This is an interesting problem. To start, I’m going to assume that we are talking about Uber (share ride) users and not UberEats. Although both can go hand in hand, I think each play to attract users can be different. So for the sake of time and to pick a certain product, we will go with Uber’s main product — ride share. What is Uber? Uber is an app that connects you to a ride/driver to take you home, work, airport, or where ever you may choose within a range. We can break down two main users– the driver and the rider. For this practice, we will focus on increasing riders. We can also break down the type of riders that Uber can penetrate and get a bigger market share: 1. Corporate Users: This would be for companies to provide rides to workers or stay long for work 2. College Students: Self-explanatory– and want cheap rides close to or around campus 3. Elderly: This would be for elderly people who at above 55 years old and would need rides to/from hospitals paid for by their insurance I’m going to select college students because of a couple of factors: – Most universities/colleges already provide a share ride taxi or trams for students – Typically, riders are supposed to be 18 and over. Students tend to start university at 18 and we can dominate the market and get them to join Uber over other alternatives at an early age. – Students are price and time sensitive (just like Uber)! A couple of the pain points and reasons why this could be useful for students and university is that: – As a student, I don’t want to be walking home late from the library – As a student, trams don’t go close to where I live and I tend to have to walk 15 mins more – As a university, this might be a cheaper alternative than hiring our own drivers or trams to run Solutions: – Partner with universities/colleges to provide a wholesale package to be the main ride provider for students within a 2-mile radius–the university would pay for this product. – Sell students at the beginning of the year ride tickets– for example 10 rides within campus/$25 per work (numbers to be figured out) – Provide Students a discount within campus grounds– for example $1/per ride (I wish I had more solutions, but I’m blanking! Feel free to add!) Out of all these, I would partner with universities. The reason is that the main goal of this is to increase users. Although we aren’t talking about revenue/profits, we are able to utilize a business line of a university/college to increase users for the long-term play. If we are able to penetrate users and build that trust at an early age, those users will tend to rely on Uber for all their transportation needs outside of campus grounds. The way this would work is– we would get an approved EDU email list of active/current students, next we would send an invite to join Uber at the beginning of the year to use around campus. Pending on how the deal would be structured with universities, we wouldn’t charge the students. Rather, we would charge the universities as a replacement for their current trams/student transportation. Let’s assume that the average college/university is 5,000 students– 1k/per class (including grad school), we are looking at over 1k new users a year/per school (assuming all freshman don’t have Uber AND some grad students and transfer students entering already had it). A couple of drawbacks that I would be worried about is: – Not enough drivers to do demand – Drivers don’t like short rides because of low pay (maybe inventivize them) – Might only be good for schools with certain # of students, endowment, metropolitan location – Uber might lose money initially when getting these users– need to calculate CAC In terms of metrics, it’s pretty self-explanatory that the metric we would like is # of new users added (maybe at the beginning of the year), # of rides taken during the school year and after from users, and on the long-term engagement for users once graduated (just to track :)!) In summary, I think this would be the best way to penetrate new Uber users. There wouldn’t have to be a change for drivers. Technology wouldn’t have to be updated. Say hello to a couple of thousand new student users yearly! If you like the answer, check out website productmanagementexercises.com. There are over 200 product manager interview questions and answers there.