0:00We're competing for the next industrial revolution. People said, "Are you pissed off about Uber? Does that grind you?"
0:07When you fall in love again, you don't think about the X very much. We had a massive highfidelity playbook on how to not get attention for anything we did. A lot of the things that would have happened with Uber over time are things we're doing now. It's basically multiple trillion dollar industries that are going to get automated. We talk about digital AI and what it does to the enterprise, but these industries on their own are big.
0:34Do you think you were successful because of what you did versus in spite of what you did?
0:38If you don't fight for the best idea, then what idea are you fighting for?
0:41You're fighting for the mediocre idea. An idea that's going to make you less good than if you went for the best idea.
0:47The real question is when are you guys going to buy Uber?
0:50Um, okay. So, first of all, I don't even know how I ended up here.
1:00How did I end up here? How did I get here?
1:04Why? What? I have I have way better friends.
1:14No, you're not feeling it. Okay, you're not feeling it. Okay, you're not feeling it. I thought it was really, you know, I have really great friends out there that weren't invited this evening, but they're good friends. Well, that's true. Okay. So, uh I think a lot of folks know that sort of my whole thing and you hear me talk about all the time digitizing the physical world, bits to atoms, this kind of thing. Um you know, some people like, oh yeah, physical AI, of course he's going to say
1:43that. That makes sense. We've been doing this for a long time. Okay, this is a continuation of a lot of the awesome things we did back in the Uber day. So, I'm going to show you a video from 10 years ago. Consider the bit, the building block of the digital world.
2:11It was invented just 70 years ago. Yet in its short life, it has changed the way we communicate, do business, and live almost every aspect of our lives. For Uber, the bit represents our technology. It's complex, precise, and advanced. But when it's expressed, it is effortless, and refined.
2:37And if you think the bit is a big deal, consider the atom. Born 13.8 8 billion years ago. The atom is responsible for everything from the BLT to moms everywhere to New York City. And for us, the atom signifies our rapidly improving cities, the goods we move from place to place, and most importantly, the people we serve.
3:05Until a few short years ago, atoms and bits existed in entirely different worlds. But then something happened at Uber. We asked, "What if we brought these two worlds together? What would that look like?"
3:20It looks like this. We are able to create safe, lowcost transportation options like Uber Pool and Uber X. We are able to create efficient and more reliable ways of getting people the things they need. We are able to deliver freshcooked meals from the most popular iconic restaurants within minutes and someday safe efficient movement of people and things at a giant scale.
3:49Most of us don't think about bits or atoms much if ever. We think about how to get from here to there, the people in our lives, the millions of tiny dramas that play out across the world each day. the human stuff. Uber ultimately succeeds because we think about the human stuff first. But the way we do it, that's our secret.
4:15We leave no bit or atom unturned to create industries that serve people and not the other way around.
4:26So we I talk about digitizing the physical world all the time. I've been doing it for 10 freaking years. I I think I'm making a lot of the folks that are at Uber, they're like, "We're tired of it. Please stop talking about bits and atoms is crazy. I don't even understand what you're talking about."
4:40Look, we know what bits are. Bits, the bits world is a computer. And those of us who were engineers, computer science, etc., and some of us who weren't, we know what that is. The three core computing resources, CPU manipulates the bits, storage stores bits, network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits.
5:04And you're like, well, I know that CPU manipulates the bits. What manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing or digitized manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? That's real estate.
5:16Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? Well, that's transport or logistics. So, we didn't exactly think of it, we were close, but we didn't exactly think of it this way at the time. But Uber was network for the physical world, digitized transportation, but it's not totally digitized like you see the Whimos out there. Okay, now we're getting we're getting there. Of course, I think people are still driving them from the Philippines or something like this. But
5:46but they're go it's going digital. But the thing is and and this is something that's interesting for entrepreneurs generally especially in the physical world digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate still has a long way to go. Huge amount of innovation uh left to go.
6:02And so we have advanced. We've been working really hard. A lot of folks think I'm back but like I'm like dude I've been working my ass off the whole time. I just haven't been talking about it. Um, what if what if you're making atomsbased computers, digitized manufacturing, real estate and network for the physical world or or sorry, CPU uh storage and network for the physical world. What if you're just the OEM that makes food computers, mining computers
6:31or take your industry and put computer behind it? What if you are doing sort of this you're making industrial atomsbased computers? That's kind of how we think about what we do.
6:44And you know, we look around us and you're like the physical world, you're like, you look, open AAI is doing really well. Anthropic was was doing pretty well. Um, but look around you. Everything we see, whether it's this room or any room or anywhere you go, everything you see was either grown or mined, manufactured and moved. Everything.
7:13And so we look at what we do as industrial AI. And I sort of have a nice little definition there. Systems of software, sensors, robotics, and AI used to automate operations of entire industrial sectors. Okay, that's what we do. I don't know if anybody else does it. I mean, there are people doing it that they don't they don't call it this. We're one of the main guys doing this.
7:36Okay, so we're going to go through a couple of our of our atomsbased computers. So, the first one's a food computer, Adam's food, infrastructure for better food. The real question is, can you make a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? You're like, okay, well, that's a pretty good question. If you can do it, it's awesome, but what would it take? Well,
8:04it means that your manufacturing has to be automated. So, we have robotics that basically do the production of food. Let's call that between six and eight between six and $8 per meal. Okay. Um there's lots of cool things we're going to do in the future here. Um you also need to be able to move the food whether it be inside of a facility that where it's being made or actually robotic couriers, what I like
8:33to call autonomous burritos. You roboticize production. You roboticize the logistics and transportation of of of food, but you still need a space to do it. This goes back to that sort of atomsbased computer, right? You still need real estate, industrial real estate where that robotic production happens and where the robotic logistics occurs. That's our food computer.
9:00Adam's mining. Uh we have a really cool mission. Uh, I've gotten super geeked out on mining. I love it. Like I I'm loving it more every day. Um, uh, more productive minds to power Earth's industries. What makes super intelligence?
9:17Well, it's it's chips and its energy. We know that. Where are the chips come from? Chips come from the ground. Where's the energy come from? And a lot of people are like, "Oh, it comes from the sun." Yeah, it comes from the sun.
9:31But how are you capturing it from the sun? From stuff made from the ground, right? So being in the ground at this sort of almost like this primitive of physical AI is like a super interesting place. And when you're automating that thing, it's super interesting. So when we talk about mining, we're talking about, you know, we go to gold mine CEOs and we're like, would you like 20% more gold per year? We haven't heard no.
9:59Uh but they say prove it. And that's kind of the fun part. Um, but it means your opex is lower and it means by the way these mines are pretty damn unsafe. And so making these places way safer is also part of the purpose of what we're doing. And so you go okay well I when I talk about mining I like to talk about digitized storage.
10:20What is digitized storage and mining?
10:22It's called land right? This is storage for the mining computer. And this is network, right? Cuz you're moving you're moving the rocks. This is network. Um this is me by one of those vehicles. Check that out. Okay. I'm standing next to a TCP packet. There's like eight people understood what I just said. But look at that [ __ ] thing. So fully loaded. That's probably like 2 million pounds. All right.
10:57And uh this is an autonomous mining machine operating on our stuff. There are probably about three drones that were injured in this in the in the filming of this video.
11:10But CPU is really interesting in mining too, right? like how do you process the material to make it the metal and mineral that we need to to do all the things that we do to push civilization forward uh progress forward. There's lots of really cool things um to automate here.
11:31You guys ever see these things? These this is called flotation. You see these when you're flying over? Most people don't know what this is, but this is about distilling uh material uh down to the actual metal or mineral that you're trying to go for. This is a lithium plant, by the way.
11:48Uh and then of course all that stuff has to be orchestrated. So you need software almost like an operating system for that computer that's sort of moving things around and making sure it's doing exactly what needs to happen.
11:59And then we have transport, which I call wheelbase for robots. It's not exactly a computer. It's part of a computer. If you're not doing humanoids, right, humanoids are like low scale, do low-cale tasks in human environments. If you're doing highcale tasks, industrial scale tasks, you are going to make specialized machines that move and act in the physical world. The key part is move. If they're moving, they got to have wheels. if they have wheels, you
12:29gota you got to make the autonomy for those machines, those specialized robotics which are transforming that industry. Um, and if you depend on only one or two companies that exist, you're not going very far. Um, so autonomy is sort of like a critical part or critical platform you have to first make for yourself. Um, but there's lots of other industries that you can make it for, right? So, we know Phelps is the gold medals guy, but I like to say that
12:57transport is full of silver medals, right? A lot of people think about ride sharing as a gold medal. What about food delivery? What about parcel delivery?
13:07What about personal autonomy? What about trucking, freight? What about off-road autonomy? Like with mining? There's many hund multiundred billion dollar industries that are going to be powered by these specialized robotics and that are made for industry. These computers made for industry. And here's sort of like a breakdown of some really interesting just several of the silver medals that are out there.
13:34And I say, look, if you make autonomy and you make it really fast, faster than than Whimo's making it, let's just say, uh, you there's a dark horse angle. Like I don't know if you guys are like Kentucky Derby guys or not, but like there is a dark horse angle here, which is pretty interesting, but the silver medals alone are freaking insane. And so I call what we build progress machines.
14:04And what does it like? What does that mean? It's like well I'm like well at the company sort of our culture is about discovering valuable unknown truths because if you can dis if you if you are good at finding valuable unknown truths then it means you're going to know a lot of things other people don't know. And if you know a lot of things that other people don't know it means you can do a lot of things that other people can't do. And the better you are at those
14:33valuable unknown truths, the more things you're going to be able to do that other people can't do, which means you're bringing change faster and faster, like in a shorter amount of time.
14:44That's called progress.
14:46That progress is everything that's powered civilization for since the beginning, including now. But there's a what I call the final boss. The final boss for progress. It's like the the boss you got to you you have to go up against and every one of the entrepreneurs in this room knows it. It's called resistance to change. It's natural because like you know a lot of times change is bad.
15:14Um and so you have to deliver an overwhelming amount of progress to make your change happen.
15:21And so I like to make analogies to we're almost done guys. I like to make analogies to the second industrial revolution. There's like we don't fully I think a lot of folks here may not be totally schooled on what happened 100 years ago, 150 years ago, but there's a lot of analogies for what happened then to like what's happening now. And by the way, we all think, "Oh, founder mode.
15:44Let's go. Founder mode, guys. 150 years ago, they did founder mode for real." This is a picture, an illustration. You don't see that guy on the top has a gun.
15:56He's about to shoot Henry Frick. Henry Frick was a partner of Carnegie. They revolutionized steel. Like you talk about everything being mined and all the buildings and things that we see around us, all the infrastructure, etc. Started with Carnegie and Frick. Um, an anarchist came into his office and shot him twice and stabbed him several times. Uh, he didn't die. While the bullets were getting pulled out, the dudes kept working.
16:35All right. And by the way, there's other interesting things that happened back then. Super interesting stuff. Okay. If those of you who know about like Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, Edison was all about direct current.
16:48Westinghouse was all about alternating current. We kind of know what won. Like, yes, I have a flashlight with direct current, but basically AC won because it could go long distances. Edison was on the wrong side of this equation big time, but he wasn't going down without a fight. So, he market he was the ultra OG of FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. He was the ultra OG. You know what he did?
17:12He did public displays of electrocution of animals to show that AC electricity was unsafe. He was the OG. Now, we see this in the current world. Okay, the analogies they play. I'm just saying. Okay, that might go online. This was a Homestead protest. Okay.
17:48Homestead protest. This is a Carnegie Frick thing. Actually led to him getting shot actually. Uh and it was about uh it was a a strike sort of Homestead strike and it was a basically a unionization thing and they weren't willing to go union and there was obviously a scuffle of of sorts. Um, and it's I mean it's one of the it was the first big huge union situation for how we think about
18:15it today. Probably the archetype for it. And we're starting to see those things, right? So like of course go back to 2014 Uber uh well there was a strike across all of Europe in all the major European cities. They lit cars on fire. They did crazy things to stop that kind of progress. This is the final boss, the resistance to change. And like you know they say history doesn't rhy, this doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
18:49Okay. And not everybody can read it. Okay. So the Uber and Lift drivers are now protesting at the Whimo office.
18:57Okay. There's a What's this?
19:02Okay, fair enough. See, that happens. Okay. But we're ma we're bringing progress forward. There will be resistance. It is going to be a thing. And there are a ton of entrepreneurs, super badass entrepreneurs in this room. Like we have to be steelied. We have to be hardcore.
19:22Um like the guys on the invite that I sent, right? Uh we've got Ford, we've got Carnegie, we've got JP Morgan. H we got all the guys. Westinghouse on the right. Uh, we have to look to We always think that we did things first, but actually there were dudes that did it harder, better than us for sure. Always. They walked to school uphill in the snow both ways. I promise. All right.
19:49And they had those things, right? They had the stuff, right? And it's like what you see in the press about what that stuff is isn't always what the stuff really is. Look at that empathy. But how do you lead 20,000 people and get them oriented towards a beautiful mission? And those 20,000 people are great minds, optimistic, good people. How do you do that? You can't do that by being a bad person.
20:16But you have to be hardcore. I don't know if you have to be as hardcore as frick, but you got to you got to bring it. Um, and there's a lot of there's a lot of things we got to hold and we got like the entrepreneurs. We got to we got to do this. And by the way, the folks that support us or the executives that are making magic happen too. Like you got to be all these things.
20:39And so at the company we have this thing called the champions champions heart 23 points for the golden golfers in their championship. So they're really relying on getting a lot this weekend. So, we have this thing called champion's heart, which is um you know, in life, you get knocked down like what just happened to her.
21:01Uh but if you put everything you got on the field and when you get knocked down, you keep getting back up, it's very difficult to fail, right? Uh you turn the volume back up.
21:15May catch the leaders.
21:16Well, she's got fun.
21:18This is a gutsy effort by Danovan.
21:20Cancel. She's moving it through. Dadan coming down THIS TRUCK TO THE OUTSIDE. Donan coming on strong. Dan allow and this is just a thing we believe at our company and I think it's a thing that most of the successful entrepreneurs believe in. Um, and so, you know, look, a lot of folks they say, "Hey, Travis is back."
21:46Or, you know, I think it might have even been on your invite, but, uh, I've actually been working for eight years. I just haven't been talking about it.
21:56Um, and so it is good to be back in this way because I was kind of in a cave for a while. Um, and I want to thank everybody for being here. And, uh, I think, uh, Eric, Ben, and I are going to have a a nice conversation. And uh again, thank you so much.
22:25So, the reason why people loved our podcast that we did, the first one that we did together is because we just got right into it. Right into the good stuff. So, we're going to do that here and then we're going to open it up for I'm scared for Q&A.
22:38Eric's good at this and it stresses me out. All right. What do you got, Eric?
22:41So, Travis, why didn't you buy Lyft and do you regret it? What would you do if you can go back in time?
22:51Um, I think this will surprise a lot of people, but Lyft's culture was very different than ours.
23:00Uh, maybe it started with the purple the pink mustache. Um, but I think it's interesting, right, when it comes to entrepreneurs that are in that moment where you could acquire something. By the way, I got a lot of [ __ ] for this for a long time. So, so yeah, the the uh the culture didn't mix.
23:20Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The culture didn't mix. And um when you meet with somebody and you're going to acquire them and there's so much goodness that could come from it, by the way, we're in some crazy war probably spending a billion dollars a year on it or some insane amount of money. Um you want it to work.
23:37So, you wouldn't do anything different.
23:39I wouldn't do anything different. And it's easy to say now, but I got a lot of [ __ ] for that for a long time. But it was basically I would sit across the table from the guys and I just didn't it was just clear that we were very culturally different and you couldn't it get harder and harder to make that happen.
23:56So I I by the way I agree with that.
24:00I think it I mean you you'd have to do the counterfactual if Travis was still running Uber. Uh because what would that look like? Travis is still running Uber today.
24:12Well, I think it would have been the original culture uh and uh the culture they went to which was a reaction to um the resistance just ended up being a much more milktoast culture than the the original Uber culture was a special um very pronounced culture. Uh my favorite thing in that um culture doc
24:40was meritocracy slashtostepping or toe stomping. I can't remember. I always thought of it as stomping but meritocracy and toe stepping.
24:50Which is kind of like [ __ ] your feelings, you know? Like we're we're going to we're here to build. We're going to do it. Like we're going to push as hard as we can. And like yeah, you may get your toes stepped on, but like you got to keep going. You got to keep bringing it. And that to me that was the part that um got diluted when when Travis went out and it was in some ways it was the core part.
25:17It was a very essential element to at least what I saw you know kind of from the side in it.
25:24Yeah. We've rebranded it the the current company at Adams. We call it the best idea wins. But uh you know, but the toe stepping is important because you've gotta there's so many people that are not willing to fight for the best idea because they're going to upset somebody else. And if you don't fight for the best idea, then what idea are you fighting for? You're fighting for the mediocre idea, the politically expedient idea, an idea that's going to make you less good than if you went for the best idea.
25:54And so having everybody oriented towards that is a cultural vibe that helps you win.
26:01Yeah. When Andy Grove was at Intel, he used to call that constructive confrontation.
26:06Which is which is the only way to get better. You have to get tested.
26:11There's a poly market on when Travis is going to come back at Uber or when they're going to ask Travis to come back at Uber. But the real question is when are you guys going to buy Uber?
26:22I think we still have a lot to earn. It's a fun um a so much of what I'm doing and you know people go what would you be doing if and I can't say all the things that I would be doing at Uber I'm doing now. Uh there's a lot of things I'm not, but it is a continuation of the things and a lot of the things that would have happened with Uber over time are things
26:55And uh if those things play out and you take over like look, I outlined what industrial AI is and where it's going over time, it's basically multiple like hundred billion or trillion dollar industries that are going to get automated. We talk about digital AI and what it does to the enterprise, but these industries on their own are big.
27:18Um, and so this is a new industrial age that basically uh is sort of coming. I compare it to the second industrial revolution. So if we're correct and we execute well, then it's a thing because you're like, is food going to get automated? Is it production of food going to get automated? And is the delivery of food going to get automated? I think we'd all say yes. And if that's the case, then there will be a service that that prepares and delivers that food at
27:47cheaper than going to the grocery store. And if that happens, this occurs and food will be completely revolutionized. Will mining get automated? And if it does, not just the movement of the materials, but every part of mining.
28:00Then what is a mining company? It just owns real estate. It will be completely revolutionized a multi-trillion dollar market. And there's many of these and um well we got to now we got to deliver. So talk about how you're different as a founder building at Adams than you were building Uber in terms of what have you changed? What have you kept the same when you reflect back? What do you think you were successful because of what you
28:27did versus in spite of what you did?
28:30Uh the look some of how I did Uber is very related to what I did before Uber and what I did before Uber was um I failed.
28:45I I mean I got my my company barely got acquired. Like I did the four first four years without a salary. I had socks that said blood, sweat, and ramen. You know, it was stuff like that. And um when you're that when you're that on the line and you're on welfare and you've got to make ends meet and then you go into something like Uber, which is like ultra product market fit times a thousand, but you still think you're poor and you
29:13can't you can't go to the grocery store next week. You get too close to the line.
29:21Like I would go right up against the line. Some people might have guessed that, but I'd go right up against the line. And the only way you knew that I didn't get chalk on my shoe was you'd get an electro electromagnetic scanning microscope and you would zoom in, reverse angle, and you'd be like, "Okay, he's fine." But if you get big and you roll that way, you get to a place where people you're bringing a lot of change really fast and you haven't brought trust along
29:52Um, so I would say today I'm a few inches off that line. You don't need to do the slow motion replay to know that I did the right thing. I'd stand by every decision I made at Uber, but you don't need to guess anymore.
30:07It's like super clean. You don't have to be that close. Um, the other thing that's interesting and I think sometimes, you know, the the the new the the the young entrepreneurs that are just coming up right now, they don't totally get it is that when you get into your third and fourth, I don't know, this may be even my fifth at this point company, you get freaking really good at doing stuff.
30:37And so things that used to take me a day or three days, a lot of stress, anxiety, like I am going to do this take me like 45 minutes.
30:50And that's a beautiful thing. There are things you don't get like like I'm like so used to adversity at this point that it's kind of normal. So I don't get as pissed off. But being pissed off makes you good as an entrepreneur. So, like I got to make sure I'm still fired up.
31:08That's that pissed off energy.
31:09You [ __ ] with me. I'm going to kick your ass.
31:11You know that it's easier when you're 25, I think. I don't know. I'm just not It's like a dude. Whatever. It's fine. You be you, dude. It's good. You get too used to adversity and that's kind of a problem. But, uh, yeah. So, I'd say those are some of the fun changes. Yeah.
31:26What's an example of something that used to take a long time, but is now just so much easier? Like a Look, I wrote a vision note. Um, when we rolled out Adams, it was a few months ago. It was like like, you know, look, I'm biased obviously, but like it was very, I think, a very well-ritten vision note. Uh, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that would have taken me, I don't know, hundreds of hours.
31:58Yeah. Like, okay, I can't say I wasn't thinking about it a lot, but when I was doing the writing, it actually just flowed and just happened. I'm like, holy [ __ ] it just happened. Holy cow. Like, the one I just did for the for for this funding, like, okay, I procrastinated, but you know, that's a thing. But like once I did the right, I'm like, "Oh, dude, we got it." It took like 45 minutes. I'm like, "This is amazing."
32:21And it that's related to presentation, communication, strategy, this kind of thing. uh unsure at which is pretty awesome.
32:32Ben, how have you seen Travis evolve since you first got to know him and comment more broadly? We have a lot of repeat entrepreneurs in the room in terms of when like Travis you have a massive success that also has some mistakes along the way. You know, what lessons do you learn from the next time versus, you know, what do you make sure to keep and continue because that's what that's what got you there.
32:52Well, I I thought that was actually a really good way to characterize it, which was, you know, he thought he was in survival mode when he had 20,000 people working for him. And that that that idea um is dangerous. Uh when you have such a big organization,
33:14it it's dangerous on two levels. one, it's dangerous because you're not, as he said, bringing enough people along with you, but it's also dangerous in that you've got all these people working for you. Um, and their interpretation of that idea could be a lot. You know, you kind of have to you have to stay way on this side of the line so the guy, you know, eight levels down doesn't do something stupid. And so that, you know, that's a big change, I would say. But
33:43like he was always great. Always. I mean that's why it was so tragic that we didn't invest in Uber. Um but yeah and and and I think look when you you do get I I think everything comes easier. It was what's the prince line? People say nothing comes too easy but when you got it nothing comes too hard. That's like that's where he got to the I the one thing I add to it though
34:12and again I feel like I don't want to prescribe to some to folks like everybody a lot of folks here already know this but it's like when it gets easy it's time to push hard.
34:27If I always used to say like uh if something if it's getting easy it's about to get really [ __ ] hard and you don't want it to be that way. You want to make it hard versus hard make it hard on you if that makes sense.
34:43Yeah. And I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs over the years where they're like, "Oh man, we're just cranking. We're on easy street right now." And I'm like, "Dude, you are about to get your ass whooped and you don't even know it." Uh, now I know that too because of course I've experienced it myself. So yeah.
35:00And that's a that that's a very good insight.
35:03Yeah. So it's I notice that all the time when I talk to entrepreneurs when they start going, "Oh yeah, I just Yeah, it's a it's easy. It's going so well. We don't have competition.
35:12You know, I just hired this guy. He had an offer from Anthropic for $5 billion, but he took my $400,000 a year job. Blah blah blah blah blah blah." I'm like, "Bro, check yourself for wounds cuz I assure you you're bleeding." You know, like you're in trouble.
35:27For sure. But but there's times when it's actually easy. That's a guy pretending. So I call that the fake it till you make it, which he's lying to himself plus others. But there's actual times when it's easy, but it's because you're not continuing to push. So it's one thing when you're just not winning, but you're pretending like you are. And there's another thing when you're winning but you're taking it easy and you're about to start losing.
35:56Last question then I'll open up to a couple Q&A. So Ben, uh oh Travis, when you your first external round at Uber, the venture round I believe was at 4 million post or or something like that.
36:08It's 4 million pre. You're talking about at first round. Yeah.
36:11Our first round at Uber was 4 million pre. This one is, you know, several orders of magnitude uh bigger. Um Ben, I believe this is one of, if not our biggest check, biggest check you've ever written.
36:23Yeah, certainly biggest check I ever uh you know, when did you get to conviction that we were 100% do? Like what was your process like?
36:33I wasn't 100. I when I first started talking to him, well, as soon as I knew what it was, um the only question for me was uh was it going to be one thing?
36:45Uh because look, I've known Travis for for many many many years and um he's always been the opposite of the like our conversations were always the real [ __ ] Like when we I mean I was on the board of Lyft uh and I was talking to him about Uber and he would tell me like all the stuff that Chinese ride sharing companies were doing to him, breaking into his apps, giving [ __ ] away for free, this and that and the other. And
37:12he was fired up about that. Like, oh, if I can deal with these guys, the rest of the world is going to be no problem. And there there are just not that many. There are very few, I'm telling you, I've been in this a while, very few entrepreneurs that come at it like that.
37:28So, I knew if we could put money in Travis and he was still, the other thing that I learned was he was still Travis.
37:36Like, he he hadn't like turned into he wasn't living his best life. He wasn't doing that. Um, so yeah, it was a very I was that conviction very fast. I think um a lot of people don't some people know this but not a lot is that we actually had separate companies going and so when I went to do the fund raise I kind of showed up at A16 kind of like the guy with a trench co trench coat with a bunch of watches saying you want
38:04a watch which watch would you like I got lots of stuff did you want some food stuff actually I got different parts of the food thing what do you like I've got some mining stuff that's pretty cool and they're like we just want the enough and we heard that from the first few people that we talked to. And so actually the the tricky part about this deal or the what added trickiness to this deal uh that made us sweat a little bit and just made it hard was like I had to merge separate entities with
38:33different investors and put it together.
38:36Um which was pretty interesting because like how do you do a ratio when certain things are very early? Um, but uh, but it's super great because it was like you see some of the things with Elon and he's starting to put the pieces back together he did. He's not only phenomenal of course on all the five or six or eight things and of course a A16 is in most or all of them. Um,
39:06but he was managing five or six or seven different companies and so I was really trying to put it together under a single roof which is amazing. He's doing it many, you know, a couple decades later, but I mean it's it makes things better in some ways. Yeah. Before we get to Q&A, lastly, Travis, why don't you say a couple words about what it's like to have a lot of the Uber gang back together?
39:34Uh, it's where, you know, putting the pieces back together. You know, Anthony, this company you bought, there's a bunch of people in this room who were alongside with you for the first round.
39:42Look, when I first got going, look, I was on the board of Uber when I first got going. So, I got thousands of inbound from actual Uber employees that are like, "Let's go." And I had to be careful because if you're on the board of a company, you can't hire thousands of their people.
40:03Not. It's not just a bad look. It's actually illegal. So, there's that, too. And um and I'm very familiar with the law here. Okay.
40:12Um so, you pick your guys, you pick your spots, the whole thing. Um but, you know, there's a few there's a lot of really special people in this room. I mean, uh, Godam, who was the CFO over at Uber, has joined Adams. Uh, that's a recent thing. Ganesha, who was a a VP or SVP of engineering over at Uber, has just joined Adams. And there's a lot of young guns at Uber that joined that are
40:40now the big guns, right? There's a guy, Brian Atwell, who's one of our engineering leads on the food side and on infrastructure. Uh Anthony Leandowski, of course, uh Eric Myhoffer, who ran Uber's, uh Advanced Technology Group, he's running Food Robotics.
40:58Like the list goes on, guys. Oh, Jessica uh uh Jessica Morton, she was head of Uber Eatats uh Japan and I went to Japan when we first got going and I met with Masa because like maybe Masa's going to be in and like I could never get over him just stealing my stuff and then investing in like eight other companies that do what I do.
41:23And then I met with Jess because that was like my number one in [ __ ] like my number one thing to my number one number two thing to do there. But she's now doing a lot of really cool stuff. Now we're not just an Uber company. We have more executives that are not Uber than are. But there's a lot of heart from that time and people who were there and it's like what do they say? Run it back. Yeah.
41:47But there's also run it forward which is do it new, different. Don't be what you were before. Um, so anyways, we're having fun.
41:56Speaking of special people of this room, I want to open it up to uh to some Q&A.
42:02Uh, Gary Travis, congratulations. Uh, my favorite question to ask for especially a room like this is what if you could like send a message in a bottle to the 18 to 22-year-old version of yourself, what will say?
42:20Um, look, the 18-year-old version of me uh was a super geek uh pretending not to be. So, I would just be like, "Dude, just be a geek. It's going to be fine." You know, the pretending to not be a geek when you're a geek is just a lot of cognitive spa, you know, load that's not necessary.
42:44Um, you know, uh, I am not sure that things would have gone better, but that's certainly one of the things I probably would have told myself. Yeah.
42:53What about you, Ben?
42:54That's I I just not to worry about uh not to worry about stuff, you know, like it is what it is. Do what you got to do. Um, you know, don't don't like consequence is going to be what the consequence is. You know, you got to find a way out and you just got to keep looking till you find it. And there's nothing else to do. So worrying doesn't help at all.
43:24Don't worry, be happy.
43:26Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry, be Well, but you need urgency. Don't be too happy.
43:30Yeah. Yeah. Don't be too happy.
43:32Don't worry, be happy. Travis, don't be too happy. Don't be fat and happy. Yeah.
43:37Okay. Next question.
43:40Owen, question for Travis. How are you going to structure all this? Are you going to have like shared resources across the divisions? Are you going to have CEOs?
43:48Are you going to have many boards? Like, how are you thinking of all of that?
43:50Yeah, that's super great. Um, so one of the things I'm happy about is that I don't have multiple boards because that's a thing I was just like, "Oh my god, I definitely don't want that."
44:00Um but shared resources is just a it's sort of like this is the management architecture organizational architecture geek thing that we got to figure out. Um okay the normal GNA finance legal HR shared then you're like okay infrastructure on the technology side shared is manufacturing shared sometimes you want manufacturing to go deep okay we're just going to do this kind of manufacturing but it just so
44:28happens that a lot of the manufacturing that we're doing on mining is similar to uh the manufacturing that we're doing on transport but it's very different than the manufacturing we're doing on food.
44:39So, do you have a guru of manufacturing?
44:43You probably do because it's a thing. It's a specialized thing. And when you do it at scale, you can get way better talent and just all the other things work better. So, my guess is manufacturing is also one of those things. And then you're like, which parts of software get locked in? Mostly, but not complete. And and I don't have all the answers on that one, but like these are business units that run as separate businesses.
45:09Like the guy who runs, you know, mining is just like all in on that and has lots of control and empowerment to make mining successful. Um and and same for the other for the other situations. Yeah. Yeah. It's super interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean that's the thing, right? Is like I had to make it a bit painful.
45:34Otherwise, I'm just not I'm just like I will make it's just inevitable. I just do that. Yeah. Yeah. Next question.
45:46Hi Travis. Um one thing that you said earlier was uh being pissed off makes you a really good entrepreneur. Um, you know, there's it's interesting. Sometimes people say that if you're successful and you're driven by a desire for revenge, it's like a dirty fuel.
46:00Like it works, but it's not the best source of fuel that you can possibly have. I'm curious throughout your career and just like everything that you've built, have you found a cleaner source of fuel, or yeah, you just what, you know, what's your takeaway on that?
46:11Look, most people don't know this, but before, this is a couple companies before Uber, I did a uh a a peer-to-peer file sharing system. got sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 of the largest media companies in the world and I was pissed.
46:27I did a revenge business which was I'm going to do a peer-to-peer CDN like Okami, Bit Torrent meets Okami before Bittor existed. And my whole thing was turn those guys who sued me into customers. It was like a full spite business, like full spite store, like let's go. Okay. Um,
46:48but I think in many ways the there is a there is a dirty there is a dirty revenge or dirty it's dirty it can be successful but it it ends up being less than what it should be when it comes from the wrong place if that makes sense. Uh part of what drove me earlier was a little bit of like a fear of failure.
47:10a fear of failure. And that can mean long nights where you get little done.
47:18And it just means you have this edge, this weird vibe that people like, dude, something's wrong with that guy, right?
47:24And it's just a thing. You're just not going to go all the way, right? When the Uber thing happened and then moved on to new stuff, which was like eight months after I left Uber, I was doing the new thing. Uh yeah, I I kind of fell in love again, you know, and so people said, "Are you pissed off about Uber? Are you this thing like are you does that grind you or you know, is it on your mind?" And I just like when you fall in love again,
47:53you don't think about the ex very much. And if you come from that place, you can create in a beautiful unirty way. If that makes sense. Yeah. It's important. And it's not that doesn't you got to work on it to get to that place. Probably over time, but by the time I got there, I was there. Yeah. Maybe one last question.
48:19Oh, and by the way, you can't be [ __ ] maxing to get to that place. Okay. For our boy Mark, for our boy Mark. I gota still have a debate on that one. All right.
48:30Yeah. Question. You mentioned I remember this slide. I'll remember it forever.
48:35Killer boss. Um, was the killer boss for Adams? Especially in this What is the killer boss? What does that mean?
48:46Killer boss is my version. Farfight.
48:49Look. Um, there's huge opportunities here. It's maybe the final boss is like I don't know if the final boss but like I'll just I'll just riff a little bit on this concept which is there are a lot of people in this room and not in this room who will gladly vanquish me. And I don't mean that in a bad way but we're competing for the next industrial revolution.
49:21Um, you know, Magic John, this is old school. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird were like kind of guys, but like they'll kick each other's butt, right? So, uh, that's the wrong analogy for this crew, but but you get it's like Patrick Euing, like you know, some [ __ ] Okay. But, um, so I think there's there's that is actually pretty important. Is there like an ultra like you have to you always have to think when you go into a space like this you go who's the best of the
49:50best at industrial AI. Anybody want to guess? It's really obvious. His his name rhymes withon. Okay. He's the best of the best and he'll just keep going and keep doing lots more even if what you do now is not what he does now.
50:09So if you want to go final boss mode, I mean he I don't even know who his final boss is. Like people like, "Dude, Elon's the goat." I'm like, "Dude, I'm a baby goat. It's great."
50:20Um, you know, but that maybe he's the final boss, you know. Uh, but mad respect, of course. Uh, he's he's obviously the best by a long shot. Um, uh, and so um, anyways, yeah, I'm not sure exactly how to answer, but that was a little riff on it. Yeah, maybe we'll we'll end on on this question, which is you you've never left, but you were in a cave for a while. You know, you were you were focusing
50:46I had a I had a a presentation that I gave to my leadership team in like 2019. The title was be uniconic. Be uniconic. We did we had a [ __ ] massive highfidelity playbook on how to not get attention for anything we did. We had thousands of employees who were not allowed to put our company on LinkedIn.
51:18So this is your coming out party so to speak. You're back in the flow. talk about how you've seen Silicon Valley or the tech industry at large change from when you were, you know, right in the in the center in it to be coming back eight years later. What would have what surprised you or what's what's most notable about where we are as Look, I think probably one of the coolest things and this is part of why I'm out versus not before uh is that the media landscape has completely changed.
51:47the media landscape 10 years ago, 90% of what was said was very negative.
51:54Business had become politics and we didn't know it. So, think of your favorite politician if you have one. I mean, many of you may not have one, but let's just pretend you did, okay?
52:09It's [ __ ] hilarious. Okay, but let's just say, okay, uh, take your favorite politician. Are the Go type his name in on Google.
52:22What are Do you think you're going to find anything good? It's going to be just tsunami waves of negativity is what you're going to find. Of course, if it leads, if it bleeds, it leads, right?
52:34And that's human nature and there's negativity and that gets the clicks and the whole thing. Um, but we weren't used to it then and we thought everything that the New York Times said was real and we know now that that's not even close to true and it's we we now understand. And so the media landscape is like, yeah, you don't have to talk to those guys and you can go and talk to a David Senra. You can go and
53:00talk to uh Joe Rogan or name your guy and it's you can say what you need to say in a in an environment that's not like a struggle session in Mau China, right? So that's a big freaking change. And and I think it's a you know Elon buying Twitter is like the beginning of us being able to speak our minds and for disagreeing to not be illegal.
53:32That's a big deal. We should all thank Elon for that.
53:38And it allows so you go, okay, somebody like myself who basically was just like, okay, uh, I want to build. I want to, uh, I I want to not think about what the New York Times is writing when I make decisions about what I build. Um, I had to emulate what it's like being a capitalist in Russia, which is their number one KPI is called shut the [ __ ] up.
54:04And that's what I did for eight years. In a weird way, it was like that for different reasons, but it was like that. And so, we're now out of that mode or getting out of that mode and let's go. And I think that's the biggest change for all of us in the last eight years. And God bless and like hopefully that continues.
54:27I think it's a great note to to wrap on. Travis is back. Travis never left. Give it up for Travis. Thank you.
