The Uber - Didi Chuxing Merger with Brad Stone, author of The Upstarts & The Everything Store | Acquired Podcast

…Both Tencent and Alibaba, the sponsors of these ridesharing companies realized that the next battlefield in this longstanding war between the internet giants in China is going to be mobile payments. And that the taxi companies, the ride-hailing companies are ways to spur payment value with mobile payments. So they start to kind of use these two ri... See more

It’s that they don’t have a structural advantage by gaining the position that they’re in to necessarily make that N+1 market any easier than the N market.

A big one that I really want to talk about is company culture and its impact on business trajectory. I think that Uber is one that has been a win-at-all-cost company. Brad, you mentioned in your book that Airbnb defined its mission and values very early and Uber didn’t really. Their mission and values were just keep going and win. I think you have ... See more

When you describe the culture and values and character of a company, not even through like the internal workings but in the way that the product experience feels when you use it, it’s almost indistinguishable from the founder’s personality. And very rarely does a company, even when it goes through multiple CEOs significantly deviate from that that ... See more

They’re global companies in a market where it’s really not clear that being global gives you that much of an advantage.

And there’s a belief at Uber that kind of technology will make a difference and they can move kind of learnings around the world. But it’s just not clear to me. Like the continued strength of Lyft in a lot of US cities I think is indicative of like maybe as long as you pick somebody up within 3 minutes, maybe nothing else matters. Ola in India, kno... See more

Didi does something that I suspect even Travis and Uber, as Machiavellian as they are in the US, couldn’t even imagine and see it coming. Didi starts investing in all of Uber’s rivals around the world including Lyft in the US and Ola in India and Grab Taxi in Southeast Asia, and they announced that they’re going to literally, it's like the allies f... See more