Uber Earnings and New Call of Duty

now quote stronger than ever. Plus, Elon Musk is now the Twitter complaint hotline operator that according to his Twitter bio and giving us an idea of what the subscription model for the platform will look like. And he founded one of Uber's biggest competitors and wrote the book on at Grubhub founder Mike Evans joins us to talk about his journey from then to now. For more on Uber's results,

let's bring in the man himself. Uber CEO Dara Causashi. Dara, great to have you with us, as always, So let's start with the good stuff. Active writers back to pre pandemic levels. Tell us the trends that are driving this

and how well you see it keeping up in a downturn. Well, the big meta trend that we're seeing now is that the U S consumer consumer in general and especially at the U S consumer is still spending, but you're seeing a shift of that spend from spend on retail goods UH during the pandemic, people who were at home, etcetera. Back to services, travel sectors incredibly strong, restaurant, hospitality sector is strong. People are going back to work, and all

of that is benefiting the Uber business. Our mobility business is incredibly strong. Delivery is proving to be a really sticky habit. All of that translates into growth bookings of twenty nine billion dollars up thirty two percent on a year on your Bay assis and then of course adjusted EBA DAUM coming in super super strong UH in terms of you know, over five million and adjusted IBIDA on the quarter. And then what we indicated for next quarter is adjusted IBIDA range of six hundred to six hundred

and thirty million, so even more strength ahead for US. Still, writers aren't taking as many rides as they used to. What else needs to happen before uberseas of full recovery or do you ever get back to those numbers? I think we will absolutely get back to those numbers and hopefully beyond and you're seeing signs of that, which is trips per monthly active. Pre pandemic, we're about five point

seven trips per monthly active. Uh, they were stuck at about five trips per monthly active, and you've seen that come up to five point three now and it's absolutely headed in the right direction as the world opens up, as you know, again people go out to restaurants, etcetera. What we also have is a power of the platform. In that pre pandemic, we were essentially a rides only business.

Now our rides and our eats business are of equal size, and essentially we are moving our riders up selling them eats, and we're up selling our eaters to grocery and then back to rides as well with the Uber one membership program, which now has launched an eight markets. So we're confident that we can drive higher frequency, higher engagement with our platform just because of the breadth of use cases that we have. Now, let's talk about delivery demand holding up.

As you said, it's a very sticky habit. Profit looking really good, but we're not saying notable growth. Is this an area where you're seeing the impact of inflation set in where some customers might be saying, you know, maybe I'm going to order out one less time this week or this month, just to be more conservative. Well, we're definitely seeing the impact of comps. Remember, so last year

we weren't fully opened up or recovered. So when you look at our a very growth x foreign exchange, because foreign exchange has hurt us, it's her, Google, it's her basically any global company out there. Our growth on the delivery side actually accelerated from twelve this last quarter. We think that Q four will be similar slightly higher in terms of your over your x f X growth. And what we're seeing there is that our audience of delivery

continues to grow. Basket sizes are higher. Some of that is inflationaries where as well, and when we look at the frequency of ordering of users, that's stable. So users are continuing to use their delivery UH product as they have before. And really we're comping against pandemic comps, and we're also being hurt by foreign exchange. But the underlying growth of the business is healthy and we think it's going to keep healthy for some period of time. Now.

I've been traveling a lot lately, and yes, my rides per month are going up, but prices are still elevated. When our prices going to fully come back down, will they ever really come back down to where they were? Well, I do think that inflation has affected um everybody and I think has re baseline to some extent prices. Uh So I don't think that prices are going to go down to pre pandemic levels. But we have seen pricing ease. For example, Q three pricing versus Q two pricing, surge

levels came down. Our average E T A s in terms of you know, when you push a button, when is when do you get your car? That's improved as well. Service quality levels have improved. So we're hoping that pricing continues to ease, going to key form next year. But I do think that this is a new baseline, and you know, our consumers are riders or eaters. They're willing

to pay. As you can see from the growth rates that we've seen as it relates to both audience up four trips up and then obviously gross bookings which are dollars in the bank, so to speak, up drivers supply is materially improving. What's what's happening with incentives? Are we going to see you pull back on incentives. Will they go away completely? Will you keep some around? Well? I

think incent we are going to keep incentives around. But driver supplies improving because we've made real investments and the driver experience. We have radically improved our onboarding process so it's faster, so higher percentage of drivers who's shown interest in driving for Uber actually make that first trip. We're making that onboard flow faster, easier customer service available to help you in case you're having any issues with documents, etcetera.

UM driver earnings levels are quite robust. Drivers in the US, for example, on average, make thirty six dollars per hour engaged on the platform. Those are very robust earnings level, especially with an activity as completely flexible. You can drive when you want, where you want as well. And then we're also innovating for drivers. Drivers previously they can for example, see the upfront price or the destination that they're headed at.

That was one of the most requested features, and we ship that feature for our drivers UH this last quarter, so that they can see the upfront destination. They can see the upfront price, and they can pick and choose what's the trip that's right for them. UH and if a trip is not right for them, they can move on to the next trip as well. All of that

is adding to more drivers coming onto the platform. But not only are they coming onto the platform, Churn rates are down almost on a year on your basis, and they're more engaged with us. The UH supply hours per driver or up sixteen percent on a year on your basis. If churn is down and engagement is up, it tells

you that we're doing something right. It is earnings levels that are really good, but we're very, very much focused on improving the driver experience on Uber and to be the platform for earners to come and earn flexibly and safely. I want to ask your thoughts on Prop thirty Lift A big backer of it, Gavin Newsom, the governor, wants

it to fail. The revenue from this generated taxing wealthy people would go to e V charging infrastructure subsidies to buy electric cars, which it seems that Uber has invested interest in. Why haven't you taken a strong stance on Prop thirty yet? I saw you ran into Governor Newsom on Twitter. Have you talked to him about this? Yeah?

I have talked to him about this and and it's our feeling that California is making very substant substantial investments in terms of incentivizing EV ownership, in terms of charging infrastructure, and it's definitely showing up in our business. As you know, we've made very significant investments in moving more of our

fleet over to e vs UH. We have a great partnership with hurt for example, to get more Tesla's onto the Uber fleet, and California is leading the pack in terms of miles for the percentage of our miles that are EV miles. It's now nine of miles driven on the Uber network in California are now e v s, which is a pretty extraordinary number. It's really second only to London. That's a fift So we feel like we're

making the right investments. We are, for example, lowering our own booking fee and making sure that drivers can make more on a trip basis when they move over to e vs UH, and in partnership with both public and private, we think California is headed in the right direction, which is why you know we've stayed out of Prop thirty one way or the other. The economy, on the other hand, maybe headed in the wrong direction. Bloomberg Data showing that

a recession is very likely. How concerned are you, How are you thinking about costs and spending? I mean, you do have I believe, double the free cash flow that at Meta Report did this quarter. Will you be opportunistic and look for potential M and A opportunities out there despite everything that's going on? More broadly, yeah, I think this is one of the most uncertain environments I've been a part of. You know, we it's very difficult to

tell where things are going to wind up. I think Europe is certainly going to be weaker and is likely headed into a recession. We're preparing for that. In the U S it's unclear recession might happen, it might be a soft landing, etcetera. So I think from our standpoint,

we want to be prepared for any eventuality. And I think as a company and as a technology company, we have been relatively forward thinking and making sure that we prepare ourselves for an uncertain world, making sure we're conservative in terms of the investments that we're making. And an investment isn't paying off, pull back, pull your money where the growth is. And I think it's showing in the results in terms of top line and free cashualow generation

and one. Our outlook, even in an uncertain environment, is a super strong look and we want to keep it that way. All right to our cash CEO of uber as always are great to have you with us, Thank you for stopping by. Thank you very much. Let's get to Arista Networks now. It's just reported third quarter results beating expectations and even prompted at Bank of America to upgrade the stock. Shares were up five point seven percent or thereabouts at the close. Let's bring in president and

CEO J Street u Lal now for more. J Cre is so great to have you back with us. I believe it's been a year since we last talked, and your sales growing fifty You're on path to grow for the year, which is even bigger than you projected at the start of this year. What are the leading drivers of this? Given continuing supply issues, inventory issues, macro concerns, how are you bucking the trend? Good to be back, em leave. We've got to keep this anniversary trend going.

Um well, I'll tell you, first of all, it's great to have our own little micro momentum in a larger set of issues that you just described from a macro and I would attribute it to great products and technology, a great set of customers headlined by Microsoft and Meta, or as I affectionately called them M and M since I like candy, and I think the confluence so of all these diverse use cases that were now part of Arista has been been well known as a data center company,

and today we're becoming more of a centers of data company where we're bringing that data to every location. Speaking of M and m's which is fitting around Halloween, Microsoft and Meta are leading customers, and I'm curious why do they rely on Arista so much when more broadly they seem to go with white box retailers for a lot of this back end stuff. Now, I think it's a very good question, but I think it's a bit of a misnomer that they only want white box or low cost.

The tricker is to embrace their requirements. And Code developed a partnership that has been on more than a decade. In both cases, we actually do co engineering with them. We partner with them on the supply chain, we partner and procurement. We work with them on different designs and use cases, and in some use cases obviously they look for diversity and they build on their own or use

other vendors. But the key in both cases that we are in many diverse use cases from the data center to the whend, to the regional spine, to the interconnect to a new use case that's coming up more and more for AI and m L workloads. And the partnership is indeed not a classical vendor customer one, but we truly take that partnership very strategically and not likely now the tight supply environment has really dented the growth for most tech bell weathers unlike Arista, give us an update

on supply issues and inventory issues. And when you think those normalized, well, I tell you these are the times I wish I were just a software company and didn't have to worry about hardware. But as you know, Arista is really a platform company. We build a lot of hardware. We have hundreds of manufacturers and vendors we work with,

and we have thousands of components on our hardware. So a couple of years ago Arista really put a plan together which we had approved by our board, to spend to the tune of four to five billion dollars in man in in getting components and inventory, which is, you know, in order of magnitude greater than our revenue. This is kind of unheard of, and we really took a multi year view on this, and as we got the approval, we started planning well ahead of our demand in twenty

one and twenty two. And the good news is that has paid off some, but the bad news is we're not getting enough of it. We would still like more components, and despite our best planning efforts, are lead times are prolonged, and we're still waiting for what we often called the golden screw. The last ten or twenty components are still not available, and it's hard to build a system without all the components. It would be a little bit like a car without the tires, and so we're looking forward

to overcoming that. But as we have crossed our first billion dollar quarter in Q two and marching ahead, we do need more and more of these components to get stronger this year and next year. Meta is raising its capacs for Arista along within Video and a few others were called out as beneficiaries. Tell us a little bit more about the changing nature of your partnership and how that we should expect that to evolve. And I think

that's a really good question, Emily. I think we all know Meta for the strength they have brought as a social networking company and ads, etcetera. But every company has to redefine and reinvent itself and Mark is doing just that, and he's looking forward um at where to invest and where to put his money where his mouth is, if you will. And one of the important areas for companies like in Video and Arista is that this area of AI and m L applications that will tremendously test the

network itself. When you put in hundreds, if not thousands, of GPUs and DPUs and storage etcetera. The pressure you put on the network in bandwidth, latency, dynamically load balancing your flows is huge. It's an order of magnitude more than anything that even we have developed and shipped so

far to Meta. So the Arista seventy eight hundred spine, as an example, will give them that kind of delivery of hundreds of four hundred gig ports at very predictable latency, at a buffer and architectural level where they don't drop packets anymore, where they can handle the applications that come in. Now,

this is long term planning. We are only in the first innings of that, but I think a lot of the meta investment will go into AI and m L which will have a direct impact on the Arista network infrastructure as well, and how we designed for them, develop for them, and they procure from us. You've got your analyst day coming up, talk to us about how we

should be looking at growth in the next year. Will these, you know, really dreadful macro economic um concerns be a headwind for Ariska, How will it all impact cloud adoption if we're heading into a recession. Yeah, no, that's a really good question. We've just had one of our best quarters ever, as you pointed out, but the rest of the world around us is as not as beautiful um, So as we look at it, we're going to be thoughtful and vigilant of is there a macro recession and

what is a riskless part in it? Because to some degree we're having micro momentum. We think some of the key trends has not affected the data center and the networking infrastructure. It remains strategic and relevant. But should a recession come, obviously we won't be immune to it. But at the moment, we're feeling really good and we have good visibility for the next six to twelve months, and we're looking forward to a great analyst day to give

our three projections. Alright, well, good luck at good luck at Analyst Day later this week. J Street Lall, CEO of Risk and Networks. Great to have you back. Thank you. We're gonna be right back with more of Bloomberg technology after this quick break. This is Bloomberg. TikTok should be banned.

That's according to FEC Commissioner Brendan Carr, as reported earlier by Axios, a comment that set chairs of Meta rising as much as four point one percent to session highs Snap spiking as well, Axio saying it's the strongest language Car has used so far to urge acting on TikTok. And while the SEC has no authority to regulate TikTok directly, Congress previously acted after Car voiced concerns about Chinese tech

companies telecom companies like Huawei. Bloomberg has learned that Tesla is sending workers from China to help with an expansion at its factory in Fremont, California, a move that could help the US facility ramp up production. Got two hundred people from Tesla Shanghai plant will head to the Fremont facility on assignments that will last at least three months. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Emily changing in San Francisco. Twitter owner Elon Musk is teasing a new subscription model

for users eight dollars per month. He's also making major changes, including limiting content enforcement work just before mid terms next week by freezing employee access to internal tools used for content moderation. All while advertisers are being urged by dozens of advocacy groups to boycott the platform if it's new billionaire owner, lower safety standards for content, into it, into it all with bloomb x, Alex Brinka and add Ludlow, So ed give us the very latest here. Let's start

with job cuts. We've been waiting for more. Have they happened? I mean at all levels of the company. Yes, we're hearing that a number of director and senior manager level people have departed, including j Sullivan, who is the GM for product for the revenue product and the consumer products. Nick cool Well, whose head of engineering his depart t bloom bows reported the VP of Gloefol sales as report has departed during the day on Tuesday. So this is

all happening, you know. A source told me over the weekend that across the products and engineering groups they were asked to put together a list for layoff candidates that will reduced headcount by fifty We have not seen a broad wave of layoffs, but what I'm told by sources is that when determining who should be laid off, they've been assessing an individual based on the code contributions, the contributions and individuals made to the underlying source code for

the Twitter platform during the duration of their time at the company. We know there's an all hands meeting called for Wednesday morning, and that's pretty much it. I know a lot of insiders at Twitter, a lot of staff are bracing for that. So let's talk about content moderation, Alex. What's happening, what can what's being moderated, what's not being moderated. Well, it seems like Elon Musk is self moderate ding if

you're following the Nancy Pelosi tweets of this weekend. But it seems like there has been According to Bloomberg, sources a slowdown and what's being moderated because they basically told that team to pause what they're working on. You'll remember that Elon Musk said that they will create a content moderation system with a group of diverse perspectives, which for me and somebody who follows social media closely reminds me

a lot of what they already have. So I think this will be one of the areas that Elon Musk will absolutely have to lay out what the plans will be, because it's not just users and the posters of content who really care about this. It is importantly the advertisers where Twitter makes most of their money. Those advertisers won't want to be, you know, paying to have their brand

show up alongside content that they view as unsavory. So that moderation piece is a piece that is widely talked about in the few days since Elon Musk has been the de facto owner of this company, but we are yet to see kind of exactly the roadmap that he plans to take up for Twitter going forward. Then, of course, there have been these developments about Twitter Blue and the subscription service eight dollars a month, and what's the latest there. Yeah.

I think Elon Musku's arguing on Twitter because remember he set this all out in tweets that a those compelled to pay for the privilege of blue check mor verification will want to do so to kind of separate themselves out from the rest of the crowd. He talked about blue carrying with it priority in terms of where responses appear,

having fewer ads appear in the timeline. You know, Twitter is verified user base right now is about four hundred and fifty thousand if you go to the app verified account, so a few times that eight dollars by four fifty thousand, and new times that by twelve. It's not really this meaningful shift in business model. It's not going to sort of displace the necessity to have a revenue stream from advertising.

But I think the idea is to kind of elevate premium content to have its stand out on what we know must believes is a pervasive issue, which is bots on the platform. What about this teasing of Vine coming flat back to the platform, which of course was this short form video product that Twitter bought, uh and then quickly dissolved. Alex Is is this really potentially happening? I mean, it's been tweeted about, and that seems to be um

where the latest is happening from Elon Musk. So I will point out that sources told Bloomberg that Vine You're right, the short form video app that Twitter bought. Um, it can be revived, but there are some turtles to doing that. It runs on the old source code. There's been a lot of updates behind the scene, So UM, I think folks are in place kind of looking at the viability of that option right now. I will tell you, if you spend time on TikTok like I do, people talk

about Vine energy. There's still a big nostalgia with that. It was the very first kind of real short form video app that got that type of content really popularized and woven into the cultural fabric of conversations online. So it seems like UM and Ellen has kind of joked about this that he is kind of taking recommendations or questions about what could be coming back. But our sources are telling us that that is one of the possibilities

on the table. There's definitely some excitement out there about the possibility of Vying becoming Twitter's version of TikTok, And are these changes going to impact the midterms at all. I mean, we're literally a week away when a lot of moderating is normally happening. How could this play out over the next seven days. Yes, so, I think I think it's really important to be clear on what we've reported.

That the group of people who have access to the dashboard and the tools that allow for policy actions to be taken against accounts that have breached policy has gone from like a group of a hundred fifties to fifteen people inside of Twitter. There's a lot of concern that effectively Twitter will be short staffed in its ability to deal with content moderation over the course of the mid

terms next Tuesday and Wednesday. That said, um, you know, we reported that over the weekend, according sources, there was some content moderation in a limited way going on with the Brazilian election, despite the suspension of those tools and the freezing of access for some employees. If you also got on your Twitter timeline, you'll start to see basically alerts from Twitter about the upcoming midterm elections and explaining

some of the work they've already done. And we'd imagine that they have got policies in place I guess the question is whether Elon Musk, since he's come into Twitter, agrees with the plan and the policies that were set to deal with the mid terms, which are next week.

Twitter CMO leslie Berland, also the head of People, is leaving Twitter um this, of course, along with a number of top executives, including Paraguaggi, Wall, the CEO, Ned Siegel, the CFO, vidigade Um, Sean Edgett on the legal team again. Twitter CMO leslie Berland also leaving the company, and she certainly won't be the last one, if our reporting is correct.

Bloomberg's Alex Brinka and Ed Ludlow thank you both. Turning now to the world of gaming, Activision Blizzard said it's Call of Duty Modern Warfare two ranked in eight hundred million dollars in the first three days of launch, the best in franchise history. Here for an exclusive interview is Johanna Ferris, senior vice president at Activision Blizzard. Johanna, thank you so much for joining us so obviously a huge weekend.

What do you think is driving this given the broader mackerel concerns and the pressures on consumers, why are we seeing this show up with Call of Duty. It's amazing. This is a testament to the community worldwide that we have. There's so much passion built into this franchise and in particular for modern Warfare too. But to be hitting these numbers out the gates the way that we've launched here

has been tremendous. It just reflects how powerful a community of players we we have, but also the magic that's been it in by all the development teams around the world here at Activision Blizzard and uh, you know, we're we're just in a very celebratory moment here to do these types of numbers, as you mentioned, and it proves that we have a blockbuster on our hands across all

of entertainment, and we couldn't be prouder. And it's topping some of the big movie theater blockbusters, Top Gun, Maverick, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness combined. What does that tell you about the popularity of games versus other kinds of entertainment as audiences evolves, I often say it feels like it's the modern medium for entertainment. It's how people are gathering, they're creating friendships, they're creating lifelong

connections through call of duty. And again, this is just that moment where we couldn't be more proud to see so many different regions of the globe connect in this way. You're right, I think some of the numbers are really staggering. It proves the power of gaming. We certainly have fierce competition ourselves, right, so we know that we are all fighting for consumers time um and for how they make

their choices. And to see so many of our players rally together here and and pour in their feedback or in their connections just three days out of launch has been amazing and we're incredibly excited for what's to come. It's no secret that Activision has been working through some cultural issues, and I'd love to hear your perspective on how that is evolving and what it's like being a

senior woman in gaming at Activision. Look, we've had our challenges and a lot of companies have their own challenges as well. When you think about how big our workforce is, and it's not um something that we take lightly. This is a priority for us to make sure that we continue to improve in workplace culture. I for one, you know, I've always felt um so welcomed here. I've been here for about four years now, and I've just been so blown away by the caliber of the talent, the collaboration

that we continue to see pouring in. And we've made this a top priority. We have no you know, um tolerance at all for bad behavior. We've already said that in many statements before, and we're gonna continue to make these investments to make sure that this is the place that people want to continue to work. And it all comes down to talent. I always come back to that, as we need the best and brightest here. We're lucky to have so many of them under the active Activision

Blizzard umbrella already. This is why Modern Warfare two has done what it's done, because we have amazing talent all over the world pouring in, and yet we want to continue to get better and continue to attract the best talent we can. Meantime, you're navigating a potential huge acquisition by Microsoft. UK regulators are scrutinating nizing the deal. What can you tell us about any signal that you've gotten from regulators about whether or not and when this deal

is going to happen. All of my eyes have really been on Call of Duty. I promised you that I know the statements are out there. As you know, Microsoft has already commented on this quite a bit. The possibilities are very exciting, UM, I think where we all understand the scope of that, and yet we are here focused to do what we came here to do, which is

to deliver the best possible player experiences we can. UH. And the Call of Duty milestones we've hit here have been just tremendous and a testament again to how much work has poured in so more to come. Um, but all eyes on on this moment and again I just really feel very honored and humbled to be a part of it. More to come, indeed, Well, thank you for sharing those new numbers on Call of Duty with us. We will stay tuned. Activision. Blizzard Senior vice president Johannah Ferris,

thank you all right. Coming up, Mike Novograts, is Galaxy Digital mulling a big restructuring we're going to discuss next. This is Bloomberg, the crypto firm. Galaxy Digital currently has

three employees, but that number could soon change. Bloomberg Shonali Bossik here to explain, Shinale, what's happening pretty enormous scoop today here, Emily by our colleagues led by U At Yang, because Galaxy maybe laying off fifteen to twenty cent of their workforce, that could amount to as much as seventy people. I want to point out here that pretty recently Galaxy had actually been hiring, and so this is definitely a new plan that we are seeing. The stock is off

more than seventy percent this year. Remember earlier this year they also had that plan to buy a bit Go, but that had fallen through as well. That would have added more staff. So really a reversal in trajectory here and seventy five positions could go at Galaxy. Now. Galaxy reports results next week, so hearing what Mike no Regrats has to say will be interesting. Remember, Galaxy is one

of the earliest investment banks in this space. They have become a very large operation with principle investing, with venture capital investing, a huge research arm So where exactly they're going to be able to trim some of that will be of interest. I think also of interest to your Emily is what they will say in terms of their liquidity positions. You have them having one point five billion

as of one billion of that was in cash. But if you take a look here, we have a board on the screen of all the job cuts that are spreading across the entire crypto industry. Coin based, Robin Hood, Block five, Genesis, and now Galaxy. The question is we've talked about their evolving door on the C suite and then now maybe on the younger side as well, and the junior ranks as well. Does those jobs? Where do

those jobs go? Next? Is their capacity of the crypto industry to pick up those jobs as we're seeing some large firms start to scale back given that range bound trading you've seen in the largest cryptocurrencies. All right, Sonali, thanks for helping us dig in there. We'll see how

it evolved. Saliot. Appreciate it. The founder of food delivery giant Grubhub is out with a new book well about his food business, Angry A Startup Legacy, details the step by step grind of building an innovative business, with each chapter including lessons for entrepreneurs and startups. Mike Evans joins me now to discuss more so, after everything you've been through, Mike, what inspired you to put it all in a book? Yeah?

I mean, the book is just the story of starting in my apartment and running all the way through the I p O. And it's an intense experience to take something from create something from nothing, and then go all the way through all the venture capital investments and all

the things that come to it. And Uh, I wanted to share that experience and if I can sort of change a few people's minds about the importance of really thinking about what it is they're trying to accomplish as they build the thing that they're building, that's really my goal with the book, and that's why I wrote it all down. What are I mean? Obviously we've heard Elon Musk say things like starting a company is staring into the abyss of death and swallowing shards of shattered glass.

What are some less Okay, okay, I want your I want your metaphors. What do you got? Yeah, I mean it's I guess it's no piece of cake since it's food dealer. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta related to food. Yeah. It was challenging for sure, and uh and that's one of the things that I've had to remember again as I started a new business that you know, every step of the way. It's the path from sort of start to success is not just a straight path. It's a

little bit more like a drunken ramble. You try things, you experiment. It's important to be able to quit the things that aren't working and really double down on the things that are. But it takes an an iterative and experimental approach to really take a business and and and make it something that customers love. Hungry is something I've certainly felt, and food delivery companies have helped a piece.

Why did you call it that? Yeah, so I started the business because I wanted a pizza and I was hungry, and uh, it started out as a hobby, and I didn't love working for another person, sort of being just a software developers. I was called a few times and in that early part of my sort of work experience, and so that that is really where the idea came from.

I was trying to solve a problem for myself. And I make the point in the book that you know, if entrepreneurs tend to not be happy people because you look around and you see that something is wrong, and you're more annoyed by it than maybe some of your friends and family are. And the difference between that, uh, that person being just a miserable grump and an entrepreneur is sort of getting off the couch and doing something

about it. And so a lot of that motivation came from just really kind of being sick of having a call on the phone and having orders like get messed up and reading a credit card upon all those things. I can't cook. I can't stand cooking, and so I had to solve the problem. And so that's why I started the food the food delivery you know, online ordering business,

um And ultimately I did solve the problem. And so it's that it's it's really just sort of goes through the experience of just what it's like emotionally to to sort of do these eight nine weeks and over the course of a decade. Startups are hard. Food delivery startups are hard. As you said, we just had uber ceo dar causeroshaw on earlier in the show. Uber eats still doing well, good profit, but not a huge amount of growth.

So I'm curious when you look at the food delivery wars today between grub Hub and uber eats and door dash, do they all survive? Do they co exist? At this current size or is their consolidation, How does the industry change? I don't think they can co exist in the the way things are currently going. Ultimately, the winner in the space is going to be the one that creates the best product for customers, And the one that creates the best customers is going to be the one that creates

the best product for restaurants and for the drivers. And ultimately, that's really I think where innovation and differentiation is going to come from, and the company that does that the best will ultimately win the loyalty and frequency of the diners that use the platforms um and I'm looking forward to seeing how it shakes out, because you know, I think there's room for differentiation among those three right now. So you're not unbiased, but who wins who doesn't survive?

Grob has this partnership with Amazon, Is that a real differentiator or not? I think grow but I am not biased. I think grow hub has an edge because it has more relationships with independent restaurants, and I think ultimately the neighborhood gems and the independent restaurants and the you know, the those businesses that sort of make up the heart of a lot of downtowns whether it's in big cities or small cities, those are the things that customers love

the most. And I think that grub has an advantage there and so my that's my hope. Obviously I'm not I'm not biased, but ultimately, really, ultimately, really it just comes down to which company is going to invest in those things the most. So last quick question, you talk about stepping down. Why was? Why was when you stepped down the right time? And as you say, stepping down

isn't quitting. Yeah, I talked about this in the book The You know, my goal when I started grow hub was to pay up my school debt, and I overshot by a little bit, right. I ran the company from the from the apartment, my my apartment, all the way up to the I p O. I was myself and

my co founder Matt. We ran the company together, and as I got towards the end of that journey, as I approached the I p O. For me, the reason that I decided to go on to do the next thing is I really wanted to work on a business where the impact of what I was doing from a social perspective and the profit I was creating were the same thing. In whatever business model that was that's really challenging to do in a public company. I'm not even

sure it's actually possible a lot of the time. And so um, I wanted to start a new company where we can make that the d n A of the company from scratch, and so that's why I went off to start my new I have to leave it there, Mike, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you. Congrats on the pluck. We'll see you tomorrow. Mrs mob