City-by-City Cold Start: Simulating GoTo's Ride-Hailing Expansion
Objective: Play a 3-stage city-launch simulation for a GoTo ride-hailing expansion: decide where to subsidize, when to declare density sufficient, and how to react once the network tips, tracking spend and driver density at each decision point.
You're the city launch lead for GoTo's ride-hailing vertical, opening a new secondary Indonesian city with a fixed 90-day subsidy budget.
At each stage, pick the tactic that matches the lesson's cold-start and critical-mass playbook. Wrong calls burn budget without building density; right calls hit the driver-density threshold and let organic growth take over.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, sufficient for logging a 3-stage decision trail
The process
Simulation
Week 1: Where does the subsidy budget go?
Day 1Riders open the app and see almost no available drivers nearby. Drivers who sign up see almost no ride requests. Both sides are near-empty.
12 drivers online city-wide, 4 completed rides in week 1, average rider wait time 22 minutes
Where should the first month's subsidy budget go?
Final deliverable
A completed 3-stage decision log with the chosen tactic, outcome, and remaining budget at each stage.
See a reference example
Zillow city-launch decision log (excerpt, different market) Stage 1: Subsidized supply side first -> driver count tripled in 2 weeks Stage 2: Held subsidy, confirmed density stable -> crossed 15-20 concurrent threshold Stage 3: Shifted budget to retention -> repeat-ride frequency up, CAC flat
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Chooses the supply-side subsidy at Stage 1
- Chooses to hold and confirm density before expanding at Stage 2
- Chooses to shift budget to retention once referrals overtake paid acquisition at Stage 3