Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245

I believe if Travis and Emil had stayed at Uber, Uber would be a trillion-dollar company by now. His true vision for Uber, which was to replace car ownership, and it was at that moment I realized, "Oh, the TAM is trillions."

We are actually full steam ahead. But things start to go wrong.

We had the wrong venture capitalist on the board. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was Bill Gurley at Benchmark. We found out in our investigation that he hired some private investigators, had weekly meetings about, "How do we get rid of Travis?" That week, Travis tragically lost his mother in a boating accident. Benchmark, Gurley decide to go after Travis.

Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Shervin, dude, I'm so excited for this. I've wanted to make this one happen for a while, so thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you, Harry. It's, uh, it's exciting to be here.

Now, I would love to start with a little bit of context. Your... I'm actually gonna start, if it's okay with your mother. Um, I'm so sorry for her passing, but I know she was also incredibly impactful to you getting into technology and so talk to me a little bit about her being impactful and getting into technology as a starting point.

Absolutely. Thank you. Um, my mom passed away last Wednesday, um, and, uh, um, we're gonna have our funeral, uh, in a, in a few days. Um, and she was just the most incredible human I've ever met. She was a teacher for 14 years in Iran and when we escaped the revolution, um, and came to America, she started all over again. We came with $35, um, and then, uh, we had to escape, and, uh, we started with nothing, uh, and my dad drove a taxi while getting his PhD. My mom was a maid, uh, and worked two jobs as a caf- cafeteria worker, uh, and a maid, and I used to go clean rooms with her. Uh, so this is the kinda classic, uh, American dream story. And she took computer programming classes at the, uh, at a college in Maryland while I was a, a kid. And so she, and she would take me to her classes. So I... And this was, like, when they had the, uh, the paper, you know, uh, with the holes in it, you'd punch, punch the holes and that, that was how they coded, um, i- in the '80s. And so I, I got to kinda see that, and then I saw, uh, the Apple, um, and I begged for an Apple. My mom and dad worked, uh, you know, overtime for three months to afford it. Back then it was, like, $3,000, which was a lot in 1985, '86. Um, and they bought me my first Apple IIc, uh, and I did my first code on it, uh, and that changed my life. Um, and then later, she secretly put on her credit card a laptop when I was at Berkeley and I didn't have enough money to get th- get a laptop, uh, and she, uh, put it on her credit card and I always said that she was my angel in- my first angel investor, my first believer. But she really taught me how to dream in color, and I'm finding this process of grieving profound, uh, in that I see her now in ways that I couldn't see her when she was alive.