To help you with the political war. You put it differently, you said its a campaign that you are running. Is bringing him on part of this creating a kinder, gentler he does not start until the end of september. He was obamas 2008 Campaign Manager and he was an advisor sort of in between the campaign and the white house in 2012. He is a pretty incredible guy. But the context is we view where we are at as there is a Political Campaign that is happening. We did not really realize it but there is a Political Campaign that is happening and uber was the candidate. The opposition was the taxi cartel. They were the opponent. Maybe there are some primaries going on that some other folks in the ridesharing space, etc. But the big opponent was the taxi cartel. They have been giving political donations for dozens of years, tens of years, decades. They have been lobbying folks for those same decades. Bayonne local politicians. They have created a monopoly in every single city for taxis. The causes problems who want to get around the city efficiently, and causes problems for creating jobs. It is not only that riders have no options, the drivers get stuck because there are no opportunities for jobs. In a situation like new york where a driver leases a car for 40,000 per year. That is the taxi. Its 40,000 per year. Instead, it is just a taxi. And for that, for that privilege of leasing that car for 40 grand per year, he gets to be impoverished. And thats because he did not have options. And people cannot get rides. And that medallion, the license to own and operate a sealed taxi, is worth a million dollars. Why . Because of the artificial scarcity. There are 13,000 taxis in new york. There were 13,000 in new york in the early 1950s. So does he go in and grease the wheel, bribe people, or is he a hammer, you are going to do this because i know people . How does he get stuff done . The way to think about it, he is the uber Campaign Manager. So that means policy communications, branding, and strategy. And which of those four are you inserting cash . You will go to a city and say, look, you guys have the wrong policy. For instance, miami, if you call to get a town car, there is a law there that says if that car comes in 15 minutes, you have to wait 45 minutes more before you are a legally allowed to enter the vehicle. If you enter before an hour has passed, that driver can be arrested. Thats not good. So youre trying to fix that. When you say you want to fix that and meet with the City Council Person or meet with the deputy mayor or something, they literally say, there is no meeting unless you go through this guy. And this guy is a lobbyist. And that is where the cash is inserted. In the big scheme of things it is a dirty business. Its terrible. Im glad you hired a professional to take care of that for you. How much of uber do you personally own at this point . I own a lot. More than 50 personally . I dont think its appropriate to talk about that here. You think its inappropriate, on a stage, a site where it is known for breaking news about peoples net worth. Yes, we can talk about it later. When you introduce yourself do you say im a billionaire, or is it still paper for you . Thats kind of funny. I think a lot of people who know me know that im pretty much the same today as when i was i know you, and you are the same. So you know the answer to that question. So you just yeah. [laughter] are those taxi socks . You used to be one of the poorest rich people buy new, if that makes sense. What does that mean . I think you had made a million dollars, but you immediately invested into new startups. Now you are worth some number of billions of dollars, i think. I just kind of want to see a little bit of arrogance or something that i can make fun of. But im not really getting at. Um, ill work on that. All right, so two days ago i was in palo alto and i called for an uber and the uber came. On its way i get a call from the driver who says, were you going. Us a couple miles. He hung up and canceled the route. Son of a bitch. So first of all, i assume he has been fired now, right. For my point of view, the thing i liked about uber back in the day as i would never have that kind of shit pulled on me. Uber changed all of that. Are you changing so fast that some of the old taxi problems are coming into the system . I mean, look, if you were to wave down a taxi in manhattan and say im going to brooklyn, hes going to say hell no. And thats normal. And there is nobody to complain to. Yeah. In the uber model, we are not perfect, but we really strive to be. So when that thing happens, we encourage the feedback. And folks who do this, drivers the partners who are doing this, they do not last in the system. So it is against the rules to engage in old taxilike behavior. Of course. But this is the tricky balance of this kind of business, right, is we have two sets of customers. There is the riders, but there is the drivers, too, and any policy that we have cancellation policies, minimum fares, things like this, in many cases it is good for one side and bad for the other. So you do something good for the riders and then the drivers are upset. You do something good for the drivers and in the riders are upset. Finding that principal balance is quite tricky, and its why anytime there is a little policy tweak that we do, it kind of makes news and somebody is upset. But we really try to find that principal middle ground. Its the right thing to do to take feedback from riders when there is a trip that did not quite meet expectations or meet standards. And ultimately, folks who are not meeting those standards should not be on the system because then you cannot offer highquality service. But there is also a driver constituency that you have to be mindful of. Im not saying in this case that hates that line, but that is part of the nuance of our business. You have been trained, son. I have not. You are smooth all of a sudden. Thats not true. Before you would have been, he is fired. My team wishes i have taken training. Have you seen some of the things ive said . Yes, i have. [laughter] i had oatmeal this morning, so im a little calmer. Ok, im glad. A nice, balanced breakfast is a good way to start the day. Yep. How many drivers does uber have now . We are in the hundreds of thousands. There are hundreds of thousands of partners connected to our system, right. How many are you bringing on every month . We are in the many tens of thousands. So like right now, you know, we are in the neck of the woods of about 50,000 new jobs a month being created. And from any deactivate every month for poor performance . I dont have that number right now, but there are some number. You have a computer, lyft which is annoying because you have to sit in the front and talk and they have these mustache things. I have not used to, but i have heard some people apparently half. They seem to be constantly whining that you are beating them, that you are trying to take their drivers by offering them incentives. I dont hear a lot about their business, but i hear a lot of whining. So my question is, would you consider buying them just to shut them up . [laughter] that is a valid m a strategy isnt it . Just please shut up and we will buy you . This is an interesting question. I like to use i like to take the political analogy a little further and say of course the opponent as the taxi cartel, but there is a primary race going on right now and there are some scrapping that happens in the primary race. I think thats part of it. In terms of m a and how uber thinks about it, we have not acquired a single company. We sort of are just really focused on the product, building the business. We are in a couple hundred cities, 45 countries, and we are proud of that. We are proud of doing that in the timeframe weve done it. We have not spent time on the m a side of things. That was approaching an answer. Thats fine. How did i not approach it . I said would you buy them to shut them up. He said we have not bought companies, thats not the way we think about a full stop indirectly, you got there. We are not in acquisition mode right now. Talk about the city bus. The pool. The uber pool. So you drive a bunch of people and make it much of stops and somehow this is not a city bus. I dont get why that works and why anybody would use it. Here is the idea. The idea is that you push a button, the car picks you up just like normal. Ok. And while you are on your way to your destination, somebody else is going along the same route at the same time. And with less then lets call it two minutes or less deviation from your route, you pick some of the else up along the way. And they get in my car with me. Thats correct. And what happens then this sounds a lot like a bus so far. Understood. The difference is a bus, you go to a corner a halfmile away from you when you wait 15 minutes and sometimes its on time and sometimes its not. This comes just like the uber that you know. You push the button and its there exactly when you need it and where you want it. That is the uber magic. What happens is you are still getting the benefit of the bus you are still getting the benefit of carpooling by literally taking cars off the road. There is significant efficiencies in doing this right. It seems like to make this work i know you just started, but to make this work you have to have a massive number of users for the Network Effect to kick in and make this viable. Otherwise it seems like a would not work at all. So if we were just starting out in a particular city, and we are launching all the time, you cannot do it. There has to be a large number of people going from basically having routes that overlay each other at the same time, and you cannot do it in small cities where you are not big. But if you are big, you can start to make that work. And i think one part is liquidity. The other part is product. The product has to be just right, because there is a lot that can go wrong, especially if they are the second user from putting the button to making this all work. So do you think you have enough liquidity, as you call it, to make this work in San Francisco, new york . I think we do. I think it is right on the edge of liquidity to make it work at scale. So lyft and others are doing copycat products. You are saying they are not going to be able to make this work because they are so much smaller . Maybe this is a little bit of a hat tip, but i dont think that lyft copycat at this feature. I think that companies are often working on features at the same time and roll them out. But at the end of the day, liquidity is going to matter on this and its going to you have to be very, very large to make it work. At least thats our sense of things. All right, we will see how that goes. I refuse to use that service personally. Fair enough. We are seeing good pickup. But fair enough. I cannot wait to do an uber pool and see you in the car and say gotcha. I dont want to do this thing where im stuck on a was with unwashed masses. I dont want to go out of my way to pick up yet another person. I want to go where i want to go. There is such an idea where they drop you off i cannot wait to see you on the uber pool. Then im the only person in the car and some of you could come in. You could literally have a perpetual ride for the driver. What is interesting about that you think about the driver income side of this, utilizing that car and getting the income, and also how that affects prices and really helps bring them down. Its a big deal. Our whole thing is about bringing the cost of taking an uber below the cost of owning a car. And right now we are which the Car Manufacturers must love you talking about that. If you have the taxis want you dead and some of them seem like they might hire someone to hurt you and you have the ankle biters who are you not fighting with . Who am i not fighting with the nature of this business is that it is so disruptive, so insanely disruptive that there are a lot of incumbent in a lot of places that we have to persuade to come to the other side. So the answer is, almost no one. Tell me about the wins. It seems you have won all the battles. We are starting to see the things from the u. S. In europe and we are working through it. We still have a decent assist from the city of San Francisco from october 2010 but there was a law passed three weeks ago in california that reaffirmed with the Public Utility Commission already said 1. 5 years ago or more you feel good about california . Colorado, new york, ec, any trouble spots . We are not in vegas, there are a few cities like that in vegas is a good example. And europe is a train wreck you are sledging through that . Our business is growing pretty good clip, faster than the u. S. But in germany you ignored the van and drove in hugely but are you subject to 250,000 euro per drive penalties . There was a case in hamburg and the court decided we were breaking some rule and that case got suspended and even and then there was another case in frankfurt which said we are charging too much. I thought too little . They will get you one way or another and we said, just tell us what the prices and they wont tell us what the price should the be. And that is on appeal right now. In china things are going well . In china we are in five cities and beijing is the fastest city it is either number two or number one, the fastest growth from a city at its age. You said beijing has 70,000 cabs. Thats right. And new york . 13,000. Orders of magnitude larger. I think a lot of folks in america dont know all the stuff going on in were in north asia and south asia. Middle east there is a lot of interesting stuff in china specifically. 70,000 drivers in shanghai and 200 cities in china that are over one million people. There is a lot going on there, two big Taxi Companies or taxi apps, that are in and allout war an allout war, one partnered with alibaba hundreds of millions of dollars being subsidized on each side for these Respective Companies to grow and when, so there is this a chinese war going on. That makes me think, stay away from that market. Two huge players with half 1 billion being subsidized and then you come in how do you win . What is really fun and awesome about china for us and me specifically is we get to be the little guy. For me that is like homecoming. We can see what happened and for me why not try . Yes, i think you are right there are a lot of challenges but how much fun is it to try and see and if you can persevere and make that work, that is really awesome. So, lets get down and dirty how will you make that work . I think they got a little bit of a head start, these subsidies, they are giving rides away for free and in exchange creating payments account payment accounts. So if youre smaller if kwa dee is smaller they will be subsidies and will be more expensive for the intercompany to retain market share in that world. There was a lot of interesting economic and competitive things going on and when you are the small guy, there are a lot of things a small guy can do that a guy you are a small guy in the sense that you arrive at your vague date balance sheet, how much is earmarked to fighting the price war in shanghai and aging beijing . We are so small that it will not cost us a lot to get in the game. Every dollar you spend cost them more because they are bigger . Right now we are doing right sharing ride sharing and we are just finding ways to make the economics work. Uber always starts with how do we make a Sustainable Business . The competitive dynamic can push you down sometimes but ultimately you have to have a Sustainable Business and that is part of our culture. At the end of the day we will try to offer the cheapest, most reliable ride in china. On the product side there are benefits to have uber roles versus the other guys and it will be interesting to see how we go against those guys going big. Last question, we are Double Overtime am a complete his regard for everyone else, if uber if uber fails, what is it that will kill you if you had to guess . The politics . The competitors . What is your biggest threat . That is interesting i think the stress will kill me. I think it would be the stress. [laughter] the last company was crazy stressful because i did not have any money and was always trying to make it work and i say i got 100 knows 100 nos per day for six years straight. This is a different kind of stress, four years in and you have to find ways to find that center, balance and sanity because again we are getting bigger and people look at us that way and you have to find that new balance. Right now that is stressful. We are working hard to find. Maybe you could do pilates . I am down. Thank you very much. Thanks. [applause] awesome stuff a quick announcement because a combination of Michael Arrington and electricity have slowed us down this morning. We have a couple contest todays is called disrupt vine and that is the theme you are working on, if you can submit a vine we will give away a mini drone tomorrow and if you need more information it is on the hashed the website. Our next guest is a super genius, do not confuse him with our techcrunch volunteers in green, he is a huge deal, not that our volunteers are not. He had his hand in paypal, yelp and now a firm. He has been developing in mobile years before we thought it was important, welcome alex wilhelm from techcrunch. Good morning. Thank you. How is it going . Great. It has been one year since you are here last time, wearing the same shirt. Im impressed with that. Dedication to the cause. This will take 100 years to build fully. Uber was just on and mark cuban was on a Television Program and i did quick math and i think that makes you the poorest person were interviewing in the first block. How to make you feel how does that make you feel . That is entirely inaccurate if you priced might affirm shares correctly. How would you . The sky is the limit for changing 20 of u. S. Gdp. There has been a lot of talk recently in the market about ebay divesting paypal you know the company other than anyone else, should ebay spin paypal out . At some point sometime in the next 18 months for sure, paypal volume will outstrip ebay so for all intents and purposes ebay will be in deficients of paypal so whether paypal spins ebay in or paypal gets spun out, ebay remains a key market or paypal but ultimately it is the faster growing of the two, so paypal must receive its full managerial. Would you buy shares in the new public paypal . It depends who the Management Team becomes. Who would you want to run the company you cannot say you. Im unavailable, im running my own Financial Services company. There are a bunch of people, probabl