Ask HN: How did Uber acquire its first customers?

[theforceawakens]

1. In many talks Travis K talks about picking up the phone and dialing for dollars/calling up SF limo companies. But what did he tell them? Why did 3 of the 10 companies he called, (as per Travis) show interest in his venture? (AFIK, that seeded the start of Uber. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

2. How did they specifically convince Riders to join their platform? (I somehow feel this was the easy part, as Travis had Sacca and other SV influencers as part of his close buddy network..and the money through Red Swoosh's acq.)

Very curious to understand the strategies they had in place, to solve the Chicken and Egg problem initially.

Thanks!

[samstave]

OK I have been an uber member since the day they were born, effectively... How was i converted?

I lived in the presidio in SF - then later I lived upper-market/twin peaks.

the cabs wouldnt fucking show up, so I was calling ALL cab companies - then they were sharing dispatch info and I was banned from calling them. I made personal relationships with black car-drivers (the lincoln towncars that are "uber black") and would call them when I needed to get a ride. I paid a premium for that - but ultimately they told me about Uber.

I HATE SF taxi service and I jumped ship and havent looked back since.

I spend A LOT on uber.... but for me (as I dont have a car and I hate driving) It is wonderful and has been great since I joined.

The only reason I dont use Lyft is that they dont work with my bank for payment.

While I think the CEO of Uber is rather lame, and a good friend said it was the worst place hes ever worked (ops guy) I love the service.... and for that reason I stay.

[eli36]

in a nutshell the competition to uber in SF was so dire, as to be laughable.

It's weird I have lived in UK and Australia and never a problem getting a cab to show up. Nonetheless uber seems to be getting popular in Sydney due to the cost savings and ability to use an app.

[theforceawakens]

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing your personal story!

[askafriend]

Why did your friend say working there was horrible?

[sajid]

https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/uber

[theforceawakens]

Great link. Thanks so much. But it doesn't really talk about Travis' tactics to convince the initial limo companies to join his venture. Looking for a deeper insight. It is so hard to convince someone / incumbents, to join a platform where they might fear competition. Usually they don't look to grow, they look to not die. IMO.

[samstave]

existing black car drivers were always open to randoms asking them for rides... and then haggling over a price.

They likely saw the opportunity of "how 'bout an app for that, with a set price" as haggling with the black car drivers sucked.

Once you found one you liked... you would stick with that driver and call them. But the thing is that they werent always available when you needed them, or you didnt call them enough... so its a pretty easy stretch for why they would want to do this. Plus everyone bitches about taxis and they all knew it was an industry to be disrupted "What??? Youre not requiring me to get a medallion!!!???" - no brainer for them.

[theforceawakens]

Great insight (especially regarding the "no need for a medallion" pitch to drivers, but I feel that would have come later during growth stages)! Thanks.

One question - When Uber first launched (think in early 2009), smart phones were not so ubiquitous (right?) especially for Black Car drivers. I'm just wondering if some guy selling them on an App at that time, would have worked. I just feel there was something more to it. May be "cheat" that side of the game (offer money to the Black Car drivers to join the App OR buy black cars and hire drivers maybe. Travis and Garrett were millionaires then already), since they knew there was demand anyways, knowing SF was a tech town and would be an easy sell to techies.

What are your thoughts? Am I making sense?

P.S: Would be awesome to get some insider insight into this.

[samstave]

You may think that smartphones (like iphones) were not popular at that time - but they were - they fucking EXPLODED in popularity.

I worked as Dir of OPs for 'MobileComplete' at the time where we reverse engineered mobile phones for devs to test their apps.

The DAY that the iphone came out we had many, this guy Colin reverse engineered the phone to make it available on our platform -- this was ~2007... I built the very first healthcare app for the iphone in 2008 where people thought "this wont be a thing - the average age of nurses is ~58..." -- YC company Dr Chrono basically succeeded in what I was doing when the first iPhones came out... pre iPad...

Basically I was trying to push HL7 integration to healthcare apps onto ipod touch devices (again because ipads didnt exist) so we built an appliance which would do this over ESB and provide access via iphone/ipod touch to various med systems.

(we applied to YC but were rejected)

anyway...

Now look at companies like AllScripts etc... and even Epic...

Anyway - smartphone apps had a meteoric rise (which is a weird statement given that meteors literally only fall) -- but yeah - we all knew this shit was going to take off.

[nostrademons]

It was very much unevenly distributed. I worked in Boston when the iPhone came out and nobody I knew had one - hell, people were still excited about their Razrs and LG flip phones. I moved to Silicon Valley for Google in 2009, and all my coworkers had a G1, because the company had given them out for Christmas the previous month. When I finally got my G1, I was like "I don't really see the point of it, other than looking up facts on Wikipedia" and one of my coworkers was like "Dude, once you get used to it, you will never want to go back. It's just so useful." Even as late as Dec 2009 (2.5 years after the iPhone came out), I went back for Christmas and all of my relatives were amazed that my phone could do voice recognition and turn-by-turn navigation. None of them had a smartphone...hell, my mom finally jumped on the iPhone bandwagon last year.

[theforceawakens]

Good to know! Thanks.

I may have observed this from a non-SF angle, but based on my own experience health, public and manufacturing verticals have the slowest rate of tech adoption. Partly due to aging staff and bucket loads of regulations.