A Happy Executive Took a Job Because It Mattered

Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, was not looking for a new job. He had spent 13 years at Expedia, he was happy there, and when a headhunter called out of the blue about the top job at Uber, he thought the idea was absurd. He blew it off.

Then he ran into Daniel Ek, the chief executive of Spotify, over drinks at the Sun Valley conference, the annual gathering hosted by the investment bank Allen and Company. Khosrowshahi was with his wife, Sid. Ek told him he had recommended him for the Uber job and thought he would be great at it.

Khosrowshahi protested that he was happy where he was. Ek looked at him and answered, as Khosrowshahi remembers it, “Since when is life about happiness? It’s about impact.”

Ek’s argument, as Khosrowshahi tells it, was simple. Uber was a company with real impact on the world, it was important, and it was in trouble. Why not take a shot at it? Ek added that he thought many people were drawn to the company by its impact in the world.

Khosrowshahi said he wanted to work at a place where he could make a difference, and at a company that was making a fundamental difference in how people live. Uber, which he describes as shaping how the world moves, with more than 10 million drivers and couriers on its platform, fit that test in a way that his early work in investment banking at Allen and Company had not.

He and Sid talked it over that night, after a couple of beers. The next morning, standing in a parking lot, Khosrowshahi called the headhunter back and said, “tell me more.”