting the breadth of the tree before we're going deep. So, uh, we have a cultural value for that at Uber, and I've pulled it into our new value system at, into my value system at my current company. Uh, but it's called super pumped, which is about infectious enthusiasm about the hard things. The harder it is, the more weird, gnarly, whatever words, whatever superlative you wanna put in front of it, the more awesome it would be to solve it.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
The more excited I get.
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles]
- TKTravis Kalanick
And the problems that are more awesome to solve are the ones that people think are, are impossible to solve. Sometimes people think something is impossible, they perceive it that way, but it's very possible, but it's actually easy. And there's other ones that people think are impossible that are super difficult, but possible.
- DSDavid Senra
That's how you think about Atoms now, right? When I hear you speak about it, and when I read about it, you're like, "This is going to be super difficult, but it is possible."
- TKTravis Kalanick
So Atoms is the name of my company. We just named it this. It came from a, a cr- a crazy obscure name that was done on purpose. We basically went ultra stealth. But the real question is, is coming out of Uber, what was the next thing and why? And it is Atoms. We just started calling it that now. I was yearning or had a penchant for, an affinity for something that's super hard, super complicated.
- DSDavid Senra
Have you always been like that? Or was the exper- like was the experience of Uber that crystallized how important that was? When did this, this desire-
- TKTravis Kalanick
It's alway- it's always been this way, which is i- and I think it's funny how you got there because it's like that feeling when somebody tells you something that is impossible and you're like, "Is that right?" [laughs] And that-- And I'm like, "Watch this." I've always had that. Like even when I was a kid, I'd always have a sparkle in my eye to do something somebody was like, "Shit." That kind of thing.
- DSDavid Senra
Did you know at-- when you started it, like how-- There's no way you could've known like how difficult it was, right? Did you like, "This is a hairy problem. I'm gonna, there's, I'm gonna be fighting with every regulator"?
- TKTravis Kalanick
No, there's a complexity, there's a complexity to it that was part of the attraction.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay. And you saw that-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... from the, from the first spot?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, from the very early days I knew it was complicated. I didn't understand exactly how it was complicated.
- DSDavid Senra
I'm very curious, what you said was very interesting.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You're creating all these problems.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Some of the problems you're creating are not coming ashore, I think is the word you used, for another-
- TKTravis Kalanick
It takes time to, to see what the nature of the problem is that you created.
- DSDavid Senra
So can you give an example of like ch- a, a problem you're creating when you start in China, how long it takes to come ashore, and what happens when it does?
- 12:19 – 21:02
Uber vs. Didi: Copycats, Hypergrowth & China’s Rules
- TKTravis Kalanick
We, um, we eventually rolled out. So Uber Black was one thing, much smaller than like a Didi thing. There was another company called Kuaidi.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
And we were just in this corner sort of doing a niche thing, which is a super high-end thing in China, which is like so niche, right? An S-class in China at that time is like very... It's thin. I mean, we're growing, it was fun, but it was thin. But I think it was 2014, I believe it was '14. Y- yeah, I believe it was '14, must've been, where we, we basically said, "Okay, we're gonna do ridesharing in China." Nobody had done that. Didi was taxis, and if anybody who's used a taxi app with taxis, the problem is you're a second-class citizen, meaning taxis want people to wave them down. They don't wanna take rides from an app where they have to give a percentage of the revenue to some middleman. That's not a thing.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
So it sort of will f- fill in the gaps, but it's not their main jam. But we went to full rideshare, which is like peer-to-peer ridesharing where anybody driving a car could offer a ride to a citizen in the city.
- DSDavid Senra
Which before you did not exist at all in China.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Certainly not coordinated by an app.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
This is now a ridesharing p- what, what is at the time called peer-to-peer ridesharing. Think of... You know, some people would think of Lyft or UberX, this kind of thing in the US context. Uh, but what we called it was the people's Uber. And so in the app, you'd open it up, and it was red cars.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
But we became Chinese. We had a sh- a massive, awesome brand there because we cared, and we were passionate about the user, uh, the customer in ways that these other companies just weren't. But what was interesting about what was going on with Didi was that while we were in- inventing, innovating, they were copying. And these guys were so good at copying, it was kind of... It was almost an art form. To be able to copy as quickly and fiercely as they did was like warrior mentality in its own right. But it was like, I like to say like the, the, the place to be is, is like a bra- brave heart, which is like the warrior poet. These guys are just pure warriors.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
There's no poetry. They weren't creating the new thing. They were copying. Man, they were copying, but almost to a level of poetry in their ability to copy and the speed at which they were able to do it.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Right? But while they were getting ready copying it, it was a very wild sort of half technology, half regulatory arbitrage, very bold. It took them a while to copy, and while that happened, [whooshing sound] it went vertical.
- DSDavid Senra
Uber did?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, Uber did. And I'd say als- like so vertical it almost leaned to the left.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
Like it almost started bending.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
The curve almost bent to the left, okay? [laughs] And, um, that was what it was. The opportunity was massive, where we would basically, at some point, probably our top 10 cities were all Chinese cities.
- DSDavid Senra
That's wild.
- TKTravis Kalanick
In rides.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Not in revenue, because the rides instead of like at the... in my day, 13 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever, they were... these were like three bucks-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm
- TKTravis Kalanick
... two bucks type stuff, right? I remember we were doing this fundraise in China. We had to raise money in China because we... I mean, it was a huge... I mean, it was just pulling a huge amount of money.
- DSDavid Senra
You mean you were burning a ton of money?
- TKTravis Kalanick
We were burning a lot of money.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- 21:02 – 31:48
How Network Effects Become an Efficiency Fortress
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
But they at some point felt like we were, we may win. And instead of really seeing super problems at the... We didn't... For the most part, we were treated fairly at the cities, for the most part, not completely, but for the most part. But what happened was the, uh, what I would ca- what I'd say at the time is that the China war went global. So we were spending, let's say, tens of millions of dollars a month fighting Didi in all these cities, and the fight was like, uh, I needed to subsidize rides-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm
- TKTravis Kalanick
... to gain market share. When I gain market share, there's network effect because if I'm bigger, then my system is more efficient, and if I'm more efficient than them, they have to subsidize more than I do to compete with me. So how do I subsidize where, when, how to get that efficiency edge, that network effect efficiency edge so that I subsidize less than them? This is why, you know, like, Lyft is smaller than Uber because we were better at this part of this, the thing, and people don't really know that's what it takes. It's... But, like, how do you get efficiency edge? Efficiency edge starts when somebody even downloads the app and signs up. If it's easier to sign up on one versus another, you have an efficiency edge. If it's easier to call a vehicle and, like, get it to you without problems, you have an efficiency edge 'cause you'll have less support. You'll have less... Like, people are getting their higher completion rates. Like, if the cars are moving to where the demand is because they, the driver app has good sort of ways to point drivers to the right place, that means you have shorter pickup time. Efficiency edge. Efficiency edge means you get bigger faster. You get bigger faster means you have a bigger network of drivers, which means wherever you are in the city, you are gonna get a faster pickup, um, and it will be cheaper because, well, if there's less dead time for the driver to pick you up, then if he's generally trying to optimize for dollars per hour, then, then the whole thing just starts working better. That's the network effect. So you're like, "Okay, how do I get bigger?" Well, I'll make the rides really cheap. That's one way of doing it. And if your rides are cheaper than them, then all of a sudden your network gets bigger. Your network gives you efficiency, which then means you can get to a lower price point without subsidies that the competitor still has to subsidize.
- DSDavid Senra
You'd make money, uh, profit at a p- a place where they would make a loss and... The robber barons all understood this.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes. This is like you can go-
- DSDavid Senra
Rockefeller, Carnegie-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Absolutely
- DSDavid Senra
... all of them did.
- TKTravis Kalanick
100%.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. When you're talking, I'm like, "Shit, this is Rockefeller."
- TKTravis Kalanick
It, it totally. So I, I read, uh, I think it was a Chernow biography.
- DSDavid Senra
Of Titan?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, there's actually a better one I'm gonna send you.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And what it is is this book from 1970 by David Freeman Hawk, it's called Rockefeller: The Founding Father-- John D., the Founding Father of the Rockefellers. Titan is 800 pages, and you got a lot about his, like, family history. This is, like, 250 pages of how he built Standard Oil, and it's-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... this shit.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
It is exactly what you're describing.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
I wanna interrupt you one second before you go back to China.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
My question to you now is, like, I spend- Thousands of dollars a month on Uber.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And I only use Uber at Black SV.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
It's insane. What ... In a, in a, in a, a, a mature market in the United States, in these big cities that I'm using Uber-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- 31:48 – 44:05
Capitalism vs. the Taxi Cartel
- TKTravis Kalanick
I think the other thing about monopolies too is there's, there are different ways, they're different things because sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is so competitive. Sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is anti-competitive, and they're different.
- DSDavid Senra
That's interesting. Say more about this.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. Well, where I ended up at Uber was it basically sort of the motto was more like, "The one who serves the customer best gets all the customers."
- DSDavid Senra
Very Bezos.
- TKTravis Kalanick
That's where we ended up. So you can be highly competitive. And look, we had never at Uber, we never got a regulation passed that would hurt a competitor. We never would do that. That's just not how we rolled. We never donated to a campaign, ever, to try to get something passed.
- DSDavid Senra
You wanted to win because you built the best service.
- TKTravis Kalanick
That's right.
- DSDavid Senra
I'm reading this b- biography right now. It was published in 1975. It's on the founder of Honda, who's competing in Japan. Po- he founds Honda 1948. Japan's in ruins.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And they're-- the, the technology in Japan is really low at the time, and so all these, all of his, the people that are building motorcycles-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... and cars, they're like, "Let's bui- bui- uh, let's get together and petition the government to not allow imports." And he's like, and he was the only one that voted against it. He goes, "No, no, no." He goes, "The way to win is to build the superior technology."
- TKTravis Kalanick
No. Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
'Cause if we have the best product, that product will go, it won't just-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... be profitable in Japan-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... it'll spread throughout the entire world.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Very much like what you're saying here is like-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... "No, I don't want protectionism. I wanna win because I built the best product."
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, and-
- DSDavid Senra
"Customers are choosing it."
- TKTravis Kalanick
And also remember what we were overcoming to do what we do was a system that was perfectly anti-competitive.
- DSDavid Senra
Can you explain what that-
- TKTravis Kalanick
A government, a government-condoned monopoly or a government-condoned cartel called taxi.
- DSDavid Senra
People don't understand this. Can you explain the environment in which you started Uber?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Let's start with what is a taxi [laughs] . Okay, what is a taxi? Um, we'll do New York 'cause it's the best, it's the best way to tell it. In the early 1900s, there were people that were picking up other citizens, uh, that needed a ride across town and charging them for it. And, um, eventually, the city decided, "Hey, look, we wanna have this to be licensed and controlled in some way," or, like, certainly rules of the road, just rules of the road. So you'd get a license, but anybody could get a license. You'd get that license for free, and they would make sure, like, you weren't, like, a felon and, like, different things like this, which you'd go, "That sounds great. Good idea." But anybody could get a license and get it for free, a taxi license in New York. And eventually, that number got to, I don't know, somewhere around thirteen thousand. And then those thirteen thousand people who had licenses, this is now, like, let's call it the 1920s, the 1930s, decided that they would lobby the city to give no more licenses out. And the city, they, they did some deals. Who knows, you know, that era in New York, you know, how that went down. But no more licenses. And of course, that was great for the people who had them because as the city was growing, there's more and more demand to get across town, but there are a fixed number of licenses. People who could do it were allowed to do it. Then the taxi guys go to city council, and they, they lobby again. And the next version of the lobbying is, "We wanna be able to sell the license to somebody else." So now I have this thing. Now it's known as a medallion. Now I can, I can... It's l- it's sort of artificial scarcity. Um, and I can sell it to somebody else who wants to get a cash flow that's an artificially high cash flow because nobody's allowed to compete, essentially. And then they went to city council one more time, and they said, "We wanna be able to lease out this license to an individual on a daily or weekly basis." And that is the modern taxi system today. When Uber rolled into New York, uh, the driver was getting a twelve-hour shift seven days a week, but there are two twelve-hour shifts. Each of those drivers was paying forty thousand dollars a year to rent a car for half time.
- DSDavid Senra
Insane
- 44:05 – 54:04
The China War Goes Global & the Entrepreneur’s Capacity for Pain
- TKTravis Kalanick
outlawed.
- DSDavid Senra
How does the China Didi Uber story end? Did they, the government put the hand on the scale and favor Didi over Uber?
- TKTravis Kalanick
So they ultimately did. What happened was is the China war went global, and what happened is the sovereign wealth, uh, their sovereign wealth funds in China started pouring billions of dollars into my competitors, Uber's competitors in different regions, so that they would subsidize in those regions and drain my resources.
- DSDavid Senra
Wait, before you go there, take me your mindset when you realize the game that they're playing.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. I mean, you're like, "Damn."
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
"That's real." [laughs] You're like-
- DSDavid Senra
What are you, like, not sleeping? Are you, like-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, I mean, the entire Uber thing was, like, a lack of sleep, you know? So it wasn't like this was a new lack of sleep thing.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
It was just... I mean, it was a new thing, but lack of sleep generally was a thing, just because I had a global business that was really intense and, and very game theory oriented in the ways that I'm describing, which means it was always on, and crazy, weird things happen in cars at night. So, uh, like, uh, the first time I got woken up in the middle of the night because there was a, a drive-by shooting from an Uber.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
You know what I mean?
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Like, that's not good.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
The, the thing is is that w- what happens in a city happens in an Uber. And so you're-
- DSDavid Senra
And, and you're exposed to all the vagaries of human behavior.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, the, the roads, the roads are the cardiovascular system for the city. There's nothing that happens in a city that a road doesn't touch. You know, people are people. They do things they shouldn't do. What we... Our goal was to make Uber the safest place in a city, and I think we accomplished that. We got pretty close to that, um, and I know they take it pretty seriously today.
- DSDavid Senra
But go back to the stress. Like, you wanted the stress, right?
- TKTravis Kalanick
It was fun.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay. So Herb Kelleher, do you know who that is? Founder of-
- TKTravis Kalanick
That's Southwest
- DSDavid Senra
... Southwest Airlines.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Most successful airline in history.
- TKTravis Kalanick
For sure.
- DSDavid Senra
40 straight years was, was profitable.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And you know, P- he, he has what? He was a gangster, right?
- 54:04 – 58:21
Life After Uber: Lawfare, Media Narratives & Reputation
- DSDavid Senra
How long did you take from when you left Uber, which obviously had to be fucking devastating, heartbreaking-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... to jumping into the next thing? Did you sit on the beach for a little bit? Like, what did you actually do?
- TKTravis Kalanick
No. So it was, like, seven months, six, seven months, something like this, and most of it was, uh, fending off lawfare.
- DSDavid Senra
So wait, the lawfare, was it criminal, or were they trying to, like-
- TKTravis Kalanick
It was civil and criminal.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- TKTravis Kalanick
For sure. Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
So you're fighting off that for a little while.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, it's like a corporate cancel culture, lawfare, like, all the things. On the corporate side of all of those things, remember I said, remember earlier we, we talked about, uh, business became politics.
- DSDavid Senra
We were talking about this off camera.
- TKTravis Kalanick
We... Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Can you talk about this now?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. So-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- TKTravis Kalanick
... there was a, you know, in the 2010s, there was something that happened in the media, and it was that business became politics. If you just think about your favorite politician and just go on the internet today- Do you think you're gonna see a lot of happy-go-lucky stuff about your favorite politician? Like, of course not. We know that because politicians basically, just the nature of what it is they do, there's a lot of mudslinging and a lot of stuff, and a vast majority of it is just untrue. Um, though I, [chuckles] I'd say with some of our politicians today, maybe a lot of it is true.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
But, but you know, it's just a dog-eat-dog mudslinging thing, and the headlines are often not true, which I think we know that in politics. What we didn't know in 2010s is that, or that was just starting to happen, was that business was becoming politics, that the headlines you were starting to read about business were just narratives and often fabrications with substantial material perversion of truth.
- DSDavid Senra
And you were exhibit A for this.
- TKTravis Kalanick
For sure. I, I would, I would say so.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
I mean-
- DSDavid Senra
No, I would say so, too.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
So, you know, like talk to anybody who knows me, they would basically say the difference between... Especially if you talk about ten years ago, the difference between the public persona and the actual person couldn't be more different. It's-
- DSDavid Senra
Well, I can sp- I can speak to this.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- 58:21 – 1:08:35
What Founders Get Wrong About Venture Capital
- DSDavid Senra
of the worst.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, going back, it's like, is it just when you're doing Uber, is it just you raised money from the wrong people? What did you... How do you look at it now, and how could you... What, what would you tell, like, a young founder now that has to raise a ton of money?
- TKTravis Kalanick
I always... I gotta do the... I gotta first shoot the arrow, which is you definitely shouldn't raise from Benchmark capital.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
Gotta get that out there. Um, and then [laughs] okay, let's get into the real stuff. Um, look, I think it's really interesting to start with what... where, where did it get weird? I mean, basically at the peak... Uh, so 2017 was a, was my problem year, right? I mean, it was always hard, but this is when it got dialed up. And Benchmark was running a war room. They were an, an unspoken activist investor that was creating a once-a-week crisis, uh, but without-
- DSDavid Senra
Against you?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, against me, uh, without speaking of it. Again, there's some things I don't know, but the best I can see is that they wanted liquidity, and they felt like I wouldn't give it. We were already preparing for an IPO, but I didn't tell them that.
- DSDavid Senra
Why didn't you tell them that?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Because we wanted to sort of make sure we'd done the right thinking, got prepared, so we could just say, "We're gonna do it, and here's how we're gonna do it." And Bill Gurley's a bit of a catastrophist. It's always the end of the world. Um, and so that forces you to do really weird things if you think the world is always going to end, including try to take me out. So instead of dealing with that catastrophism, let's just go do the damn thing bec- Uh, I give you lots of examples, like, uh, uh, I think on the... We had a, we had a fundraise in 2014, mid-2014, um, where the last round we did was in August 13, was $3.5 billion. That's when we brought Google and, um, Google and TPG in. And then mid-2014, so nine months later... Uh, that was three and a half billion. Nine months later, we did a round. Gurley was, like, convinced it was the end of the world, and we got a raise. And just take your first term sheet, just fucking take it. And you have a whole philosophy on this, which is, like, if you want a round to go well and to go fast, you have to have a process. If you just go take the first term sheet- Getting the round done will actually take longer because there's no alternatives. You don't have alternatives, and then it gets weird. And then the VC will just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, push, getting more and more and more and more, and it gets weird to a point where it actually becomes highly likely the, the deal just blows up. So I like to say, I never get attached to a price, I get attached to a process. That process is about excellence and fundraising. Anyways-
- DSDavid Senra
Can you explain that process though?
- TKTravis Kalanick
We'll get there.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Okay.
- DSDavid Senra
Don't let me forget.
- TKTravis Kalanick
I won't. [laughs] BFS. [laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- TKTravis Kalanick
We're gonna have to sit here for 10 hours-
- DSDavid Senra
That's fine, bro
- TKTravis Kalanick
... to cover everything. But he was convinced, like, "Hey, just take the first deal. Like, just do a $6 billion..." It was like, "I think you could get a $6 billion round valuation done right now. It's nine months after the three-and-a-half. Just go take the first term sheet and make it happen." Now, if you're a founder hearing that and you're just like [sighs] you're like, "Dude, I hear you, but even if the world is about to end, the best thing you can do is have alternatives, and the deal will actually get done faster." So we got to a place where, like, I just wouldn't talk to him, and not... If he reached out to me, I would re- I would talk to him, but, like, I just wouldn't try to engage because it was always that. So Emil Michael would handle this part. He would handle a lot of the, the investor relations, especially as it relates to them.
- DSDavid Senra
Shout out Emil Michael. That dude is loyal as hell to you.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, he's a just an awesome guy, not because of loyalty, but because he's just an awesome guy, but of course that too, and he would do it in a genuine, authentic way, like try to handle the con- the ob- the objections or whatever. Anyways, two months later, we got a round done at a 17 and a half billion pre.
- DSDavid Senra
Whoa!
- TKTravis Kalanick
So that's my point. So when you want to do things right, you gotta do things right, and VCs don't, uh, not all, but many, most, they're just... They're worried about other things. So we were already planning IPO stuff. They didn't know it, but they also never expressed the desire to. Like, "Hey, dude, you got IPO." It was never brought up. So it was like this weird cast- catastrophism mixed with if you think the world's about to end and you've got this thing that's worth a ton of money, y- you could get to a weird place, especially when you're in a VC. You don't have any control. You're not, like, running anything. So now you're like your entire holy shit, big... Your outcomes in life are due to this guy, and you think the world's about to end and he doesn't. You're like, you could get into a place where you're running a war room to destroy him, and that's, that's kinda what happened.
- DSDavid Senra
What's the alternative scenario if you raised just from somebody that wouldn't have done that? Like, I'm just gonna make this up, but, like how Founders Fund says they... No matter what, they'll never remove a founder.
- TKTravis Kalanick
No.
- DSDavid Senra
They'll not do like a warfare, a war room against them.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, I think there's two parts. So first, I'd say the most... The, the, the... Actually a super high bar for a VC is do no harm. There's a lot of reasons why that's hard for a VC.
- DSDavid Senra
Elaborate, please. This is important, man.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- 1:08:35 – 1:18:38
The Fundraising Playbook: QED Storytelling & a Five-Room Auction
- DSDavid Senra
you-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... explain, explain excellence in the fundraising process and how you think about it, the system you developed for this?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, and it, it could be changing over time, but I m-- like I certainly have my approach. It's interesting because I've just-- I'm just finishing a fundraise right now, and it's, it's interesting to see the world change. But I think part of what we're seeing right now is we're in a, we're in a super cycle or like a super high... We're in a hype s-- I don't wanna call it hype cycle, but like in a, a very bullish cycle right now, which means different things happen than if it's sort of average. When it's average, it's super important to tell a beautiful story that's woven f- like that, that, that's, that's, uh, like a story that numbers are woven through. It's a, it's a s- it's a beautiful, entertaining, interesting story with analytical numbers woven through it, and you basically get to what I would call QED, which is you've dissected the chess match to such a degree that it's very clear what it takes to win and that you have the winning formula, and you get to the end of the thing and you're like, "It's just proven. It's not even like a question anymore. It's QED." That's in normal times, and I think in super cycles or whatever we wanna call, you know, kinda what's going on right now, that rigor's not as important, and if you go too far on that rigor, it could be too much.
- DSDavid Senra
Explain that.
- TKTravis Kalanick
You hear stories of entrepreneurs that just sit down around a table and then have an idea, and they get money. That's the opposite of QED. But if you have a two-hour-long presentation that goes QED in a super cycle, you probably should shorten that to forty-five minutes.
- DSDavid Senra
Why?
- TKTravis Kalanick
I don't know how to put it. It just looks like too much. Like, why are you going so far, dude? What? What's your-
- DSDavid Senra
You'll talk yourself out of the deal.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Is something wrong?
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, you'll talk yourself out of the deal.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Why are you so detailed? [laughs] It's this weird d-dynamic. [laughs] It's very funny. Like, it's cool, bro. [laughs] You know? Maybe it's also because you're, you're projecting many years out. So, so the more super cycle you're in, the more forward you are, the more into the future you are, and that future can't really be presented as tightly with numbers.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. So what are you talking two hours for? You don't know.
- TKTravis Kalanick
So then it's about the theory of the case. That's probably the way to think about it, is that a mix of super cycle plus the speed at which technology is moving and the sort of true exponential inflection that can occur, you're talking three to five years out. There's almost no set of numbers today that can QED the five-year thing at this crazy hundred X situation that's probably gonna occur.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
So then you have to talk about the theory of it in many ways, and so maybe that's why it's a little bit different today.
- DSDavid Senra
What's the common, uh, in your approach in a normal cycle-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... and the super cycle you just described here?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Normal cycle is two hours QED.
- DSDavid Senra
What is something that you'll use in both, whether it's normal or super?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, I still do some version of... I-- Yeah, my style is QED.
- DSDavid Senra
And then the multiple bids thing is man-
- TKTravis Kalanick
And also, yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... is mandatory, correct?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. So, well, I would call it... So it's QED is the storytelling, and then there's sort of like a, an auction process that you hone if when you're doing it right. Now, this has to be measured against how many resources you have to do QED and how much deal resources you have to manage a full auction.
- DSDavid Senra
Explain that part to me.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Like if I have five rooms going at the same time, I have to have... The-- that's a thing that you... five rooms simultaneous for an entire week. Uh-
- DSDavid Senra
Where did you even get that idea?
- TKTravis Kalanick
It was just the expression of the right thing. It, it's, it's sort of like if you keep incrementing on something and keep making it better and better, you will end up there.
- 1:18:38 – 1:26:42
The Uber Coup, Radical Accountability & Outgrowing Fear
- DSDavid Senra
I'm very curious how you protect yourself from what happened with Benchmark and Uber from ever happening to you again. So how are you selecting? 'Cause that's just obviously the price.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Look-
- DSDavid Senra
You're not taking the highest bidder.
- TKTravis Kalanick
You know-
- DSDavid Senra
Like how are you picking your partners?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, you have to also be careful, like, um, there can be... You gotta be really careful not to get into victim mentality, and what I mean by that is what was my part in that, in that dynamic, right?
- DSDavid Senra
I was thinking while you were speaking, I was like, what if we could ask them what would they want you to do that you weren't doing? Maybe say, "Hey, we're about to fucking IPO." [laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
I had-
- DSDavid Senra
It might be normal.
- TKTravis Kalanick
For sure that would, that probably would've saved me, but also, like, I didn't kiss the ring. I think Gurley wanted to feel like- Homietown with me and just never was
- DSDavid Senra
Homietown to me is different than kissing a ring, though
- TKTravis Kalanick
It, but it, it's similar
- DSDavid Senra
Okay
- TKTravis Kalanick
Okay? I just put it in that category. We don't have to fucking go there. So, so that's... There's that. That's one thing I could have done differently for sure, would have changed everything. Um, there are people inside of the company who became his partner to do the coup. Those individuals shouldn't have been there, okay?
- DSDavid Senra
Did you suspect them at all before?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes
- DSDavid Senra
Wow
- TKTravis Kalanick
There was definitely something wrong, is what I would say. Okay, let's put it that way. Every decision I made at Uber, defend to this day. Like, I wasn't 100% correct, but always good intentions and always coming from the right place. Generally, just did the right thing. Yeah? One of my lawyers put it this way, he's like, um, you know, did you... if you're... Like, he, he sort of made a sporting or a, uh, like a, like a sports analogy, which is like, do you have chalk on your shoe? Would be like kind of going out of bounds or doing something you shouldn't have done, and I'm like, "Never had chalk on my shoe." But in order to know, you would need an electromagnetic scanning microscope to see with reverse angle of slow-mo replay to verify that there's no chalk on the shoe. So the problem was is I ran too close to the line in too many situations that it, it cr- When you are big and important, the scrutiny and the expectation is that you don't run that close to the line, even if it's correct, and that is a thing I definitely did not understand. Um, and it comes from what I did before Uber, which was I was doing a really hard startup, first four years, no salary, ran out of money several times, like super grind, like lose all friends, like everything's... It was just the hardest kind of... I, I like to say the non-luckiest entrepreneur journey of all time.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
You can't call it unlucky. I eventually sold, but like you definitely would never call it lucky, that's for damn sure. But basically, it was so hard that I had to be sort of epically precise and hardcore just to pay the bills and go to the grocery store next week, and that precision and intensity made Uber what it was, but I was running a $70 billion company the way somebody who thought he was gonna starve next week would run it.
- DSDavid Senra
That is fascinating
- TKTravis Kalanick
Like super intense precision, perfection and obsession because he's not sure that he's gonna be able to pay the grocery bill next week.
- DSDavid Senra
Did you understand your... that was your approach at the time you had that approach? Or you had to leave and look back and figure it out?
- TKTravis Kalanick
It's a little, probably a little bit of both, yeah. But I take pride in that. At the time, it was like a pride in going all the way, but like not maybe understanding every... understanding it the way I understand it today.
- DSDavid Senra
I wonder how much of that is a benefit. Like, you're, you're super... You're one of the most aggressive founders in history. You're wiser, more experienced now-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... more access to resources, better network.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
I wonder if this version of you-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Mm-hmm
- 1:26:42 – 1:31:30
Why Specialized Robots Beat Humanoids at Industrial Scale
- TKTravis Kalanick
come out of.
- DSDavid Senra
So I love where the conversation has gone because-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... what I'm hearing from you is like there's just this theme that runs through you as a person and then your approach to company building throughout these companies. So we barely touched on what you're doing now.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, let's get into Atoms.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And you said you wanted to start, uh, with the mission, where it says, "Physical automation to transform industry and move the world."
- TKTravis Kalanick
AI and robotics to totally transform industries, but one industry at a time, and specialized robotics to do so. So for instance, if you want to make a thousand pancakes an hour, you wouldn't have a humanoid do it. If you wanted to get a car to move down the street, you wouldn't have a humanoid drive it.
- DSDavid Senra
Hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
I think humanoids have their place, which is, let's call it low-scale tasks in human design-- e-e-environments designed for humans. So ex-example, you're in a house. Clothes need to be folded, but it's not like you're folding clothes all day long. It's one of the things, but there's no way you'd buy a robot for tens of thousands of dollars to just fold clothes because it's just not big enough of a problem. So now you need a machine that can do many different types of things in the home. So it needs to fold clothes, it needs to take out the trash, probably needs to wash dishes. There's like a bunch of things. But that's a very generalized thing. Has to be able to do a lot of different things, and it's in a very human environment. The best form factor is a humanoid for this thing. But I'll bring up the thousand pancakes an hour. Imagine a humanoid making pancakes. Well, it would make it like a human. It would be like [mimicking machines]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- TKTravis Kalanick
Okay? And by the way, if you were just making pancakes at a home once a week on a Sunday, because you need a machine that can do many different things, including make pancakes, it's all good. But if you needed to do a thousand an hour, you'd probably need like, I don't know, a hundred humanoids in a row doing this, right? Versus a very simple iron apparatus where the batter gets pushed into it, it's hot already, and it's pushing out like maybe even like a hundred pancakes every few minutes.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
You know what I mean? So specialized robotics, uh, specialized, uh, machines that are specialized for the task at hand is sort of how I look at what we do. And so industrial scale where there's real change to an industry by automating the whole thing, and so you go, "Okay, well, I've got a lot going on in food already." The idea is, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store? Pretty awesome if you could. And it's gotta be a high-quality meal, of course. But like the, the, the question mark there, can you, requires you to have what I would call industrial real estate for food e-commerce. What do I mean, food e-commerce? We know what e-commerce is. It's got Amazon warehouses everywhere or like major hubs, like big distribution centers, DCs. But food e-commerce is a little different. You-- it is a warehouse type. You need to do logistics from it, but you also need to do manufacturing. Like there's no manufacturing that's happening at an Amazon warehouse because everything's manufactured somewhere. It gets delivered to this big warehouse, and then it goes from there. But with food, it has a thirty-minute half-life, so the manufacturing, the logistics has to happen at the same place, and it always has to be fifteen minutes from where you are. So now you have a very different situation where you have real estate in urban and suburban environments that's always fifteen minutes from anybody. So you have an urban logistics fabric l- uh, pr-production and logistics fabric across a city, which is I have the real estate, then I have robots, uh, robotic food production, 'cause then I'm taking the labor cost out, and then I have robotic logistics because right now, your fifteen dollar bowl that then gets delivered to you somehow became thirty bucks. [laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
It's of course expensive to produce, but every time there's a drop by a courier, that's another twelve bucks.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Industrial real estate, robotic production, robotic couriers.
- 1:31:30 – 1:40:14
Finding Your Sport: Food, Mining & the Physical AI Stack
- TKTravis Kalanick
And then-
- DSDavid Senra
Was there a specific reason you, you started with food, though?
- TKTravis Kalanick
It just caught me. I mean, like that is like I don't have a list. Well, first of all, of course, I did Uber Eats, so like very familiar with this part of things.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
But nowhere close to the atoms that are necessary to do what I just described.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
You know, I, I like to say like I have lots of ideas all the time. I mean, I, I'm an idea factory.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
But other people have great ideas too. But like an idea comes to you or comes to you, if that makes sense. And I like to say, you know, you go out on a date with the idea, like, was it a good date? Did it, did it go well? Like, how did you and the idea get along? And it's very much related to like who are you is going to be a big part of which idea works for you.
- DSDavid Senra
You call this finding your sport.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, finding your sport or your business soulmate.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Be in touch with who you are, and then when the right idea comes your way, you just know. You just know.
- DSDavid Senra
I thought I, I understood how you thought.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And now, you know, we've been talking for several hours, I'm-- I think I'm getting a little closer there. But then I read what you wrote-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... where you're just like, "Well, look around, dude. Everything that you see in a city and a civilization has either been grown, mined, or manufactured."
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And so I'm like, oh, he like is-- you're into details like you were describing the Uber signup flow earlier.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
But you zoomed all the way out.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
So it's like I'm gonna start with the material constituents of everything that exists in the world.
- TKTravis Kalanick
So when you look around you, everything around you is grown or mined, manufactured and moved, and that's how we look at the world. And then you go, well, when you think about physical AI, the automation of movement and action in the physical world, you look at the, what I call the physical AI tech stack. Real estate's part of that for the reasons I've, I've described as it relates to food. If you didn't have the industrial scale, what I call high infrastructure, heavy-duty energy, heavy-duty mechanical systems 'cause you're extracting air and then tempering it and pushing it back in. Real estate is a big part. What is a mining company? It's actually real estate. So the ability to take land and turn it into pro-productive pro-progress, essentially, is a underappreciated and not understood thing, and it is most definitely a big part of the, what I would call the physical AI tech stack. You go like look at, you know, you can look at Tesla and all the things Elon's doing, like it's obvious that real estate is his jam, or certainly his team's jam. He doesn't talk about it as much, but it's a big part of what happens. He's got a freaking city. He's starting a freaking city, right? You know, the head of HR is, is basically the mayor of a city that he's building. You know what I mean? So it's a really important thing, but also when you, you know, you can go further than that, which is everything we're seeing in technology, you know, a lot of times we talk about super intelligence is sort of the function of, I need to have energy, and I need to have minerals at the very base. Lots of energy. We talk about data centers now in gigawatts or megawatts, you know. So I need to have energy, and I need to have the minerals, and then I have those two things, and I can get super intelligence eventually, working those things hard. But where does the energy come from? You're like, "Oh, it comes from the sun." Okay, but how do you capture it? Goes back to minerals. Like land is the whole damn thing. So there's a really interesting perspective about how land plays a role in the future of physical automation, physical AI, um, and just, um, autonomy in the physical world is, is very dependent upon it, and that's why mining is so interesting.
- DSDavid Senra
You're not owning the mines, correct? You're just making them more productive with gainfully employed robots?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Correct.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- TKTravis Kalanick
What we call gainfully employed robots.
- DSDavid Senra
This is hilarious, by the way.
- 1:40:14 – 1:46:33
How to Build Many Companies Inside One Company
- DSDavid Senra
One of the things that I was talking to Daniel Ek about you that he finds most fascinating about you is your propensity to build a ton of separate companies inside of one company. You did this obviously at Uber.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You're doing it again at Atoms.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Is that just your natural-- Is that what you meant, like your business soulmate? You're just like, "I don't wanna work on just one product or one business." Like, you want a conglomerate. Like, h-how do you think about this?
- TKTravis Kalanick
I mean, this goes back to, no, you don't... That's not how it works. It's, um... But it is... Remember, the con- only constraint to our imagination is management capacity. So then the question is twofold: Do you have an imagination, and is it any good? But if you do have an imagination and it's good, you're gonna have interesting ideas that should happen. There's many ideas that maybe either shouldn't or somebody else should do, but there's gonna be many ideas that you should do.
- DSDavid Senra
So what does the actual organization inside of Atoms looks like with all-- look like with all these different businesses?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, does every business have a CEO? They report directly to you. Like, how, how did you actually structure this?
- TKTravis Kalanick
You have a business unit line leader, and then you might even have sub-business unit leaders as well. Um, you really try to empower and, you know, empower them to do their thing. That is... You know, I sort of look at that as alignment upfront, accountability on the back end. So what are we trying to accomplish? How are we gonna try to accomplish it? What do we view as risky, and what's sort of no-brainer? And how do we do accountability as we go? And then sort of approach it with like a management style, which I call problem solver in chief, which is, I spend my time on the most impactful problems that are not already being solved.
- DSDavid Senra
That's how you dedicate your time.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Is that the directive that you give to everybody that's-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
That's... Okay.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yes. So I've got a certain number of hours per day, but that's a tiny fraction of the problems that need to be solved.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out, like how do you-
- TKTravis Kalanick
So that flows down. Now everybody's got their s- their, their, their remit, let's say, so they solve problems in this area. So it's flowing down, but they are the problem solver in chief deputized for their area all the way down to the bottom.
- DSDavid Senra
Do you still put an emphasis, I've heard you speak about this in the past, an emphasis of hiring and empowering young people? Is this business different than, like, when you were launching new cities in Uber, for example, where you gave a lot of responsibility to, you know, aggressive young people?
- TKTravis Kalanick
Well, okay, again, so it, it... There's really interesting ways to do it. I, I, I sort of have this, this concept I call the line in sort of the maybe the framework is finding the line. So there's a line. On one side is order, lots of structure... Sorry, sorry, structure. Like, as you, as you pull away further, further back into order, you have lots of rules, lots of structure, lots of process, and eventually lots of bureaucracy. And if you go too far back from that line, you're going slow and people are bummed. And if you go to the other side of the line, which is chaos, lack of rules, lack of process, lack of structure, and as you go deeper and deeper and deeper into chaos, you also get to a place where you're going slow and people are bummed. So that line between order and chaos is innovation at speed and at scale. And the job of every leader is to find that line, and it's not in two dimensions, it's like in eighty dimensions. Okay? And the best leaders are able to find that. And, you know, the probably the most approachable way to describe this is the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos is the, is the approachable way to describe this. But you go to back to like launch at Uber. You could think of it as like, okay, there's a bunch of twenty-three-year-olds launching cities. What happened was at the beginning, the first 20, 30 cities, I was deeply involved in whether that city was gonna get launched. But what happened was somebody go out, "Hey, go launch a city. Make something out of nothing." And there'd be some kind of playbook there, but a lot of it was undefined. But nothing would actually launch until it got to a pricing call, 'cause pricing in the transportation space is the sum of all strategy. And so the pricing call then goes, well, what's the regulatory? What's the car type that you're gonna use because of that regulatory? What is the average wage in the city? Because that's on the driver's side, and that's part of the cost, of course. You basically go through every aspect of the city that relates to transportation. How long does it take to get around? Like, where are people going? You ultimately get to a price, but it means you have to understand everything and how you get to that price matters. So in the first twenty cities, I was on a pricing call. In some of those cities, man, it would be like eight pricing calls. It could be like eight hours, ten hours of pricing calls before we launched London, as an example. But I never solved the same problem twice. Once we solved it, then it became part of the playbook, and eventually we get to s-city twenty and that pricing call takes five minutes. I stopped going to them. Didn't matter anymore. But the key that I was trying to get to is you have a twenty-three-year-old who then can go and launch a city. Even at the beginning when I was still involved in that pricing call, they wouldn't see me till the pricing call, but they knew I was gonna be at that pricing call. The one rule was you can't launch until I say yes at that pricing call. So they would come ready to play at that pricing call, and they knew that if they didn't, I'd be like, "No," and then they suck. And so they would put everything they-- into making that successful, which means all the other things that they're doing before are gonna be organized towards doing it right because they wanna win. And so now I've got one rule, which is that pricing call. The fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos, that if you didn't have that one rule, you now have twenty-three-year-olds running around doing crazy shit.
- 1:46:33 – 1:48:53
Entropy, Civilization & the Meaning of Progress
- DSDavid Senra
That's awesome. D- it made me think of another line that I love that you put on the Atoms website where you said that chaos was the law of nature and order was the dream of man.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Hmm.
- DSDavid Senra
My interpretation of that line now having spoken to you about this, it's like I feel that you're imposing order on the chaos of the physical world. That's what your company's trying to do.
- TKTravis Kalanick
I almost think of it as negentropic, which means [laughs] and it's kind of a, uh, you could get into a very interesting sort of, uh, uh, very, uh... I don't wanna say, y- very energetic debate with certain people about negative entropy, but civilization is an attempt to locally slow down entropy and maybe even go negative. It's building structure against the nature towards chaos. That's what civilization is. And so Atoms is essentially the structure to defend civilization and move it forward into progress.
- DSDavid Senra
There's another line when you, when you speak, there's a lot of things that you say that remind me of Rockefeller. Uh, in when, in the early days of the oil refining industry, he used that word, that he thought it was a chaotic industry.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Mm.
- DSDavid Senra
It was. He's at the very beginning.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
This is when the oil industry, the entire-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... cons-- it's solely concentrated in Pennsylvania, for God's sake.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah, yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And he goes, "I'm going to impor-- impose order on this chaos."
- TKTravis Kalanick
Mm.
- DSDavid Senra
That's a line he used.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Progress is sort of the organization and structuring of the world towards human happiness and liberty and transcendence in some fashion. That's how I view what we're doing at maybe the very highest level.
- DSDavid Senra
I think that's an awesome place to close, Travis.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Me- mean, it really means a lot to me-
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... you taking the time.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. Appreciate it.
- DSDavid Senra
Really appreciate it, man. Thanks.
- TKTravis Kalanick
Yeah. Great.
- DSDavid Senra
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over four hundred biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 1:48:54
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