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26:19 · 114K views · Nov 4, 2011
Travis Kalanick's talk at FailCon 2011 about his earlier failed startups, given as a case study before Uber's rise. It describes lessons from those ventures.
HN commenters recommend it for insight into Kalanick's background and how his past failures shaped his mindset at Uber.
3 comments from Hacker News
This is a valid criticism, but is mitigated a little by the fact that some of these success stories include within them wisdom from preceding (or competitive-contemporaneous) failures. This is even the case, indirectly, where the Startup School presentation can't fit the speaker's whole story. For example, I think the Travis Kalanick presentation about Uber at Startup School was great. (I'd love to see the time-unconstrained 'two-hour' version of the same talk.) But, it was just about Uber: a current big success. Kalanick also did a shorter -- and perhaps even better -- talk about his previous ventures at the 2011 FailCon: this video Combined with the SS12 Uber presentation -- indeed, perhaps best viewed just before -- it provides real context, and a much better idea of the range of outcomes and challenges startups face. And, of the entrepreneurial qualities that gave Kalanick repeated chances at Uber-like success.
I would really recommend watching this talk[1] TK gave at Failcon back in 2011. It's a great insight into Travis's background and the mindset that he imbued into Uber in the early days. [1] this video
I've found this video from 2011 to be kind of interesting in terms of illuminating how his history as an entrepreneur has shaped his attitude running Uber today (TL;DR - he failed and got screwed over a lot). this video