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

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Business, Education, Society & Culture

4.5 • 17.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reveals the future of driverless cars, how he led Uber’s financial turnaround, his family’s escape from Iran in 1978, and the truth about AI, automation, and job loss! Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber and successfully transformed the company from losing $3 billion a year to generating over $9 billion in free cash flow. He previously served as CEO of Expedia for over a decade, scaling the company into a global leader in online travel. He explains: ◼️The "wartime" leadership strategy he used to save Uber from collapse ◼️Why telling the uncomfortable truth is the only way to scale a company ◼️His undercover experience as a driver and why it changed the app ◼️Why 80% of jobs face total disruption from AI automation by 2035 ◼️The truth about autonomous vehicles and banning humans from driving (00:00) Intro (03:32) Why Escaping Iran Rewired My Appetite For Risk (10:15) The Brutal Truth About Raising Kids In An Uncertain World (16:50) Do Engineers Make Better CEOs — Or Miss What Really Matters? (18:09) How To Choose The Few People Truly Worth Betting On (19:16) The X-Factor That Turns Good Employees Into Game Changers (20:51) Why Rejection Is The Price Of Building Something That Matters (26:46) How To See Industry Shifts Before They’re Obvious (32:51) The Jevons Paradox: Why More Efficiency Can Mean More Consumption (39:47) Why Transparency As A CEO Builds Power — Not Weakness (46:52) Can You Turn A Comfortable Culture Into A Hungry One? (49:42) Ads (51:10) The Advice Young People Need Before It’s Too Late (57:36) How To Build A Culture That Improves Every Single Week (01:01:53) Why Most Teams Fail At Goals — And How To Fix It (01:06:56) What Happens When Strategy And Values Fall Out Of Sync (01:13:53) How AI Is Changing Our Company — And The Moves We’re Making Now (01:18:52) Why 90% Of Our Engineers Use AI — And What That Signals (01:23:43) Will AI Replace 9.5 Million Uber Drivers — Or Reinvent The Job? (01:35:05) The Most Important Advice For Thriving In An AI-Driven Future Enjoyed the episode? Share this link and earn points for every referral - redeem them for exclusive prizes: https://doac-perks.com Follow Dara: X - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/8IAzCZd YouTube (Uber) - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/7dRAeeV Instagram (Uber) - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/CtQISla The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: WHOOP: https://JOIN.WHOOP.COM/CEO for one month free Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett Wispr: Get started with 14 days of Wispr Flow for free at https://wisprflow.ai/steven

Transcript

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0:00.0	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.
0:04.7	But do you ever worry that they might not be able to deal with the truth?
0:07.1	Then they can leave. Because the most important skill in life is a 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. 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.
0:39.7	Yeah. And it really started with being born in Iran. With the Islamic Revolution in 1978, we were not safe there.
0:46.1	And I remember at one point, we had these revolutionary guards come into the backyard and bullets went through our living room.
0:52.4	So my family came to the U.S.
0:55.5	to rebuild their lives.
0:56.8	Eight, nine years old?
0:57.1	Yeah.
0:58.9	And it really destroyed my dad.
1:01.2	Sorry.
1:06.2	It's tough for me to talk about it.
1:07.3	Okay.
1:08.2	It's again. All right. Let me try again.
1:12.3	Seeing that has put me on a road where I just wanted to make my family proud.
1:17.2	So I studied bioelectric engineering, and then my first job was invest in banking,
1:21.4	and I got to see the process of big companies being built.
1:24.1	And then I had the opportunity to take over Expedia.
1:26.7	And in your 12 years of CEO, Expedia sales increased from 2.1 billion to 8.8 billion. And you were the highest paid CEO of a US tech company. And I left it all behind to go to Uber. 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
1:44.3	arrived amongst us, which is AI. Now, driving, I think, is one of the biggest employees in the
1:48.7	world, like as of profession. I mean, we've got nine and a half million drivers and careers
1:52.4	on a platform. Those drivers, careers that you have will be out of work. Being honest about the
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