The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Shervin Pishevar on The Epic Uber War and What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | Raising $15BN to Win China | Why The Traditional Venture Capital Model is Dead | The Future of Quantum and How We Will Cure All Diseases in 10 Years
Mon, 13 Jan 2025
Shervin Pishevar is a serial entrepreneur and investor. Shervin is famed for leading Uber’s Series B at Menlo alongside leading Warby Parker’s Series A and investing in Tumblr, all in just 18 months at Menlo. Following Menlo, Shervin co-founded Sherpa Capital and today Shervin is averaging over 73x on his investments. As an angel investor, Shervin made over 100 investments in the likes of Dollar Shave Club, Postmates, Facebook and more. In Today’s Episode with Shervin Pishevar: 08:09 Meeting Travis Kalanick: The Start of a Game-Changing Partnership 11:08 The Uber Series B: Securing a Billion-Dollar Deal 12:49 The Rise of Uber: Global Expansion and Strategic Moves 19:01 The Lyft Rivalry: Missed Opportunities and Lessons Learned 20:57 Recruiting Emil Michael: Building a Strong Leadership Team 24:29 Uber China: The Challenges and Triumphs 27:19 The $15 Billion Raise: Fueling Uber's Global Dominance 30:57 The Beginning of the End: Betrayal by Benchmark 35:33 Sam Altman's Coup and Lessons from the Past 36:22 The Uber War: Legal Battles and Boardroom Drama 37:36 Fusion GPS and Fabricated Reports 39:43 The Me Too Movement and Its Impact 40:51 The SoftBank Investment and Leadership Changes 41:29 The Downfall of Uber's Visionaries 51:09 The Future of Venture Capital 57:01 Quantum Computing and AI: The Next Frontier
Full Episode
I believe if Travis and Emil had stayed at Uber, Uber would be a trillion dollar company by now. This is the greatest value destruction that's happened since firing Steve Jobs at Apple. Travis, his true vision for Uber was to replace car ownership. And it was at that moment I realized, oh, the TAM is trillions. What do you think makes him so good? Really exceptional intelligence.
You talk about 10x engineers. These are like 1,000x humans. We are actually full steam ahead, but things start to go wrong. Yeah, what went wrong was we had the wrong venture capitalists on the board. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was Bill Gurley at Benchmark. We found out in our investigation that he hired some private investigators, had weekly meetings about how do we get rid of Travis.
That week, when Travis tragically lost his mother in a boating accident, Benchmark, Gurley decide to go after Travis. I haven't told many of these stories, but basically,
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and what a show we have in store for you today. This guest lost their mother a week before this recording. He then got on a flight from the US to London just for this episode. I'm thrilled to welcome Shervin Peshawar, serial entrepreneur and investor.
Shervin is famed for leading Uber's Series B when he was at Menlo, alongside leading Warby Parker's Series A and investing in Tumblr, all in just 18 months at Menlo. Following that stint at Menlo, Shervin co-founded Sherpa Capital, and today, Shervin is averaging over 73x on his investments.
Now, as an angel investor, Shervin also made over 100 investments in the likes of Dollar Shave Club, Postmates, Facebook, and more. But before we dive in today, it can be difficult to build a team that's aligned on everything from values to workflow. But that's exactly what Coda was made to do. Coda is an all-in-one collaborative workspace that started as a napkin sketch, now
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