Here’s the inside story of how Uber accidentally became the world’s largest buyer of iPhones...
1/ To get drivers on the road, we needed iPhones.
So every city ordered hundreds of phones at a time from HQ in a Google Form.
When the phones came, we’d unbox & set up each one.
It was manual, took hours & stretched deep into the night.
But it worked.
Jul 10, 2024 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
In 2012, I joined Uber as employee #99.
Our biggest challenge? Finding drivers.
Here’s how we signed up the first 1M drivers at Uber:
1/ We cold called.
When we launched a new market, we’d go to Yelp and make a spreadsheet with every limo company in the city.
Then, we’d hit the phones.
Some drivers said no, but most were interested enough to take a meeting.
May 21, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
In 6 years, we grew Uber from 10 cities to $10B in revenue.
How’d we grow so fast? We hired local teams in every city.
This was our playbook:
1/ Every city started with 3 people in a tiny room.
A GM as the CEO.
An Operations Manager who worked with drivers.
And a Community Manager to grow ridership.
May 2, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Today, Uber is a $140B company with more than 6 million drivers.
But in the early days, we had to overcome the same chicken and egg problem many startups face:
Without drivers ➡️ riders couldn’t get a car
And without riders ➡️drivers couldn’t make $
Here’s how we solved it:
1/ When we launched a new city, we didn’t have 100s of people requesting rides on Day 1.
But we had a few.
Since we wanted riders to see cars on the road 24/7, we paid drivers $30/hr to be online even if Uber wasn’t busy.
Aug 26, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
A question I get frequently:
Why did Uber open hundreds of offices in cities around the world?
Some thoughts on why this worked for Uber and why I think local ops teams can be a massive advantage for high-growth startups 👇👇👇
What did Uber city teams look like?
Every city started w 3 people:
- General Manager - the CEO of the city (most had MBA)
- Ops Manager to own the driver side (ex-bankers, consultants)
- Community Manager to own the rider side (BD, mktg)
As the city grew, so would the team.
Aug 17, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
In 2 years, Uber went from being in just a few cities to more than 100.
How did Uber grow so quickly? We recruited hundreds of thousands of drivers.
I get asked a lot about how we did it, so here are some lessons that might be helpful to other startups 👇👇👇
In any marketplace, one of the most important things you have to do is solve the chicken and egg problem. For Uber, that meant finding the right balance of drivers and riders.
