"Pushing the boundaries doesn’t mean breaking them" – Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi about what's next for the company

The first question sets the scene: “Did you ever think: Now that’s a company I need to work for?” Dara Khosrowshahi, who joined Uber as CEO in August of 2017, starts laughing. “No,” he says. “I admired them for their unbelievable growth. But what I now realize is that winning sometimes increases bad behavior.”

“What was your first thought when you were offered the job?” – “No, thank you.” Khosrowshahi says he felt comfortable in his job as CEO of Expedia, he had no reason to leave. But then he talked to Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify. He told him that life “isn’t about being comfortable, it’s about doing something great,” Khosrowshahi recalls. “You need to go to a place where you can make a difference as a person and to a company that can make a difference in the world.” And he felt that Uber offered both.

Khosrowshahi is this year's star guest at DLD Munich, a conference focused on the digital age. He is being interviewed on stage by Tanit Koch, editor-in-chief of German newspaper Bild. The name of the panel: Uber's Next Chapter. But to talk about the next chapter, you can't ignore the previous one.

To recap: Things really went south when former Uber engineer Susan Fowler wrote a blog post last February detailing allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company. Fast-forward to an investigation by former US attorney general Eric Holder. On top of that, Google filed a lawsuit against Uber. There were some more, smaller scandals. In the end, CEO and founder Travis Kalanick was first placed on leave and then resigned as chief executive in June of 2017, leaving behind a company in chaos that was scrambling to find a new leader.

So what is Khosrowshahi thinking now, after a couple of months at the company? “There is a rebel in every start-up. I just think that Uber took it too far. Pushing the boundaries doesn’t mean breaking them,” he says. “The company was thirsty for leadership and wanted change.” And: “When I came there, we crowdsourced the cultural norms. I didn’t want the culture to be delivered top down.” And: “What Uber needs is a team. If Uber is just about me, it won’t succeed.” Instead, employees were asked to write down the norms they felt were most important – and the management edited their thoughts. Why are they called norms, not values? “Norms are about behaviors," Khosrowshahi explains. One of the main norms that is supposed to carry the company forward? “We do the right thing, period.”

Did the scandal have a negative impact on business? No, Khosrowshahi says business is “surprisingly good” and the growth rates "still extraordinary." Uber Eats — a newer standalone service that just acquired David Chang’s delivery-only lunch menu Ando — is “exploding," according to Khosrowshahi: “Uber will become the largest food delivery company in the world this year." What part of business is not going so well? “The profitability part,” he says, but they are working on that, too.

While Koch and Khosrowshahi, who is wearing a T-shirt saying “We Are All Dreamers," are talking inside, taxi drivers are protesting outside the venue in downtown Munich. Their demand? Uber should leave the German market. Taxi drivers are seeing the Silicon Valley start-up as “illegal competition” that is violating national transportation rules. Meanwhile, Khosrowshahi explains that you can “absolutely” earn a living as an Uber driver, and that the company is thinking about ways of introducing driver benefits: “We are giving drivers the freedom to do what they want, whenever they want. But for drivers working 40+ hours a week, we need to see what kinds of benefits we can bring them.” 

In Germany, Uber is still trying to find its way. The company is currently only operating in two cities, Munich and Berlin. There are strong regulations in place, limiting the company to two of its services: UberX — which in Germany doesn’t allow private drivers but only professional drivers — and UberTaxi, which connects customers with licensed taxi drivers. Germany is not the only European market where Uber is struggling: In London, the company was effectively banned, the European Union's top court has ruled Uber a taxi company – with all the regulations that come with that.

Nevertheless, Uber is hoping to expand its business in Europe – and soon. “Germany is a market of enormous promise," Khosrowshahi says, but the way the company went about it the first time around was not ideal: “We stepped into Germany and behaved in manner that was totally wrong,” he says. Now, Uber is working with regulators and cities which “takes longer, but the German market is worth the investment.”

According to Khosrowshahi, Uber is planning to launch in more German cities this year: “We want to make sure that we get it right. Once we get it right, we’ll scale the business.”