TechTO Together — Andrew Macdonald

Sure, happy to. So I currently run the mobile rides business, so the sort of core transportation product that I think most folks think of when they think of Uber. I actually am based here in Toronto. I started out running the Canadian business just about eight years ago and have moved through a bunch of different global roles. So glad to be here talking to this group today.

Sure, happy to. So again, great to be here and hopefully can share some lessons. We've obviously been right into the thick of it. When you're a company that sort of moves the world and the world stops moving, that can be very, very challenging. And you know, for this situation, there is no precedent or playbook. I mean, we've seen a lot of ups and downs over the years at Uber, but nothing like this, and the world is all sort of dealing with that at the same time. So yeah, as you mentioned, we've kicked off a bunch of new initiatives in response to the crisis. We're a global business, and so we actually saw the impact of this start with our Asia business in January. Hong Kong for us was hit hard, and we really saw that when a city stops moving, when people start working from home and people stop socializing, obviously the rides business is going to contract. But we also have a delivery business. We're in the food delivery space with Uber Eats. We actually deliver, you can get groceries through Uber Eats as well. And about a year ago, we launched a business called Uber Health, which is non-emergency medical transport. And we're HIPAA compliant on that, which means we can comply with all the data protection rules in the US and equivalents globally. So we are looking at things like pharmacy, pharmaceutical delivery. We're doubling down on our grocery delivery. We're actually doing a fair bit of B2B delivery, and we're even seeing people just use, order a car just to send packages and food to their family members or whatever through the app. So lots of response to this, and we've had to move very quick to put things in motion.

Yeah, no, I'm happy to. So you know, we definitely weren't prepared for a challenge of this magnitude. I don't think anyone in the world was, frankly. What I will say is when we realized what was upon us, we very quickly got the right group together. So we pulled together 50 leaders across the company representing every single function, basically spent two days together in early March and aligned on a set of principles for how we wanted to operate, how we wanted to make decisions, what mattered to us, what we would do for our employees, what we wanted to do for our customers, and more importantly, how we deal with sort of the daily crises that were coming up. And so we agreed on a set of principles, things like intellectual honesty, trusting the data, trusting the experts, speed. Right, so we have been very quick in our decision-making, and I would definitely advise founders to take the same approach. We've made a lot of mistakes, but when you're in a crisis, you need to act with the information you have, and that may mean the next day you change your decision, and the next day you change your decision. I can think of decisions we made that we changed three times in a week, and we were always honest with our people about why we were doing that. And I think you know, you end up benefiting when you move fast.

Yeah, so our, I mentioned decision-making principles, we used our first principle was empathy, and that was both for our employees, because a lot of the early decisions were around what do we do with offices, what do we do around working norms, how do we help people with families. So empathy to our employees, but also empathy to the people that use the platform. So our drivers and couriers, our truck drivers on Uber Freight, or our consumers. And so empathy is the first principle. We've tried to be super transparent. If you open the app today, the Uber Rides app, you'll actually get a message which says, 'Please don't ride, stay home if you can. This is only for essential transportation,' which I think a lot of people were surprised that we would actually go with a message telling people not to use the service if they could avoid it. But we're genuinely trying to lead with empathy and honesty, and that's what the experts are telling you, right? Stay home if you can, which we're all doing now. And not everybody can. People working at the grocery store, people working at the hospital, you know, these are essential services and they are using the service, so everybody else should stay off. So I think empathy, I think honesty, transparency in terms of why you're making decisions, and then constant communication is all critical for leaders.

I think one of the unique challenges of this situation for me has been internalizing that this is both a work crisis and a family crisis, or a world crisis for most people, right? Usually when you have a crisis at work, you know, hopefully the working assumption is, well, we're just dealing with this work problem, but everything on the home front hopefully is okay. People are dealing with really tough personal situations at the same time they're dealing with really tough business situations, and that makes it doubly hard. We have 30% of our staff that are parents and they've now got to balance kids at home. We've got close to 10% who are caregivers of other types, taking care of their parents or loved ones, and they're balancing that with jobs that have now become very difficult and very stressful in a way that they never thought before. So we spent a lot of time thinking about how to be supportive of those individuals, whether it's flexible schedules, whether it's encouraging people to block parts of their day. We just sent out a survey to our staff basically asking, 'How are you doing? How are we doing? What resources do you need?' And again, listening to what people want and then responding to it. And so I think just keeping in mind that everyone's going through a lot personally and professionally, and you have to again lead with empathy.

Yeah, our CEO started our global all-hands, where we have close to 30,000 people dialed in from all over the world, with his four kids on Zoom, thanking the company for what we were doing. Our CFO had his daughter on, she was plugging her Twitter handle. So yeah, it was fun.

I think I'll use my 30 seconds. So a couple things. One is, you know, you got to survive. So make quick, aggressive decisions to preserve your runway, particularly if you're a business that's going to be hurt by this crisis, which most businesses are, not all, but most. If you are a business that actually has an opportunity here, say you're an online, you know, communications platform, lean in super hard, get super aggressive. But also think about how you can do right by your customers and the community, because I think times like this are when brands are built for the long term. And then for all companies, like there's going to be a lot of ways to get engaged with the community, and you know, startups are usually not in a position to donate cash, even though that's what a lot of organizations need. So just think about how you can use your superpower to help. We heard from a couple entrepreneurs before that were using their companies' superpowers to give back, and I think probably everyone on this call who is at a startup or has their own startup has a superpower that can help the world in some way. And that's what we're trying to do by giving away free rides for healthcare workers and free meals for the elderly. But I'd encourage you to think about what your superpower is.

Yeah, thanks Rick, thanks Marie, thanks Andrew.