Uber Founder on AI, Risk, and Building the Future w/ Travis Kalanick | EP #164

- Well, robots and AI replace all of our jobs. - If somebody wants to go and make a thing that doesn't make people's lives better, they should count on failing. - In your seven year tenure, zero to 70 countries, five billion right or trips, seven and a half billion revenues, a 70 billion dollar valuation. - I didn't think of it exactly like this at the time, but basically I was digitizing network for the physical world. - When you're trying to do something disruptive, there's a massive immune reaction that occurs. One of the best ways to deal with resistance to change is to build a massive amount of trust with those you're asking to change or that you're asking to bring along with that change. Because then you can turn your adversaries into advocates. Nobody's in control of the world. So you have to see into where the world is going and build for that world. - Now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. (sighing) - This is a group of entrepreneurs running 10 million to 10 billion dollar companies. Their focus is on getting clarity on their massive transformative purpose and then using that for a moonshot to do something extraordinary, to go from success to significance in the world. - Yeah. - And when we've talked about understanding the process of reinventing an industry, transforming it, making it efficient, I think there are only a handful of individuals that make that possible or have done that successfully. I wanna read the numbers on Uber, just as an example, 'cause I wanna dive into the founding of Uber and then obviously what you learned and building cloud kitchen as well. But in your seven year tenure, zero to 70 countries, that's pretty impressive. Five billion writer trips. I mean, that's dead. - Yeah, I don't know where that number came from. - It came from a Chatchee PT or some science like that. - So when I left, so mid-2017, we're probably doing, I don't know, 130 million a week. So that would be like seven weeks for every billion. So maybe it's a, you know. - Seven and a half billion revenues, not bad. - They're about. - Yeah. - And the growth at that time was probably about 50 billion. That would be GMV, and then how you calculate revenue from there could be tricky. But yeah. But a 70 billion dollar valuation, not bad. - Can you take me back to that, first of all, that founding aha moment? And then we talk about purpose as a critical part of building a company, that's a moonshot company. - Yeah, the aha moment, I mean, it's kind of interesting. So you hear a lot of the founder, that what do they call them, founding, founding, fables, founding, there's something along. This is sort of like-- - Yeah, you get the public sort of like generates. - This whole made up thing, we don't have one of those. So, but it sounds like one. So we were in Paris, we were at, if you guys remember, way back in the day in '08 and '09, there was a Loïc Lemurs web summit. - Yes. - I think it was called that, yeah. And I was there in Paris. I was sort of in between gigs. I had sold my recent company to Okamai, and I didn't know what was next. So I was there with a guy named Garrett Camp, and we were walking, back in before Uber in Paris, you'd have to walk back. You would, I wanna go faster here, but basically you had to walk home in Paris back in the day. You go out to dinner, you're walking home. That's just what it was. And so we were on a three mile walk back to our hotel after a dinner, and he said, man, I wish we could just push a button and get a ride. - That's a prophetic wish. - And I'm like, (laughs) I'm pretty good. And he would, he's like, yeah, let's just go back to San Francisco, make the app. We'll have, let's buy 20 S classes, get 40 drivers at a parking garage, and we're off to the races. I'm like, look, there's enough cars out there already. We don't need to buy the cars. We don't need to, we don't need to get a parking garage, and we probably don't even need to hire the drivers. And that was kind of the balance at the beginning was he was the classie, and I was the efficiency. That makes sense. - Purpose, we talked about this in advance. How critical is purpose in driving sort of a company at this scale? - I mean, it's super important. I think there's, you know, you could probably have a whole conference on purpose. So you could take it many different ways. The first is, I think every individual, sometimes I'll talk to executives where they're like making the move to the next thing, ideally the one I'm trying to recruit them for. And my advice, even when I'm not recruiting them is you gotta be really self-aware of who you are. If you get really, really self-aware of who you are, then when the next thing comes, you will know when your professional soulmate presents itself, you will know. - Fascinating. - And so. - And if you're honest with yourself. - Yeah, you gotta be. So you gotta, it's like, I shouldn't be running Pinterest. Just wouldn't work out. But that's because I know myself. And so, and so if you understand your nature, you need to find a thing that you do that matches that nature. - So when we talk about your massive transformative purpose, what wakes you up in the morning, what keeps you going. And that is the foundational, foundational, if you foundation for building a company that, and then how does that translate then to your team that you build? - Well, before we even get it to, it's sort of like there's a couple more layers to it. I like to say, you know, my sort of space is digitizing the physical world. But let's say that's the sport that I play, that I'm meant to play. Meaning, if you play basketball and that's your thing and you're really great at it, don't go play tennis. So you gotta know the sport. Through that self-awareness, you know your sport. Digitizing the physical world, I'd also say, innovation at speed and at scale. This is stuff that gets me fired up. And then the final layer is like, who are the people that I'm serving? Whatever you're gonna do, you're serving somebody. You should be, you should be fundamentally passionate about them and what the thing you're gonna do is gonna do for them. - Yeah. - So yeah. - Yeah, no. And I think that's when, you know, just in the nomenclature here, we talk about in your MTP, who are you serving, right? Who do you wanna be hero to? - Yeah. - Everybody, I hope you're enjoying this episode. You know, earlier this year, I was joined on stage at the 2025 Abundance Summit by a rock star group of entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, focused on the vision and future for AGI, humanoid robotics, longevity, blockchain, basically the next trillion dollar opportunities. If you weren't at the Abundance Summit, it's not too late. You can watch the entire Abundance Summit online by going to exponentialmastery.com. That's exponentialmastery.com. So you get clarity on that. - Yeah. - And you start building an organization. And I guess the challenge is, if you're bringing in people who don't share that, you're getting it very quickly. - Yeah. - Start going the wrong direction. - This is when you get like a culture clash internal. Is if there are people who don't see things the same way you do, at least the values. And look, you know, most of us here have personal relationships of one kind or another. Friends, loved ones, partners in life, the whole thing. And it's very similar. You, you know, opposites can attract, but the core values you need to believe in, you have to share. - So how do you use that as a filter for who you're bringing in? Are you dogmatic about it? Or are you allowing those who naturally gravitate that way to come in? - I mean, those two are, I think, very similar. So sometimes somebody who doesn't, who should, sometimes a tennis player goes to a basketball court and you're like, yo, whoa, whoa, we don't do rackets here, you know, we have this much larger ball that we put it in this hoop, this different. So it doesn't have to be a judgment. It's just an assessment, a factual sort of thing. And so you have to understand what the values are and if the values are the same. And again, it's those things that I just went through. And this gets codified into sort of what you might call cultural values or things like this. And if your cultural values are really, really good, then it becomes really clear who's not supposed to be there. And you don't wanna get to that place where it's not supposed to be there. You, when somebody comes in, you wanna make it work. It doesn't always work, but you wanna try to make it work. But it becomes really clear, ideally, in a recruiting process. And if it, if a mistake happens on the way in, it becomes. becomes clear super early. Well, this is, I play tennis, not basketball, you know. - You said a few minutes ago that you are focused on sort of optimization, getting rid of inefficiencies. And is that your sort of, your super power for finding opportunities? - Well, it goes to that digitizing the physical world. So we know what the digital world is. It's called a computer. - Right, CPU manipulates the bits. Storage stores the bits. Network moves bits from point A to point B. These are like the three core computing resources in a computer. But digitizing the physical world, if that's your sport, then you've decided that treating atoms like bits is what you do. So you go, okay, well, CPU manipulates the bits, what manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing. Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? That's real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B, what moves atoms? You're like, that's logistics or transport. So my last company, Uber, I didn't think of it exactly like this at the time, but basically I was digitizing network for the physical world, digitized transport. One of the three core computing resources in an atoms-based computer. You're like, well, that's well on its way. It's not all the way done. We need autonomous cars and all of this to really be out there. But it's, we've got light at the end of the tunnel. But what about digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate? And so that's how I see what I do. So what I do is I make atoms-based computers. And if you are treating atoms like bits, it will naturally be about efficiency. It's very different than say, oh, I make a social media app. A social media app is going to win when it takes your time, gets your attention, takes your time. And that's how they make money. Atoms-based computers typically are giving you your time back. Yeah. And so that becomes sort of the foundation of what it is I do. Yeah, we talked this morning about the idea of looking into your business and finding everything that's not been digitized yet and dematerialized yet. Yeah. Because somebody is going to eventually do it if it's doable. Yeah. What advice do you have to focus about doing that? It's, you know, the other part of it is companies that are born as digital native companies like you bore Uber. And those are trying to retrofit themselves. Well, I mean, these are very different things. So if you are digitizing a business that exists, let's assume that business is profitable, has some sort of competitive mode, et cetera. In some ways, the starting point is very straightforward. It's like you just take all the line items where there are humans and you try to find ways to get more leverage on those humans. So you start with customer support, account management, any workflow where people are doing things, filling in data, workflow-type stuff. That's the easy starting point. It's not as innovative per se. Like it doesn't get to the core product, but it's sort of how you start surrounding the core if you have something that's not digitized. But the radical thinking is to really digitize it from the inside out is not always the domain of an existing profitable business with a competitive mode. It usually doesn't have the DNA to do it again. It sometimes does, but most of the time does not. I mean, we didn't see very many other pre-existing transportation companies copy what you did, even though you gave a very clear model. Yeah. Timing on this, Bill Gross was here with us today. But he spoke yesterday morning with one of the talks he's given looking at the most successful companies and the companies that failed and was at their CEO, their capital, and so forth. And his conclusion, it's timing. That's it. And being too early is identical to being wrong. It's worse. Yeah, because you waste a lot of money. And time. And time. I mean, it's the worst. So the company I did before Uber was like networking software. I sold it to Occamlie, but I was like-- I was probably wrong and too early, which is like really the worst. So first four years, no salary. I didn't have anything. So I like to say, actually at some point had socks that said blood, sweat, and ramen. So it will grind you to dust if you're early. And if you're early and wrong, that's intense. By the way, please take your questions. We're going to be going to your questions in a little bit. I really want you have a chance to ask Travis for his wisdom. You hit a key point when this theme of this session is technological convergence. It's a bit of convergence on the smartphone and Google Maps and GPS. And the 2008 recession, how important was that recession for this? For what? For getting the gig economy. People willing to drive. I don't think it had much to do with it. Was the concept of Uber tried before you? What's this? Did people try-- I mean, the main thing that existed before us was there were a couple taxiats out there. But the problem was it was just a broken model. So a lot of times people, when they see an opportunity, but they go after it the wrong way, taking a slice of the taxi market, A, is very small. And B, it's sort of like when Zenga built on Facebook. It's like you're on somebody else's platform, and they can squeeze you. And you're basically getting yield optimization from the 20% that doesn't matter. So if a taxi guy agrees to go pick somebody up, but then gets a call that he doesn't have to pay any commission on, or somebody waving their hand, hailing them, you're done. So the reliability, the quality of the product you're going to be able to offer sucks, which you could say is similar to where online delivery of food is right now. Like the restaurants are like the tap-- Uber eats or DoorDash on a restaurant. It's like a taxi app. You're getting yield optimization on a thing that's built for something else. I remember on my first Uber ride in San Francisco when you were just running the black car service. And someone said, oh, I was going from part of it. Let me show you this new app, right? And what's interesting was you didn't try and boil the ocean in the beginning. You began really with the black car in San Francisco. Can you talk about staging a moonshot, storage staging something that would scale? Because just that mindset of just let's get it working here right before we grow it. Well, look, we were in San Francisco for a year before we went to our second city. Our second city was New York. And we didn't even do the low cost products. What we call Uber X, we didn't do that until-- was that-- must have been early 2013. Maybe mid-2012 was sort of halfway. And then early 2013 was all the way. So yeah, getting it right matters in my current company. There are a couple situations where we went too big, too quick, because you can learn the wrong lessons from the last thing. I'm like, oh, this scale is easy. It works. So I did this thing. It was like-- the acronym was PMD. I didn't-- basically, I didn't want to happen in my current company what happened at Uber, which was, we invented this thing, and then we had copycats everywhere that we, in different countries and continents, that we had to then go fight. Because they copy our thing before we got there. Even though we went to so many countries so quickly, we got there after the clones got there, right? So we didn't want that to happen again. So I came with this acronym. It was called PMD Parallel Multicontinental Deployment. It sounds like a nuclear war. And we did it. But we went to some places we shouldn't have gone. Just so happens, you can't make money on kitchens in India, which is not possible. We also found places that were amazing. So we went to Kuwait. We went to a lot of places you wouldn't go. Then we went to Saudi. We went to lots of places that we wouldn't have otherwise gone without that mentality. But yeah, don't go to Indonesia. Don't go to India. Don't go to Columbia. Those are the main ones. I remember when France made Uber illegal. That's my-- don't start a tech company in a country. that made Uber illegal was my motto. - How important is getting the system, the operation, working really buttoned down before you start moving to additional new territories? - Yeah, I mean, there's a balance. I mean, there's a couple of niches that I have right now that are like, you know, they talk about the moonshot inside the moonshot, you know, that there's things like that that make the overall thing when we've got a couple right now that are very much in that category. That balance between when to cook it and when to scale it is a tricky one. There's a judgment and instinct, but you basically, you don't want the overall effort of winning to get, this is kind of maybe technological and kind of obvious, so I'm not sure it's gonna be helpful, but you don't want the overall effort of winning to be dragged down because you went too big. Okay, obviously, so you're like, well, what does that mean? So right now I have this one project where it's still operationally intensive 'cause we haven't gotten the tech right yet. And it's, but it's growing, it's perfect. We're like two six month periods in a row where we grew six x year over, we grew six x in that six month period. Now you're low base, okay? But it means it's 36 times bigger than it was a year ago. It's not gonna be small for long. When do we push and start expanding? But I know we'll drown if I don't get those core workflows tight. We're gonna drown in ops. Yep. So we're almost there, we're right about to click in and sort of expand it. Scaling something that's broken is not fun. Yeah, I like to say, let's not scale failure. It's what I say at the office. When you're trying to do something disruptive, I mean, there's a massive immune reaction that occurs. Sometimes the immune reaction is when your own organization, if people have been doing something else all along. And then sometimes obviously it compares how do you deal with resistance that you had? Just general resistance. Yeah, I mean, well, I like to say that, one of the most important things that innovators do is they are really good at finding valuable unknown truths. Things that are true and very valuable that nobody else knows. So if you create a machine that's finding valuable unknown truths, then you start to know a lot of things other people don't know. And if you know a lot of things other people don't know, you can start doing things that other people can't do. So that's called change making. You start to be able to do stuff other people aren't doing, which means you're doing some stuff nobody's seen. So you start doing a lot of it 'cause you're really good at that core thing, which is finding valuable unknown truths. You start doing a lot of it. You're basically in the change making business. And there is this thing in nature that is everywhere around us. It's called resistance to change. It's in nature. It's natural because nature of whores a monopoly and nature of whores change that can cause bad, cause harm. So it's a natural mechanism to slow down progress to make sure it's the right kind of progress. And so one of the best ways to deal with resistance to change is to build a massive amount of trusts with those you're asking to change or that you're asking to bring along with that change. And so then you really have to have a philosophy around how to build trusts while change making because then you can turn your adversaries into advocates. And you actually will end up moving much faster. So a lot of times people learn again, learning the wrong lessons are like, oh man, the Uber thing just go crack some skulls and kick some ass, you know? But actually the lesson to learn is different, which is if you're building, if you build trust as you make change, you can actually go even further. - When I knew you at Uber, we were talking about-- - That doesn't mean don't crack skulls. You still gotta do that too, okay? Just make sure. - It was about 13 years ago. I had my two kids, my two boys. And I remember at that moment in time, I made a decision to double down on my health. Without question, I wanted to see their kids, their grandkids, and really during this extraordinary time where the space frontier and AI and crypto is all exploding, it was like the most exciting time ever to be alive. And I made a decision to double down on my health. And I've done that in three key areas. The first is going every year for a found upload. You know, found is one of the most advanced diagnostics in therapeutics companies. I go there, upload myself, digitize myself about 200 gigabytes of data that the AI system is able to look at, to catch disease at inception. You know, look for any cardiovascular, any cancer, neurodegenerative disease, any metabolic disease. These things are all going on all the time and you can prevent them if you can find them at inception. So super important. So found is one of my keys. I make it available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, 'cause you know, I help this in you wealth. But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and about another 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, a virus. And we, you know, don't understand how that impacts us. And so I use a company in a product called Viom. And Viom has a technology called Metatranscriptomics. It was actually developed in New Mexico at the same place where the nuclear bomb was developed as a biodefense weapon. And their technology is able to help you understand what's going on in your body to understand which bacteria are producing, which proteins. And as a consequence of that, what foods are your superfoods that are best food to eat? Or what food should you avoid, right? What's going on in your oral microbiome? So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements. And Viom really helps me understand from a biological and data standpoint, what's best for me? And then finally, you know, feeling good, being intelligent, moving well is critical, but looking good when you look yourself in the mirror, saying, you know, I feel great about life is so important, right? And so a product I use every day twice a day is called One Skin, developed by four incredible PhD women that found this 10 amino acid peptide that's able to zap senile cells in your skin and really help you stay youthful in your look and appearance. So for me, these are three technologies I love and I use all the time. I'll have my team link to those in the show notes down below. Please check them out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. Now back to the episode. - We were in the midst of working on a Uber X prize for flying cars. - Yeah. And that was part of your initiative as well as the autonomous car program at Uber. - Yeah. - Do you wish, do you think it was the right thing for those not to continue? Or do you think they would have gotten the technology going faster? What are your thoughts? I know it's retroactive. - No, it's okay, it's okay. Look, they killed the autonomous car project that we had going on. At the time, we're really only behind Waymo, but probably catching up and we're going to pass them in short order. So my guess is there's probably some, you can look back 2020 and say maybe, I wasn't running the company when that happened, but you could say, wish we had an autonomous ride sharing product right now, that would be great. - Yeah, I think the same thing here. I think it's, there's still some lack of clarity on where flying cars or let's say at VTOL, like vertical take-off and landing. How does it exactly play out? But it's pretty clear if you can get from here to there at 150 miles an hour, and it's kind of like a very fast commute. I think it changes the game in a lot of ways and I think there are companies that are doing some interesting stuff. I think Joe B's probably one of the more angels in the nurture and number them. I mean, it's packet switched humans where you're moving people for sure. Well, this is what you just did, right? That's network for the physical world. You just went into Adam's base computer, right? - One last question before we go to your questions here. So again, I'm ready, iterating under pressure. I mean, one of the things that you've fabulously did was iterate the company, the models, the products, the services and so forth. You talk about how important iteration is. - Yeah, I mean, I guess that's like how important is breathing, you know? It's like. So then it's really what, how do you breathe really well? What's your mantra? Okay, so how do you-- But yeah, so then it's like-- How hard did you push your teams to iterate? Or were you the one sort of dividing the iteration? No, I mean, yeah, my company's generally run in an empowered way with checkpoints. We would-- we like to say let builders build, but you need alignments and accountability in order to empower. So iteration, look, yeah, there's a lot to be said there. I'm trying to think of some nice pithy things to say that I figured it out. But it's-- you've got-- you know, it's-- our three cultural values at my current company are truth, trust, and passion. So you-- you really-- again, you have to find those valuable unknown truths. You have to have a passion to get it over the line fast and first. And you have to build trust with those that you're bringing it to. But I think one of the things about iteration is really lowering risk. A lot-- here's an interesting-- here's an interesting way to go with this. Is that a lot of people say I want to have-- I want to be a risk-taking company. Or I want to go to-- I want to go work for a risk-taking initiative or whatever. And I'm like, no, I want to be a not-risk-taking company or a risk-midicating company. I like to say as innovation-- I have this like fun formula-- innovation equals big p divided by little r. Big p is progress and little r is risk. Risk comes in the form of time, money, and reputation. So I need to squeeze down risk. If I get it to zero, then innovation goes to infinity. And hold on to that progress while getting risk down. And iteration is a big part of that. It's about, in some ways, finding those valuable unknown truths while minimizing the risk of doing so. In the form of dollars, time, and reputation. As you go to the mics, I'm going to ask one more question. And of course, we got questions coming up on Slido. And on Zoom here, you have really been passionate about a customer-centric focus. Yeah. Speak to that for a moment. Well, look, I think-- you know, look, who's the best of the best of the best at this? Is probably Amazon under Bezos. I mean, that's just next level. Just done so beautifully. It's so clarifying to make a person's happiness or a company's happiness, your target. It's visceral. And so if you start there and work your way through it, it gets-- you just get clarity. Now, a lot of people go, oh, I'm going to be customer obsessed. I'm going to lower the price. Well, if you don't exist in business next year because you went out of business, you aren't customer obsessed. So customer obsessed means you have to have a lot of heart for the customer. You have to have a lot of love for them. But you also have to have a lot of ROI. And if you get a lot of ROI with that heart, then you can put an even more heart. And I think that's one of the things that-- it's sort of like that-- sort of the feelings and the numbers coming together, if that makes sense. And I think sometimes people forget that it's about both. Simone? This is not about technology. It was about your mindset when you had so much trouble pushing the taxes in the kitchen. And every day, it seems like you had another issue. How did you keep resilient in your mind? When your team and what's the mindset you can recommend to us that we always are seeing challenges every day and changes like you did? Well, it's interesting because every once in a while I'll get an entrepreneur that comes to me and we'll say, when do I give up? Like, when do I move on? And I've sort of formulated a three-step program. I'd love to know the answer. I've held on too long a few times. I've never given up early, but I've held on too long. I have to-- this applies to-- well, I don't know if it applies to all areas of life, but it might-- I haven't thought about it. Okay, so step one. Do you still believe? Like, if you don't believe, move on. Yeah. Obvious, okay? Step two, are you the right person to do it? So this goes back to self-awareness. And just knowing, like, okay, what's sport are we playing? Am I a support player? I'm the main player. Like, where do I land? Where am I in this? And super hyper-transparent honesty with yourself about it. Okay? And then-- okay, so let's say we check that box too. Step three. Am I about to do significant mental or physical damage to myself by continuing? I remember one of my companies. It was-- And that's the hardcore entrepreneur way. That's when you're really right on the edge. It was running a launch company in the late '80s, way before SpaceX. And in the last days of the company, I was making journal entries saying the patients on life support four days left to live. It's like just this emotional-- Yeah. Richard, if you start having apocalyptic dreams or nightmares, you're probably getting pretty close in my experience. Richard, please. Yeah. Hi, everybody. Richard Medcalfe. The question is, in my mind, is the inner journey. So you have led this industry disruption at scale. And as it got bigger, were there moments where there's some kind of inner story, fear? Or did you stop playing at the bigger enough game? Or I'm just going to wondering what there's going to pivotal in a moment as a leader? Or were? I'm not sure I understand the question. So you were leading change where there was no playbook. Yeah. Right? Where you were kind of out there at the forefront, kind of writing the rules as you go. A lot of pressure from you from various states. Yes. So I was just going to wondering what that did for your own personal leadership. Were there moments where you lost your nerve? Or-- Never lost your nerve? Never happened. Never lost your nerve. Just kidding. Okay. Yes, just the inner game. Kind of what's the answer to your story of what goes on? Look, yeah, there's something to be said. When I finished that company before Uber, that one where I did four years, no salary, like all this stuff ran on money a couple of times, had apocalyptic nightmares. You know, this kind of thing. I then would do-- I did a couple of talks, you know, like entrepreneur talks, things like this. And one of my sort of aphorisms was, money will not buy you happiness, but it will pay for therapy. So look, the clear you are, the more centered you are, the more you can do. Good one. Our team's over. Thanks, Peter. Hi, Travis. How do you see cloud kitchens evolving in the near future? What role will AI and automation play in its future growth? And do you foresee cloud kitchens merging with any other AI company to become even more cutting edge? Look, the high level of that question. Okay, so look, I'll do the food part and then the AI part. The idea about cloud kitchens is, can you get a meal that is prepared and delivered to you? So high quality and so cost-efficient and so convenient that it is approaching the cost of-- You go into the grocery store. Yeah. And if you do that, you do to the kitchen, what Uber did to the car. And you turn this thing that we all do for ourselves into a thing that a service does for you. That doesn't mean we don't cook. Like, I like horses, but I don't write a horse to work. And really, this kind of infrastructure will be so much more healthy. I'd like to say you don't have to be wealthy to be healthy, and that's one of those things we talk about. You basically get-- again, what you get in return for this is you basically get your time back to do all the other things in life you love. And cook when you want, that's great. But you don't have to. And similar to what happened in the Uber situation is that, of course, this used to drive-- everybody used to drive themselves and more and more every year. Somebody else is doing it for us, or there's a service that does it for us, and ultimately an automated one. As it relates to AI on this question, I think everybody is very familiar with chat GPT, DeepSeek, GROC, this kind of thing. I call that BITS AI. That's AI for BITS. There's a whole other thing that we're probably going to start seeing more of, which is what I call Adams AI. AI around the physical world. You could say the first iteration of that is what you see with the waymo's rolling around, right? In autonomous cars, generally, but what about humanoids? It's basically-- how does a machine move through the physical world, an act in the physical world, there's a whole other set of models that are going to need to be invented to make that real. Sometimes borrowing from the other side, but it's a different ball game. - Thank you. Gustavo, on Zoom, what's your question, Gustavo? - Hi, hi, I'm from Brazil. I am a serial entrepreneur. I have a 1 billion dollar companies in my track record I co-founded. In my experience, luck plays a bigger role than my vision and ability. In your view, does luck significantly contribute to the success of a business? Could you venture a percentage? - It's so important. - How important is luck, Travis? - Okay, so I like to play backhanded. Anybody here like to play backhanded? All right, there we go. In any given game, luck plays a real role. - Sure. - But if you play 100 games, it doesn't. - That's a really good analogy. - So the way to think about it is, is the success that you have is it due to 10,000 decisions or is it due to two? If it's due to just a couple, then you're lucky. If it's due to 10,000, you're not. - Love that. Cartique. - Thanks, Peter. Travis, thrilled to have you here. So my question actually, and I'm gonna reference George's question up there, if you don't mind, is about what framework do you have and that you're deploying to determine to assess timing, but also valuable unknown truths? - Yeah, I mean timing, you know, you get burned. What you know, a lot of the other question I get a lot of is, what did you learn? What did you learn at the last thing or what did you learn? And I'm like, well, I learned all the things I shouldn't do. And that usually, I mean, all of that is about really seeing the future, right? So a valuable unknown truth is, means you see something nobody else does. It means you believe something that is against what everybody else believes. It means you have to see the future. You have to see the difference between perception and reality, where everybody thinks reality is here. That's their perception. They think reality is here, but it's actually over here. The distance between the two is the innovator's playground. So you have to get good at seeing what the future really is and being very skeptical of everything coming in and analyzing in a very truthful way. And getting good at it, what is actual reality, not what do people think reality is? And look for those moments when what people think is very, very different than what is real. That's where all the good stuff is. Beautiful. Yeah, I'll give it up to that. (audience applauds) Gone? Yes. Hi, Travis, thanks for being here. I have a really important question. How has your leadership changed since everything that happened at Uber? Yeah, great question. So before Uber, the largest company that I had run was a 12-person company. So kind of everything, okay? So everything I'm saying right now is from a journey where you learn every day and you sort of deeply commit to getting better every day. So everything from 12 people running, scrappy, don't know what the hell you're doing, not paying yourself for four years. A thousand how big was Uber at that point? It was like 15,000, 20,000 people. Yeah, and then several million drivers, it was a lot, you know, so what I learned is just like whole, like everything I'm saying, you know, and you iterate on all those things as you go. We'll go to Elchen. Thank you, Peter. What's your advice on industry that's super segmented? I missed you. What's my advice on? What's your advice on segmented industries such as construction materials, digitize that industry and I've been wrong for the last five years. Look, I've played around, so we buy property and do construction, that's part of what we do. And I've sort of dabbled in modular construction. The promise of it is so beautiful. Of course, the issue is called local contractors and subcontractors. And like we did a thing where we made this beautiful, we would manufacture these facilities, these kitchen facilities off site. Just really epically, just wonderful. But then it turns out like, okay, you have to put them together like Legos on site. But now I have to train a set of contractors to build it. And in the first go, we had one that could do it. He wakes up one morning. He's like, you know, I don't feel like doing it today. And you're like, please, pretty please, we signed a contract, you're supposed to do it. And then he's like, you know, I think if you paid me half a million dollars more, I would do, so you get into this world where it's against the contract you signed, but like they got you. So then you're like, okay, now I have to train all these contractors to do this thing so that I can manufacture somewhere else and then put the pieces together. You know, my point is is like, there's a lot of change that needs to happen. It may be that we only get there when we get into true robotic construction on site. Or I don't know. I haven't solved this yet. - Where did we integrate everything we got? - Yeah, I don't know. I don't have the answer for this one, but I have so much hope. - Thank you. - Yeah, Jacob, one of our teams again, yeah. - Hello, Travis. So do you believe that the mass destruction of currently existing industries happens based off of factors within or out of your control when you're creating a business based on your experiences at Uber? - Look, nobody's in control of the world. And sometimes the world changes in ways that you didn't expect and you have to adapt to that. So we're only in control of what we do each day, but most definitely most of what's going on, we're not in control of it. I think that's a super important thing for people to realize 'cause I know a lot of people get really attached to this idea of controlling stuff and they get into weird spots when you do that. Now, there's the other side of it. You get so used to not being in control. Like is an entrepreneur, you wake up and you're like, what crazy F-dub thing is happening today? And you just go, yeah, I guess that's what's happened today. Let's go. But then you almost lose your spine. You almost become an invertebrate because you're like just like this blob, that's just cool with whatever's happening. So you have to sort of keep the fight to try to make the world the way you want it, but you can't get attached to trying to control it. It's like this balance. - Amazing, Barun on Zoom, please. - Thank you, Peter. Hi, Travis. Darling in from Dubai. My question is the global consulting industry is highly fragmented and as we live longer, there's gonna be a lot more people who work in the industry who will become consultants. It's really fragmented and it's a large industry. Is it a good idea to consolidate this industry using the Uber model? - Push a button, get a consultant. I was just kidding. Okay. I like, you're like, okay, okay. No, I think that the consulting world is so much about what can be done with AI. - Yeah, I think consulting is about to get radically transformed with AI right now. - Like, you're like, okay, if you're sort of a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble. If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you've got some stuff, you know? And you're basically going to those, like I previously mentioned, profitable companies with competitive modes and like making their moat bigger and making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view. - Yeah, I think consulting is a scarcity mindset business. You build a wall around these consultants and you meter them out a little bit at a time and that will get completely disintermediated by AI. - Yeah, Ted, it's good. - You can push a button now and get a consultant's called Deep Research. We've been talking about it for the last few days. It's pretty good. - Let's go. Travis, what advice do you have please for investors and board members who want to make entrepreneurs like you successful or working with people like you? What are the tailwinds? What are the headwinds that they create? - Yeah, I mean, I'm going to say some provocative things. - I was hoping you would. - Yeah, all right, let's go. I think. There are a lot of investors who make the pitch of founder friendly. They make the pitch as if their job is to serve the founder, but that's not their job. Their job is called capital allocation. And once you make that leap that you understand that your job is capital allocation and not happiness of a founder, then I think a lot of things actually get into a much better spot. And generally, from a founder's perspective, the way a founder should look at an investor is not which investor is going to be founder friendly or help me-- you know, this kind of thinks I've just never seen that work. It's a-- which investor does the least amount of harm? So the way I look at it is, OK, you're playing a chess match. You're like a grand master chess player, right? And you're playing another grand master chess player. And you're playing this game like 60 hours a week. This match, 60 hours a week is what you're doing. And you're like pretty exhausted from doing that, but like you're passionate about it. And then there's this chess enthusiast that doesn't actually play chess is trying to tell you what-- >> Read a book about it. >> Do on the chess board, and you're like, homie-- let me tell you the 18 reasons why that's not a thing. And it's not their fault. They're not playing chess. It's OK. But the do know harms a real thing. I look, governance matters. But a lot of times, I think, investors get in the mode of thinking they're the idea guy. If the investor is the idea guy, you have the wrong company. And getting a board that supports you as a moonshot entrepreneur that gives you the freedom to do riskier things. >> It's got to be smart risks, right? >> Or worse, but still. >> Yeah, like you still, as a board member, should be like, are you smoking something? You know, the response should be very good. But you should be asking, are you smoking something? Because things can get weird, yeah? >> Thank you. This is such a wonderful conversation. So we were having dinner last night. It was a group of founders. And we started to brainstorm around what's happening over the next five years and 10 years. Well, robots and AI replace all of our jobs. How do we prepare for that future? I'd love to get your thoughts, because it's coming up fast. >> Yeah, I mean, this is a hard one to answer, because the history of technology basically says we're fine. But a lot of times history says you're fine, and then things change, you know? So it's like, I don't know. The one thing we got going for us, this is a weird one. The one thing we got going for us is that robots don't have bank accounts. >> Yet. We had an easy-- >> Two hour session on crypto last night. >> Easy, easy. Okay, hold on, let me just roll with this for a second. Let's just assume robots don't have bank accounts, all right? Why does that matter? Because if you're making something cheaper, it's cheaper for a human. It means that they have more money than to spend on other things. And when they spend it on something that's powered by AI, it doesn't go to a robot's bank account. And when some founder makes a shit ton of money doing whatever, and they're going to spend that money, it doesn't go into a robot's bank account. So I'm in a weird way. I know this is a little bit, you know, sort of nitchy with the way I'm answering this. I'm more optimistic than pessimistic. I'd say the other thing that I'd put out there that I think it might be more generally applicable or make more sense, to be honest, is I've done companies that have failed. And the main thing when the company failed that I experienced or that I saw was that nobody wanted the thing that I made. So if somebody wants to go and make a thing that doesn't make people's lives better, they should count on failing. And if you want it to succeed, you better be making somebody's life better. And probably a lot of people's lives better if you want it to succeed. And so that's where things ultimately go is that the machines are serving by its nature. Its DNA are serving us. Let's start it out there. Time for one last question, Rachel. Thank you. In Travis, Uber changed my grandparents' life. So thank you. That's awesome, thank you. My name is Rachel, and I am Anderson Fellow. And also a new founder. I am building an AI-driven company to revolutionize how we form, sustain, and grow our most intimate relationships. And the question I have for you is that Uber wasn't just a company. It was an introduced entirely new market. It was disruptive innovation. So how did you balance needing to educate people on the market with building your product for finding your business model and scaling? Well, it's like you hear about somebody's first experience with Uber, and the fortunate part is is the product itself is the education. They're like sitting at a dinner table, and you're like, check this out. You're at a restaurant. You're like an environment. It was naturally social, a large percentage of the app installs were at restaurants, right? A large percentage of the app installs were due to one person introducing the thing with a link. Like, I get a free ride. When I give you a free ride, we call it give get. It was like a third of all of our new users up to 2015 or '16. So the product itself was the education. Look, I think it's pretty weird that one citizen taking another citizen across town became somehow really controversial. It's kind of weird that that was controversial, but it was. So we had to sort of deal with the controversies we went. Maybe it gets back into that change-making thing and trust or lack thereof, yeah. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for Travis Melanick. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to be releasing all of the talks, all the key notes from the Abundance Summit exclusively on exponentialmastory.com. You can get on to band access there. Go to exponentialmastory.com. [MUSIC PLAYING]