Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941

Emil, this is such a joy to do. I've heard so many wonderful things. I've- you know, I've referenced the shit out of you with, like, you know, 20 people. But it was incredible to hear the depths of your relationship. So thank you first so much for joining me today.

(laughs) It's great, great to see you. I've been a fan of your podcast for a long time and I was wondering when my invite was gonna come. But here we are in 2022 and it's come, so I'm here.

I mean, and we actually have to thank Raf at Gopuff for this one. But, uh, I'm so excited to make it happen and I wanna start with a little bit of context. So, we- we see kind of the OG of negotiations and deal-making stay in Emil. But just walk me through like how did you make your way first into tech and then into investing? What were those two entry points?

Yeah. Uh, so I went, um, to college and graduated in 1994, which if you remember the time there, that was the very beginning of the internet businesses starting to come out. And so, in my same class at Harvard, um, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, David Weiden from Coastal Ventures, Alfred Lin, Tony Hsieh, I mean, all of them graduated the same year. And so all of us sort of decided, "Hey, well, this thing is happening in the economy, we can go do an investment banking job, a consulting job, or figure out what this tech thing was all about." So, um, I moved to California. I went to, uh, unfortunately Stanford Law School, but at least I was in the middle of what (laughs) was happening in the Silicon Valley. And then Hadi, uh, Partovi, if you know, who runs code.org now, um, was co-founding a company called Tell Me Networks. And H- Ali Partovi was founding, um, the Internet Link Exchange with Alfred Lin and Tony Hsieh. And so I was working at both. I was kinda working at Tell Me, advising at both. And so it was at the very beginnings of the new internet entrepreneurs were feeling around for something important in the internet in 1994 through 1998. Um, so that's how I got started.

I have to start with, um, actually one from Dave Clark. But Dave Clark highlighted the breadth of your experiences pre- really diving into being the OG that you are today. We have, uh, Harvard, Stanford, Goldman, lawyer, uh, Department of Defense.

(laughs)

And he asked, "Which of these best contributed to your success today, do you think, on reflection?"

I mean, you know, uh, sort of none of them. The best one (laughs) was the Bill Campbell thing. When I got to the Valley, um, Bill Campbell was associated with Kleiner Perkins. Um, and Kleiner Perkins back in that day was the VC. They did Amazon, Google. Um, John Doerr was w- was the man. There was no one who, what he touched turned to gold. And he was buddies with Bill Campbell and, and he invested in Tell Me, that first company I was telling you about. And Bill took a liking to me and I was 25, and he became my mentor and, and he's the one who sort of propelled the future startups. He's the one who propelled, you know, working at the White House for, uh, Secretary Robert Gates. The education stuff didn't propel me for much of it, except meeting the guys, Hadi, Ali, David, Alfred. Um, so those are the two sort of influence I'd say that got me there.