"I'd never heard of Dara before," Ting says. After much debate and public intrigue, ride-sharing company Uber has selected Dara Khosrowshahi the current chief executive officer of travel website Expedia as the company's next CEO. I nearly got killed delivering near the baseball park. Daras soccer and math skills made assimilation easy. If he gets aggressive, dont move. The description of a resourceful leader are as follows: resourceful leaders focus on what they have that is useful, have no use for any knowledge that doesn't apply, and can look stingy or selfish. In college, you introduced yourself as Darren Kay because you worried that no one could pronounce your name, but then you stopped using it because you worried that it sounded like a porn name. [4] In 1998, he left Allen & Company to work for one of his former clients at the bank, Barry Diller, first at Diller's USA Networks, where he held the positions of senior vice president for strategic planning and then president, and later as chief financial officer of IAC, another company controlled by Diller. Actually Mr. Khosrowshahi, 52, is weirdly normal for Silicon Valley. [12], In June 2013, he received a Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young. Mr. Khosrowshahi, who replaced Travis Kalanick in 2017, is widely perceived as a mop-up man. The first Indian cab aggregator company, Ola has madeavailing cab serv, Uber Success Story - Know the History of Uber | Founders | Acquisitions, Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified informationon different startups and organizations. The absence of his father brought the changed Dara, serving as a reinforcement to perform excellently at school. Finding ways to improve both the relations with Uber drivers as well as their compensation levels (think livable wage) can only positively affect the bottom line for Uber. A seasoned executive with a background in both engineering and finance, Dara oversaw a number of acquisitions that bolstered Expedias offerings and aggressively invested in mobile, which now accounts for more than half of Expedias traffic. You like the casting choices for Showtimes forthcoming Super Pumped show about Uber. Khosrowshahi's LinkedIn profile states that he focuses on "driving innovation and positioning the Expedia brand for further international growth." ', On diversity and global ambitions:Its really important for us to be global in nature and to be open to diverse kinds of backgrounds and cultures. He is also a member of the board of directors of BET.com and Hotels.com,[1] and previously served on the board of The New York Times Company. "Khosrowshahi, recruited from travel site Expedia, started his turnaround at Uber by talking to people. Some analysts note that Ubers ride-sharing business seems to have an existential problem; wouldnt its original business model only work if it used billions to subsidize the cost of rides until the transition to self-driving cars? The company has grounded all of its driverless cars -- at least for now.And Khosrowshahi hasn't been perfect. Uber's co-founder used a "burn the village" approach (as he called it) that built the startup into the behemoth it is today -- an international ride-hailing service in 73 countries with 18,000 employees that's valued by investors at $72 billion. "A lot of us probably thought about leaving at some point," says Wayne Ting, who's worked at Uber for four years and is now Khosrowshahi's chief of staff. "For culture change to take hold at a big company, it can't come from the top down.". "One of the hard things in 2017 was that there was so much distraction and so much dysfunction," Ting says. And then we wizened up and essentially rebuilt our architecture from the ground up, it took hundreds of millions of dollars. We celebrate differences. When Dara Khosrowshahi became the CEO of Uber last year he was virtually an unknown. "And insiders and outsiders say that Khosrowshahi has shown just how different his leadership style is from Kalanick's no-apologies-necessary mantra. StartupTalky is top startup media platform for latest startup news, ideas, industry research and reports, inspiring startup stories. Khosrowshahi was crucial to those talks, Ting says, and sought to treat Waymo more like a friend than a foe. But its just not what I want to be spending my time on.. New problems also keep cropping up. Met with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. That turned out to be a mistake because it stifled innovation. Honestly, I didnt spend a lot of time figuring it out. Has that dream dimmed? In one of the highest-profile legal battles in Silicon Valley history, Waymo sued Uber in February 2017 for allegedly stealing its driverless car trade secrets. He shared his perspective with GeekWire during the 2016 GeekWire Summit and a podcast recorded at Expedias Bellevue, Wash. headquarters on the companys 20th birthday last year. More importantly it sets another important tone forKhosrowshahi. Period.". Sometimes I feel like an idiot not answering. Pick, Dara Khosrowshahi, Steps into Brighter Spotlight", "Uber's CEO Comes From What May Be the World's Most Techie Family", "Dara Khosrowshahi, Dad of Silicon Valley", "The amazing life of Uber's new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi from refugee to tech superstar", "Spinoff of Expedia Comes at Tough Time for Its Sector", "Dara Khosrowshahi: Executive Profile & Biography", "Here's One CEO Who Probably Justified His $94 Million Payday", "New Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: What you need to know", "Uber picks Dara Khosrowshahi as its new boss", "6 things to know about Uber's CEO pick Dara Khosrowshahi", "Uber officially announces Dara Khosrowshahi will be its new CEO", "Uber's New CEO May Get at Least $200 Million to Exit Expedia", "Read Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's Letter to Employees on IPO Day", "Uber CEO calls slaying of Jamal Khashoggi 'a mistake' and compares it to a self-driving car crash", "Uber CEO calls Jamal Khashoggi murder 'serious mistake', Uber gave CEO Dara Khosrowshahi $45 million in total pay last year, but it paid its COO even more, Legality of ridesharing companies by jurisdiction, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dara_Khosrowshahi&oldid=1137916332, Exiles of the Iranian Revolution in the United States, Brown University School of Engineering alumni, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Articles containing Persian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Kathleen Grant (?2009, divorced), Sydney Shapiro (m. 2012present), This page was last edited on 7 February 2023, at 01:56. Witnesses and court documents revealed juicy company details, like Kalanick's secretive text conversations that said things like "second place is first loser." Building a strong corporate culture and trusting employees to take initiative by using their expertise and creativity are important traits of this leadership style. Travis was a really ferocious competitor. He frequently wears a black T-shirt with white lettering that reads, "We are all dreamers. Push, push, push, focus and by the way youre going to have a job. They dont have to come to me to ask for permission to do something. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick exits federal court after taking the stand during the Waymo v. Uber trial. Washington is taking a decidedly darker view of Silicon Valley. Leadership; Media assets; Map beacon indicating location switcher. "I saw my family losing everything and you know what, we rebuilt a life. Uber Change Agent Dara Khosrowshahi Getty Images The headlines include "Uber leadership shake-up," "Uber executive reshuffling," " Uber Operating, Marketing Chiefs Leaving in Leadership. Whether it's Waymo, whether it's more governance, he allowed the company to then go back to business. Dara was previously CEO of Expedia, which he grew into . A regular member of the list of Prominent Iranian Americans since 2015, his qualities and hardships have put him in rarefied air. [4][3] He praised his wife for wearing a Slayer t-shirt to the wedding, which was held in Las Vegas. I said Lets get married on 12-12-12. Its a lucky day. "And it was messy. Now Khosrowshahi will apply his leadership style and lessons learned to his next job as the new CEO of Uber, steering the company through upheaval and growth. [3] Before the disruption caused by the Iranian Revolution, Dara Khosrowshahi was all set to join his family business. Khosrowshahi expresses this mission in many of his interviews and it shines through in many descriptions of himself and the company on the Internet. Our response has been to keep breaking up the company. He was then the CFO of IAC, the company that acquired USA Networks. He prefers giving his team credit to swanning. [6], In 1978, just before the Iranian Revolution, his family was targeted for its wealth and his mother decided to leave everything behind and flee the country. It is to build the best company.. I wanted to get married. Dara Khosrowshahi is the former CEO of Expedia who took over Uber as CEO in 2017. In his first two weeks, he held a roundtable discussion with drivers to hear their complaints (they want a higher cut of earnings) and shadowed Uber's customer support representatives to listen to what passengers were saying. AP Our Bain & Company team recently concluded a five-year study to. It also evokes transparency. CEO, Author, Keynote Speaker, Leadership Strategist, Poet, Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. They know theyre having a tough time. While noting that our regulatory sandbox is much more city and state than it is federal, Mr. Khosrowshahi said that this tech-lash is inevitable. He said he didnt have enough time to be depressed or to feel sorry. As he was frantically trying to figure out if the company already losing billions could survive losing, in some places, 85 percent of its rides business, he discovered a glimmer moving fast: Uber Eats, an arm of the business he had been pouring money into for the previous two years, despite many investors being unhappy about it. Next, complete checkout for full access to StartupTalky. That's earned him a reputation as a measured and diplomatic leader. This was his life., Andrew Macdonald, the senior vice president of mobility for Uber, who has worked for both bosses, praised Mr. Khosrowshahi for changing our culture values to do the right thing., Are we as combative as we were seven, eight years ago? Dara Khosrowshahi knew he was going to have to clean up a spectacular mess when he became CEO of Uber last August. Does he pay attention to politics in Iran, with that country still in the clutches of zealots? Dara was previously CEO of Expedia, which he grew into one of the world's largest online travel companies. He separated from the company, and I think that was a fine thing to do. Some insiders praise his calm management style and steady hand, but others worry he lacks. From the start, Khosrowshahi wanted to hear what people at Uber had to say. Were going to be fine. Mr. Kalanick undermined his successor at the start, according to Uber insiders, but Mr. Khosrowshahi finessed the founder slowly out of the business. Isnt this fundamentally at odds with treating workers humanely? His leadership has guided brands to supremacy. No., Mr. Khosrowshahi laughed, noting, Her mom still cant say my name right. (Say it like this: DAR-uh Koz-row-SHA-hee.). He had just gotten divorced, she said. Another leadership style I believe Khosrowshahi possesses is the social style. Board member Arianna Huffington and Uber investor Benchmark Capital didn't return requests for comment. Drawing of a court document from the Waymo v. Uber trial showing former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's reported wish list for what he wanted to get from Waymo's self-driving car program -- including all of Waymo's data, source code and a pound of flesh. These "employees" have become part of the over-used and quintessential definition of the so-called "gig economy." We work with him at Uber Eats and thats fine, Mr. Khosrowshahi said. That is, Khosrowshahi would be paid with some normality. Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline, Glowforge co-founder Tony Wright departs, 3 years after helping launch 3D printer startup, Landmark FDA approval clears the way for gene therapy treatments that fight cancer, Meet Ubers choice for CEO: Expedia chief brings internal calm and experience with big personalities, Software Development Engineer III New Initiatives, Senior Site Reliability Engineer (Seattle or US Remote), Senior Software Development Engineer Lending (Seattle Or U.S. Dont worry about a thing. , Those are times when Im tougher on the team, when I tell my team to be tougher on their team when things are great because when things are great is when you loosen up; when you lose discipline; when you let things go; when youre not as demanding on yourself or your team as you should be. Do the captains of the cloud and industry making obscene gobs of dough deserve it? Check your inbox and click the link. The two dont go well together.