What Uber Has Learned About Expansion, Hurdles and Growing Pains…

For entrepreneurs, the story of Uber is a fairytale. Five years ago, the ridesharing startup launched in San Francisco. Today, it operates in 300 cities in 58 countries and is valued at about $50 billion.

That kind of growth is unequivocally amazing. But it comes with serious hurdles, especially for a startup in an industry that demands new rules and regulations.

Earlier this summer, I had a chance to sit down with Uber’s East Coast general manager, Meghan Verena Joyce, at the entrepreneurship conference 36|86 in Nashville. Joyce explained how Uber knows when it is time to launch in a new market, how the company manages the constant push to get lawmakers to adopt ridesharing regulation and what its biggest pain points have been.

Joyce also spoke about what it takes to get hesitant potential customers to hail a ride with their smartphone and hop in a stranger’s car.

Check out the video above.

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Catherine Clifford

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbi…

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