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Stanford Graduate School of BusinessStanford Graduate School of Business

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Uber

“People often optimize for the role or for the company. The first thing I optimize for is who I will work with. Don’t bet on companies, bet on people,” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, told students at today’s View From The Top event.

Lepi Jha FishmanhostDara Khosrowshahiguest
Dec 3, 201841mWatch on YouTube

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Dara Khosrowshahi on leadership lessons, culture change, and Uber’s future

  1. Dara Khosrowshahi traced how moving to the US as a child shaped his adaptability and the personal grounding he derives from family, education, and sports.
  2. He described mentorship and decision-making lessons from Barry Diller, especially the discipline of going directly to the source and betting on people rather than titles or companies.
  3. He reflected on Expedia’s competitive lessons, arguing that resisting lower-margin models slowed response to booking.com and that margin pain is sometimes best taken early and fast.
  4. He explained why he accepted the Uber CEO role as a chance to take a meaningful shot at impact, emphasizing transparency with the board and clarity of leadership expectations.
  5. He outlined cultural and operational shifts at Uber toward diversity, stronger city and stakeholder connection, and treating drivers as true partners through product co-development and new support programs.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Early assimilation taught flexibility, humility, and the value of stable anchors like family.

He described arriving in the US at age nine without fluent English and learning to adapt quickly, crediting family stability, education, and sports (soccer) as key mechanisms that helped him integrate and build confidence.

Going to the source produces higher-fidelity truth than relying on filtered summaries.

He recounted how Barry Diller bypassed hierarchy to ask the analyst who built the deal model to explain it directly, reinforcing the idea that information loses fidelity as it gets filtered through layers.

Career decisions can be optimized by betting on the person you’ll learn from, not just the role or company.

He said he chose to follow Barry Diller because of a belief learned at Allen & Company—“bet on people”—and framed mentorship as something you earn by doing strong work, being close to the truth, and aligning with a leader you want to learn from.

Low margins can be an asset that drives speed, discipline, and market share—if you embrace the pain early.

Reflecting on booking.com’s rise, he said Expedia underestimated the strategic power of lower margins because the team didn’t want to give up “fat margins,” later concluding that low margins can enable faster expansion and stronger cost discipline.

Sometimes the leader has to step into the operating role to learn what the business truly needs.

He explained that after failing twice to hire the right leader for expedia.com, he took over operational leadership himself, calling it one of his biggest learning periods and saying it helped turn the business around by bringing business and technology together and accelerating innovation.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

I learned a lesson that if you don't understand what someone is saying, uh, the answer is no, not yes, 'cause when, whenever... It's an Iranian thing, you always wanna say yes.

— Dara Khosrowshahi

One lesson for me that I took away was I wasn't an investor. I was an employee, right? But instead of making a bet on the job or instead of making a bet on the company, I was making a bet on a person.

— Dara Khosrowshahi

Low margins are an asset, they're not a liability.

— Dara Khosrowshahi

My attitude was, it's not about winning or losing, it's actually about taking a shot.

— Dara Khosrowshahi

We're not gonna have predictable profitability. And we'll say to our shareholders, and the shareholders can choose. If they want a predictably profitable company, go buy a bank. Don't come to us. Simple.

— Dara Khosrowshahi

Read the available transcript
Immigration and assimilationFamily, education, and sports as groundingMentorship and “bet on people”Going to the source vs filtered informationExpedia strategy and margin tradeoffsBooking.com competitive lessonOperational leadership and learning by doing at expedia.com leadership role by CEO of parent and operational CEO of brand, tech-platform focus, innovation speed (as described) though keep as phrase? -> keep short phrases only, ok: 'Running expedia.com personally' etc. We'll keep phrases only.','Uber CEO transition and board expectations (transparency, leadership clarity, confidentiality) -> phrase','Culture change: diversity, stakeholder connection, serving cities','Driver partnership: co-building products, insurance benefits (AXA in Europe)','Customer obsession vs competitor focus','Multi-product mobility vision and third-party integrations (Lime, public transit)','Autonomous vehicles integrated with ridesharing','IPO mindset and long-term investors; rejecting “predictable profitability” framing','Short-term impatience / long-term patience

SPEAKERS

  • Lepi Jha Fishman

    host

    Stanford Graduate School of Business moderator/interviewer for the Leadership Perspectives talk.

  • Dara Khosrowshahi

    guest

    CEO of Uber and former CEO of Expedia.

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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