Topic
59 facts from 28 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2011
In fall 2011 Andreessen Horowitz told Uber's Travis Kalanick it could only invest at a $220 million post-money valuation, down from the roughly $300 million originally agreed.
“they still want to do the deal, but they can only do $220 post, not $305 or $310 or whatever it was supposed to be.”
2011
Andreessen Horowitz's Uber term sheet included a large option pool refresh, which diluted existing shareholders and helped lead Travis Kalanick to reject it.
“And they put a huge new option pool refresh in there, which of course would dilute existing shareholders and particularly the entrepreneurs even more.”
2011
Benchmark led Uber's $10 million Series A at a $60 million post-money valuation in 2011.
“A $10 million Series A at a $10 million at a $60 million post-money valuation.”
2017
Dara said the Uber CEO recruitment took about two months over the summer.
“God, I think it was about two months. It was over the summer.”
2017
Dara said Barry Diller reviewed and improved the presentation he gave to Uber's board when he was a candidate.
“And he actually helped me in the PowerPoint. He's like, this is good. This is good. You have to add this page.”
2017
Dara said that when he joined Uber, Transport for London had revoked its license and the company was dealing with a data breach.
“Like it had to go to London, TFL, they revoked our license and there had been a data breach and we had to deal with that.”
2018
By 2018 Benchmark's Uber holding was worth about $8 billion.
“In 2018, when that Wall Street Journal piece came out, their holding in Uber was worth $8 billion.”
2018
To let SoftBank invest, Uber's high-vote shareholders all had to agree to convert their shares to low-vote shares.
“And we literally had to like get everyone to agree to blow up the high vote shares.”
2018
Dara recalled SoftBank's investment in Uber as about $10 billion, possibly $15 billion, including primary and secondary shares.
“It was $10 billion. It was actually, I think, $15.”
2019
Acquired released its episode on Uber in May 2019, on the day of Uber's IPO.
“We started in May of 2019 when we did our Uber episode on the day of their IPO.”
2019
Dara said Travis Kalanick sold all his Uber shares after the IPO lockup ended, which pressured the stock.
“after the IPO, after the lockup, stayed Travis sold all his shares.”
2020
California voters passed Proposition 22 on November 3, 2020, letting gig companies keep drivers classified as contractors.
“election day, November 3rd, 2020, a huge moment for the country, but also for DoorDash and Uber and the whole gig economy, Prop 22 passes in California.”
2020
Dara said Uber's mobility volume fell about 85% in the pandemic, hitting the company's main profit driver.
“sitting together as a team, 85% of your mobility volume, which was the profit driver of the company, falls off a cliff.”
2020
Dara said Uber exited self-driving development because of the pandemic and now works with partners such as Waymo and Aurora.
“Ultimately, because of the pandemic, we decided to get out of self-driving, which I think is, it was a good decision”
2023
In 2023 Acquired interviewed Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, then valued at about $80 billion.
“And then we get the opportunity to interview the CEO of the then $80 billion market cap Uber.”
2026
Shahir Daya says Uber's president publicly said the company used up its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April and could not link the token surge to better customer outcomes.
“saying the company burned through its entire 2026 A I coding budget by April in four months. And they could not link the surge in token consumption to better outcomes for customers.”
2026
Pete Johnson said Uber used up its entire 2026 token budget in thirteen weeks.
“Like in the wake of what happened at Uber earlier in the year, with them burning through their token budget for 2026 in thirteen weeks”
2026
Woodson Martin says he recalls Microsoft, Meta and Uber announcing a pullback from AI-first-for-everything strategies.
“I think Microsoft, Meta, Uber, like all these companies who were like, wow, maybe we went too far too fast”
Undated
Calacanis says his first seven Sequoia Scout investments included Uber, Thumbtack and DataStax.
“I had in the first seven, Uber, Thumbtack, and Data Snacks.”
Undated
Calacanis says he made 19 Scout investments with about $700,000, which became worth over $100 million, largely due to Uber.
“So, I did 19 investments. I put 700 to work. It became worth over 100 million in total, largely due to Uber.”
Undated
Packy McCormick says he used Uber Rush messengers to clean Breather spaces and was the service's largest user for a time.
“I was the largest consumer of Uber Rush messengers in the world for a while.”
Undated
Hamilton Helmer guesses that Uber's network effects probably do not give it power that translates into meaningful profitability.
“But does Uber have power from network effects in a way that will translate into meaningful profitability? I would say first order no would be my guess.”
Undated
The Uber story is adapted as a Showtime series called Super Pumped, premiering February 27th.
“is coming out as a Showtime series on February 27th called Super Pumped.”
Undated
According to Mike Isaac's book, part of Garrett Camp's original inspiration for Uber was a scene in Casino Royale where Bond summons a car with his phone.
“Part of his original inspiration for Uber was watching Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig James Bond film.”
Undated
Brian Koppelman says he and David Levien did about 100 hours of research and found that Uber's Eiffel Tower founding story was apocryphal.
“David and I did 100 hours of research. And so we found like the quote unquote founding story of Uber where they're looking over from the Eiffel Tower.”
Undated
Brian Koppelman says Super Pumped shows drivers who bought cars under Uber deals and later had them towed away.
“the driver who thought he was going to have a fleet of cars because there were deals that encouraged him to buy those cars.”
Undated
Hamilton Helmer says that more drivers and passengers let Uber build more efficient route structures, which reduces driver downtime between rides.
“by having more drivers and more passengers, it makes it possible for Uber to develop more efficient route structures. And what more efficient route structures do, essentially, is to minimize driver downtime.”
Undated
Chenyi Shi says that greater local density on Uber reduces driver wait time, though she argues the gain has diminishing marginal utility.
“As that density increases, you can decrease the amount of wait time for drivers.”
Undated
Ben Gilbert says he started a ride-sharing meta-search startup that was killed when Uber cut off its API access.
“I started a startup that actually got killed by Uber not willing to play ball with us and cutting off our API”
Undated
Hamilton Helmer argued Uber's source of power is geographic density, which did not carry over when it competed with Didi in China.
“Ubers, if they have a source of power, it has to do with geographical density in a specific area like the Bay Area or something.”
Undated
Hamilton Helmer said Uber lost around a billion dollars or more in its China venture, though he was unsure of the figure.
“I don't know. What did they lose? A billion dollars or something.”
Undated
Uber shipped food delivery as a separate app called Uber Eats rather than bundling it into the ride-hailing app, which the guests took as a sign the two networks only partly overlap.
“which you can see in the corporate action they took to ship a separate app called Uber Eats rather than bundling into one app.”
Undated
Dara said Uber had 5.6 million drivers and couriers earning on its platform.
“It's 5.6 million drivers and couriers who are earning on our platform.”
Undated
Dara said Uber Eats gets more new customers from the Uber rides app than from Google, Meta and Instagram combined, at about a quarter of the cost.
“we get more new customers from Arise than we do from Google, Meta, Instagram, you know, all of these other channels combined.”
Undated
Dara said Uber's unit volumes grew 24% in the first quarter, up from 19% in the fourth quarter.
“if you look at our Q1 unit volumes, they grew 24% versus 19% in Q4.”
Undated
Dara said there are about 4.5 million taxis worldwide, and Uber aims to connect all of them to its platform.
“There are four and a half million taxis in the world. Who would imagine that Uber would be working with taxis?”
Undated
Dara said Uber handles about two billion transactions per quarter, giving it a large dataset for matching and pricing.
“working over an ecosystem of two billion transactions a quarter, the data sets that we have”
Undated
Dara said Uber's matching and pricing improve marketplace throughput by about 5% per year.
“every year matching and pricing probably improves by five percent a year.”
Undated
Uber built a 'blast dispatch' for taxis that offers a ride to about 10 taxis at once because one-to-one matching had low acceptance rates.
“the team built a technology blast dispatch, which is instead of a one-to-one match, it's a, you know, we'll make a dispatch of 10 different taxis.”
Undated
Dara said Uber treats a ride fulfillment rate below about 98% as an emergency.
“if our fulfill rate, which is the percentage of the time someone asks for a ride and then there's a car available, if that's less than, call it 98%, that's like all hands on deck.”
Undated
Dara said Uber's gross bookings grew about 22% in the last quarter while driver and courier earnings grew 30%.
“gross bookings grew, you know, over 22% or so, which is really good. The money that drivers and couriers, including tips made on the platform grew by 30% higher.”
Undated
Dara said Uber is the largest source of work in the world by number of earners.
“I think we're the largest source of work anywhere by far and growing pretty fast.”
Undated
Jerry Liu did AI research for about two and a half years at Uber before founding LlamaIndex.
“did AI research for like two and a half years at Uber, um, have worked in ML, uh, for most of my career”
Undated
Acquired has interviewed figures such as Jensen Huang and Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi after covering their companies.
“Occasionally, we do have the opportunity to interview someone like Jensen, like Charlie, like Dara from Uber”
Undated
Rabinovich says he is comfortable letting his children ride in Waymo cars but is wary of Uber rides alone.
“I actually let my kids take them. I'm a little apprehensive of my kids getting into Uber on their own, but I'm totally fine with them taking Waymos around them.”
Undated
May Habib says Uber, Salesforce, Accenture and NVIDIA use Writer internally.
“customers like Uber and Salesforce and Accenture and NVIDIA are using Writer internally”
Undated
Uber's support team uses Writer agents to classify Jira and Slack requests, assess urgency and generate updated documentation content, with humans approving publication.
“they use Writer agents to classify Jira and Slack requests, they assess urgency, and they generate updated responses and content”
Undated
Choudary says Uber drivers' pay fell because an algorithm set it, not merely because more drivers entered.
“the pay of the driver went down because the pay was now set by an algorithm.”
Undated
Choudary says Google Maps let less experienced drivers match experienced drivers and reduced the latter's pay.
“mapping helped the less experienced drivers get access to the same pay and reduce the pay of the more experienced drivers.”
Undated
Uber is a Stack Overflow enterprise customer whose Uber Genie assistant draws on its internal Stack Overflow content to answer questions in Slack channels.
“A good example of this is Uber, uh, who has something called Uber Genie that is a customer of ours”
Undated
Uber's mapping team set a target of accuracy within ten meters or ten seconds for maps and arrival time estimates.
“We settled on a metric which was ten meters or ten seconds.”
Undated
Uber's routing had to balance a marketplace by considering about one hundred drivers per rider and vice versa, unlike consumer navigation.
“for one rider, you would probably reach out to one hundred drivers to see when they can get to them”
Undated
Rafi Krikorian ran Uber's self-driving car division and says Uber's prices changed after its IPO as subsidies ended.
“I used to work at Uber, I ran the self driving car division there, and you could see it even in Uber that, like, post-IPO, the prices changed, right?”
Undated
Tahir cites Uber as an example of a company whose strong ML platform helped it win its market, including features like surge pricing.
“Similar to ML Ops, where the people who build the best ML Ops platforms like Uber, they won them, their their markets.”
Undated
Todd Vancil cites Waymo's driverless cars as an example of disruption of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.
“Waymos are even innovating around Uber, right, with, uh, driverless cars and so forth, right?”
Undated
In a clip, Uber's Dara said that in about 20 years the 9 million drivers could be replaced by perhaps 20 million autonomous vehicles.
“I think 20 years from now, you can imagine that those 9 million will be 20 million, uh, AVs, maybe.”
Undated
Arun Chandra said Uber reportedly spent its entire token budget in a matter of months rather than a full year.
“Uber said, Hey, I spent my entire token budget in a matter of months versus the full year.”
Undated
Mike Cannon-Brookes said Uber did not launch until around the iPhone 6, using it as an example of how killer apps arrive years after a platform shift.
“Uber didn't come along until the iPhone six.”
Undated
Zach Lloyd names Uber and Ramp as examples of companies that are a poor fit for Warp factories because they build their own systems.
“our our kind of not a good fit customer for this, for instance, would be like Uber or Ramp.”
Episodes