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Aug 2024
41m 42s

20Growth: Uber's Expansion Playbook for ...

Harry Stebbings
About this episode

Scott Gorlick was employee #99 at Uber. Over 6 years, Scott built Uber in Atlanta and helped the company scale from 10 cities to $10B in revenue. Scott is also a prolific angel investor having written early checks into Lime and Standard Cognition to name a few.

In Today's Episode with Scott Gorlick We Discuss:

1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers

  • How did Uber acquire 1M drivers? What was the playbook?
  • What worked? What did not work?
  • How much of a role did driver-to-driver referral payments have in driver acquisition?
  • What did Lyft do on the driver acquisition side that Uber should have done?
  • What did the retention look like for drivers on a 30, 60 and 90 day period?

2. The City Expansion Playbook:

  • What was the expansion playbook that Uber used for new cities?
  • What worked in ramping demand in a new city? What did not work?
  • How much of a role did promotions and discounting play? Lessons from them?
  • Why did Uber often let Lyft launch in a new market first? What was the benefit of this?
  • How did Scott see the maturation rate change with new markets opening? How fast did each subsequent market reach profitability?

3. Travis Kalanick and What Uber Could Have Been:

  • How would Uber be different today if Travis was still in charge?
  • What are the biggest mistakes that Dara has made with their M&A strategy?
  • What are some of Scott's biggest leadership lessons from working with Travis?
  • How did Travis create such strong followership and cult around him?
  • What were the single biggest management mistakes made by Travis?

 

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