YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Lashinsky

lines on the record: 128
first: 2017-06-26
most recent: 2017-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Preparation, I'm going to get there because it's really short. I wish I could be snarky, but I just try really hard to do three things to say, please and thank you and to be grateful for all the blessings that I have. And I think if everyone sort of shot for that tough goal, the world would be a better place.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Afterwards, will you sign this? Yes, I promise. Do you realize this is 20 years? I were young at the same time. Anyway. No, I wish I, by the way, they give you 60 minutes preparation”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did happen countless times. I'm optimistic because I have joy and warmth in my heart, not because I'm making a prediction.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No way. I mean, you know, well, you've kind of done what I'm saying I won't do, but you've done it a little. You run a company, you sold a company, but you've kept being a journalist the entire time. And I've had, you know, nibbles over the years. Would you be interested in doing this? And I'm just blessed that there isn't anything else that I want to be doing. I get to do a lot of fun things. I like being a journalist. I don't want to be the CEO of Uber. Are you kidding me?”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, some people ask me what advice would you give, Uber? And I really, well, I hate to do that, but that would be the obvious advice. Lift is focusing right now”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll give you the one that what Uber did well from the outset was a core tenet of what Apple did well, which was to be laser focused on as few things as possible. And when Uber was thriving. And jobs sort of took this to an art form. They were going to say no to more things, and they were going to say yes to. They were only going to do products they could fit on a conference room table. We can have a long conversation about how the fact that that's over at Apple now. And it's over at Uber, right? Because they do Uber Eats and they're investigating flying cars and they're transporting kittens and barbecue and helicopters. great entrepreneurs and great business executives try to focus on as few things as possible. That was my learning from writing about Apple.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What about tips? What are some of the things What do you think? You've interviewed hundreds of founders. What do you think the key assets are or things to avoid? Obviously not writing bad memos, but think of some assets”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's little evidence that Gates changed after he became a philanthropist. Yeah. Bezos never changed. Zuckerberg grew. Which is different from changed, and we could, you know, Steve Jobs didn't change, he also grew. Tremendously. But it's a great question. I structured my Apple book all around lessons that you can learn from Apple, both for entrepreneurs, which jobs considered himself to be one, and corporate executives.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to really, really steer away from this and make sure that the people that you're bringing on embody The values that will get you to the next stage, not let you be dragged down by this. I know there are good people at Uber, but you can't, the phish stinks from the head.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, tomorrow I'm a humanist, right? I mean, I think that what Karen and I do and what you do is going to be the last industry to be disrupted by robots. I mean, can you imagine a robot doing Karen's wishes? Yes, totally.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As I'm sure you've heard, it absolutely is something that they talk about. And to give you a window into the mindset of the company, this was for Travis Kallanik and the people around him a badge of honor. And I'm paraphrasing him now. These aren't my words, taxi systems, taxi commissions and taxi owners are corrupt. We are... We are doing something about that corruption. They want to keep the number of taxis available to consumers down and to keep prices high. And we're going to have as many cars on the road as possible and drive prices low for consumers. That is, that was the founding mentality of the companies. And they weren't shy about that.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't pay them Kind of Is connected to the fact that the company's mission is to disrupt the taxi industry. And as you were just talking about, eventually to possibly take out the transportation sector worldwide. I would imagine that working in that environment would be very different from any other job because you're dealing with all of these large humanistic ethical, moral questions as you go about your daily tasks. So is that part of the culture? Is that something people talk about or their connections there?”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The logical conclusion of the billions of dollars that all of these companies are spending on automation is the elimination of human jobs, which is the same conclusion of all the other examples of automation that that's happening in the economy.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wanted to get rid of all drivers. He said someday my business will work when I can get rid of all drivers. I know. That was what the crowd said at the time too. It was a really interesting observation. I think he was telling the truth and was brutally honest about what a lot of these people don't say is that they're hoping to get rid of all humans in the process of driving and so forth.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this was classic, right? He was asked in China, Travis Kalinek was asked in China, do you envision a future where people don't drive cars themselves? And he said, oh no, people still ride horses for leisure, even though that was once our primary form of transportation. And I can envision a day when people take their cars out for a ride on a beautiful sunny afternoon.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You or are you talking about all the clutter of cars on Uber and cars on the road? Because I think they're different subjects. I'm not one of these futurists who sees how self-driving cars is going to work quickly. When you talk to these people, they tell you it's a when, not an if it will happen, it is safe, but it's going to take consumer acceptance and regulation to get there. And that may take quite a bit of time. And I just think it's funny it's interesting. I'll make an observation. Uber is lift are cluttering the streets, but Lyft, in John Zimmer's words, are taking cars off, taking cars off the road, which is a wonderful.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's very complicated. On the one hand, the Uber and Airbnb didn't invent piecework. They didn't invent contracting. But they've, I don't know, made it more efficient maybe with the smartphone or the web being the procurer of people and things for that piecework. I'll just tell you, because we don't have a ton of time, my observation talking to a ton of time.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do. I do, and I can't tell exactly which direction you're hoping I'm going to go or which direction the people who are clapping are going to go. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the impact on the economy. As part of my research for the book, I became an Uber driver. And so I wanted to experience what it was like. I didn't do it for a long time. And I did it long enough to learn very quickly that I enjoy my job a lot more than being an Uber driver. It's tough.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More women around the table. It was a bad, stupid joke at the exactly wrong time, but he quit immediately. He did the right thing. He knew he was going to be a distraction for that company. He did the right thing. He did one single stupid joke. Travis Chalon has done a dozen very serious, disturbing things, including the India stuff. Please read about that because it will disturb you to no end.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they can't compete in the self-driving area. They can't do it. They just can't. They're not the most brilliant. There's A players and B players, and now they don't have the A players anymore, and they've managed to create one of the most toxic cultures I've ever seen in tech. And so I think it's just like, I don't know who could go in. And of course, and then you have this CEO floating around saying, I really need to get to, this drives me nuts. You know, Uber needs to get to Uber 2.0, and Travis needs to get to Travis 2.0. Like it's all going to rest on his Jesus-like shoulders. And that mentality is so Silicon Valley. And I think here's someone who created most of the damage, not taking responsibility for it, not having any kind of sorry. There's not a real sorry here. And I don't want like, you don't need to prostrate yourself. But David Bonderman, whatever you think of that joke, and I think he meant something slightly different when he said, I think he was talking about having discussions with women. There's more discussion with women.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say the sexual harassment, sexism, and stuff are stuff they'll, sadly, I will say they'll probably get over that if they do the right things. They shouldn't. They should not. But I think the lawsuits are really problematic. I think the criminal investigations are problematic. I think the fact that they have a very thin management staff and how do you attract really good people there? You're not going to get us Cheryl Sandberg to show up there. She's just never going to, someone like that is never going to do that. So you have all these problems of attrition keeping staff, keeping drivers happy. This is such a logistically complex company to have the mindshare of what one employee, one executive that remains at Uber to do it is really hard. And then I think they're going to get sold. That's what I would say.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I've ticked at that. You've got a company with a, I'm going to give you the cup half full because Kare's going to give you the cup half empty, which I'm fine with. I could give you that too, but it's a company with global operations and sort of I'm reaching for a business cliche which is Mindshare with consumers, with riders. And so huge problems including these legal problems, which are way worse maybe than the public perception problems or the reputation being tarnished. But if you could get past that, if they can get past that and you bring in the right leadership to run that global operation, that would be the cup half full.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I should probably preface this by saying that I haven't read Take A While. But I'd love to know from the both of you what you think is the sort of realistic and practical future of Uber. A lot of the shortcomings that we've talked about tonight”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in fairness, from a storytelling perspective, that was one of Jobs' lines. He said, I like to think that Apple's the largest startup in the world. He made it work. He was Steve Jobs. It was not a small company. It had a ton of professional processes. And you would hear these stories about people being screamed at by Steve Jobs and others being treated horribly. But there's no rules. That's not against the law. Screaming at people because you think they suck. So that's where the comparisons end.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, superficially, there's a lot of similarities. Jobs prided himself in breaking the rules. Large and small, not so large as Uber has, but that was part of his persona. And I wrote a thing this morning that Travis told me once, I said, how do you like running a big company? And I think it was a very telling response. He said, I like to think of it in small pieces. And I reflected in the book, and again, that I don't think he had grasped that that wasn't acceptable. He's running a big company.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, and he gets complex organizations, he knows how to wrap things up in a bow, and I don't know how old he is, but he doesn't need...”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I'll give you types of people, the type of person who'd be perfect in this situation if he wanted to do it would be Alan Malali, the former CEO. Ford, who had been the CEO of”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Add to his portfolio running Uber, right? That's a great idea. I mean, two people who, one, the name's been floated is the former era parent at Disney. I can never remember Stanley. He's a guy who's a business guy who's run a complicated operation and done it very, he's a very diplomatic guy. You've had him on stage. He's the kind of person.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. What are my specific responsibilities? They're going to be? Well, they're going to be these. And how do I know that's not going to change when Travis comes back? Well, because we say so.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If there's ever a There's ever a conversation I'd like to be a fly on the law, and it's this conversation with the top prospect who says, well, okay, explain one thing to me. Who do I report to? You can report to Travis Kalinick, but he's not there right now, right? Right. When's he coming back?”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, who's the COO going to be? Who does it have to be? They're looking for a COO. They're looking for a CMO, a CFO. Head of engineering. If there's ever a... Only because we've gotten some of these people fired. No head of product. Head of business, yeah, that guy. He's gone.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brands can rejuvenate if they do things right. You need the right people and the right money and the right strategy. I'm not telling, but I'm not telling you anything you don't know.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. But in any case. This is the last question, and we'll get to QA. When you have that idea of this brand is the most important thing. And it's not just this sexual aspect thing. It's not just Waymo. It's not just gray balling. Before that was Delete Uber. Were they trying to screw people who were going to the protests? It's like every single day. It feels very trumpy in. Like, what? Oh, I forgot he insulted someone who was disabled. That was months ago. You know what I mean? There seems like a brand sustain this much because you covered brands for years, internet brands.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was going to say, though, but that's the more like in our circles, that's the more prevailing thing. I won't do that. There's people out there who do.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The data that would be interesting to know is what consumer behavior is like. Anecdotally, there's places where people just take Uber Or anecdote.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. The best moat was that they'd become a verb. I'm going to Uber there And it was easy to explain, and people around the country and around the world knew it. And they've been severely tarnished. But they have the data at their fingertips. I don't.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the flip side of that is already we go around town and we see drivers who have the lift decal and the Uber decal on the same window because it's interchangeable to them”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even with what they released, we don't have a super clear view of what the finances are. They're fairly opaque. So, what we know is that for a while they were losing a ton of money in China. They stopped that. They're losing a ton of money by trying to build up an India business. They're losing a ton of money by investing heavily in their very own version of autonomous vehicles, which we talked about earlier could end up ending in tiers for them. But that's expensive, right? That's bringing in zero revenue. So the question is, does the business itself have a shot at bringing in money? There was evidence, there's been evidence at various stages of their development that it had the possibility to bring in a lot of money. And let's just take the United States. Uber and Lyft are in this arms race. You could also envision a scenario where not by collusion, but because they've either spent themselves into exhaustion.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a Maya Angelou fan, and her quote is when someone shows you their face for the first time, believe them. You know what I mean? I just do. I think companies are what they're. There was never a lyft version of an Amazon competitor or an Ola or a DD or whatever.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was a three decade plus old company. Uber's hope has to be that a six or seven-ish year old company that the culture isn't as ingrained.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'll make an observation. I think Apple was 30 or 35 years old when I did my book on them. And it was a huge education for me because I had always discounted the notion of corporate culture. I thought it was one of those soft topics that people don't have anything real to talk about. And I decided I was completely wrong. At Apple, the culture was everything.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With this inside this company, I think they have a shot at making those things stick because I don't believe that every person is rotten and I'm not making it.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I think given the scrutiny of it they're under It's going to be hard for them not to take them seriously. And so they will institute when you read through the holder recommendations, there's sort of like they're like operating manuals for how you're supposed to do human resource They'll institute those changes. And I don't know if it will stay.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm wondering, do you think spending all this time with this company and saying there are good people there? Do you imagine these recommendations are going to be taken seriously and that they will change? You just made a face.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uber is a, this is a situation where on an almost daily basis recently, things happen that you couldn't make up if you tried. And can you imagine? A meeting with the employees for the board members to explain to them what they're going to do next and this revered financier, David Bonnerman, making a sexist comment at Arianna Huffington's approach at that expense, at that meeting”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being their competitor in India, and then carrying them around for a year, medical records in a criminal case. And I'm just curious, I'm saying, does it change? Because that was literally last week kind of thing that we're doing that. And then they lied to the New York Times about it when they asked about it, and they never, New York Times didn't write about it.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. But there's sexism and sexual harassment in every company we cover, but nothing of this thing. And then also, will it change at Uber? Because again, just last week, we wrote about this India thing, which was, I think, what pushed it over the edge was that For those who don't know, they got the medical records of a rape victim, an Uber customer, and were essentially questioning her story, blaming it on Ola. This is the CEO.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, and by the way, I also wrote an Uber with him and the driver recognized that he had the CEO of Uber in the back seat and started to really give him the business. You don't understand this isn't working right. I can't get my emails answered on that. And they did an email. He said, I'm going to follow up with you. And then, of course, very quickly, late at night, he copied me on the email. I later said, you know, did you do that because I was in the back seat?”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You would think it would be women And I think, so I can't do any better than answer your questions as directly as I can. I think that when you read my book, you will get a sense of an immature grown-up running an immature company. And so I think I got that. And after the, again, after I turned in the manuscript and that video of him berating the driver came out, that became a viral sensation. And he said that he needed to grow up and point out toward the end of the book, this was a man who had recently entered his fifth decade.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember, yeah I'm saying what happens that this gets overlooked. I'm not going to give you the blame necessarily, but it does get overlooked. In Brad's book, it's not there. In Gabe's book, it's not there. I want you to talk about a bigger issue around Silicon Valley, that even the women you interviewed didn't. Or men, like, I don't say just women, it's men should.”
2017-06-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Adam Lashinsky, author, 'Wild Ride' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT