Ex-Uber employee shares how company ‘overcame the chicken and egg problem’: 3 key points

Scott Gorlick, who joined Uber as senior operations and logistics manager and later headed the company’s strategic projects, shared how the company “overcame the chicken and egg problem” that startups face. In a series of posts on X, he listed three key points that helped the company’s “growth flywheel” to “spin”.

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“Today, Uber is a $140B company with more than 6 million drivers,” wrote Gorlick on X.

He then shared the problem that Uber faced in the initial days: “Without drivers, riders couldn’t get a car. And without riders, drivers couldn’t make money.”

In the next few posts, Gorlick then shared how the company solved this problem. Since the company “didn’t have 100s of people requesting for rides on day one of their launch”, they “paid drivers $30/hr to be online”.

Gorlick also shared how the company built its customer base. “We’d put cars close to bars and restaurants where we thought people would be,” he added.

The former Uber employee also revealed the company’s strategy for spreading the word quickly and helping it grow. Gorlick said, “If a friend was riding with you who hadn’t tried Uber yet, we made it easy for you to refer them. Each of you would get $10 off your next ride. And your friends would refer their friends.”

“From my time scaling Uber, I’ve seen that the right people working on the right thing at the right time can change the world. Every startup is different, but the tactics we used to grow can be applied at other companies,” he concluded.

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Many on social media reacted to Gorlick’s thread on Uber. An individual said, “You’ve no idea how valuable this information is. Thank you so much for sharing. Im a solo founder building a real estate marketplace for my country and like all young marketplaces, its going through the chicken and the egg problem.”

“I remember those days. Travelling for work, realising I could use Uber in that city was like magic,” added another.

A third commented, “So cool to get this perspective.”

“I always wondered about this, actually! Thanks for the insight,” expressed a fourth.