Travis Kalanick reveals Bill Gurley pressured him to take a $6 billion valuation. Two months later, he raised at $17.5 billion.
"Gurley was convinced it was the end of the world and we've got to raise, and just take your first term sheet, just f*cking take it."
"We got to a place where I just wouldn't talk to him. If he reached out to me, I would talk to him, but I just wouldn't try to engage because it was always that. So Emil Michael would handle this part. He would handle a lot of the investor relations."
"Anyways, two months later, we got a round done at a $17.5 billion pre."
"We were already planning IPO stuff. [Benchmark Capital] didn't know it. But they also never expressed the desire to be like, 'Hey, dude, you gotta IPO.' It was never brought up."
"If you think the world's about to end and you've got this thing that's worth a ton of money, you could get to a weird place. Especially when you're a VC, you don't have any control. You're not running anything. So now your entire outcome in life is due to this guy."
"You could get into a place where you're running a war room to destroy him. And that's kind of what happened."