TRAVIS KALANICK

I spent a disproportionate amount of my time in a car in L.A. I'm 35 years old. If you add up the hours spent in cars, it would be years.

Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That's why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It's for the experience.

The regulatory systems in place disincentive innovation. It's intense to fight the red tape.

There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it.

After Scour, I started a company called Red Swoosh. The idea was to take those litigants who sued us for a huge amount of money and turn them into customers with the same technology. I wanted to get them to pay me. It was a revenge business.

My politics are: I'm a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I'm pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It's good for everybody; it's not red or blue.

As an entrepreneur, I try to push the limits. Pedal to the metal.

I've been an entrepreneur since I was 18. I started a company with a bunch of buddies that got funded in my senior year, and that's when I finished school. It was called Scour, a peer-to-peer service, file-sharing.

Limos, from the beginning of time, they know who they're picking up, they usually have a credit card on file, they know where the pickup location is, and so there's essentially a prearrangement of sorts, and, of course, the limo customer knows the driver, knows the company, knows the rates. All we've done is make it more accessible.

I think Uber is just very different; there's no model to copy. It may be the reason why we've been a lightning rod in so many ways, because we don't do anything conventional... And then I think also, as an entrepreneur, I'm a bit of a lone wolf.

Uber exists because of mobile telephones.

As much as I'd love to give everybody a really cheap option, it's just simply not possible in certain sorts of extreme events... I guarantee that our strategy on surge pricing is the optimal way to get as many people home as possible.

I know about traffic.

In many ways, we look at Uber as the safety net for a city.

Imagine if we could create the most just workplace in the world. We would naturally be a magnet for all the great minds out there.

Surge pricing only kicks in in order to maximize the number of trips that happen and therefore reduce the number of people that are stranded.

I don't believe that you can make decisions on anything without having all of the details.

The way I try to simplify my job is that I have two lists - I have a list of all the crazy, interesting problems that I get to solve every day or that need to be solved, and I have a crazy list of things I'd like to invent. And I kind of just prioritize them and work my way down, and try to simplify what I do when managing a big company.

Every Uber employee should be proud of the culture we have and what we will build together over time.

Millennials aren't buying cars anymore. They don't want to drive. They don't want to own these cars. They don't want that inconvenience.

I have been trying to understand the regulators.

Think of a world where there is no ride-sharing; people are driving themselves to work. You now have 30 people being served by 30 cars. Those 30 cars are only served 4% of the day; 96% of the day, they're stored somewhere. Around 20% to 30% of our land is taken up just storing these hunks of metal that we drive around in for 4% of the day.

I like pralines-and-cream ice cream.

If you are focused on profits right out of the gate, you're gonna have the smallest profitable business that has ever been seen.

Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps.