Uber CEO: At Uber, If You Don’t Perform, You’re Out! Uber Was Losing $3b A Year

**Steven Bartlett** (0:00)
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**Dara Khosrowshahi** (1:07)
You come to Uber, you're going to work your ass off. And if you're not performing, we're going to let you know.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:11)
But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth?

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (1:14)
And they can leave, because the most important skill in life is the skill of working hard. And when you see the top athletes, Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, of course they're talented. But the thing that's different about them is they work their asses off. And that's a learned skill. That's not something you're born with. You may be smarter, more talented, et cetera, but I'm not going to let anyone outwork me.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:35)
With that mentality, when you joined Uber, it was losing 3 billion per year. Now it generates 8.5 billion in free cash flow every year. But it seems that you were forged in such a way that you were going to be relentless.

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (1:46)
Yeah, and it really started with being born in Iran. With the Islamic Revolution in 1978, we were not safe there. And I remember at one point, we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard, and bullets went through our living room. So my family came to the US to rebuild their lives.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:02)
You were what, eight, nine years old?

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (2:04)
Yeah. And it really destroyed my dad. Sorry, it's tough for me to talk about it.
All right, let me try again. Seeing that has put me on a road where I just wanted to make my family proud. So I studied bioelectrical engineering, and then my first job was in investment banking, and I got to see the process of big companies being built. And then I had the opportunity to take over Expedia.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:33)
And in your 12 years as CEO, Expedia's sales increased from 2.1 billion to 8.8 billion, and you were the highest paid CEO of a US tech company.

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (2:41)
And I left it all behind to go to Uber.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:43)
And I want to get into practical company building, how you would get that company to work hard and create a culture of continuous improvement and all that stuff. But there's an alien that's arrived amongst us, which is AI. Now, driving, I think, is one of the biggest employees in the world, as a profession.

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (2:57)
I mean, we've got 9.5 million drivers and couriers on our platform.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:00)
Those drivers, careers that you have, will be out of work. Being honest about the situation, what do the 9 million people do? Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning in to the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.