I thought Uber’s pitch was interesting because they make a pretty good case for how inefficient the taxi industry is, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that this meant people would want to use UberCab. Just because people dislike waiting for taxis doesn’t necessarily mean they’d be willing to pay more for a better experience. I would’ve liked to see more evidence of how often people faced these problems and whether they were actually willing to pay to solve them.
I also liked how they approached market sizing. Instead of trying to predict demand for a completely new service, they started with how much people were already spending on taxis and car services. I thought that was a smart way to make the opportunity seem more real. But since UberCab was initially targeting a smaller group of people who could afford a premium service, I wonder how much of that market they could actually reach.
Another thing I liked was that they included different scenarios for how big the business could become. But I wish they’d explained the assumptions behind those numbers. For example, how many customers would they need in each city, and how often would those customers need to book a ride?
For our Sanity Check pitch, I think the market sizing approach is something worth borrowing. We could start by looking at what people already spend on the problem and then narrow it down to the customers we could realistically serve. I also think breaking our estimates into simple assumptions, like the number of potential customers and how often they’d use the product, would make our numbers much easier to explain and defend.
