Curious -- how did this extend to global markets such as EMEA and APAC? Granted there were legal challenges unique to each geo, but what didn't translate as well beyond the domestic home market?
Great question. From Day 1 at Uber, there were legal challenges everywhere. I would say that each city was 95% the same and 5% different.
I would say that regulatory and compliance are the areas that differed most significantly. Regs flared up at different times (London, Paris, Hong Kong to name a few) and could be around anything from licensing requirements to GDPR compliance
But the general ops strategy / best practices were very similar, no matter where you were in the world.
Fascinating rationale for the "city teams" rollout. What were the early thoughts on required minimum number of drivers in a new "launch city"? And what did you do?
In the earliest days when no one really knew about Uber, you didn’t need that many drivers to launch a city.
You may just have needed 6 to 10 drivers on 24/7 to show availability during the week and then ~30 during the weekend (Friday / Saturday nights were big).
As the city grew, you needed to add more cars quickly and you were never really in a situation where you had too many cars.
Curious -- how did this extend to global markets such as EMEA and APAC? Granted there were legal challenges unique to each geo, but what didn't translate as well beyond the domestic home market?
Hey Lauren -
Great question. From Day 1 at Uber, there were legal challenges everywhere. I would say that each city was 95% the same and 5% different.
I would say that regulatory and compliance are the areas that differed most significantly. Regs flared up at different times (London, Paris, Hong Kong to name a few) and could be around anything from licensing requirements to GDPR compliance
But the general ops strategy / best practices were very similar, no matter where you were in the world.
Fascinating rationale for the "city teams" rollout. What were the early thoughts on required minimum number of drivers in a new "launch city"? And what did you do?
Hey John,
In the earliest days when no one really knew about Uber, you didn’t need that many drivers to launch a city.
You may just have needed 6 to 10 drivers on 24/7 to show availability during the week and then ~30 during the weekend (Friday / Saturday nights were big).
As the city grew, you needed to add more cars quickly and you were never really in a situation where you had too many cars.
In terms of what we did to get supply, you may find this post interesting if you haven’t seen it yet! https://scottgorlick.substack.com/p/scaling?r=bulp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy