Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196

When I got back to Atlanta to launch Uber, it was really about building the operation from scratch. You know, while most drivers hadn't heard of Uber and were a little bit skeptical, they were willing to give us a shot because it didn't cost them anything to join. And for the first two or three weeks of the city, dude, I was nervous. Zero out of 10 cars utilized, one out of 10, two out of 10. And then one Friday night, I was out. You know, I'm sitting next to some other guys that are in different cities and they're like, "It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen." And within, like, 10-minute span, we went from, like, two out of 10 cars utilized to, like, all 10 cars utilized and, like, 100 people opening the app. And it just totally flipped. And from that point forward, we just needed more cars.

Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) Scott, man, I am so excited for this. They- I said to you before, I'm a fanboy of your Twitter threads. I think they are fantastic. So first, thank you so much for joining me today, man.

Thanks, Harry. Excited to be here.

Now, I would love to start just with a little bit of context before we dive into the incredible stories that are coming. Uh, tell me, how did you make your way into the world of growth to join Uber, I believe, as employee number 99?

Harry, it's a crazy story. So I finished up school in 2011 and when I finished up school, there were really only two things that people did. They either went to investment banking or they went to consulting. I chose consulting. And very early on, I realized that it wasn't for me. Um, probably on like week three. But the silver lining of the experience was on the weekends, I could go out and fly to San Francisco, as long I was back- as long as I was back at the client site on Monday morning. So this was 2011, 2012 and, you know, I was going out and meeting companies like Airbnb and Square fairly early, along with like 50 other companies, but nothing really clicked, um, until I was in Chicago one night. I was trying to get to a work dinner and I was trying to find a taxi. It was raining. And I had heard about this app where if you press the button, you could get a ride. So I download the app and two minutes later, my first Uber showed up. It was an Escalade and I was immediately in love. Absolutely magical experience. So that night, uh, I was working on a deck pretty late at night, probably wrapped around midnight or 1:00 AM, and had this Jerry Maguire moment where I was like, "Huh, I need to be a part of this Uber thing. What's the most, like, simple thing to do?" So I decided to email travis@uber.com, not thinking that I would hear anything. And I got an email back and, you know, over the next few weeks, uh, I got to know the team. Eventually, uh, took an analytics test, took a creative test, and then flew out to meet the team probably a couple of weeks later. And because I was so young when I got in the room, I said, "Don't worry guys, I'm old enough." They seemed to think that was really funny. I was 23 and didn't know a- anything. But they sent me back to Atlanta to launch Uber's, uh, roughly 10th city as employee number 99.