Uber Founder on AI, Risk, and Building the Future w/ Travis Kalanick | EP #164
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Will 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, 5 billion rider trips, 7.5 billion in revenues, a $70 billion 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

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 the moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. This is a group of entrepreneurs running $10 million to $10 billion companies. Their focus is on change.

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 you know understanding the process of reinventing an industry uh transforming it making it efficient i think there are only a handful of individuals that

make that possible or have done that successfully. I want to read the numbers on Uber just as an example, because I want to 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 rider trips. I mean, that's a debt. Yeah, I don't know where that number came from. It came from JetGPT or some sites 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 in revenues. Not bad. Thereabouts. Yeah. Well, the gross 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 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 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? Yes, there's something along this. Yeah, you get the public sort of like generates this whole made up thing. We don't we don't have one of those. So, yeah.

But it sounds like one. So we were in Paris. We were at, if you remember way back in the day in 08 and 09, there was Loic Lemur's Web Summit. Yes. I think it was called that. Yeah, it was Web Summit. Yeah. And I was there in Paris. I was sort of in between gigs. I had sold my recent company to Akamai, and I didn't know what was next. So I was there with a guy named Garrett Camp. And we were walking back before Uber in Paris. You'd have to walk back. You'd

I want to 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 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, pretty good. Yeah.

And he's like, yeah, let's just go back to San Francisco. We'll make the app. Let's buy 20 S classes, get 40 drivers and 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 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 classy and I was the efficiency, if 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. Yeah.

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... 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 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 as the foundation for building a company. And then how does that translate then to your team that you build? Well, before we even get into it, 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. 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 got to 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

that I'm serving. Whatever you're going to do, you're serving somebody. You should be fundamentally passionate about them and what the thing you're going to do is going to do for them. 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 want to be a 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 live.

online by going to exponentialmastery.com. That's exponentialmastery.com. So you get clarity on that. Yeah. And then you start building an organization. And I guess the challenge is if you're bringing in people who don't share that, you're going to very quickly 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 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

I mean, those two are, I think, very similar. So sometimes somebody who doesn't, who shouldn't, sometimes a tennis player goes to a basketball court and you're like, yo, whoa, whoa, we don't do rackets here. We have this much larger ball that we put it in this hoop that's different. So it doesn't have to be a judgment. It's just a...

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 want to get to that place where it's not supposed to be there. You

When somebody comes in, you want to make it work. It doesn't always work, but you want to try to make it work. But it becomes really clear, ideally, in a recruiting process. And if a mistake happens on the way in, it 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 superpower 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. Yeah, right CPU manipulates the bits storage stores the bits and

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 because if that's your sport then you all 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 and

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. And 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 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 now 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 as somebody's going to eventually do it if it's doable yeah

What advice do you have to folks about doing that? The other part of it is companies that are born as digital native companies, like you bought 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 like 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 moat 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. Timing on this. Bill Gross was here with us today, but he spoke yesterday morning. One of the talks he's given looking at the most successful companies and the companies that failed and was it their CEO, their capital and so forth. His conclusion is timing.

That's a and being too early is identical to being wrong. It's worse Yeah, could 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 Akamai But I was like I was probably wrong and too early which is like the really the worst so first four years no salary. Yeah, I

I didn't have anything, right? So I like to say, you know, I actually at some point had socks that said blood, sweat and ramen, you know, 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, you know, make your questions, right? 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, you know, the theme of this session is technological convergence, but your convergence on the smartphone and, you know, 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 Uber tried before you? What's this? Did people try? I mean, the main thing that existed before us was there were a couple taxi apps out there. But the problem was it was just a broken model. So a lot of times people, when they make, they see an opportunity, but they go after it the wrong way. Taking a slice of the taxi market, A, is sort of very small. Yeah.

And B, you are, it's sort of like, you know, when Zynga 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 like 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 tax

Uber Eats or DoorDash on a restaurant is like a taxi app. You're getting yield optimization on a thing that's built for something else. I remember my first Uber ride.

In San Francisco, when you were just running the black car service. Yeah. And someone said, oh, I was going for a party. Let me show you this new app, right? Yeah. 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. Yeah.

Can you talk about staging a moonshot? 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 UberX. 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 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 works. So I did this thing. It was like the acronym was PMD was I didn't Basically, I didn't want to happen in my current company what happened at uber which was I'm 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 up with this acronym. It was called PMD, Parallel Multi-Continental Deployment. It sounds like a nuclear war. And we did it, but we went to some places we shouldn't have gone. Like, just so happens you can't make money on kitchens in India. It's just 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. 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 Colombia. Yeah.

Those are the main ones. I remember when France made Uber illegal. That's my, you know, 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 initiatives that I have right now that are like,

They talk about the moonshot inside the moonshot. There's things like that that make the overall thing win. 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 tautological 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. Wow. 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? Um, and, uh, but I know we'll drown if, uh,

I don't get those core workflows tight. We're going to drown in ops. So we're almost there. We're right about to click in and sort of expand. Scaling something that's broken is not fun. Yeah, I like to say let's not scale failure is 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. 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 because 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 nature. It's natural because nature abhors a monopoly.

And nature abhors 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 trust with those you're asking to change or that you're asking to bring along with that change.

So then you really have to have a philosophy around how to build trust 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. I still got to do that, too. 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, you know, 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 to be able to live.

is going every year for a fountain upload. You know, fountain is one of the most advanced diagnostics and 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 Fountain is one of my keys. I make that available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, because health is a new wealth.

But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and about another 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, viri. And we don't understand how that impacts us. And so I use a company and a product called Viome. And Viome has a technology called Metatranscriptomics. It was actually developed by

in New Mexico, 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 for you to eat? Or what food should you avoid? What's going on in your oral microbiome?

So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements. And Viome 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 XPRIZE for flying cars. Yeah. And that was part of your initiative as well as the autonomous car program at Uber. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you wish do you think it was the right thing for those not to continue or do you think they would have had gotten? Gotten the technology going faster. What are your thoughts? I know it's I know it's right. No, it's okay. It's okay. Look they They they killed the autonomous car project we had going on. Yeah At the time we're really only behind Waymo, but probably catching up and we're gonna pass them in short order. I

So my guess is there's probably some you can look back 2020 and say maybe you know I wasn't running the company when that happened But you know 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 you know, it's there's still some lack of clarity on where I

Flying cars or let's say at VTOL like vertical takeoff and landing like when how does it exactly play out? But it's pretty clear if you can get from here to there at 150 miles an hour

You know, 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 Joby's probably one of the more interesting ones. Joby and Archer, a number of them. I mean, it's packet-switched humans where you're moving people through. Sure. Well, this is what you just did, right? That's network for the physical world. Yeah. You just went into atoms-based computer, right? Yeah.

One last question before we go to your questions here. So get them ready. Iterating under pressure. I mean, one of the things that you fabulously did was iterate the company, the models, the products, the services, and so forth. Can 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, how do you breathe really well? What's your mantra? Okay, so how do you iterate? But yeah, so then it's like... How hard did you push your teams to iterate? Or were you the one sort of divining the iteration? No, I mean, yeah, my companies generally run in an empowered way.

with checkpoints. We like to say let builders build, but you need alignment 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, our three cultural values at my current company are truth, trust, and passion.

So 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.

Here's an interesting way to go with this, is that a lot of people say, I want to be a risk-taking company or 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-mitigating company. I like to say as innovation, I have this 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.

the form of dollars time and reputation as you go to the mics I'm gonna ask one more question and of course we got questions coming on Slido and on zoom here you have really been passionate about a customer centric focus you know 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 yeah I mean awesome 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, you just get clarity. Now, a lot of people go, oh, I'm going to be customer obsessed. I'm

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 in even more heart.

And I think that's one of the things that it's sort of like that, the sort of the feelings and the numbers coming together, if that makes sense. And I think sometimes people forget that it's about both. Simon?

This is not about technology. It was about your mindset when you had so much trouble pushing the taxi syndicates. And every day, like it seems like you have another issue. How did you keep resilient in your mind and your team? And what's the mindset you can recommend to us that we always are seeing challenges every day and changes like you like you did?

Well, it's interesting because every once in a while, I'll get an entrepreneur that comes to me and will 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. Okay. I've held on too long a few times. I've never given up early, but I've held on too long. I have too. 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? Hmm. So this goes back to self-awareness and just knowing like okay, what 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, so

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 who was... That's the hardcore entrepreneur way. That's when you're really right on the edge. I was running a launch company in the late 80s, way before SpaceX launched.

And in the last days, the company, I was making journal entries saying the patients on life support, four days left to live. It's like just this emotional. Richard. If you start having apocalyptic dreams or nightmares, you're probably getting pretty close in my experience.

Richard, please. Yeah. Hi, everybody. Richard Metcalf. The question is in my mind is the inner journey. So you've led this industry disruption at scale. And as it got bigger, were there moments where there was some kind of inner story, fear, or did you stop playing the big enough game? Or I'm just kind of wondering what those kind of pivotal inner moments as a leader was 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 various states. So I'm just kind of wondering, like, what that did for your own personal leadership. Were there moments where you lost your nerve or doubted yourself? Never happened. Never lost my nerve. Just kidding. Okay. Yeah, so just the inner game. Kind of what's the unheard story of what goes on? Look, yeah.

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 out of money a couple times, had apocalyptic nightmares, you know, this kind of thing. I then would, I did a couple 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 clearer you are, the more centered you are, the more you can do. We had one of our teens, Omer.

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. Okay.

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 going to the grocery store? Yeah. And if you do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.

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 ride a horse to work and Really this kind of infrastructure will be so much more healthy I like to say you don't have to be wealthy to be healthy and that's one of those things we talked about you you

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,

used to drive everybody used to drive themselves and more and more every year uh 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 deep seek grok 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 Adam's AI, AI around the physical world. You could say the first iteration of that is what you see with the Waymos rolling around, right, in autonomous cars generally. But what about humanoids? What about... It's basically how does a machine move through the physical world and act in the physical world?

There is very 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 it's a different ballgame. Thank you. Gustavo on Zoom. What's your question, Gustavo?

Hi, Travis. I'm from Brazil. I am a serial entrepreneur. I have a $1 billion 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 if so? How important is luck, Travis? Okay, so I like to play backgammon.

Does anybody here like to play backgammon? Anybody? 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. Kartik?

Thanks, Peter. Travis, thrilled to have you here. So my question actually, and I'm going to 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 how do you, 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, right?

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. Give it up to that. John?

Yes. Me? Hi, Travis. Thanks for being here. I have a really important question. Yeah. 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 like everything from 12 people running scrappy, don't know what the hell you're doing, you know, not paying yourself for four years. 15,000, how big was Uber at that point? It was like 15, 20,000 people. Yeah. And then, you know, 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 Elchin. Elchin? Thank you, Peter. What's your advice on industry that's super segmented? I missed you. What's my advice on what? 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 this thing where we made this beautiful, we would manufacture these facilities, these kitchen facilities offsite.

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 it.

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. 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 one yet. Vertically integrate everything again. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have the answer for this one, but I have so much hope. Thank you. Jacob, one of our teens again. Hello, Travis. So do you believe that the mass disruption 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. So...

you have to see into where the world is going and build for that 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. And I think that's a super important thing for people to realize because I think 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 as an entrepreneur, you wake up and you're like, what crazy effed up thing is happening today? And you just go, yeah, I guess that's what's happening 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 baroon on on zoom please thank you peter hi travis uh dialing in from dubai

My question is the global consulting industry is highly fragmented. And as we live longer, there's going to 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 feel like, okay, yeah.

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 just, you're 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 got some stuff. Yeah.

And you're basically going to those, like I previously mentioned, profitable companies with competitive moats and making their moat bigger. And making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view. 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. Yeah.

Ted, it's good to meet you. You can push a button now and get a consultant. It's called Deep Research. We've been talking about it for the last two days. 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 gonna be founder friendly or help me, you know, this kind of thing 'cause I've just never seen that work. It's which investor does the least amount of harm.

So the way I look at it is, okay, you're playing a chess match. You're like a grandmaster chess player, right? And you're playing another grandmaster 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 moves to do on the chess board. And you're like...

Homie is 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 okay, but But the do no harm is 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 It's if the investor is the idea guy you have the wrong company. Mm-hmm

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. Yeah. Right? Of course, 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. Thanks. 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. Will 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 find out, 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 a, we had a two hour session on crypto last night. Easy, easy. Okay. Hold on. Let me just roll with this for a second. Okay. 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 niche-y 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 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 throw it out there. Time for one last question, Rachel.

Thank you. And Travis, Uber changed my grandparents' life. So thank you. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. My name is Rae Shellolden, and I am an Ascend 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.

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, refining your business model and scaling? Well, you know, it's like it's, you know, 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 know, you're at a restaurant. You're like, and 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 and

with a link, like I get a free ride when I give you a free ride. We called it GiveGet. It was like a third of all of our new users up till like 2015 or 16. So the product itself was the education. You know, 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 controversy as 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 Malanek. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to be releasing all of the talks, all the keynotes from the Abundance Summit exclusively on exponentialmastery.com. You can get on-demand access there. Go to exponentialmastery.com. Thank you.

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