# China copied Uber quickly, then began innovating

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/china-copied-uber-quickly-then-began-innovating/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Travis Kalanick](https://realalpha.app/builders/travis-kalanick/) · CEO, Atoms · Built Uber and now leads Atoms, applying industrial AI and specialized robotics to automate food, mining and transport.
- Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [DeepSeek Panic, US vs China, OpenAI $40B?, and Doge Delivers with Travis Kalanick and David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/), Jan 31, 2025
- Moment: 51:04 to 55:06 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/china-copied-uber-quickly-then-began-innovating/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3064

## Quote

> “you eventually run out of things to copy and then it **flips to creativity**”
> — [Travis Kalanick](https://realalpha.app/builders/travis-kalanick/) at [52:54](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3174) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. Competitors copied some Uber launches within a week or two.
2. Uber had about 400 Chinese nationals working in Silicon Valley.
3. Kalanick says China now leads in some food-delivery innovations.

## About this segment

Travis Kalanick recalls how quickly Chinese competitors copied Uber’s launches and how the company built a large China-focused team in San Francisco. He says repeated copying eventually built the capability to innovate and lead.

From “DeepSeek Panic, US vs China, OpenAI $40B?, and Doge Delivers with Travis Kalanick and David Sacks”, Jan 31, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[51:10](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3070) almost 10 years here uber day we're running uber china and i mean i cannot there's no way i could express the frenetic intensity of copying that they would do on everything that we would roll out in China. And it was so epically intense that I basically had a massive amount of respect for their ability to copy what we did. I just couldn't believe it. We would do real hard work, make it, we'd dial it and it would be epic and it would be awesome. We'd roll it out. And then And like two weeks later, boom, they've got it.

[51:57](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3117) A week later, boom, they've got it. And, of course, I use that to drive our team. And there's so many great stories. I mean, we had like 400 Chinese nationals in Silicon Valley. At our offices in San Francisco, we had a whole floor for the China growth team, and it was primarily Chinese nationals. we had billboards on the 101 in Silicon Valley in Chinese, Uber billboards to join our team in Chinese to serve the homeland. It was like an all-out war. It was really epic. It was epic.

[52:38](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3158) And by the way, when you went to that floor in our office, you were in China. They rolled China style like the desks were literally smaller like the density of the space was it was china okay so but what happens is when you get really really good at copying and that time gets tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter you eventually run out of things to copy and then it flips to creativity to creativity and innovation Now, at the beginning, it's sort of all over the place.

[53:13](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3193) The kind of innovation when it was new was like, what? You're like, really? But as they exercise that muscle, it gets better and better and better. So if you want to know about the future of food, like online food delivery, you don't go to New York City. You go to Shanghai. Right? What's an example of something really innovative they're doing? Doesn't Meituan do drone delivery and stuff? Here's an example. If you went to offices like, let's say, Shanghai, Beijing, any of the major cities, Hangzhou, et cetera, the office buildings have hundreds of lockers around their perimeter so that everything that you get, whether it be food or anything else, but especially food, It's just the couriers drop them off in these lockers at the office buildings, and then there are a whole other set of people that are sort of like inter-office runners that then bring it to your office.

[54:15](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3255) As an example, and when you see it, you're like, and it's epically efficient. And they're taking advantage of their economics on labor and things like this. It wouldn't exactly work that way here. But a lot of the innovation you will see coming out on Uber Eats or DoorDash, like the stuff that's coming out now is stuff that existed three years ago, four years ago in China, maybe longer. So like eventually you cross that threshold of copying and you are innovating and then you're leading.

[54:47](https://realalpha.app/v/8RkgkOqWs0s/?t=3287) And I think we see that in a whole bunch of different places. Yeah, here's a look at these smart lockers that you can see. you're just available for sale when you go online. But yeah, these things are crazy. And you've experimented with those as well. Didn't you have like a commissary