Travis Kalanick's Journey: From Uber to Cloud Kitchens

Travis Kalanick envisions revolutionizing food delivery by building infrastructure that empowers restaurateurs and enhances efficiency.

### The Future of Food: Travis Kalanick's Vision for Cloud Kitchens
* 🍔 Travis Kalanick's departure from Uber was influenced by a **toxic culture**, and on Christmas Eve, he announced plans to **leave the board**, as Uber seeks a new CEO amidst its **$70 billion valuation**.
* 💡 Kalanick expressed his enthusiasm for investing in innovative projects, highlighting his work with Cloud Kitchens, which aims to **revolutionize the food industry** by creating **efficient infrastructure for food preparation and delivery**.
* 🏙 ️ Cloud Kitchens operates in 30 countries, focusing on building facilities that support restaurateurs and entrepreneurs in delivering **high-quality food at lower costs**, similar to Uber's impact on transportation.
* 🤖 The company incorporates technology, including a **software division serving hundreds of thousands of restaurants** and a **robotics division utilizing expertise from Uber's Advanced Technology Group**.
* 📊 Kalanick discussed the economics of running a food brand, noting that **labor costs can consume 25-40% of revenue**, while successful restaurants often operate on a mere **10% profit margin**.
* 🚚 He emphasized the importance of logistics in food delivery, aiming to **reduce costs to zero** through automation and efficient operations, which would allow for **better food accessibility**.
* ⚔ Reflecting on his time at Uber, Kalanick shared insights on managing competition and regulatory challenges, emphasizing the **need for innovative strategies** to thrive in a **rapidly evolving market**.
* 🌟 As he looks to the future, Kalanick remains committed to his **entrepreneurial spirit**, inspiring a new generation of innovators eager to **make a meaningful impact in the world**.

the reason that he was kicked out is because of this toxic culture. Some big news that took place on Christmas Eve. If you missed it, Travis Kenck planning to leave the board at Uber. And when he showed me what he was working on, I immediately said, Hey, can I invest? A popular 70 billion doll ride-sharing company is searching for a new CEO to take the wheel. So you want to talk about structure being completely screwy. Competition is good. I'll bet my entire network that Uber will be here and thriving in 10 years. You're at war prematurely with your customers. Sorry about [Music] that. All right [Applause]. Everybody, my guy, um, uh, I can't believe I can't believe I get to sit down with one of the most famous investors in Uber. I'm honored. I'm honored to be here. Um, we wanted to have a surprise for you every day. Uh, I've been, you know, Travis and I have been friends for 25 years. Um, the first time I interviewed

Travis was 1999. I was doing a little magazine out here, Digital Coast Reporter. You were doing a little company called Scour, which was a peer-to-peer network to share files. You were 22 years old, I was 28. I think if we put those two numbers together, just don't let people do the math, you know, it's just like, just keep moving. It was a while ago, 1999. And I just remember the enthusiasm, drive, and fire that you had at that time, and it always struck me. I said to myself, I don't know if he's going to win on this one. I'm pretty sure he's going to get his ass handed to him. In fact, correct, correct. But I know this guy's going to win big in the future. And sure enough, we got to go on a great journey together with Uber, and now again with Cloud Kitchens. And every year when we're hanging out, I say, Since you left Uber, I say, you know, whenever you're ready, let's have a

conversation and here we are. And then you call me every year. I call you every year. If you're ready, just, and I'm just a block away from you. You're Alma Moer, UCLA. Let's go. Come on. I'm like, all right, let's go. And this year you said, okay, so here we are. Um, let's chop it up. Let's talk about Cloud kitchens. You have since, uh, you left Uber, been working extremely hard and quietly on cloud kitchens. What is the vision? What is cloud kitchens for people who don't know? Well, uh, so yeah, I mean, it is kind of funny when you go from being a tech guy to a kitchen guy. I mean, that's interesting. Um, look, food has, I think we all know, like food is, it's at the center of the Human Experience, the center of humanity, and just how we live. But it's got a lot of problems, health, cost, convenience, like all that stuff, and it could be a hell of a lot better. And so, um, of course, in my last, at my last gig, we did Uber Eats. It

was a starting point, but the difference with food versus rides is that the infrastructure was already there. You had a bunch of cars that were 98% unutilized, and so you just had to light it up. But to do food right, you needed to build the infrastructure. And so, the mission for our company is infrastructure for better food. And the idea is like, can you get the preparation and delivery of food so high quality, and most importantly, so cost-efficient, that it starts to approach the cost of you going to the grocery store? If that happens, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. And so, the quiet part is like, we go and buy real estate, we do construction, we then go talk to the center point of what matters in food, which is the restaurant tour, the entrepreneur who's making it, who does it just because, I mean, it's a labor of love. You got to have a deep passion for food and a deep passion for people because otherwise, you couldn't survive in that world. But these guys are like, like

true blue entrepreneurs, and they are our customers, and you do it from their perspective, and you help them get their vision for what they're doing out there and do it super, super efficiently. Um, and so we like to say we serve those who serve others. We're not the restaurant; we're the guys underneath. And, uh, currently, I think we have real estate. We have facilities in all the major cities in 30 countries around the world. Um, we also have a software division, so we have hundreds of thousands of restaurants using our software stack. Um, and we have a robotics division. Um, that, you know, got going with a lot of the original sort of Uber ATG guys, Advanced Technology Group, the autonomy guys. So, we got that crew together and, um, have really, you know, robots that are going to—that already are out there but are going to be out there in a really big way over the coming, you know, quarters and years. So, the premise of Uber was, Hey, press a button, we move you or anything from point A to point B. What a profound

simple but profound insight as an entrepreneur. The insight here is getting your food quickly, efficiently, and then making it easier for a restaurateur to pop up a restaurant. Tell us the economics of a food brand. When Jade and I and the family were out here on vacation over the summer at Manhattan Beach, we had a wonderful experience of ordering Gwyneth Paltrow's Cloud kitchen and these new brands. Great, yeah, great new brands popping up. Talk about the economics for that food entrepreneur. I mean, it's just tough. I think most of us know a restaurateur. Some of us may have even tried to do a restaurant or be a part of it in some fashion. Like I said, it's a labor of love, but your big costs are going to be labor. Let's call it between, you know, let's call it 30%, but it can range from like 25% to 40% of your overall revenue. Occupancy, which is the physical space itself, let's call it between 6% and 12% of

Revenue uh supply chain is 30% uh marketing. Let's call it 10 um. I know I'm missing something somewhere, but those are the big stuff, and a successful restaurant's going to have a 10% profit margin and be really pumped about that. Wow um, and so yeah, that's just how it works um. You know, one thing I wanted to say just sort of the high level to like sort of how do you connect the dots on like sort of where Innovation is going is that um, you know, my sweet spot is digitizing the physical world, and you know, you could take that to mean a lot of different things, but it's basically treating atoms like bits, and so we know the bits world is a computer. Okay, computers, well, CPU manipulates the bits, storage stores the bits, Network moves bits from point A to point B, but if you're treating atoms like bits, you go CPU manipulates the bits. What manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? That's Real Estate. Network moves bits from point A to point

B what uh yeah what moves atoms well that's transport of logistics and so these are the three sort of core Computing resources in an atoms-based computer and you can say my last gig was so much about the network for the physical world but there's just a huge amount of innovation left in compute and storage for the physical world also known as digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate and so our company is really sort of building atoms-based computers and sort of our first computer is really a food computer so that's kind of how we think about it yeah um let's take a look at the video of um some of the robots uh that are making food in Cloud kitchens [Music] and that's our lab we're doing that in-house all in-house yeah all this stuff is in-house [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we call this part like look ma no hands right so once the dispensers are full of food nobody touches it and what comes out on a conveyor belt is bags of food.

that get delivered amazing, right? So, you know, LED bag sealed, you get the general idea. So now you have a restaurant that can asynchronously produce for consumers from what labor is doing, and the labor is primarily on the prep side of things. So we see there's kind of vessels there. I'm assuming they have ingredients in them. The bowl goes by, stuff gets dropped in, organized, covered, put in a bag, label goes on. The human has no part in that except for maybe preparing and filling prep. Let's say you have prep in the morning. This machine can run for hours without anybody there. And so, you know, there's interesting, you know, so it just becomes a more efficient thing. So if you want to do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car, you have to make sure two things happen. One is that you need the logistics, the movement of food needs to go to, the cost of that needs to go to zero. This is autonomous vehicles, things along these lines. And then the production of food must also get sorted.

of roboticized mechanized, essentially those two things happen, and then we can always cook, but it can be out of choice. And um, you know, I like to say I like a, I, I like horses, but I don't ride a horse to work. And so um, you can get higher quality food to the people at a lower cost and just give people the most precious of commodities back, which is called time, to do all the things, all the other things in life that they love. And you're strategically placing these Cloud kitchens um in, I get, I would assume very low-cost real estate, but that's at very key uh locations that make it very efficient to uh deliver the food. Yeah, yeah, so on the software side, we, we have a software stack that, like I said, hundreds of thousands of restaurants use. We're seeing 18% of all online delivery in the US as an example. Our software is touching so because we see where all of the delivery is, we know where to put a delivery-only restaurant facility um, and so we find distressed

real estate or sort of unique situations where it's hard to develop, and we've built a competence in sort of turning that into a 30-kitchen facility that we then lease those kitchens to restaurant tours. Let's talk about the Playbook. This is something you worked on really hard at Uber, hiring Josh in New York, Will in LA. We had a podcast, and you were set on that podcast years and years ago, Hey, I'm looking for some people to run some cities, to run Uber, and you found this eclectic group of Samurai, and you let them go, um, and man, they cooked. Yeah, talk to me about that management principle and your management principles. Hey, be pumped, you know, and bringing that enthusiasm, that fire, and letting those cities cook, because most people have this top-down, they do things sequentially. You've really, and in those early days, got more and more emboldened and excited about doing things in parallel and letting people make mistakes in those regions and learning they could. I remember Josh started doing messenger delivery, you let

other people deliver kittens for a day to an office. That was a funny thing, yeah. JD Vance, that's when he uninstalled Uber. Um, no kittens, um, but cookies, whatever it was, ice cream trucks. Yeah, talk about that model of letting, you know, flowers bloom, letting these Samurai go crazy. So look, we had a cultural value at Uber called let Builders build, and I'm sure there were other companies that I think may have said that before us, but we certainly took a hold of that. And look, as it related to our GM model and how to empower GMs to do well, it starts with who is the person. And I always felt that the magic making happens when you cross sort of creative instincts with analytical capabilities or prowess, really. So we would just design tests that sort of simulated what it would be like working together, that tested their creative stuff, their secret sauce in creativity, but would create problems where it was crossed with the necessity to analytically solve problems.

got it. And so, you put those two things together with a hungry person that maybe just got out their MBA or, let's say, equivalent, and they're fired up and ready to go, and you empower them. And then, you put very simple controls to make sure that they're checked, like waypoints, that in order to go further, they have to pass that test once they're in the job. And just simple things, like we would have a pricing call in the early days of Uber, where you cannot put it up in the app until you pass the pricing call. The first 30 cities, I was on that pricing call. And the thing about price when it comes to transportation, it's an amalgamation of all strategy across everything, across what does your cars look like, what's the supply, the supply, what does Metro or public transport look like, what is the cost of labor in that city, what are their general alternatives for getting around, what are regulations like. Ultimately, it becomes a service with a price. You pass that, and then you run.

get to run a city, but that means the previous 30 days or 90 days when they're just doing lots of stuff. I don't have to worry, and then they get to that point. They pass the test. They know what the criteria for passing the test is, so it forces them into the right mode, right? Let's talk about strategy. You know, one of the great privileges of getting to be involved in your journey for a little bit was we would talk sometimes late at night, weekends, when there were really dicey strategy moments, and I'd ask you what you're thinking, and we would just jam out. A couple of those conversations, I remember calling you in a panic after having taken a lift, a ride chair, and we were only Uber black. Yeah, and I said, Trais, I just got out of this thing. It's $16. It would have been $60. I'm pricing sensitive, but man, this is going to change everything. And you're like, Jakow. And I said, Don't you don't understand, J. No, this is disrup.

you said we're launching it next week. We got it. You know it is disruptive and you saw you know the Lincoln Town Cars were so brilliant you know because there were such high margins but you saw the disruptiveness of the rering thing and then surge pricing. We had a big debate about tipping. Let's talk about some of those seminal moments in product design yeah and competition because this was not happening in a vacuum. People forget there was Sidecar, there was Lyft yeah and then there were Regulators. This was a war yeah. So I mean kind of a funny story. I'm not sure if I've ever told you this. You were you were only six weeks behind Zuck right which is I first heard about Lyft from Zuck H and he's like yo yo I think you have a situation on your hands and like Su would sort of do that like with like a little with you kind of sit yeah kind of like that yeah. He's he's a puck yeah and I'm like thank

you and um but the thing was was look it was at the beginning that was like they called their rides donation it was a donation thing it was non-commercial because there was no insurance there was no regulation there was basically just citizen giving another citizen a ride across town and we didn't do anything about it for 9 months because we were already getting our asses hand handed to us and we were doing the legal thing and so I'm like dude like we're we got like I got threatened by the city of San Francisco and the state of California 3 months after we launched Uber with 90 days in jail for every ride that had occurred yeah so then this thing is like it's a donation I swear and by the way if you don't give the donation they suggest then you get kicked off the system yeah right so we're like H we're not going to do that and we saw Lyft eating our market share up from the bottom up because they didn't have insurance or regulation or any of these

other things, and then nine months into it, uh, the city of San Francisco, the state of California, because it was a California pu, said, Ah, you know, it's totally fine. And then we're like, Oh, so then we hustled, got our thing going, which is called, at the time, was called peer-to-peer ride-sharing, right? Um, and then just got working, and um, um, the way we did it was like, the reason we didn't do it in the first place is because it was clearly not like legit, and but then California said yes, and so I made a PCT with myself that was like, I'm never going to let this happen again. And so, each and every city we went to, we would send, we would wait for Lift to launch, and then we would basically say to the city, we'd send them a letter saying, There's this really cool thing called ride-sharing, this company called Lift is doing it. Um, we think it's great, but our read of your regs is like, it's probably not allowed because you're thoughtful, you

want to be thoughtful, but if you don't enforce in the next 30 days, we're going to participate as well. Great. So, almost every city in the US, other than two, we can talk about those two, by the way, but in all, every city in the US, other than two, Portland, Vegas, we were number two in R sharing for this reason. And we did this actually internationally. We did it across Europe. We did it everywhere. There were other folks that were out there, and we would talk to the regulatory guys, say, If you're going to enforce, do it, but if you're not, we're going to participate. Yeah, and that worked. That's kind of how we rolled. And surge pricing was an interesting one, you know. The brilliance of the Uber Marketplace was, in many ways, tackling demand and figuring out a way to get drivers to come out on New Year's Eve, the worst night of their lives to drive. And you came up with a pretty novel approach, which is, Hey, we'll

pay you double. We'll pay you triple. Yeah, and if you don't want to participate in that as a customer, that's fine. But we think availability is more important than necessarily having standardized pricing. And man, the world got very, very upset at this. And you and I talked about when you explained it to me. I said that makes logical sense. And I said, you know what we should do? We should write a blog post. And that blog post is still up, I think, where you just explained it to people. I thought Uber took down all my blog posts. They probably, yeah, that might be a little. But this blog post where you just said, Hey, here's how to handle New Year's Eve. Leave at this time, go back at this time. But we need to get these people on the road, and they deserve to be compensated. So surge pricing. There's another way to say it now. I called it surge pricing on purpose because I didn't want anybody to think we were trying to deceive them, right? So we said surge pricing like it's clear.

what's going on um but the other way to say surge pricing is called the lowest cost reliable ride because if surge pricing goes up too much then you have drivers that aren't making any money um and by the way they'll go to the competition but if surge pricing is exactly at and by the way if surge pricing is not enough you're not not going to be able to get a ride because too many people are going to want it and there won't be enough cars sech price in the right spot it draws enough Supply in and fends off enough customers and the market clears so it's the lowest cost reliable ride and that's why we knew it was a winner even when all of the competition and the world generally was like hating on this idea anytime we were doing surge pricing and our competitor wasn't we knew we were gaining market share because somebody could just come to us and get a ride when in the other system they couldn't so you're proving reliability you're proving it's the lowest cost reliable.

ride. That's it. Yeah, um, take me to, you know, real quick. Led to a massive, super interesting logistics cross with economics problem where at the peak, I mean, and I don't know what it is at Uber today, but it was like, I don't know, like 150 PhDs working on this problem that we just described, huh, inside the company. Yeah, which is like, how do you find that lowest cost reliable ride is a very, very difficult problem in a live logistics system like this. Let's talk about regulators in relation to people being independent contractors. This is when I realized the press was acting without good faith data or logic, and as a former journalist, you know, it was kind of eye-opening to me to be on the other side of the table and watching this happen because we knew full well based on driver data that they loved their jobs at Uber because they had free will and they could go and do any other job they wanted. And let's be clear, the average Uber driver during my, you know, let's say at the end of my tenure was

eight hours a week, so they clearly like it. Clearly a side gig, yeah, side hustle, and they wanted the flexibility over everything else. Work when I want, don't work when I want, and then these Union politicians and everything said no, and the people who own the medallions, and this is a cabal of really bad actors who were saying no, they have to work a shift, and they have to go work for somebody who owns a medallion who gets 50, 60, 70% of the economics, and they portrayed us or you as the bad guy in all this, and this was the exact opposite of the truth. So, um, yeah, I mean, it was a union problem, which is, it's very difficult to organize people who in this classic area, which is very Union organized called drivers, it's very difficult to organize them when they choose when they want to work, their office is their own, it's their own like nobody controls it, like there's just no control, and so other than the control given to the individual, and so it was very

disruptive to the union and their own business model, and so they had to cut it off at the knees. And so that became a mix of a sort of political discourse and like a media push, crossed with sort of regulatory lobbying, and like trying to make political apparatuses do what's necessary to constrain it. And you took the approach, We will fight. There are wartime CEOs, there are peacetime CEOs. I put you in the category with Elon of wartime CEOs, who it does not matter how many battles you must battle concurrently, We're going to fight because we're on the right side of history. But this became acute, the number of battles that you had to fight, the number of fronts increased. Take us to the darkest peak of it, because every time I talked to you, I felt fine about it, but other investors, other people felt like, Hey, this is too many battles to wage at once. Talk to me about you personally fighting all those battles. My perception of you was the more battles

emerged. Yeah, the more you realized you were doing the right thing, it filled your bucket, it powered you, it gave energy to you to know we were on the right side. So yeah, I, you know, sort of in jest, I would say to folks, I'd be like, so you know, I'm not sure how it became so controversial that one citizen giving another citizen aid across town became such a thing. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. The darkest moment, I mean, the thing is, is like you'd keep, it was almost like we were always pushing into that area. So like if something became easy, then we'd push elsewhere until that became hard. So it was constant, it's like I make the analogy to like a, to teams that we have in different places then and now, like a world-class marathoner. I've never seen a world-class marathoner at mile 19 look like he's just honky-dory. Yeah, right, and if he was, he's about to

lose so you push right to that edge of what's possible. And if that starts to get easy, you push further. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you push in exactly that along that axis. It could be in a totally different area. But, um, as long as the problems you're solving are greater than the problems you're creating, then you're fine. When the problems you're creating start to, when the derivative of problems you're creating is greater than the derivative of the problems you're solving, then you have a real problem, right? And that's when you have to start pulling back, get back to above water, and then go back into it. But when I talk about creating problems, I think of it like, think of it as like a math professor. A math professor without a really cool, interesting problem to solve is a sad math professor. And that's how we would think about it, right? These, we always pushing to the point where we're sweating, yeah, and it's like not sure, and there could be late

nights. There could be all-nighters. It could be that thing. But because we were doing the right thing, because we had great people in the field who believed, then we could push all the way to that edge. Only they could be world-class marathoners too. Only two entrepreneurs I know have had the audacity to not build their products in China. Everybody does that. That's pretty easy. But to actually operate a business in China, yeah, you and Elon decided we're going to try to compete with selling cars inside of China. Pretty crazy. And even crazier, self-driving cars in China. Wow, yeah, okay, let's go. Let's go BYD. Like, you're up against some serious competition, and it's not exactly a fair game maybe, or there might be complications to that game. We had a long conversation about China, and I said to you, Wow, we're burning a lot of money there. What do you, what's the strategy here? Let me just hear it from you. And you said, We're, we're

going for gold, yeah, but I mean, there's a lot of fun there. I mean, look, the thing about doing business in China is it forces you to rethink everything, everything. Like, if you go into China thinking you got it, you're going to get your ass handed to you. You have to start first principles, Bottoms Up. Um, let's see, where could I go with this? Um, look, we tell me, tell everybody the strategy. Hey, we're going for gold, but they're silver, and you how you looked at the world in that regard. Yeah, yeah, so I'll get there. Is that we, so a lot of times when you go in ENT China, they're basically, somebody's going, you got to have a partner. If you just go and you do your first exploration trip, they'd be like, you got to get a partner. They're like 50/50, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, why? Nobody could tell me why. So then we just went on our own and started building something, and we never saw on the ground. We never saw bias. We were treated fairly.

on the ground, um, but at some point, what I'd say is the China war went global. And what I mean by that is the Chinese government, I think it was safe. There was a, there's some, there's some, I think it were called safe, like a, it was like the sovereign wealth of China, CIC. There's like a few things like that. They started investing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in all of our competitors globally to drain us of money so that it was harder to compete in China. They made Apple, and I'd love to have a discussion with Tim at some point. We had some interesting words for each other at this point, but they made Apple invest a billion dollars in Dee, and Apple doesn't invest anything in anybody. No, that's not their, like, what was he protecting there? There's something going on, so whole really amazing story there. Holy cow. Anyways, uh, the Chinese war went global, and so that's when we had to go from going for the goal to making sure we got the silver and

that's when we started negotiating with DE to basically say we had 20% of the overall entity of the merged entity. But in order to do that in China, that's when we actually had to push our spend super hard because they had to be scared. So I think at the peak, right as we were negotiating the term sheet, we pushed, we were burning, I think it was $75 million a week. It's a big number. Yeah, that was that. Yeah. And but we knew we had the deal, but we only have the deal if they're scared, right? This is a poker. So our market share was skyrocketing as we did this. They're pissed and tripping. And then AIL, who's negotiating the deal, is like just chain smoking. Yeah, but that's how you get a deal done in China, right? And that turned out to be, there it is. That's your wartime CEO right there. That deal, we had invested millions in CH, billions in China at that point. And I think we I

think we invested. Yeah, we probably were around a billion, billion and a half, and the DD St at the time when the deal got done was we at 891. Yeah, something like that. So, we turned a bill and a half into eight or nine. I can't remember the exact math, but it's something like that. Uh, let's talk about in like two years. Yeah, let's talk about when you got atin U. This was heartbreaking, crushing, brutal. Um, you fought hard to remain in the seat. I got out there and did what I could on the Press front to try to defend you and try to keep you in the seat, but we failed. Yeah, uh, and it was brutal, and it was particularly hard on you because you put your soul into this company. Yeah, well, look, I think there's a little bit more. I mean, uh, you know, like if an investor is running a political Oppo campaign against you for six months, sort of generating a crisis every week for six months straight, it's going to wear you down, and then you know my

this one's hard. Your mom passed. I know. I was there with you. No, no, it's all good with you. But that's when they went in for the kill. Uh, that I just couldn't hang. Yeah, bottom line, I just couldn't hang. [Applause] Yeah, and yeah, it was um, it was dark. It was dark, yeah. So, but look, I, a lot of people go, Hey, are you pissed off or this thing? And I say, um, First, I loved it every minute. I loved every minute. But when you fall in love again, you don't think about the ex very much, right? Cloud kitchen, the X, you moved on, and you put all that in there, in the, I just want to say, like, I am proud of everything you did, and watching you do it, and getting to be there and witness it. I learned so much from you. The community learned so much from you, and I think we all owe like the Playbook. I can tell you the impact you had on the Next Generation because, you know, I never talk about Uber.

I brought it up once or twice, never talk. I never talk about it. I try to keep it low-key, but I brought it up once or twice, and it was good for my deal flow, and I got to see. I got to see. I'm so honored to be here. I'm so honored to be here too, but I got to see that famous Uber investor, and I mean this sincerely. The number of entrepreneurs who came to me who said, I started this company because I watch Travis. I watched what he did. I want to be Travis. You inspired that generation along with Elon to say, I want to operate in the real world. I want to build something that has an impact, and I am willing to fight and have that entrepreneurial spirit, which I'm going to be honest, there's a large amount of entrepreneurs who don't have the fight in them. They don't have the dog in them. You got the dog in you. You got the fight in you, you know? And that's so rare, and that's why you're so successful. It's

because you're willing to fight the fight. Yeah, um, you know, look, we just saw the Olympics, and I know I made that marathoner analogy before, but like every one of those gold medalists, they got the dog in them. There's no way, no other way. Um, we're just playing a different sport, and I think the, you know, some of the interesting parts about this sport is that it's, it's not just an individual thing, it's a, it's a massive team, and there's stakeholders in cities and citizens and, and all that. Um, it's just fun, you know, like a lot of folks go, look, you did the Uber thing, why are you doing it again? I mean, you catched in a lot of chips, you could be just chilling. I'm like, look, Serena keeps getting on the court, she's totally badass, why is she doing it, right, you know, or take your favorite star of anything. Yeah, LeBron's in his 40, what, he's 40 now, and he, he's looks great out there. So, it's because they have a

love of the game, and it's not just Showtime that day. Yeah, it's everything behind the scenes. It's working with people, especially in this sport. Like, again, individual stuff is a little different. Like, you got to—I like the magic of working with magical people. Doing it as a crew is where all the good stuff happens, and they—and you know, they all keep coming back. You know, I've seen a lot of the folks who came for a second Tour of Duty with you. That speaks volumes. As we end here, um, Dar has done—I got to know him. Yeah, um, try to support the team over there for the Legacy, um, and he's—he's done a decent job, solid job, profitable. What's that? Let's go. They went from my 75 million a week to profitable. I like it. Well, I mean, it is great. The Legacy, we always knew it was easy to make it profitable. People were saying, Oh, it could never be profitable. And you and I would talk and be like, We were raise the

price of dollar profitable like it's not difficult just do you know look there's there's an art to that too it's all good yeah um but yeah like like I think Uber's gotten to a great place. The profitability is there. That means it's going to be around now. They've got to figure out the autonomous thing. That's I think that's the next big challenge to uh to go after. Well let me just put it out there. He's he's going to do his tour and uh his stour is going to end. Would you consider doing what Steve Job did and coming back and merging Cloud kitchens with Uber. Would you consider it if if if the opportunity was there or can can you not go. You're saying there's a chance. Can you go home. I mean if he this would be the Return of the King. This would be my dream if you came back. I know it's not your dream but it's mine. Could you if Cloud kitchens became part of uber. It would be it would be a

trillion-dollar company with you back in that seat. Would you take the seat again if it was offered? Would you consider it? Well, I definitely know who my head of comms would be on that note. Travis Kalan, my man, I love you. Great job.

In conversation with Travis Kalanick | All-In Summit 2024

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All-In Podcast

Travis Kenck's Transition from Uber to Cloud Kitchens

Travis Kenck is leaving the Uber board as the company searches for a new CEO.

He has since been working on Cloud Kitchens, aiming to build a better food infrastructure and provide cost-efficient meal preparation and delivery.

The company has real estate and facilities in major cities across 30 countries, along with a software and robotics division to support restaurants and enhance efficiency.

Food entrepreneurs face high costs, with labor accounting for 25-40% of revenue, occupancy at 6-12%, supply chain at 30%, and marketing at 10%.

A successful restaurant typically operates with a 10% profit margin.

The speaker's company is innovating by digitizing the physical world, focusing on manufacturing and real estate, and using robots in Cloud kitchens to efficiently produce and deliver food.

Empowering Leadership and Disruptive Innovation at Uber

The speaker discusses their unique approach to real estate development, turning challenging spaces into 30-kitchen facilities for restaurant tours.

They emphasize the importance of empowering city managers, allowing them to take risks and learn from mistakes, while using a combination of creative and analytical problem-solving.

The speaker also highlights key moments in Uber's strategy, such as disruptive pricing and surge pricing, as well as the competitive landscape with other ride-sharing companies.

Uber initially struggled with regulation and competition from Lyft, which used a non-commercial, donation-based model.

After nine months, California's approval allowed Uber to expand its operations, using a strategic approach to enter new cities.

Surge pricing was implemented to tackle demand and attract drivers, ultimately proving to be a successful strategy for gaining market share.

The Challenges of Disrupting the Ride-Sharing Industry

The logistics and economics of finding the lowest cost reliable ride at Uber was a complex problem, involving up to 150 PhDs at its peak.

The press misrepresented the situation, ignoring driver data that showed they valued the flexibility and freedom of the gig.

The disruptive nature of Uber's model made it difficult for traditional unions to organize drivers, leading to a political and media push against the company.

The Challenges of Pushing Boundaries in Business

Pushing the limits is essential for growth, but it requires balancing the problems being created and solved.

Operating a business in China presents unique challenges, forcing a rethinking of strategies.

The Chinese government's global investments in competitors created a difficult landscape, leading to a shift in focus from ambitious goals to securing a stable position.

The speaker pushed hard in China, burning $75 million a week to negotiate a 20% share in the merged entity.

Their aggressive strategy led to a skyrocketing market share and ultimately securing the deal.

Despite personal challenges and a brutal political campaign against them, the speaker's leadership and determination inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of teamwork and collaboration in their sport, drawing parallels to successful athletes like Serena Williams and LeBron James.

They highlight the joy of working with passionate individuals and the magic that happens when people come together.

The conversation also touches on the profitability of the Legacy and Uber, with the speaker expressing interest in the possibility of merging Cloud Kitchens with Uber in the future.