Assertion Supported
Didi and the Chinese Government Had Full Access to Uber's Data
“It became very clear that everyone had all our data. Didi knew everything we were doing whereas, like, Lyft and Uber always knew what each other were doing, because we were watching each other, we're friends, things like that, but, like, we never had each othe…”
Insight
Full Marketing Channel Attribution and Consistent CAC Metrics Are Impossible
“I agree. I think it's bullshit. I think it's a really, as, like, a, the expectation that it's going to be a consistent metric across channels, and having, like, a full view of everything that could be included in that is, is impossible. Like, it's not, Unlikel…”
Insight
Founders Should Hire Growth Teams Only After Achieving Organic Growth
“I think it's hiring because they need growth, rather than hiring because they have growth.”
Insight
Most Companies Do Not Need a Standalone Growth Team
“Generally speaking, I actually don't think most companies need a growth team. Like, growth, again, should be infused throughout the business.”
Disclosure
Uber Dissolved Its Centralized Growth Team Prior to Grenier's Departure
“So like we actually, all of those functions within the growth team eventually actually merged back into the core business to where by the time I left, we actually didn't have a centralized growth team anymore.”
Assertion Supported
Uber Built Its Growth Team by Hiring Cross-Functional Leaders Simultaneously
“When we built growth at Uber, like we infused an entire team In one fell swoop, right? Like, and Ed was hired, and he hired myself, a head of product, a head of engineering, a head of design head of analytics.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber Never Solved How to Allocate LTV Between Drivers and Riders
“And there's like, this is one of those challenges that like we've had, we had like dozens of data scientists working with it and we never got a great answer to it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Uber Burned Budget Shifting Driver Ads From Earnings to Flexibility
“We're like, great, we need to, like, shift all of our messaging away from dollars to flexibility, and we spent a ton of money on that type of messaging, and then it just burnt, right? Like, it was just, like, no one clicked, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Paid Acquisition Drove 40% to 50% of Uber's Global Growth
“When we were doing a billion dollars, that included China, and that was more than 50%, like paid drove a ton of our growth in China. And so, and it was like, it was nonsense. It was just wild. And so, like, let's say six, seven hundred million dollars on, like…”
Insight
Most Growth Struggles Stem From Product-Market Fit, Not Missing Channels
“More often than not, I find that like most of the company's problems aren't That they haven't found the channel that's gonna work for them. It's actually that they don't have product market fit, or that they're pointing the wrong direction, or they're too narr…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2028
TikTok Will Not Be Banned Due to Deep Youth Adoption
“Oh, I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I think that there's too much of a single generation that uses that app that would go crazy if it disappeared.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Most Masterclass Customers Come From Brand Marketing, Not Talent Channels
“It was pretty mixed. I would say the majority still comes from Masterclass first.”
Insight
Benchmark Growth Role Compensation Against Product Management, Not Marketing
“Yeah I mean, I think your product bands are usually a really good place to start. They, unlike the performance growth marketing side of things, you tend to have, like, the good people in that market have a lot more leverage and so I think product bands tend to…”
Assertion Supported
Uber Spent $1 Billion Per Year on Growth Marketing
“I mean, we were spending a billion dollars a year at one point.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lambda School Chat Launch Triggered Backlash After Bypassing Customer Service
“At Lambda School, we implemented a new, like, chat opportunity for our students, and we didn't loop in customer service, and customer service had, like, an entirely different chat element. And so it just, like, caused a ton of backlash, like, across the compan…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Local Uber Teams Ran Facebook Ads on 200 Personal Credit Cards
“At any given time, there were probably, like, 200 personal credit cards buying ads on Facebook, and it used to drive me mad, and, like, initially I went out with, like, a very, like, firm grip on, like, you can't do that, like, stop doing that, like, we have i…”
Insight
Paid Channels Should Target 30% of Customer Acquisition Mix
“I usually tell people 30% tells me that you're not dependent on paid, and it tells me that you're doing it enough To have like a need to keep refining and improving it, being relevant in the moment and those types of things.”
Assertion Supported
Ed Baker Imported Facebook's Growth Organizational Structure to Uber
“Uber was really the first place that we called it growth, right? I was hired by Ed Baker. He brought over the kind of Facebook structure that they had built at Facebook.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hotel Tonight Was Facebook's First Mobile Ads Customer
“I was working with the Facebook product team and was the first customer to use mobile ads on, on Facebook.”
Assertion Partly supported
Uber Expanded From 12 to Over 1,000 Cities During Grenier's Tenure
“Yeah, so, you know, I joined Uber, we had about a dozen cities, and when I left, we had probably a thousand plus cities, or, you know, the idea of cities kind of disappeared at some point.”
Assertion Supported
Uber Used Completed Trips as Its Core North Star Metric
“The, like, trips was our metric, because it's like, okay, well, a trip can't happen without a rider and a driver, and so if trips slow down, it forces us to go into the weeds and say, like, well, why aren't they happening?”
Disclosure
Lambda School Spent Around $100,000 Per Month on Marketing
“So we weren't, we were spending maybe like a hundred grand a month, right?”
