Transcripts For BLOOMBERG The David Rubenstein Show Peer To

BLOOMBERG The David Rubenstein Show Peer To Peer Conversations July 14, 2024

I dont consider myself a journalist. No one else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though day job and was running a private equity firm. Define leadership . It that makes somebody tick the c. E. O. Of uber for how long now . Dara two years. David you enjoy it . Dara i love it. David when you came in the was not a public company. Youve taken it public . Dara yes. Avid youve received a lot of publicity about the ipo. Obviously, you know that. He company now has a higher market capitalization, roughly 72 billion, Something Like that market capitalization than any company in american capitalism history except for in this short a time after its ipo. So many people criticizing you for having added cap . Illion market dara i think there are many critics out there especially for companies. Thats a fact of life. I do think whats different some of the Technology Companies of our generation that the socalledlic, stayed , is that weve at it for longer and weve aised more money over a longer period of time. As a result, when we come public, we generally have bigger than companies who went public, lets say, in the last generation, the companies that view on this t my is, we want it to go public. We needed to make sure that well capitalized for the next five years for the company. E achieved that and now the time is to put your head down and get the real work done. Went public ompany i pointed out there is a high high market capitalization so after its ipo it did go down by about 11 , which is a an ipo, so ne after did you think that the Investment Bankers didnt place it correctly or what do you the problem was on the ipo . You know, i love how this starting. Is i appreciate that. Actually the timing of very much in line with our president s tariff wars. Got ame day, so i think we caught up in a bit of a market swirl. There is nothing you can do i tell the nd what team is, short term the market can be a voting machine but long its a weighing machine and were focused on the weighing. Nd im very confident that if we as a team execute the market will appreciate it. How did you get here . Uber, did take an you . Unfortunately, when i come here i need some professional security. Uber from time to time . Yeah, this weekend with the family were taking ubers all absolutely. Ace, when you take an uber, lets talk about the ride sharing do theyen you take uber know who you are . Its about 5050. Nd the ones that dont know you, you just give them comments on how good they are or not or make sure im very polite, that i dont slam the door. I ask them how they are doing. If i get on the phone call i ask them if its okay to make a nice call, i try to be as as i can because im trying to uberating. David you said before people shouldnt slam the doors. Problem . Big dara if youre driving a car and youve got 10 or 20 in, the car ising an asset of yours. Has roughly ompany 22,000 employees . Dara yes. But two or three million drivers . Dara almost four million on a global basis. David youre in 63 countries . Dara yes. 585 cities, like like that . Ara youve been briefed effectively. David is it going steady or down . Ara its increasing in every single market, growth rate, we as a company, in the last a newly we announced as public company, we announced that on the Foreign Exchange basis we grew our ookings 41 yearonyear and this is off of a pretty considerable base of bookings, almost 15 billion on a quarterly basis so the business is growing at very big scale. Pretty impressive rates. David last quarter when you had your Earnings Announcement you a billion dollars during the previous quarter. Dara yes. David im sure you know this. There are details that are important. David how much longer can you billion dollars a quarter and keep going . Dara we have a very significant amount of cash in the bank. 8 billion in the ipoened you had some money . Dara we already had some Money Company at this point is incredibly well capitalized to eep investing and the market that were going after, the people, food, of these markets represent 16 trillion dollar markets that and if you after look at even uber, the ride itself, when you look at our audience, the countries in which we operate, are addressing no more than 2 of the population these countries. So we think its time to lean forward. The business itself can be quite profitable. Were confident of that. But the next two, three, four be about going to growth and then well flip it over as the market demands. I wanted to have a ride share right after this uberrview why should i pick versus your competitors . Dara i think we have lots of competitors who are very good at what they do. I think we typically, in most pretty much in every market that we operate we have the greatest number of drivers in the market. Weve got the best liquidity so youre probably going to get the est eta, so youll get the quickist driver to pick you up. The choice that is we have are pretty impressive. Example, in d. C. Now, we app. Schedules right on the we really want to move from a simply your app to transportation partner so that if youre trying to get from a to b were going to give you all that you have which many of our competitors dont do, to be able to get from b with a tradeoff of time, convenience, and price as well. David so right now, u many different businesses. Sharing is the one that youre most famous for but morph profitable for you is uber eats . Dara no ride sharing is more in most markets. Its the more mature part of the business. He uber eats business is now about 20 of our business. Its growing over a year over year basis. Were now the food delivery player. As a revenue percentage right now what percentage . Dara its about 20 of our bookings. David how many cities is that in . Dara eats is in over 500 cities. Whats the midwest popular food . Dara Fried Chicken is magic. Fried chicken. David how do you keep the grease from kind of going through . I mean my im covering that in next business review. David thats the most popular . Dara yes. Lot of people in the company own more stock than you do. Youre the c. E. O. Underpaid. Nk youre is that a problem for . You. Dara i would never claim that im underpaid. Claim that im underpaid. The David Rubensten show, peertopeer conversations is sponsored by wells fargo banking. E wells fargo healthcare banking, making a difference where it matters. G a difference where it matters. David lets talk about some of your other businesses. Over here you have your scooter usiness and your electric bike business. Dara yes. David the scooter business is all over the United States and world . The dara its in about 25 cities now and expanding. In the u. S. But were expanding into europe pretty quickly as well. Thats ouve a scooter manufactured just for you or is it different than the scooters that other Companies Use . Were building a scooter thats manufactured just for us. The bike is manufactured just by us. And designed by totally proprietary. David some people say scooters dangerous. What do you say about that . Dara its something that were carefully. Etty and were working on technologies to modulate those issues. Example, when scooters get to very busy parts of town, them down. Some of these scooters early on, they went as high as 20 miles per hour. Now were working with cities to say, how fast do you think is a responsible speed . Encourage our riders to wear helmets. David now you have a new helicopters. Is dara yes. David now, youve launched that couple of cities so far . Dara in new york city so far, yes. Downtown new york to jfk. David is there great demand for that . We will see. As you may know, going to jfk new york hhour in city is a mess. And really what were trying to does that cost, if you want to go from Downtown Manhattan to jfk, what does that cost . Ber copter, about 200. To 200ng to cost close anyway so the magic about being ise to do it in a helicopter that were bringing in demand from thousands of users who are to jfk and were matching three or four users and were utting them in the same vehicle. One of the keys in terms of traffic is, most people drive thats a huge waste of our roads. Its a huge waste of gas, et cetera. We have a product called pool, where we will match two, three, or four different riders one car, and essentially copter is pooled for the air and what you will see is that these helicopters are going be replaced bay generation of electrically powered vertical landing. And david will they ever be driverless . Dara eventually they will be were absolutely going to start with pilots. I think its a safer way to go. David you can expect that in the Aviation Industry in general. Absolutely taking a look at either computers assisting pilots more and more. Some controversies with period of er a long time, going driverless. Pilotless. David lets talk about your autonomous r business. Ou took a lot of people from carnegie lemons Robotics Department and you said recently will happen nk it so quickly as people previously said. Your ng will it be before ride program or your Driver Program is one where there is no drivers . Drivers, i think it will be 15 plus years. Take long g it will time. There is this drama around obots replacing humans and the reality of life is that the better thing that humans alone alone, are robots and humans working together. So robots are very well esigned for replacing repetitive, predictable behaviors. Most of driving is not either predictable, but there is a subset of routes that are. So what you will see with our program is that, one, well be incredibly careful and absolutely fety comes first, but were building our driverless program, and, by the way, were working with as well, within a ontext of a network where, first in d. C. , what are the 1 easiest trips in d. C. . Easy trip in d. C. May be avoid a roundabout. Unprotected left turn. Stay away from the airports. Stay on areas that are very well mapped. A set of routes that are incredibly easy to drive. Nd what you will see with us, as far as our driverless program, well get the machines to do the simple stuff, and then have the humans do the difficult stuff, and the two are coexist for 10 or 15 period of timeng versus of the drama that the press reports. David your 15year answer was mean no drivers at all but you expect to have some driverless or autonomous in a year or two or three or four . Dara i think within the next ive years, well see some driverless vehicles out in the market, and again, i think it will be in a very limited way. David you now, you spun off to a riverless Company Separate company. Why did you do that . Dara we created a separate where we were able to some investors and some partners, toyota, who is, as you oem, and we have a terrific partnership with toyota, deny zo, which is a well, thats y as very strong in manufacturing kits and sensors and other parts car. He and really bringing in toyota and denzo was about building Autonomous Vehicles at scale and then we also brought massa and soft bank as well. Biggestoft bank is your single investor still . Dara yes. And and they went in evaluated above or where you currently are . Dara below. It will get more decent with time. David when was the Company First started and who start it . Dara the company was started about nine years ago and it was gary camp, who is an entrepreneur. Hes still on the board. Unbelievably smart guy so he brought on travis who former c. E. O. And one of the founders as well, so garrett another one of our founders, ryan, really teamed up to build this thing. Of the people who were there at the beginning, own a lot of stock, in fact, a lot in the company own more stock than you do. Youre the c. E. O. Ou think youre underpaid because youve taken it public and you dont own as much stock as people working for you. Is that a problem for you . Dara i would never claim that im underpaid. You were u tell interviewing for this . Dara i did. Very early, as you know, press over the place. David you dont think its a secret . Barry to thank pretty much for everything in my professional career and cai not possibility of his hearing about this from some news report. He was the first person i called. The first person i called. You grew up not in the United States. Where were you born . Ara i was born in iran actually. David why did you leave iran . 1978. I left iran in i was 9 years old and this was hen the iranian revolution happened. My family was an industrial off, and when the shaw was overthrown, folks like longer welcomeno in iran so we left iran and went to france. Actually to wait until things calmed down and things never we went wn, and then from france to irvington, new york, where we stayed in my because we had no other place to stay. You went to High School New york. Errington, i studied bioelectrical throughing at brown and it all away to be an investment banker. Go figure. David you didnt want to go private equity, higher calling of Investment Banking was good enough . Question of just and i l i wanted to be wanted to be a little less evil. David could you have gone thats the ultimate. Dara for that i would need horns. To work en you go for barry. How did you know of you . Barry was he was a big battle t on wall street. He was bidding against paramount. It was a back and forth. It was an unfriendly bid. He was not wanted. We put up a big fight. And i got to know barry over that period of time and i myself, you know, if i ever have the chance to work for that person, i want to work person, and i got the chance eventually. David so you went to work for him . Dara yes. David ultimately one of the companies he owned was expedia. Yes. david did he own it before you joined . Him as went to work for the deal person, so we did a brought in ls and companies, we bought both and they and expedia were part of the family because of the deals that we did when i came in. You became the c. E. O. Of expedia . Dara i did, yes. David did you have any experience, did he think you would be good . Dara he was desperate. We were in a situation where one expedia, who s of was running it at the time, and this stuff happens naturally, company, building it is different from managing it and entering into a mature and this person decided that, hair, im not up for the c. E. O. Anymore. Can you find a replacement. David you were not dara you know, i have no idea. I never asked him but i raised my hand. Expedia one point the board gave some Stock Options that were worth 180 million. Guess they did based on theoretical values. David and all of a sudden while youre doing a good job of 180 million, t someone asked you to interview for the job of c. E. O. Of uber, right . Dara yes. David did you say i already have a job . Dara yeah, at first when i got no way. Said but then, i talked to a couple you iends, and, you know, ont get too many chances as a professional or otherwise to work at and especially lead a company that i think is a part how we live life. And i decided, in this case, a onceinalifetime opportunity. David did you tell barry you interviewing for this . Dara i did, very early. S you know, the press was all over the place. David you couldnt keep it a secret . Dara i couldnt. Barry i have barry to thank for pretty much everything in my career. Ional and i could not bear the possibility of his hearing about from some news report. First person i called, he was pretty unhappy at the beginning. But then he called me back. A series of me ersations, he called back, he said, i understand, let me now how i can be helpful. He was helpful as we went on this journey. He didnt remind you of the 180 million worth of Stock Options . Dara he understood that the eason why i would do this was not necessarily monetary. David when you came in you were eplacing travis, one of the founders and one of the big shareholders . Dara yes. David but he was still on the board. Dara yes. David so was it awkward to be replacing somebody who was a shareholder . Dara i feel the same way. Expedia and ard of im the former c. E. O. I there is a new c. E. O. , actually picked him, who is the board c. E. O. Tell you, being a former. E. O. , its a little weird sitting there and having someone else do something differently with your baby, because i think uber feels like travis baby and sitting there and its lt like mine a little weird but youre respectful, you get out of the travis has done the same for me. Is it weird . Yes. But are we in a situation where respectful and comfortable and hes there for me when i need his advice . Yes. Biggest ats the challenge you currently see the Company Facing . Ara i think the biggest challenge that we have is a common challenge that you see ith some of the large Technology Companies out there, hich is there is an increasing Regulatory Burden that is coming on some of the tech companies. Some of it deserved. I have some suppose extra money and i wanted to buy into a company like yours. Dara i think you have some extra money, dont you. Have enough but why i should buy your i have soe extra money and stock . Is it likely to go up from where is it likely to outperform some of your competitors . Where its no idea going next week or next month but over a long period of time cusp of a e transportation revolution. Were the player thats global. Were the player thats multiproduct in terms of moving people and things with our freight business as well. A much larger scope than any of the other players out there and i tell you, that urselves and many of our competitors are going to do great. Because this is about replacing car ownership. This is about redefining how cities are shaped. This is about shaping our peep in urban centers. David lets summarize what would you like the average erson who is listening to know about uber and its future . Dara i think what i want you to is that we essentially want partner in terms of your everyday life in the city. When you want to go to work we to be there. When youre coming back to work we want to be there. You,nt to be there to feed nd we want to be your everyday utility, and well do so in a responsible way. To is a company that wants be great, but wants to do good for the world as well. Nd we know weve got a lot of work ahead of us. And hung out in he hospitals all day long and wrote a businessman. What put us on the map were our nflation systems, these are syringes that are used to blow angio plasty balloons. At the end

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