🚖Uber in 1 minute

How Uber got its first 1000 customers

Company: Uber

First 1000 Strategy:💬 Word of mouth

Finding customers exactly when they need the product (i.e when they’re suffering)

Word of mouth is usually used as a catch-all-term for organic reach. Just like network effects, word of mouth can power exponential growth to your company (more people use it, more people talk about it, more likely you are to try out the app). But people only talk about your company, when your product hits a certain “wow factor.” The deeper the pain the user experience, the lower the threshold for them to be “wowed” Uber understood that, so when Travis went out to get his first customers, he wanted to hit people at exactly the moment they experience that pain of getting a cab. He launched a street team that camped outside crowded events like south by south west, crowded train stations at peak hours, local tech events. The street team gave out free rides to everyone (then they moved to discounted rides).

Wow factors

1. Press a button to get a cab in 5 minutes

2. when you are at an event and its impossible to hail a taxi

3. and its for free btw

Any normal Reaction => WOW I FUCKING LOVE THIS….(and then you tell your friends).

This is very different than if the first time you used the product was on a perfect Sunday at 2pm where there was a line of cabs waiting outside the mall to pick up customers and you decided to give Uber a try, had to wait 5 minutes for the car to arrive and pay X2 as much as you would.

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See you next Sunday 😉,
Ali Abouelatta

P.S: What do u think of the new format? Do you prefer long stories or short (<200 words) ones? Hit reply and let me know (Nothing I love more than incorporating your feedback into the newsletter.)