23: Bradley Tusk, Founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings

In 2018, Uber is a household verb. The company is on an absolute tear; Dara Khosrowshahi has assembled a world class management team and Uber is evolving from a ridesharing company into a full scale transportation business. The company now has multiple business units at multi-billion dollar run rates; earlier this year Uber announced Eats is at a $6B+ bookings run rate. Excitement around the company is steep and in 2019 we are likely to see an IPO. The early view on pricing is Uber will enter the public markets at $100B+ market cap. Back in 2011 however, Uber was anything but a foregone conclusion. The company had raised a small Series A and the incumbent taxi industry threw everything they had at the business. Fights were prevalent in every market, but the battle in New York City was especially high stakes. The world was watching New York and if Mayor DeBlasio succeeded in shutting Uber down, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world followed. Founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick engaged Bradley Tusk to help with the fight. One of the most public and epic battles between private enterprise and city hall, Bradley ran a genius political campaign that ultimately kept Uber up and running as a business. We unpacked how it all went down in this episode.  It was a pleasure to have Bradley on the show; we spent most of the time chatting about Uber, but we also touched on how he's using blockchain to empower mass mobile voting - a key initiative to fix low voter turnout - and whether his former boss Mike Bloomberg will run for President in 2020.