Consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have the day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What makes somebody tick . One of my friends invested in uber a few years ago. It was at a 3 billion market value. I said he was going to lose all of his money, no ridehailing company can be worth 3 billion. In fact, it turned out to be worth more sums of money and now it is publicly trading. I have the same reaction when i hear of didi, like uber in china. I do not think it would catch on but i was wrong again. It is the single largest ridehailing company in the world. The person running the company is a young woman from china who rose up because of her hard work and now she is the president of didi. She is one of the best known Women Business leaders in china, and extremely intelligent person who is clearly going to make the company even more successful as she continues to lead it. We are here with jean liu, the president of didi, the largest mobile Transportation Company in china and one of the largest in the world. When didi was started in 2012, it wasnt the first or only company doing this, is that right . Jean there were 30 players doing the exact same thing. David did you have anything that was better than the other 29 . What were the advantages over the other companies . Jean we worked really hard. For example, there were a lot of strong competitors, right . There was a big competition and we sat down to think about what is our strategy and how can we provide better value . We launched four business lines in three months in 2015. There were a lot of moments we worked really hard and tried to catch up. David there is another company in the u. S. Called uber, which you are probably familiar with. When uber started, it grew quickly in the u. S. And other parts of the world, and also had a division in china. In many places, uber said we will roll over our competition. But in one country they were not able to do that, and that was china. In china, you ultimately came to a deal where in effect you merged but you are the Parent Company and uber is an investor in your company. Is that right . Are you also an investor in uber . Jean yes. Small. David your company has grown to the point how many riders do you have per day . Jean we have hundreds of millions of users every month. Hundreds of millions. David you have more users every month than uber . Jean thats right. David today, what are your other businesses . Jean talking about uber, i have to say we are thankful for the competition because it makes us better and stronger. When uber first came to china, their war chest was bigger than our market cap. So because of competition, it helped us to push ourselves to launch different product lines. Starting from a taxi, we launched private cars and different prices, black premier and express line. And then later we had a social car pulling product. Now we have bicycles and electric bicycles. We probably offer more than 10 services to our users. David most Chinese Companies that are Technology Leaders like alibaba, tencent, baidu, have dominant positions in china but so far they have not taken dominant positions outside of china. Now, you are taking positions outside of china and building your business outside. Have you been very successful outside of china so far . Jean i wouldnt call you know, we are very successful and we see very encouraging results. We are in brazil, mexico, colombia, in the latin market, and we are just entering into the australia and japan markets. David how do you have to change everything for the different markets, are there different qualities you have to bring to the table . How do you make your Service Better for these countries . Jean i think we provide our service to the local people by combining two things, one is our Global Technology architecture, and then local innovation. We tailor make products for different markets a product in. Markets. A product in brazil and a product in japan are very different. Unlike other companies who do copypaste. Cookie cutting for all the markets. It is a very different approach. David you mentioned some countries you are in, you are not in the u. S. Are you prohibited from being in the United States . Jean its a very crowded market. David its not likely to happen anytime soon . Jean if we can bring user value, we will consider it. If it is the same product and only compete on pricing, we dont see the point. David the United States and china have had a trade dispute going on a while. Does that affect your business . Jean to be honest, it doesnt really impact our business because we are, you know, we are supported by local passengers and drivers. However, i think we have benefited from trading and sharing over the years. It is unfortunate to see this, and of course we hope it can get resolved. David if i am an american tourist and i want to use your service in china, is it easy to do . Do you have to speak chinese . Jean you dont at all, we have a great English Version. We have a great English Version and actually, a lot of our employees, colleagues, are from overseas, different countries. Especially now that we have a global business. David uber is now publicly traded and losing a fair amount of money every year, over a billion dollars per year or more. Are you thinking of going public and are you losing money or making money . Jean well, we do have a specific ipo timetable, lets put it that way. Back to the uber point, i am sure it is temporary and they will get through it. They are very diligent and experienced. For us, we think profitability is the natural result of the value you create. There are two things in china that are different from other markets. First, rideshare is cheaper than car ownership. That is a huge Value Creation you provide to users. Secondly, in china, we are going through a transition that people, you know, people urge for a life quality, for better lives, and want to spend more money. David the average age of your customers is below 30 . Jean 2030. Actually, lots of them are students from college. David people who are 60, 70 are not your target audience as much . Jean they are, and we definitely want to make our technology more accessible to everyone. David back to the question of profitability, you are profitable . Jean in our core business. Yes. David one of the businesses that is not your core business, i think you spun it off, was your autonomous. Why did you spin it off and when do you think autonomous driving will actually be very common . Jean actually, you know, i think it will take huge commitment for Autonomous Technology to Mature Technology wise and also commercial wise. And i think for a company to succeed in it you need to be prepared to spend money and Human Resources into it. We want to attract the top talent and make it independent. So people feel we want to join this as a young company. At the same time, we are at an advantage because we run the largest network. For a geo sensing Autonomous Car to run, it is easy. In california it is easier than beijing. We have a huge amount of data, so that makes us feel like we are in an advantage in that way. David how many years away . Jean a long time. 510 years. David you spun that off because it will not be profitable in the near future. Jean we are investing in it. David when you joined the company, you had a market value of 500 million more or less. Lets say i want to invest at a 500 million valuation today, could you do that today . Jean not really, no. David as far as your background, your father is well known in the Business World in china, he was the founder of lenovo. Did he say you need to go into something computerrelated when you grow up . Jean not really. David no pressure to get into the business . Jean not at all. David you went to peking university and majored in Computer Science. Jean yes. David so after you graduated let me ask, in china are there more men than women in Computer Science . Jean we have 36 students and 30 of them were men. David you graduated and presumably did well but the new left china to go to harvard. Was it hard to get into . Jean it was hard to get into, yeah. David you went to harvard and got a masters in Computer Science. Did you find it was harder or easier than you thought . Jean i would not say harder or easier. I think it is more interesting. And my key purpose to go abroad is to see the world and meet different people and it was totally rewarding. David your english is, by my view, perfect. Jean not really. [laughter] david pretty good. Where did you get this english, at harvard or china . Jean i think i probably got in china. In china, we start to learn english starting from elementary school. If you have a good english teacher at school, you get ok. I would not call my english perfect. David it is better than mine. When you graduate from harvard, did you decide to go to a great firm like Goldman Sachs . Chinese jean it was almost accidental to join goldman. I did a summer intern in the Research Division as an i. T. Engineer in hong kong. I thought it was fascinating, what people are doing. I decided i wanted to apply for a fulltime job. Thats why i ended up in the Investment Banking division in hong kong. David you went there after you graduated, you went to hong kong and you stayed in hong kong for 12 years and became a managing director. Jean yes. David most people would say if you are a managing director at goldman, life cant be much better, so you are on your way up to the top. Why did you leave . Jean a lot of people asked me especially when i resigned from goldman, my exboss there said i cant believe youre drawing a joining a taxi company. When i first moved back to beijing, i found myself struggling up the street with my three young children. I did not have a license plate to drive in beijing, and it is hard to get because it is a lottery system. It is really hard to hail a taxi. And then i met didi at that time, a very young company. David it started in 2012 . Jean yes. I met the founder in 2013 when it was oneyearold. I wanted to make an investment at the beginning. I tried three times and failed three times. David investment on behalf of goldman or yourself . Jean on behalf of goldman. I was a very good goldman soldier. David each time he said we dont need your money or what . Jean yes, because there were lines of investors waiting and they were faster. The process from goldman is quite strict. I failed. But i always wanted to do something. And this thing seems to me to have a huge impact. I thought, why dont i just join him . David how big was the company in 2014 when you joined . Jean let me see, it was valued around 500 million, and 700 people, and the only product we had was the taxi hailing app. When i joined, a lot of my friends or family advised me not, because china is very competitive and people think so much uncertainty. David what do you say to the people who advise you not to join now . Do you ever see them and say, if i had listened to you i would still be at goldman. Jean i hesitated. I hesitated. When i sat down with the founder, i said if you dont let me invest in you, let me join you, he did not back off, which surprised me. And then i got hesitant when people advised me not to. So we went to tibet together with a group of seven people, a soulsearching trip, and after that i made up my mind. David what position did you join at . Jean chief operating officer. David you came from Goldman Sachs, but at Goldman Sachs you were not managing hundreds of hundreds of people, so how could you be the chief operating officer . Jean i did not manage hundreds of hundreds of people, but i did see a lot of business and talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. I think also is just in my genes. I want to lead an organization that is of this generation. David who were the big investors in didi in the early days . Jean there are number of them. The strategic ones that we have, tencent, alibaba, tim cook and apple, a lot of very wellknown financial investors. David most of them, are they large Institutional Investors from the u. S. Or china or all over the world . Jean a mix, it is diverse. David when you join the company, you had a market valuation of 500 million or less. Lets say i want to invest at a 500 million valuation, could i do that today . Jean not really, not even when you are nice and friendly. David you are running one of Biggest Companies in china and one of the Bigger Companies in the world in terms of market value. How do you keep that from going to your head . Jean it is a very challenging job. When i first joined the company i thought it was a Technology Company, but now i know it is about people and safety. David how do you get to work everyday . Do you take one of your services . Jean most of the time. David if you are taking one of your cars and you dont like the service, what do you say . Do they know who you are . Jean you know, the other day we have this assignment where we have to test the driver experience. And the other day my colleague and i picked this young guy and my colleague introduced me to him, this is our president and we want to survey you some questions and he was not impressed at all. He said when you give me some coupons if you want to survey me. I am not a celebrity. David you are now widely viewed as one of the most powerful women in business in china, women in business around the world, and not just a prominent woman, but a prominent executive, running one of the Bigger Companies in the world in terms of market value. How do you keep that from going to your head . Jean good question. Actually, i think i have a tough job. It is a very challenging job. When i first joined this company, i thought it was just a Technology Company and now i know it is about people, it is about safety. Last year, there were two terrible incidents that happened on our platform, two young girls got killed and it was devastating. For all of the senior executives, we sat together and thought to ourselves, what is the next step . This is much more challenging than competition coming in. David was the death because the driver did something wrong . Jean yeah. The driver was a criminal. David how do you screen those people in the future . Jean after that, now we launched more than 40 product features about safety. Facial recognition, itinerary sharing. So there are 40 of them. But the challenge part is not about how committed we can be for safety, there are a lot of dilemmas that i cant ask Data Scientist for an answer to. Its a social problem. One dilemma we face, for example, is do we allow drivers to reject drunk passengers . Because there are a lot of internal conflicts from drunk passengers, and they sometimes assault drivers. Drivers complain to us, hundreds of drivers complained to us daily, saying can we reject this drunk passenger . Do we allow it or not . So we put up a nationwide consultation form and asked for feedback. 80 think we should. It surprised us because our original concern was if we let that happen, what if something bad happened to the drunk passenger . So what we do not encourage is a drunk passenger to ride by themselves, they have to have a sober friend. David how do you make sure the driver isnt drunk . How do you make sure . Jean we have the drivers cell phone, so if they drive dangerously, speed driving, hard brake, hard return, we test immediately. Before he can pick up others, we would do facial recognition and there are phone calls if we see anything random. David in the United States, there is a lot of discussion about whether women are allowed to get senior positions in companies, and very few fortune 500 companies have ceos as women. Is it easier in china for a woman to be ceo of a company or harder . Jean as a ceo, most times you are not likable. I think there is a Glass Ceiling everywhere, but i think in china, its already a very encouraging work environment. At didi, we have a Womens Network we launched four years ago. The key is to encourage women to plan their career for the next 30 years. When you were young, you must have planned your career for the next 30 years. But it is a challenge for young girls to say what i want to do for the next 30 years, because they feel their life will pause when they have kids and get married. We want to make sure our employees feel they are empowered. Thats why we encourage a lot of working from home, we encourage a lot of culture like that. A young mom can work from home one day a week. David you have three young kids. Do you work from home one day a week . Jean i cant do that, but my kids are relatively big, 10 and nine. David are they impressed with your job or they dont really know how powerful you are in the Business World . Jean they know, but they dont think of me as powerful. They think mom has a lot of problems because i do discuss with them my work issues. In my view, the younger generation, generation z, they have more access to information than we do. So i think that they have very independent views. David for many women in china and elsewhere, but certainly china, you are a role model. How do you fulfill that role . Do you speak to groups, tell women how to advance . How do take on that responsability . Jean first of all, i think we are all running and growing. I would not consider myself a role model, but i would consider myself someone who loves to share my own life experience. I have also experienced ups and downs personally and professionally. I think the best way is to share your life story without really telling people what to do. People will get inspired. David your father is a very prominent person in the chinese Business World and global Business World, lenovo is a company he basically built. Does he give you advice . Jean one piece of advice i got that benefited me for my whole life, he always said life is supposed to be hard. When we had our hiccups and the incidents, a lot of time it is frustrating, if you are helpless, like what happened last year. But i always remember my father telling me that life is supposed to be hard. I think that makes me more resilient and stronger. David what would you say you are most proud of having achieved as the president of didi . Jean for the company, i am most proud we are providing 10 billion trips per year and serving all different types of need. We are creating income for tens of millions of drivers. Personally what makes me proud is we have built a team with resilience and commitment, and people view this as the right thing to do. Beyond the routine checkups. Beyond the notsoroutine cases. Comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. All working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gigspeed network. Because beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. To do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. David her father played pro basketball for the pistons, but it was her mother who was the competitive one, and her Seven Brothers and sisters taught her to be both strong and to work as a team. Recruited for lacrosse for lehigh, she walked on in basketball and became captain of a championship team. Cathy engelbert took her business degree, where she worked hard while raising a family. She quit once but over 18 years, she worked her way up to be the first female ceo of the largest professional service firm in the world, responsible for over 300,000 professionals worldwide. Now, she is taking on a new challenge, as the first female