Richmond Dinh argues that people will pay for convenience above almost everything else. Uber didn't win by being cheaper or faster, but by eliminating friction: no hailing, no waiting, no cash, no billing. The company sold laziness, and that's what made it magical.
Chapters
In the history of humanity, there's two things that people want time and time again, and the first thing they want is convenience. If we are in the business of selling laziness, we will make a ton of money because the human mind just wants to do one thing, and that's to conserve energy and find the path of least resistance. So if you sell convenience and help people become lazier, you will make a lot of money. Uber crushed the taxi industry, not because it was cheaper, not because they're faster, but because when they removed the one process in the whole pathway to catching a taxi, meaning that, remember you had to catch a taxi? You had to wave a taxi down, you have to wait for them, but worst of all, when you got in, when they dropped you off, they would double park and you have to pull out your wallet and pay cash because if you pay by credit card, they'll charge you exorbitant fees. And you're waiting there, the car behind you is beeping, and the whole process took about 2 or 3 minutes, and that was very, very inconvenient. And when Uber removed that whole process because you could just order on an app, which made it easy, but more importantly, when, if you remember catching your first Uber, they turned up to your home or your office and you got in the Uber, and when you got off, you didn't have to pay. 'cause the app did it all for you. And it was this magical moment where you thought, "Wow, this is awesome." Because what they did was they sold you convenience.
