Uber’s Travis Kalanick reveals how to hustle the American way!

When Travis Kalanick, founder & CEO of Uber, chose a bus ride over an Uber to travel to IIT Bombay, he was welcomed with a roaring applaud. He then talked to Ronnie Screwvala in an auditorium that had over 3,000 students.

During the session that lasted for an hour-and-a-half, Kalanick talked about how jugaading, or hustling as they call it in America, is required to be a successful entrepreneur.

Kalanick, who had founded Scour and Red Swoosh before he conceived the idea of Uber, said that his co-founders had a lot to offer to him in all these ventures, and shared that complementing skill sets is an important yardstick while picking a business partner.

On being asked what if an entrepreneur isn’t a good story tellers who can articulate their vision and ideas to investors and customers, he said that then one probably should get a co-founder who can do the same.

"At Uber, we say, 'Always be hustling'. Even if you are an introvert and you haven't got hustle in you, you better get a co-founder who does. And if you haven't got enough hustle to find a co-founder who's got hustle, it's going to be tough. You've got to have a little hustle in you. Get out there and make s**t happen," he addressed the audience.

He also shared his belief in a business being ideal with two co-founders, so that “your job doesn't get lonely and that you get to keep 50 per cent of the company.”

Comparing running a business to playing chess, he said, "You are playing chess and you are doing it 80 hours a week. You should know the layout of the board and you should be five or six moves ahead.”

He further said that one needs to be a good listener when investors come in, once a month or a quarter, wanting to give advice. "But they can't just come in and look at the chess board and have any freaking idea what the right move is. Because they don't even play chess," he says.

Giving similar hustler fixes to CEOs who run multi-billion dollar businesses in Silicon Valley, he advises not replying to emails from investors right way.

"Like almost to the point that investors forget. And when they remind you about the email, you respond. Then they get into this learned sort of thing, where they ask fewer and fewer questions," he said, to much applause from the audience.

On a serious note, he said that even though his journey sounds fun, “it's only fun after like five years of therapy or something."

Revealing that he is also Uber's recruiter-in-chief, he asked students to write to him regardless of the fact if they are dropouts or like the idea of graduating.

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