DARA KHOSROWSHAHI

Born in 1969 in Tehran, Iran. His family fled during the Iranian Revolution in 1978, losing most of their wealth.

They settled in the United States as refugees when Dara was nine years old.

Spent 12 years at IAC/Expedia under Barry Diller. Rose from VP to CEO of Expedia in 2005.

Under his leadership, Expedia's revenue grew from $2 billion to $10 billion and market cap increased from $3 billion to $20 billion. He turned a travel website into a global travel empire.

Took over as Uber CEO in August 2017 — beating out Jeff Immelt and Meg Whitman for the job. The company was in crisis: Kalanick had been forced out, the Waymo lawsuit threatened the self-driving division, and the toxic culture was front-page news.

He stabilized operations, settled the Waymo suit, rebuilt the culture, and took Uber public in May 2019.

Uber Technologies is the main story. Under Khosrowshahi, Uber went from losing $4+ billion annually to achieving its first operating profit in 2023.

Market cap grew from ~$70 billion (2017 private valuation) to over $160 billion.

Before Uber, he ran Expedia Group from 2005 to 2017 — growing it into the world's largest online travel company through acquisitions of Hotels.com, Trivago, HomeAway, and Orbitz.

He serves on the board of a few companies but his primary identity is Uber CEO. His wealth comes from Uber and Expedia stock compensation.

Khosrowshahi is an operator, not an investor. His skill is taking complex, troubled companies and making them work.

At Expedia, he integrated dozens of acquisitions into a coherent platform. At Uber, he turned a money-losing chaos machine into a profitable public company.

His strategic approach is disciplined growth: focus on core businesses, cut unprofitable experiments, and achieve profitability before chasing growth. This was the opposite of Kalanick's "spend to win" approach.

He sold Uber's money-losing autonomous vehicle division (ATG) to Aurora and exited Southeast Asia by selling to Grab — moves that sacrificed optionality for financial discipline.

Uber's path to profitability. When he took over, Uber was burning $4 billion annually and nobody believed it would ever make money.

By Q3 2023, Uber reported its first operating profit. The stock, which had been written off by many investors, more than doubled from its IPO price.

He proved that a rideshare company could be a real business, not just a venture-subsidized fantasy.

Uber's IPO pricing. Uber went public in May 2019 at $45 per share — a $82 billion valuation.

The stock dropped 7.6% on day one and continued falling to a low of $14 during COVID. The IPO was widely seen as overpriced.

If Khosrowshahi had pushed for a lower valuation or delayed the IPO, early investors would have been better served.

Khosrowshahi believes in long-term thinking and stakeholder management. Running Uber requires balancing drivers, riders, regulators, investors, and employees — all with conflicting interests.

His approach is diplomacy, not dictation.

He's said that the best leaders are the ones who can admit mistakes, which was a direct repudiation of Kalanick's never-apologize style. He issued apologies for Uber's past behavior, met with regulators personally, and rebuilt relationships that Kalanick had destroyed.

On profitability: "Growth is easy. Profitable growth is hard.

And that's what separates real businesses from subsidized experiments."

Married to Sydney Shapiro. They have children.

He has additional children from a previous marriage. Keeps family life relatively private.

His Iranian heritage and refugee background are central to his public identity.

Born in Tehran, Iran. Family fled to the U.S.

as refugees during the 1979 revolution. Attended the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York.

Then Brown University, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering. No MBA — he learned business at IAC under Barry Diller.

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