I countered that established players like General Motors Co., which operates its own ride-hailing and -sharing service Maven and invested $500 million in Uber competitor Lyft, could squeeze Uber out of the market if it so chose because it's far easier for them to re-create Uber's products than the other way around. That automakers would, and maybe should, win the battle for mobility supremacy. Manufacturing, after all, will continue to play a major role in how people move even if car ownership is outmoded.

A few laughs and Detroit vs. California jabs later, we agreed to disagree and enjoyed our seaweed salad. But the conversation highlighted the differences Detroit and Silicon Valley are struggling to overcome as the technology and automotive industries become increasingly interdependent.

A key difference: Yee and Sarver view Uber's financial losses as a secondary consideration to its potential, the antithesis of Detroit's hyper-focus on profits. The drive for growth at the expense of profitability has, of course, at times brought the auto industry to its knees.

Pawl sees such conversations, or arguments, as critical to his mission; creating awareness that Detroit and Silicon Valley are different but together are forging the future of the mobility business.

"There hasn't been a lot of auto-based venture capital spending in Michigan," Pawl said Wednesday at the Techstars Mobility Demo Day preview, which hosted the Silicon Valley cohort. "Detroit is now focused on the future, not the past, and we want everyone to know that. Why can't we, as a state, serve as that conduit (to get more investment)?"

The state knows it needs Silicon Valley. Right now, the popular perspective is that it is leading the pack toward mobility. California's techtropolis is leading, as the bleeding edge. Just as Uber can't rectify its balance sheet, electric-vehicle darling Tesla Motors is fumbling its attempt at mass production — the California automaker continues to miss production critical deadlines for rollout of its Model 3.

Liz Tariq, head of brand and communications for Sherpa Capital and partner at Sherpa Foundry, which connects corporate members to startups, is helping Pawl and the MEDC connect to Silicon Valley. The state contracted Sherpa to make those connections. It's fortuitous that Tariq is now a Detroiter. She moved to Detroit from Silicon Valley in January after her husband, Musa Tariq, left Apple to become the chief brand officer for Ford.

"The Valley has a much higher tolerance for risk and failure; plus you have the density of talent and capital. But here, you have hundreds of years of domain expertise and manufacturing infrastructure that the Valley can't touch," she said. "Because auto is king here and in the Valley tech is king, that causes a really interesting tension in this sort of self-driving arms race we are living in. The bottom line is that no one knows exactly how this is all going to play out, but so much good can come just from getting people around a table and outside of their respective echo chambers to debate this stuff and hear a different perspective."

The new perspective, particularly from California, is that Detroit must participate in the mobility debate.

"There's a relatively new recognition that not all great ideas come from Silicon Valley," said Steve Parkis, who grew up in Battle Creek and later became an executive at Disney Co. before becoming an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Silicon Valley's Playground Digital.

James Schwyn, CTO at Troy-based Valeo North America, attended several of the events with the investor faction.

"We're all pursuing tech," Schwyn said at the Techstars event. "They have a much different approach to business, but we have to find ways to stay connected, to not be isolated from what we can offer each other. Exploring these ideas is the only way we'll all succeed."

Schwyn's right about collaboration. It's necessary. The California investors will make their money. Some of their investments will be home runs, others flops. But, ultimately, Silicon Valley will succumb to the longstanding manufacturing prowess and financial discipline of Detroit's legacy automakers.

In 50 years, when autonomous driving and mobility are no longer buzzwords, the world will probably have forgotten about Uber. GM and Ford will be different companies, but profitable ones.

Or maybe I'll eat my words with a side of seaweed salad.