Zeid Hreish

It’s been almost seven years, and I still get asked this. 

Maybe because everything after Uber worked out so well.

It’s a great question the kind that makes you pause, take a breath, and really think. Because leaving at your peak isn’t the obvious move.

Uber was a rocket ship. I was one of the first in MENA, launching city after city, moving millions of people, and onboarding hundreds of thousands of drivers. It was fast, chaotic, and relentless. Everything was on fire, all the time.

There was a point where I could land in a city, turn on Uber, and within hours, I’d be in a car with a driver who had no idea I worked at Uber, telling me how I should use Uber more. That’s when I knew we had won.

Most people left after a year or two — I stayed for nearly five years (basically an eternity in Uber time). I saw the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

So why leave?

Because after five years of hypergrowth, I had seen every kind of problem, solved them at scale, and built something massive. I had pressed every button. It was time to press reset and build again.

Sometimes the best decision you can make is to press reset.

Uber was one of the best experiences of my life. But growth isn’t about holding on to the past — it’s about building what’s next. And that’s exactly what I did.

Starting is exciting. Scaling is brutal.

Everyone idolizes the zero-to-one journey—the founders, the first hires, the garage-to-Unicorn story. But what about the companies that go from one to 100? What about the ones that have to scale across regions, cultures, and entirely different regulatory landscapes?

I learned this firsthand at Uber.

When Uber expanded into new markets, it wasn’t just about adding more users or hiring more people—it was about rebuilding from scratch every single time. What worked in one city didn’t always work in another. The growth playbook from San Francisco? Useless in Dubai or Riyadh. The drivers, the riders, the government policies—every market was a different puzzle.

The Hard Realities of Scaling

Playbooks Don’t Travel Well
Companies love to document processes and best practices—what works, what doesn’t, what to replicate. But when you’re scaling globally, a single playbook can’t be copy-pasted from one market to another.

• In San Francisco, Uber was a disruptor breaking into a tech-savvy, innovation-driven city.

• In Dubai, limousine has to be 30% more expensive than taxi and regulators were a critical piece of the puzzle.

• In Saudi Arabia, cultural norms dictated entirely different onboarding strategies for Saudi drivers.

What worked in one place was irrelevant, sometimes even harmful, in another. Every new market meant starting over—adapting everything from pricing models to marketing, driver acquisition strategies to customer expectations.

Early Hires Must Evolve—or Step Aside
When companies start, they hire generalists—people who can wear multiple hats, solve problems creatively, and figure things out on the fly. But scaling demands execution-driven specialists.

• The people who built the first version of the product may not be the best ones to optimize it at scale.

• Early managers who thrived in chaos sometimes struggled when systems needed to be structured.

• Those who resisted change slowed the company down.

At Uber, those who didn’t evolve with the company’s needs were outpaced by those who could. It wasn’t personal—it was the brutal reality of hypergrowth.

Processes Either Accelerate Growth or Kill It
At a certain stage, startups realize they need processes. But there’s a fine line between process and bureaucracy.

• Too few processes? Teams waste time reinventing the wheel.

• Too many? They become roadblocks instead of enablers.

Uber had to master the art of fast, adaptable processes. The best ones weren’t rigid—they evolved as fast as the company did. Whether it was city launches, compliance approvals, or customer support escalations, speed mattered.

The #1 Reason Startups Fail: They Can’t Scale

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t start. They fail because they can’t scale.

Scaling isn’t just about growing—it’s about constantly rebuilding at a larger and larger scale. It’s about moving from the chaotic, do-it-all stage to a structured, efficient, high-performance machine—without losing agility in the process.

At Uber, we moved fast. Really fast. We broke things, fixed them, and adapted—because in hypergrowth, adaptation isn’t an option. It’s survival.

The difference between breakout success and a slow death? Speed of adaptation.

Comment below with the toughest scaling challenge you’ve faced—I'll share my thoughts on how to tackle it!

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