Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The biggest risk for Uber is actually AV technology working perfectly and Uber not being a part of it. Because if AV technology works perfectly and Uber's not a part of it, then you essentially have players who have a lower cost structure than us who can come in and compete with us and essentially make our service irrelevant.

Book of the Day

Theo Baker delves into power and corruption at Stanford in 'How to Rule the World'

There is a sort of Stanford inside Stanford where the most elite students who are going to found the trillion-dollar companies are dragged into this alternate reality and and foisted with excess and access and learn how to cut corners.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

The companies that tend to win in technology are the ones that are able to identify the inflection point on the S-curve early enough to make a big bet, but not so early that they run out of capital before the market develops. The penalty for being too early is often indistinguishable from being wrong.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

The way I think about it is that the most dangerous time to own a technology business is when it's currently executing well but the next curve is about to start. Because what happens is all your best people, all your resources, all your management attention is focused on scaling and perfecting the current curve, and the new curve looks tiny and unimportant by comparison.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The biggest risk to Uber is that we get disrupted by autonomy. Because autonomy is going to lower prices. Lower prices will mean more trips. And if we're not part of that autonomous future, we'll essentially be stuck with an ever-more-expensive human-driven transportation service while our competitors will have cheaper and cheaper autonomous transportation.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The formula that I used was when the company is doing well, double down. When the company is doing not so well, double down. I think that's actually the right formula because the greatest risk for Uber was irrelevance. If you slow down, you get lapped.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The insight is that if AV technology works, then every player in the space needs Uber more than Uber needs them, because we bring the demand. We bring the customers. We bring the transaction. And I think we are going to be the storefront for autonomous mobility for the world.

Diet TBPN

Bezos' Prometheus Raises $12B, America Inc. Moves to Texas, Trucking Rebounds | Diet TBPN

Bezos argued that if AI makes it cheaper, faster, and easier to invent things, employment will ultimately rise because even though you're shrinking the number of people needed by 10x, the technology will create more than 10x as many opportunities.

Diet TBPN

WWDC Reactions, Claude Fable 5 Debuts, McAfee Eyes ESPN Mega Deal | Diet TBPN

So you have like Tim Cook operationalizing the company, making so much money from the app store, building the business, but at the same time, he just happened to be the CEO during the greatest AI winter ever, basically from 2011 to 2022, 2023 when we started getting LLM, started getting chat bots.

Diet TBPN

Social Network Sequel Trailer, Fable 5 Sparks Safety Debate, SpaceX IPO Watch | Diet TBPN

We're twice as big as the biggest country on earth. We're not frightened of Congress. We're post government around here.

The a16z Show

AI, Growth, and the Future of Healthcare | Anish Acharya & Sachin Jain

Acharya argues that artificial intelligence is not simply another productivity tool, but a fundamentally new technology capable of performing work on behalf of people and organizations.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The best technology companies, they don't think product first. They think about what problem they're solving for whom, and they think about the network. If you solve a problem for a network of people, then the more people who have that problem and join your network, the more powerful your solution becomes.

Diet TBPN

WWDC Kicks Off, Jobs Up, Tech Down, VC Horror Stories Go Viral | Diet TBPN

Your PR team will have many heart attacks uh because you're not in the world of deterministic outputs anymore. So that's going to be a big cultural shift for Apple I think in this uh non-deterministic stochastic uh AI era.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The most dangerous thing that could happen to Uber is if one of the AV companies actually decided that they wanted to be a ride-sharing company, that they wanted to own the consumer relationship and own the driver relationship. Because then you'd have a competitor with a superior technology and they decided to go vertical.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The biggest risk for Uber is that we actually don't lean into AV enough, that we're not aggressive enough in terms of our partnerships, that we're not aggressive enough in terms of building product. Because I think AV is going to happen, and I want Uber to be the biggest beneficiary of AV, not the biggest victim of AV.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The history of Uber is really the history of navigating chaos. And I think what we've learned is that the chaos is actually a feature, not a bug. Because the chaos is what creates the opportunity for a company like Uber to come in and bring order to a market that didn't have it.

The Business of Tech

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage

whenever anyone asks, I would say that there would be no Uber today as it is without Travis and how he was. You know, when many cities, governments, regulators are saying this is a legal stop, to have such steadfast belief that this was going to be good for riders, good for drivers, good for cities, and to still push on with that belief

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The big players, the OEMs, they didn't want to give up their customer relationship. And I think that was a mistake, because the customer relationship is actually a burden when you're going through this transition — you're on the hook for the whole experience. We were able to essentially be asset-light, take the best of breed from all of these networks, and essentially build a better product for consumers.

Pivot

Who’s Really to Blame for "60 Minutes" Chaos? | Pivot

When you're in an industry that's in structural decline and you have a product that's up 9% year-on-year. You don't [ __ ] with it,

The Business of Tech

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage

I mean, you know, if I reverse engineering my career, it's really been about normalizing disruptive technologies to make them more understood and to drive that mass adoption.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The goal is to make Uber so useful that it becomes your default relationship for getting around and getting things done in the real world. And I think the super-app vision, where you can order food, get a ride, get a package delivered, book a flight — all from one place — is something that's very natural for consumers, because they don't want to have 15 different apps. They want one trusted relationship.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The biggest opportunity that we see with autonomous vehicles is actually on the Uber Eats side rather than the rides side, because the driver is such a big part of the cost structure of delivery, and because the consumer experience of waiting 30 to 40 minutes doesn't require a human driver to be present.

The New York Times

These Teens Are Choosing Trade Classes to AI-Proof Their Futures

This generation, especially, you really have to think about what you're going to do. Because if your plan is not future-proof, the world is going to eat you.

The Business of Tech

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage

I would say that there would be no Uber today as it is without Travis and how he was. You know, when many cities, governments, regulators are saying this is illegal stop, to have such steadfast belief that this was going to be good for riders, good for drivers, good for cities, and to still push on with that belief

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The biggest risk to Uber from autonomy is if one of the AV players decides to go it alone and not work with an aggregator like Uber. Because if one of them breaks out and they have, let's say, 30% of the market, and they're keeping that 30% to themselves, well, then we don't have access to 30% of the supply.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

I actually think the Waymo relationship is a really good example of how we want to work with AV companies. We want to be the demand side. We want to be the platform. We don't want to own the cars, we don't want to maintain the cars, we don't want to manufacture the cars. We want to be the operating system on top of which AV companies operate.

The Business of Tech

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage

if I reverse engineering my career, it's really been about normalizing disruptive technologies to make them more understood and to drive that mass adoption.

The Prof G Pod

Scott Answers: Is AI Replacing Middle Management? | Office Hours

Management is an ability to soften the chaos created by leaders. They're the ones that actually remember why this actual [ __ ] company works.

Diet TBPN

New Glenn Explodes, Enterprise AI Enters ROI Era, The Dinosaur Fossil Boom | Diet TBPN

Even if you're uh you know a SpaceX Maxi, uh it's it's it is very exciting for America to have multiple heavy launch capability providers in the market. It's good.

The a16z Show

Why $1B Exits are Dead

today's AI companies are scaling faster than any previous generation of startups, and why the eventual outcomes may be significantly larger than most investors currently expect

TBPN

New Glenn Explodes, Enterprise AI Enters ROI Era, The Dinosaur Fossil Boom | Diet TBPN

Even our second best rocket provider is better than everyone else in around the globe.

The Business of Tech

Space Mafia: How orbital AI changes everything

It's basically the wild West up there at the moment, which suits the companies trying to exploit space just fine. No copyright law, no IP law in space, No gambling or piracy laws to worry about when you have a server floating in space.

TED

The Wildlife Sanctuary You Can Visit from Anywhere | Maya Higa | TED

I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, but I wanted to do it at a much much larger scale. So then two years later at 22 years old, I came up with a plan. And the vision was to build an animal sanctuary that nobody visits, or at least not in person.

TBPN

Cerebras IPO, Warshtime, VC Infighting, H100s in China, Robot Monkey Business

It's a true overnight success. Uh we'll show you some charts of the valuation. Lots of troughs of disillusionment, but Andrew and the team powered through and wound up finding the perfect application for their technology at the perfect time during a mega cycle

The a16z Show

Ben Horowitz - "Your ONLY job is Right Product, Right Time"

a founder's primary responsibility comes down to one thing: delivering the right product at the right time

The Business of Tech

Power play: Qiulae Wong on R&D, AI, hi-tech skills and tax

most of the ones I talked to you say tax us more because we need more capital to run our businesses, and it's been a stranglehold on that because of our obsession with property.

The a16z Show

Crypto Fund 5: We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

founders are shifting toward building products that work within existing systems, rather than attempting to replace them

The a16z Show

Crypto Fund 5: We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

crypto has evolved from an ideological movement into a more pragmatic, product-focused ecosystem, shaped by real-world use cases and increasing regulatory clarity

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Brian Chesky - AI Founder Mode - [Invest Like the Best, EP.470]

what changed for him when he stopped chasing adulation and started making things for the love of making them

Book of the Day

'The Take' and 'The Left and the Lucky' explore peculiar friendships across age

There are only two ways to get ahead in this world. You either make something or you take something.

Prof G Markets

Reid Hoffman: The AI Optimist Makes His Case | Prof G Markets

The first year or two will look a lot like you know, kind of early.com companies, some of which were complete flame out and some of which were enduring institutions. Amazon being an example.

Office Hours

Can AI Actually Help You Start a Company? | Office Hours

I would describe AI is all chip no salsa and that is real insight like what is it you're going to do differently with your business what is it that's unique about your business most new businesses make no sense at the outset otherwise they would already exist.

TBPN

🟣 The Collison Brothers LIVE on TBPN

AI is making every little step of entrepreneurship slightly easier, like slightly easier to incorporate, slightly easier to create a contract or to hire somebody, slightly easier to create an ad, and then you add all of that together.

The a16z Show

John and Patrick Collison on Stripe's Growth, Agent Commerce, and the Future of Software

the economics of software are shifting from mass-produced products to bespoke, on-demand systems cooked fresh at the moment of use

TED

The Problem with Billionaires — and the Debut of True Net Worth | Randall Lane | TED

People don't resent billionaires. People want to become billionaires. People resent billionaires when they forget that the purpose of business is to create happiness, not who dies with the most toys.

TBPN

SpaceX-Cursor Deal, ChatGPT Images 2.0, Fake Bear Scam | Diet TBPN

The thing that started as like Elon sort of being like I want to buy Twitter is now like a Neol with a massive supercomputer data center and a coding agent and code review for the age of AI because don't forget they own graphite now or potentially will uh and and and a social the space review

The a16z Show

From Models to Mobility: Building Waymo with Dmitri Dolgov

getting there required more than better models. It meant building a complete system for training, evaluating, and deploying a driver in the real world.

The Business of Tech

Why big companies kill good ideas – and how to save them

Boult's core advice is to treat every significant new idea as if it were a venture‑backed startup inside your organisation. That means giving it a dedicated budget, a finite runway, clear deliverables, and hard stage gates where the project must "earn" the right to continue.

The Business of Tech

Why big companies kill good ideas – and how to save them

really cool ideas can just naturally make the world better and be commercially successful.