Travis Kalanick of Uber | E180

In this episode, Jason Calacanis and Travis Kalanick discuss Travis's journey from his first SAT Prep company at 18 to founding Uber. Insights are shared on dealing with industry threats, settling lawsuits, and pioneering peer-to-peer software. They delve into Uber's origin, its working mechanism, and its future. Travis also explains the traveling salesman problem.

Speakers

AI Chat

Jason Calacanis

Host • 43%

Unidentified

Travis Kalanick

Guest • 54%

Unidentified

Chapters

0:00	Welcome to TWiST with Travis Kalanick of Uber.
2:00	Jason talks about gambling on dinner in Vegas with Mike D from the Beastie Boys.
3:30	Thank you to GoToMeeting for sponsoring the show. Check out their beautiful new HD Faces product when you sign up at GoToMeeting.com.
5:00	Travis talks about his first company, doing SAT Prep, when he was 18.
7:00	Travis' SAT score revealed!
8:30	Travis's second company, Scour, was the first peer-to-peer software.
11:45	Travis talks about Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle, who invested in his first company.
15:30	Travis discusses how Scour evolved into a huge platform.
18:30	Scour starts to meet with music execs and senators about copyrighted content and peer-to-peer sharing.
23:30	How do you deal with all of this insanity as a 22 year old founder?
25:30	Ovitz invested in Scour, a company that is cannibalizing his own industry, then denies that he knew what was going on.
26:15	Thank you to Hiscox for sponsoring the show. Go to HiscoxUSA.com/SmallBiz to get a free, fast quote online for your small business or startup!
28:00	Travis tells a harrowing tale of getting threatened by a shady industry type before going on stage at one of Jason's digital coast events.
35:00	The Scour lawsuit is settled and Travis sells the company for $10 million in bankruptcy court.
36:00	Do you remember the first mp3 players?
38:00	Red Swoosh, in which Mark Cuban was an investor, was too early to market. Travis describes that time as blood, sweat and ramen.
40:00	Travis explains how he and Mark went on a week long flame war about P2P being crap.
42:30	How did you and Garrett come up with Uber while at Le Web in Paris?
46:00	34:45.How does Uber work?
47:00	Travis: Successful entrepreneurs can get their first round of funding done very fast.
48:30	How do you know when you actually have a good idea?
50:00	The State of California and City of San Francisco sued to shut Uber down. Why?
54:30	Uber changes the driver/passenger relationship by establishing names, rating system.
56:30	Uber has experimented with variable pricing on NYE.
58:30	So you raised a round from Benchmark Capital for $11 million?
59:45	Travis describes what it was like meeting with Benchmark.
1:00:00	What is the future of Uber?
1:03:15	Jason tells about when he realized Uber was a $1B company.
1:05:00	Why is Uber going to work in NYC?
1:10:00	Why can't it be 'push a button, get bagels and lox'?
1:15:00	What is the perfect addition to the service?
1:16:00	01:17:00 Travis explains what the traveling salesman problem is all about.

Transcript

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