Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering. @USWREMichael (Official Account). Previously @Uber @Klout @Tellme
Joined March 2008
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- Following1.8K
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- Likes16.3K
Emil Michael retweeted
Sat down for Senra .. @davidsenra
My conversation with @travisk, founder of Atoms and Uber.
0:00 Building Atoms & the Meta Problem of Management
3:51 The Appeal of Impossible Problems: Starting Over in China
12:19 Uber vs. Didi: Copycats, Hypergrowth & China's Rules
21:02 How Network Effects Become an Efficiency Fortress
31:48 Capitalism vs. the Taxi Cartel
44:05 The China War Goes Global & the Entrepreneur's Capacity for Pain
54:04 Life After Uber: Lawfare, Media Narratives & Reputation
58:21 What Founders Get Wrong About Venture Capital
1:08:35 The Fundraising Playbook: QED Storytelling & a Five-Room Auction
1:18:38 The Uber Coup, Radical Accountability & Outgrowing Fear
1:26:42 Why Specialized Robots Beat Humanoids at Industrial Scale
1:31:30 Finding Your Sport: Food, Mining & the Physical AI Stack
1:40:14 How to Build Many Companies Inside One Company
1:46:33 Entropy, Civilization & the Meaning of Progress
Includes paid partnerships.
Emil Michael retweeted
Former Uber CBO @emilmichael on what it's like working with @travisk:
"We used to argue about who had the best idea."
"I was like, 'We should buy Lyft.'"
"He's like, 'We should crush Lyft.'"
My conversation with @travisk, founder of Atoms and Uber.
0:00 Building Atoms & the Meta Problem of Management
3:51 The Appeal of Impossible Problems: Starting Over in China
12:19 Uber vs. Didi: Copycats, Hypergrowth & China's Rules
21:02 How Network Effects Become an Efficiency Fortress
31:48 Capitalism vs. the Taxi Cartel
44:05 The China War Goes Global & the Entrepreneur's Capacity for Pain
54:04 Life After Uber: Lawfare, Media Narratives & Reputation
58:21 What Founders Get Wrong About Venture Capital
1:08:35 The Fundraising Playbook: QED Storytelling & a Five-Room Auction
1:18:38 The Uber Coup, Radical Accountability & Outgrowing Fear
1:26:42 Why Specialized Robots Beat Humanoids at Industrial Scale
1:31:30 Finding Your Sport: Food, Mining & the Physical AI Stack
1:40:14 How to Build Many Companies Inside One Company
1:46:33 Entropy, Civilization & the Meaning of Progress
Includes paid partnerships.
Emil Michael retweeted
Here’s the part where Travis and I talk about @emilmichael
Emil Michael retweeted
"The benefit of Benchmark is, we don't invest in categories, we invest in people."
@EverettRandle says Benchmark's strategy is " all based on the founder."
"There's zero thought to, 'This is going to be a big category.'"
"It's that this is an unbelievable entrepreneur that is going to put their energy to an idea that they've convinced us is really, really interesting."
"When you focus and have your strategy around that—great entrepreneurs are always in style."
Emil Michael retweeted
Today, @POTUS signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum on AI in the national security enterprise. The men and women who defend our nation deserve the best, most secure, and most reliable AI in the world, and our citizens deserve to know it is handled responsibly with the care and seriousness they expect.
The NSPM accelerates AI adoption from multiple vendors to prevent single points of failure, updates @DeptofWar’s guidance on autonomy in weapons systems to keep pace with the frontier, and ensures no entity can disable or degrade an AI system our warfighters depend on without prior approval.
Under @POTUS’s leadership, we are putting our AI dominance to work to defend the American people.
Emil Michael retweeted
You’re welcome.
NYT Forced To Issue Several Corrections After Being Called Out By Trump Official: 'Completely FABRICATED quotes' dlvr.it/TRnxxd
Emil Michael retweeted
The idea that “AI safety” could be based on secrecy and control has been fatally falsified.
Truth bomb! Forgiving @benchmark and others would be like letting the Wuhan Institute of Virology slide back into a good reputation because the new Senior Manager of Pandemic Causation has made more friends than his predecessor.
Emil Michael, now a senior Pentagon official, says he’ll never forgive Uber investors who ousted him and Kalanick techcrunch.com/2026/03/23/em…
I can attest that @travisk “never left.” The fire always burns hot with him. Main difference now is that no one cares what the bystanders/ankle-biters have to say. Optimism always beats cynicism. Someone might wanna do a wellness check on Bluesky :)
Atoms.
Http://atoms.co/vision
Emil Michael retweeted
Atoms.
Http://atoms.co/vision
Emil Michael retweeted
When @travisk was fundraising Uber's round that valued it at $70B, he ran four rooms simultaneously out of their New York office for an entire week, each booked in 90-minute slots across 12-hour days:
"This is how we'd fundraise: we had four rooms in our New York office booked for a week with an hour-and-a-half slot on each. So for 12 hours in a day, four rooms going in parallel."
"I'm in the $250M-and-over club, that's one room. Then there are these other rooms, down to the fourth room, which is like $25M checks. There's a guy who works for a guy, who works for a guy, who works for me who's doing that room."
"But we're oversubscribed. So we started putting multiple investors in the same room. We were like, 'We're just out of slots dude. Let's go.'"
"The storytelling we did, anybody on my team could tell that story and make it happen. And that was a big part. It was the story... then there is making it scalable so that there are 10 different people in a company that can pitch it at any given time. And that’s when you take it all the way."
Emil Michael retweeted
It's official - Owen West is the newest Director of the Defense Innovation Unit.
The ceremonial handover took place earlier today at Fort Benning, Georgia.
"DIU's core mission is to deliver high-tech lethality our military wants, handing off projects that have been accelerated, improved and cheapened. We are not in the business of keeping quality science projects on life support without 4-star equivalent sponsorship," he said, adding that DIU will "invest where speed, scale, and lethality intersect."
Read his first full statement as Director here: lnkd.in/e5QyHeHA
Emil Michael retweeted
U.S. Central Command has announced the first combat use of Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) one way attack drones from Task Force Scorpion Strike in the attack on Iran today. Task Force Scorpion Strike was formed within CENTCOM last December with the assistance of the Rapid Employment Joint Task Force. At the announcement in December, CENTCOM stated that one squadron was active at an undisclosed location within the CENTCOM area of responsibility. The LUCAS is based on the Iranian Shahed one way attack drone.
Emil Michael retweeted
Touched down at @BlueOrigin for the next stop on the Arsenal of Freedom Tour.
The new space age will be defined by American dominance in innovation. As @SecWar made clear, this is about total orbital supremacy.
Emil Michael retweeted
We will have the high ground. Always.
We will NEVER surrender the skies—we are ushering in the era of AMERICAN DRONE DOMINANCE. 🇺🇸
