How Geek Can Become Entrepreneur: Advice from Uber Founder

Travis Kalanick, founder and CEO of Uber, met some HSE students and told them what qualities a successful entrepreneur should have and why there is space for magic in business.

Find something broken

We were in Paris once and couldn’t find a taxi. I thought: it would be great if you could press a button and a car came immediately to any point of the city. This is how Uber started.

What was ‘broken’ in this case? The transportation organization system. Why? Because to become a taxi driver in big cities in developed countries, you have to get a licence, and their number is limited. In New York, the number of taxi licences has stayed almost the same during the last 70 years, and the price of a licence has become very high. Taxi operators charge the drivers $140 a day for the use of a licence. The system works so badly that the drivers often struggle to make ends meet. No new jobs are created in this sphere, and moving around the city becomes harder and more expensive.

We saw this problem and wanted to change it. It was interesting for us geeks to find a solution for it, not only in our city, but all over the world, not only for the rich, but for everyone. We wanted to make transportation as reliable and affordable as the public water supply.

Determine how difficult the problem is

The difficult part was not to create an app; everyone makes them today. The difficulty was to have a free car in five minutes from any user who decides to use our service. We had to learn to predict the situation: what will happen on the roads in half an hour? Where is each of our cars located at any given moment? Our drivers get this information as a heat map. They see where the demand for their service is higher, where more cars are needed, and where there is less work.

The next task was to teach the computer system to see the streets as multidimensional (with pavements, parking signs, trash cans, and other objects). This was a difficult task. I always tell my engineers that tasks like this require imagination.

Analyze, but be creative

These roles can be split between different partners in the project, but the best entrepreneurs combine both of these qualities, analytical and creative. This is how our brain works, the left hemisphere being responsible for analysis, and the right one for imagination and new ideas. Have fun and enjoy solving problems.

And it’s not necessary to solve them with traditional tools; you can invent something new. Children in the U.S. run after ice cream trucks. And we invented such a thing for adults: once a year you press a button and an ice cream truck comes to you. It’s a great idea, but it demanded solving some complicated logistical tasks. Analysis is needed to make magic happen.

Distinguish reality and the notion of reality

Generally accepted ideas about something can correspond with the real state of things, but can sometimes be very different from it as well. The gap between the notion and the reality is the game field for the innovator. If you know for sure that the reality is not where most of the people believe it to be, you have great opportunities. But if you’re mistaken, the game field becomes hell.

Einstein once said that the person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd, and those who walk alone are likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before. If you want to do something new, to make the impossible possible, you shouldn’t chase after other people. You have to do something that other people will see as foolish, absurd, and crazy. And at the same time, a good entrepreneur must understand what risks they are taking. Before Uber, I had several companies, and they were small, and I was poor. I didn’t have a salary in the last company for four years, and I heard ‘no’ a hundred times a day during the four years. That was not easy.

Make magic

In the film ‘Pulp Fiction’, there is a strange briefcase that attracts everyone’s attention. One glance at it, and a person can’t think about anything else anymore. To be an entrepreneur means creating things that enchant people and their imagination. At Uber, we talk about four dimensions of magic: time (find a way to give back to people the time that they were losing before, without your product or service), calm (bring calm to their daily lives), joy (bring people joy and fun), and money (for example, Uber drivers get incomes that help them provide for their families, and the passengers pay less for transportation).

And magic should be ahead of time. Making magic is creating things that no one has seen before, and that will be in demand not only today, but also in the future.

Learn to sell your story

Engineers often disregard sellers and marketing managers and don’t want to work with them. But it’s very important to learn to sell what you’ve invented. If you don’t learn to tell your story, no one would learn about your idea, not matter how incredible it is. On Cinco de Mayo, our clients can order a mariachi band to entertain friends or colleagues, and this is also a subtle way to tell those who don’t know about Uber.

Think as a champion

As a real champion athlete, give away all of your strength and emotions on the field, and don’t get knocked down in hard times. If you truly do this, you won’t fail.

One last piece of advice: how to make a team

I’m often asked how we select engineers. I once answered: how do you select who you are going on a date with? Speaking seriously, in order to make a team, look through CVs, search online, go where engineers hang out, say hello and talk to them. Be patient and persistent.