On this day 2 years ago, China’s ride-hailing industry experienced a major turning point - Didi purchased Uber’s China operations and Uber took a 20% stake in Didi. So far Uber has expanded in more than 449 cities and 66 countries. Today, many companies are still trying to elbow into this crowded industry.

In this episode, we are lucky to have Sam Gellman as our guest, the first international Uber employee that took care of the company’s expansion in Asia and China. Sam shared his past experience in redesigning Uber’s playbook to adjust to China’s unique ecosystem, channels for communication and user acquisition. Despite knowing only a bit of Chinese, Sam was assigned to create a Chinese name for Uber. Fortunately, the Chinese name 优步 turned out to be one of the most well-received foreign company names. As the person who worked on market localization for Uber, Sam also shared how they took the company from nothing to a massive exit within 3 years.