Uber's autonomy program second only to Waymo
At the time of Kalanick's departure, Uber's autonomous driving program was considered the second most advanced in the world, trailing only Waymo.
Snapshot · The a16z Show
Travis Kalanick Is Back | Building the Future of Industrial AI
Explore episode
Jul 22, 2026
Where this was said
Uber 2017: What a Board Seat Would Have Changed
At 14:30 · chapter starts 12:42
This chapter is the episode's most revealing window into counterfactual history. Kalanick says flatly that 2017 'wouldn't have gone that way' with Ben or Mark on the board — and Horowitz doesn't disagree [1] — Travis Kalanick "Uber's 2017 implosion wasn't inevitable. Kalanick says had a16z been on the board, Uber would be a considerably larger and more central com…" 12:42 . The specifics are damning in their precision: DoorDash held 5% of the food delivery market when Kalanick departed, and losing a tenth of a percent in a week was treated as a crisis. Uber's autonomy program was second only to Waymo and closing the gap, with the network advantage that Waymo lacked. Both men believe Uber would have emerged as the dominant force in food and autonomous vehicles. Instead, Tony Xu survived — and Horowitz offers genuine respect for that achievement, noting that survival in entrepreneurship is itself remarkable.
2017: What Would Have Been Different with a16z on Uber's Board
Uber's 2017 implosion wasn't inevitable. Kalanick says had a16z been on the board, Uber would be a considerably larger and more central company today — likely the leader in food delivery and autonomous vehicles. DoorDash had 5% market share. Uber's autonomy was second only to Waymo. The network was there. It just needed the right governance.
DoorDash at 5% market share when Kalanick left
When Kalanick left Uber, DoorDash held only 5% market share in food delivery, and losing even a tenth of a percent in a week was treated as a crisis by Uber.
Similar snapshots
AI coding viability debate as hook
The founder attached their SaaS demo to the trending debate about whether AI coding is actually good enough to build a full SaaS product.
Algorithm understanding drove Twitter growth
Quickly forming opinions on how the Twitter algorithm and platform worked allowed the speaker to grow rapidly on the platform.
MVP built in one week
Sam's initial MVP was coded in approximately one week using ChatGPT voice mode and copy-pasting code, with no prior technical experience.
Discord vs email for young users
Sam argues Discord is 10x better than email for building relationships with younger users who rarely check their inbox.
Monthly infra costs ~$780–$980
Sam's monthly operating costs include Cursor ($200), AI image generation ($100), AI video generation ($200), hosting ($100), email marketing ($80), and AI compute ($300–$500).
ChatGPT-powered pain point research
Sam recommends copying days of Discord chat history into ChatGPT and prompting it to list recurring pain points as a fast, free market research technique.
50 free tools built total
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
New tool built in under 5 minutes
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
KD filter < 10 for rankable keywords
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
