90% Market Share in 6 Months: The Wild Ride of Running Uber at 24

I was recently a guest on Cassidy Warren's podcast, For Your Own Good, and the conversation went so long and covered so much that I wanted to bring it here too. This is part one of a three-part series pulled from that interview, and it goes all the way back to when I was 24 years old, joining Uber and getting handed the Raleigh, North Carolina market.My job was simple to say and brutal to execute: beat Lyft. We launched on the exact same day, with basically the same product, and six months later we had 90% market share. I walk through exactly how that happened, the five-mile launch radius, the obsession with five-minute ETAs, the live recruiting with a backpack full of iPhones and cash incentives, and the sheer amount of experimentation inside a very tight discipline.I also get into launching Uber Eats in Miami from scratch in six weeks, saying no to an entire city team who wanted a flashy launch party, and instead building the actual marketplace first. Restaurants, eaters, couriers, in that order. This is what it looks like to own a market as if it's your own company before you actually know what you're doing, and to do it anyway.Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.coConnect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/00:00 Intro and episode setup00:46 Uber at 24, goal to beat Lyft01:27 Uber Eats Miami preview02:01 90% market share explained02:41 Early Uber culture, Wild West03:36 Launch day vs Lyft in Raleigh04:19 Five mile radius strategy04:58 Six months later, 90% share05:43 Focusing on one KPI06:33 Experimentation within discipline06:58 Incentive experiments explained07:29 Managing events and driver supply08:12 Pitching drivers on gig economy09:07 Background checks and security09:52 Signing up riders at UNC10:54 Organic growth over paid ads11:41 Who do you trust, then and now12:41 Comparing to AI hype today13:52 Communicating with skeptical users14:30 Answering 500 driver emails weekly15:52 Building a text expander system16:28 Transition to launching Uber Eats17:14 Getting picked for Uber Eats launch18:09 Six week launch challenge in Miami19:06 Three sided marketplace explained19:36 Metrics needed to launch20:07 Killing the launch party idea21:05 Biggest Uber Eats launch to date22:10 Becoming a leader under pressure23:07 Jumping in wherever needed24:03 Conflict on a commission team25:04 Offered the Miami GM role26:08 Reflecting on ownership mindset27:23 Talking to restaurant partners28:37 Explaining the restaurant pitch29:10 Ghost kitchens and on demand lunch31:02 Why the restaurant model failed32:20 DoorDash winning on volume33:12 Backpack full of iPhones story34:49 Copying competitor features35:23 Why Uber tracked Lyft so closely36:26 Live dashboards and supply scores37:39 Why lost riders rarely return38:18 Lesson on owner over optimization39:32 Door to door restaurant signups40:04 Closing and part two preview