20VC: Uber President on The Untold Uber Stories: Travis, China and Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash to #1 in Food with Andrew MacDonald

Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine. 

AGENDA:

05:39 – How was Mac the only survivor from the Travis era?
10:39 – How does Uber decide what to include in Uber One membership?
11:45 – How does Uber decide which new products to pursue?
16:08 – What does Uber need to do to reach 500 million users?
20:37 – Why Uber was right to focus on its core business and divest autonomy?
24:08 – Why India and Brazil will delay Uber's autonomous future?
28:34 – The craziest story from Uber's battle in China
29:27 – Why Travis Kalanick believed money was the moat?
31:17 – Was Uber structurally disadvantaged in China from day one?
35:48 – Inside Uber's SWAT team of its 30 best AI engineers
37:55 – How companies need to extract real efficiency from AI?
42:00 – Will Uber have more or fewer employees in five years?
43:52 – Will companies that do not work with frontier models be disaggregated?
46:02 – Will AI agents disaggregate Uber's interface and customer relationship?
48:26 – Why Brian Chesky was right: chat is not the best interface for everything
55:52 – Why it is bullshit to say DoorDash would not be number one if Travis were still CEO
59:13 – The single biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick
1:00:07 – The second biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick