Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook

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?