Episode 31: The Uber - Didi Chuxing Merger with Brad Stone, author of The Upstarts & The Everything Store
Acquired1 Mars 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:


Followups:

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

The Carve Out:


More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC

Avsnitt(212)

Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

He wears signature leather jackets. He can bench press more than you. He makes cars that drive themselves. He’s cheated death — both corporate and personal — too many times to count, and he runs the 8...

28 Mars 20222h 1min

Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

We hear a lot these days about hedge funds becoming venture firms, and venture firms becoming hedge funds. But a decade before either of those approaches became mainstream, a tiny $3m fund in Boston n...

15 Mars 20221h 54min

SONY

SONY

Born in the unlikeliest of places — the terrible, wasteland-like aftermath of post WWII Japan — Sony rose to capture the imaginations (and wallets) of consumers and engineers around the world. The com...

7 Mars 20223h 3min

Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

We sit down with two of the most talented and respected people in Hollywood — Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to talk about the process of adapting Mike Issac’s story of Uber, “Super Pumped...

22 Feb 20221h 4min

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)

We sit down with perhaps the only person besides Marc Andreessen who’s had a major influence on each of the Web 1, 2 and 3 eras: Brave Browser CEO (and former Netscape + Mozilla Chief Architect) Brend...

15 Feb 20221h 43min

Peloton

Peloton

The Peloton journey has been one seriously wild ride. From can’t raise money to one of Tiger Global’s first venture investments, to pandemic darling to the stock being down 85% in 6 months... there’s ...

10 Feb 20222h 20min

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

Not only is Taylor Swift the biggest music artist of our generation by nearly every metric (it’s not even close!), with the re-recording of her original albums she’s in the process of reshaping the en...

23 Jan 20222h 39min

CAA (with Michael Ovitz)

CAA (with Michael Ovitz)

Season 9 ends at the beginning — with the man who changed Hollywood forever and wrote the blueprint for A16Z’s upending of Silicon Valley a generation later, Michael Ovitz and his “Dream Factory”, Cre...

21 Dec 20211h 52min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
varvet
rss-jossan-nina
uppgang-och-fall
svd-tech-brief
bathina-en-podcast
avanzapodden
rss-borsens-finest
borsmorgon
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
kvalitetsaktiepodden
lastbilspodden
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet
fill-or-kill
rss-dagen-med-di
tabberaset
dynastin