Inside Uber's effort to become the Amazon of transportation
Mark Matousek
- Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has reshaped the company in his four years at the helm.
- He focused first on fixing Uber's troubled culture.
- He has since turned his attention to making Uber profitable and building up its delivery service.
Four years after arriving at Uber in the midst of a crisis, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has left his mark on the company. After spending his first year cleaning up Uber's troubled culture, he has reshaped its business, doubling down on deliveries and shedding expensive projects like self-driving-vehicles and flying taxis that weren't progressing fast enough. But as Khosrowshahi pursues his long-term vision for the company, he has had to manage short-term challenges like turnover and a chaotic return-to-office process.
Below, you can read our coverage of how Khosrowshahi has changed Uber and the challenges he faces in the months and years ahead.
Cleaning up a toxic culture
When Khosrowshahi became Uber's CEO in 2017, the company was reeling from a string of scandals that revealed an overly aggressive culture. Khosrowshahi made it a priority to set a new tone for the company, rewriting Uber's corporate values and making difficult decisions aimed at increasing Uber's accountability to its employees and customers. Current and former Uber employees say the company has become less combative and more attentive to their lives outside of work under Khosrowshahi.
- Read more:
- Inside Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's 4-year quest to root out the toxic culture that nearly sank the world's most valuable startup
- Uber's top lawyer rejected the company's attempts to recruit him twice. Here's how CEO Dara Khosrowshahi finally won him over.
- Read a leaked copy of Uber's employee handbook that reveals how its CEO has reshaped its culture
- Uber's new CEO says he's ditching a practice that turned employees into 'a--holes'
Doubling down on delivery
Food delivery was once an afterthought compared to Uber's ride-hailing business, but the COVID-19 pandemic has given it a starring role. Since the second quarter of 2020, Uber customers have spent more money on delivery than ride-hailing as Khosrowshahi has made acquisitions to expand the company's delivery offerings. Now, Uber customers can order groceries and alcohol and send packages in one of the company's vehicles.
- Read more:
- Uber is battling DoorDash to rule food delivery. These are the steps Uber's CEO is taking to topple Eats' biggest rival.
- Eats has given Uber an edge over Lyft that could keep paying off long after COVID-19 has gone
- Uber is pushing into the 'cutthroat' grocery business. Partnerships with Costco and Albertsons are paving the way for the company's biggest grocery expansion since last summer.
- Dara Khosrowshahi's controversial plan to make Uber the 'Amazon of transportation' is paying off while the pandemic wipes out his core business
A push for profitability
One of Khosrowshahi's central goals is to prove that Uber can sustain itself without the help of banks or investors. While Uber has posted a few quarterly profits, they have come from one-time windfalls related to the sale of a business unit or investments in other companies. This year, the company says it will hit a measure of profitability more closely tied to its day-to-day operations.
- Read more:
- Uber says 2021 will be the year it proves its doubters wrong and stops losing money. These are the steps its CEO is taking to end the flood of red ink.
- Uber is showing ads in its core app for the first time — a feature former CEO Travis Kalanick once rejected as bad for users — as it seeks profitability
- Uber insiders say the company's cheapest rides are being quietly killed off because they lost so much money
A shifting return-to-work plan
The Delta variant has made it more difficult for companies to prepare their return to the office, and Uber has been no exception. The company has changed its return-to-office plans amid surging COVID-19 cases and criticism from employees who have expressed frustration with requirements that they eventually spend parts of their week in an office. High levels of turnover have added to the challenges faced by Uber's HR department.
- Read more:
- Uber is losing so many employees that executives had to address questions about the problem at recent all-hands meetings
- Uber is going to delay its office reopening and make vaccination mandatory for US employees
- An attendee at Uber's recent board meeting had COVID-19 and infected other employees.
- Uber's trying no-meeting Mondays to give employees a break from 'tiring' back-to-back meetings, a leaked email reveals
Spending big to fix a driver shortage
One of the biggest challenges Uber has faced this year is attracting drivers as the demand for rides picks up. The result has been higher prices and big spending on incentives to lure drivers back to the platform. Finding the right balance between riders and drivers will be critical to fending off Lyft as travel picks up.
- Read more:
- More than half of Uber and Lyft drivers stopped driving during the pandemic, and that number is far from recovered, new data shows
- Uber and Lyft asked Congress to bail out their drivers. Now they can't seem to get enough drivers to come back to work.
- Uber and Lyft execs say drivers are signing up again now that unemployment checks are running out
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