Uber CEO shows a soft side
Kalanick stresses balance in work, life
Fights with city halls and taxi unions? Forget about it. Nasty headlines about rogue Uber drivers? Not Monday.
Travis Kalanick, usually described as the outspoken and hard-driving CEO of ride-hailing app Uber, showed a softer side in a talk to business students at UCLA. Kalanick, who formed Uber with Garrett Camp during a trip to Paris and went on to transform the transportation industry, talked about the all encompassing 24/7 ways of starting a tech business.
“The entrepreneur’s way is to push until it hurts. Because if you don’t, something else will pass it by,” he said.
His company has made a huge impact. Uber currently is in 350 cities around the globe. It’s nearest competitor, Lyft, is in a little more than 60 in the U.S.
But Kalanick told students that after working all-night hours to get Uber off the ground, he realized he could only keep up that lifestyle up for so long. “You have to find ways to be balanced and centered,” he said.
The former UCLA engineering student spoke for an hour, mostly addressing the issue of entrepreneurship, to a packed crowd of more than 1,000 students.
Classroom time is great, he said, but the real learning will come outside UCLA.
“The basics can be taught,” Kalanick said. “But the most important thing is doing.”
He was asked to offer career advice for future entrepreneurs but declined, saying when he sought advice in the past, he was better off just coming to a decision and living with it.
Kalanick said he looks next year to beef up both Uber Eats, the new food delivery service from the company, and Uber Rush, which offers delivery for companies. Another new service, Uber Pool, offers carpooling in return for lower fares. Earlier, in San Francisco, he said half of all Uber requests are for Pool.
“We have hundreds of thousands of people carpooling,” he said. “We’re changing the way transportation works and reducing congestion.” Uber is “disrupting and protecting at the same time,” Kalanick said.