Ben Horowitz and Travis Kalanick on Building Again
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Why did Travis Kalanick stay silent for eight years before talking about his next moves?
Hey, Travis is back. But uh, I've actually been working for eight years. I just haven't been talking about it. We're competing for the next industrial revolution. People said, Are you pissed off about Uber? Does that grind you when you fall in love again? You don't think about the X very much. We had a massive high-fidelity playbook on how to not get attention for anything we did. A lot of the Things that would have happened with Uber over time are things we're doing now. It's basically multiple trillion dollar industries that are gonna get automated. We talk about digital AI and what it does to the enterprise. But these industries on their own are big. You think you were successful because of what you did versus in spite of what you did.
If you don't fight for the best idea, then what idea are you fighting for? You're fighting for the mediocre idea, an idea that's that's gonna make you less good than if you went for the best idea.
Real question is when are you guys gonna buy Uber? Um After nearly eight years building largely out of public view, Travis Kalinick is finally ready to talk about what comes next. In this fireside conversation from Adam's launch event, Ben Horowitz and I sit down with Travis to discuss why he stayed quiet for so long, how his thinking has evolved since Uber, and why he believes industrial AI will define the next era of technology. Along the way, we revisit the biggest decisions of Uber, founder culture, and what it takes to build transformational companies twice.
So the reason why people loved our podcast that we did the first one that we did together is because we just got right into it. right into the good stuff. So we're gonna do that here and then we're gonna open it up for I'm scared for Q and A.
Eric's good at this and it stresses me out. All right, what do you got Eric? So Travis.
Why didn't you buy lift? And do you regret it? Wha what would you do if you can go back
in time? I think this will surprise a lot of people, but Lyft's culture was very different than ours. Maybe it started with the pink mustache. But I think it's interesting, right, when it comes to entrepreneurs that are in that moment where you could acquire something. By the way, I got a lot of shit for this for a long time. So yeah, the The cultured in mix. Yeah, the yeah, yeah, the cultured in mix. And when you meet with somebody and you're gonna acquire them and there's so much goodness that could come from it, by the way, we're in some crazy war, probably spending a billion dollars a year on it or some insane amount of money, you want it to work. So you wouldn't do
anything
different? I wouldn't do anything different. And it's easy to say now, but I got a lot of shit for that for a long time. But it was basically I would sit across the table from the guys and I just didn't It was just clear that we were very culturally different and you couldn't It get harder and harder to make that happen.
I by the way, I agree with that. I think it I mean You'd have to do the counterfactual if Travis was still running Uber. Because
What would that look like? Travis is still running Uber today.
Well, I think it would have been the original culture and the culture they went to, which was the reaction to the resistance. just ended up being a much more milktoast culture than the the original Uber culture was A special very pronounced culture. My favorite thing in that culture doc was meritocracy slash toe stepping. Or toe stomping. I can't remember. I always thought of it as stomping, but meritocracy and toe stepping. Toe stepping. Yeah. Which is kind of like, fuck your feelings. We're here to build, we're gonna do it, we're gonna push as hard as we can and yeah, you may get your toe stepped on, but you gotta keep going. You gotta keep bringing it. And to me that was the part that got diluted when Travis went out and it was
In in some ways it was the core part. It was a very c essential element to At least what I saw kind of from the side in it.
Yeah, we've rebranded it the current company at Adams. We call it the best idea wins.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why did Travis Kalanick stay silent for eight years before talking about his next moves?
0:00–6:13
2
What was the reasoning behind Uber’s decision not to acquire Lyft and does Travis regret it?
6:13–9:28
3
How did Uber’s founder culture evolve and what lessons did Travis learn about building enduring teams?
9:28–18:41
4
Why does Travis believe industrial AI will power the next industrial revolution?
18:41–21:24
5
What are the biggest opportunities in automating food production, mining, and manufacturing?
21:24–33:21
Speakers
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