Dara Khosrowshahi: How I Became CEO of Uber; Uber Eats vs DoorDash; The Postmates Acquisition | E994

If I didn't wanna make mistakes, I'd be a treasury bond manager. All right, like, my job is to make (laughs) mistakes and learn from them.

(instrumental music) Dara, I am so excited for this. I've heard so many good things. As I said, Ali, Hadi, there was Daniel Ek, Ovide. I know your whole family history now. But thank you so much for joining me, Dara.

Happy to do it, uh, with that introduction. I hope I don't disappoint.

Uh, I think it'll be fantastic. But I wanna start with something from Ali actually, 'cause Ali told me about your family in Iran losing everything way back. And I will believe that we're kind of functions of our past, and so I'm really diving in at the deep end. But what would you say you're running from when you think about that?

God, it's, um... Uh, I do think that the events of Iran and our family losing everything, and, and we had a huge family, big family business, et cetera. I don't know if it's something that we're running from, but I think the whole family, to some extent, is running to rebuild essentially what we lost in Iran. You've got a next generation that is incredibly passionate and ambitious if you look at, uh, my cousins, Ali and Hadi, et cetera. It's just an example, which is, I think, we just have this immigrant chip on our shoulder. And we very much look up to our parents who built this incredible business in Iran, and we all wa- we all want to do our parts to rebuild again. And I think that's definitely shaped the ambition that my family has. Uh, I will tell you that while we lost all of our money in the business, so to speak, the, the thing that we never lost was family. And so for me, personally, the having the family around us, having that sense of love and belonging and protection is something that I treasure. And building that collective and having that shared success, like for example, in business, for me, is something that really draws me. For me, like, you know, celebrating your, uh, success as an individual is not nearly as fun as celebrating as a family or a team. So for me, I think family has shaped how I look at success, and for me, success is, is joint success, is shared success.

My family actually lost everything too when I was young, and I always equate... Uh, I told you, forget the schedule, we don't really stick to it. Uh, we always... Uh, I, for me, when I lost everything, I equated rebuilding with worthiness. When I rebuilt it back, I would be worthy again. The trouble is, Dara, I've kind of rebuilt a little bit (laughs) of it back now, and I don't really feel that worthiness. How do you think about worthiness in that rebuilding and whether that's kind of part of it?