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00:00And meal of course you were there when Uber was expanding into China and you are an Uber shareholder by default you're a D.C. shareholder what do you make of the lackluster reception by investors today. And it offers lackluster they raise more than they plan to write today except exercise the green shoe. It closed above trading price. So you know if it closes 16 people would be saying they left money off the table if it closed at 12. They'd say they've failed. I think it was a fine a fine showing. So let's talk about what happened with Uber in China over tried to compete against D.D. in China. Ultimately sold its China business to Disney took a stake in the company. This is largely in the annals of Silicon Valley history been seen as a loss. You think it was a win for Uber. Why. I mean it's sort of simple math. We invested two billion dollars in Uber China and we got out today if you do the math. ROMANS 12 percent of deals about eight point four billion dollars. So that's six point four billion dollars of profit. Usually those businesses would say that's pretty great. That's a win. I think people just you know at the time wanted to to show that. Well we didn't become the dominant player in China which is true. But we decided at the time that the economics were right to do a trade where we got 20 percent of the company at the time in exchange for retreating from the market. That was the best economic decision for shareholders and employees to compare. Obus as you see it success or track record in China to other U.S. tech companies like Facebook which is still blocked in China. Google which had to leave the country at Air B and B which is still fighting. Yeah I mean there was if you touch social networking or sensitive areas like Google Maps or Facebook the Chinese government is going to be very sensitive about letting you on the app stores which is why they're not in there. Uber Yeah because we're more focused on transportation which is a less sensitive area from a government standpoint. We're allowed to exist. In fact many of the mayors in China that I met were excited to have us there because we would compete against video which meant lower prices for consumers and better better wages for drivers. But today I think there's been a bit of a cold war between the country is back in 2016 was a much more optimistic time in U.S. China relations. They're going to pass a bill to allow investment banks in there. But but today it's much more difficult for any company like even like Google. But forget Facebook to be able to launch in China. You had an interesting tweet storm about all of this. One of my that one that stood out to me. You said while it's not fashionable for Uber 2.0 management to praise the achievements of the 1.0 team shareholders will likely have well over 10 billion dollars in value to a tribute to the Uber China and Uber Russia teams. What do you make of the fact that Uber 2.0 DA cars shot. He's Uber has pulled back from a lot of the the work that you started and possibly for good reasons sold off self-driving cars and flying taxis and you know moonshot initiatives that we're going to take a lot of work if they ever were going to work. Yeah I think some of those moves were fine like the self-driving car and definitely a flying taxi blind. But I think if you're going to be a tech company and trying to be a failing level tech company you've got to have innovation that drives new products. And if you take the acquisitions that Uber has done over the last four years out of it there hasn't been as much innovation as there needs to be to be a generational company. And that's that is my criticism of how to think about really the difference between 1.0 and 2.0. So from a technology standpoint now there are some people who would say Uber is never going to be the next Google. You know Google isn't necessarily the right comparison. But the Google isn't always ever going to be a Google sized company. Others would say Uber was never going to be a Google sized company. How would you respond to that. Yeah I would say it would a bit if if Travis and I were still there that's for sure because we would have you know how I think we would have seen the grocery delivery opportunity that in cicadas has dominated much earlier. I think we would have actually won against or dashed in the US for food delivery. There are 60 doing our company in that market cap would have accrued to Uber. And I just think from an innovation standpoint we would have had a much longer roadmap. And transportation is huge. The amount of money spent on transportation and trucking passenger delivery is bigger than the amount of money spent on search advertising. So I think I think there was a possibility there. While it's impossible to prove a hypothetical but we'll never know though. I hear your point at this stage in Hoover's life cycle. What would you like to see. I mean Uber is in a way kind of a holding company for a lot of these other bets though they weren't necessarily they haven't necessarily evolved the way you would have liked to see them evolve. But D.D. for example is one of many bets like self-driving cars in a broader portfolio. It's almost more like a V.C.. It's a little bit like I see the holding company Uber Radar came from. So it has a flavor of that holding company strategy to it. I would like to see more innovation. They need a head of product management. I think. Still had a product mantra and they need to sort of get the innovation people in the game and give them license to do some things that are not sort of just shareholdings in other companies. I mean the stock performance is the biggest you know measure here. IPO in May of nineteen forty five dollars say it's 50 10 percent increase in the Nasdaq been up 120 percent. So I do think you know to really get back to where these other tech companies have grown they've got to do some innovation in-house not the acquisition alone.

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