Deutschland
General Manager, Rides, Germany — Uber, 2015 to 2016, based in Berlin. His first general-manager role, and it began at the peak of the German taxi conflict, with the company’s licence to operate genuinely in question.
The turnaround
Uber Germany in 2015 had two problems at once. The unit economics were roughly minus 90%, and the public argument was being lost: the company read as an aggressor against a regulated trade. He was the first person to hold the country brief end to end.
The commercial unlock was structural rather than motivational. He pivoted the supply model away from recruiting individual drivers and toward fleet partnerships, signing operators with a thousand to three thousand cars each. That, plus an end-to-end operational restructuring, took the business from roughly $5M to $35M in annual run rate and moved unit economics to break-even. Uber’s German business today is worth more than $1.5B.
The argument in public
The second half of the job was the German business press, the taxi trade and transport regulators. His line throughout was that Uber was not trying to replace taxis and that the rules should be modernised rather than abolished. Under his tenure Uber withdrew UberX from Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt rather than fight every front at once, and stayed in the market.
“Wir können und wollen Taxis nicht verdrängen.”
“We cannot and do not want to displace taxis.”
Christian Freese — HORIZONT, 2 July 2015
On the French taxi protests of the same summer, and on what he thought the German debate should not become:
“Gewalt gegen Menschen und Dinge hat in einer Diskussion überhaupt nichts zu suchen.”
“Violence against people or property has no place whatsoever in a debate.”
Christian Freese — HORIZONT, 2 July 2015
And on the claims made about Uber drivers at the time:
“Zum Beispiel, dass unsere Fahrer keine Steuern bezahlen würden, was natürlich Unsinn ist.”
“For instance, that our drivers supposedly pay no tax, which is of course nonsense.”
Christian Freese — WirtschaftsWoche, 16 December 2015
German coverage from this period is the deepest on-the-record archive of his thinking as an operator, which is why it is collected here in the original rather than summarised away.
On the record
- „Wir haben nicht vor, Tabula rasa zu machen“ Long interview on the taxi conflict, regulation and Uber’s German model.
- „Wir wollen kein Taxischreck sein“ Second interview, on positioning Uber against the taxi trade.
- „Die Taxi-Innung will keinen neuen Wettbewerber“ On licensing rules, the UberX withdrawal, and misconceptions about drivers.
- „Wir müssen einfach den besseren Service anbieten“ On competing on service rather than on price or lobbying.
- Uber-Deutschland-Chef Christian Freese Profile and interview from the German startup press.
- Uber wechselt Deutschlandchef aus Handover notice at the end of his Germany tenure.
- Von Vossberg nach New York Hometown profile from the Oldenburg region. Paywalled.