Acquired1 Maalis 2017

Episode 31: The Uber - Didi Chuxing Merger with Brad Stone, author of The Upstarts & The Everything Store

Topics covered include:

The global surge in 2012 of entrepreneurs starting ridesharing companies, nowhere moreso than China
Didi CEO Cheng Wei and investor Wang Gang’s backgrounds at Alibaba, first entrepreneurial effort in Momo, and Momo’s pivot to Didi Dache
The culling of the ridesharing herd in China down to Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache through brutal competition and involvement of the “big three” Chinese internet companies
Rise of the Chinese messaging apps and associated mobile payments, and their impact on ridesharing
The 2015 merger between Didi and Kuaidi, brokered in part by Russian VC Yuri Milner
Uber’s decision to enter the Chinese market, and early success with investment and support from Baidu
The first meeting between Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Cheng Wei in 2015—which does not go well
Subsequent “scorched earth” competition between Didi and Uber throughout 2015-16
Negotiating an armistice: Uber’s agreement to sell its Chinese operations to Didi in late 2016
End of the war, or just the beginning? January 2017: Didi invests $100M in Brazilian Uber competitor 99
Sustainable growth, and building moats versus scorching earth

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

Followups:

Stay tuned for real-time coverage of the Snap IPO coming here on Acquired!

The Carve Out:

Ben: Taming the Mammoth on Wait But Why
David: Conversations with Tyler Podcast by Tyler Cowen, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog
Brad: Yuval Noah Harari (author of Sapiens)’s new book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(214)

Indian Premier League Cricket

When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if you’...

24 Maalis 20254h 26min

TSMC Founder Morris Chang

We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum… conduct...

27 Tammi 20252h 56min

Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is 100%...

16 Joulu 20243h 52min

IKEA

IKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market share. They’re one of...

18 Marras 20243h 21min

Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)

Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. We joked during the months (months!) of prepara...

30 Syys 20242h 25min

The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. At Chase Center on September 10, 2024, he did an unprecedented thing: a live conversation in front of 6,000 people on Meta’s company strategy, sharing stori...

18 Syys 20241h 29min

Chase Center + Summer Update

Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”:Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, with special guests including Mark Zuckerberg (!). The s...

8 Elo 202421min