如果你是 Grab 创始人，先找司机还是先找用户？
English summary available ↓
If you were Grab's founder, would you first find more users or more drivers? I always thought both mattered and you needed balance. Recently it clicked: drivers matter more. Demand doesn't appear from nowhere. A city that needs 100 trips today won't need 1,000 tomorrow, and fares ten times cheaper won't make people travel ten times more. E-commerce is the same: people eat, dress and shop every day, and a platform doesn't create extra demand. What changes the market is supply-side efficiency. With enough drivers, users find Grab faster and more convenient and switch over. With enough sellers and products, buyers stay instead of leaving after two empty searches. So in the cold-start stage, solve supply first and users will come. Supply without any demand will churn, so the right play is to pile up supply while guaranteeing a minimum of demand so drivers and sellers have hope of orders. Food delivery signs restaurants first, e-commerce sellers first, ride-hailing drivers first. Once supply is saturated, the logic flips: in growth, user scale drives GMV and sellers follow, and Grab must educate more people to switch. Cold start is about supply, growth about demand, maturity about balance. Early on, don't stop at the idea of balance.
Read full English version →如果你是 Grab 创始人，第一件事要找更多的 Grab 用户，还是 Grab 司机？
我一直觉得两边都重要，要找个平衡。
但最近突然想通了，其实：司机比用户更重要。
为什么？
1. 需求不会凭空增加
出行的需求每天都在那里。一个城市今天有 100 人需要出行，不会明天突然变 1000。
就算车费便宜 10 倍，也不会让人突然多跑 10 趟路。
同样的逻辑放在电商：人每天都要吃饭、穿衣、买东西。
电商平台不会凭空创造更多需求。
2. 供给决定体验
真正会改变市场的，是供给侧的效率。
- Grab 有足够多司机，用户才会发现更快、更方便，于是从原本的出行方式转向 Grab。
- 电商有足够多卖家、足够丰富的商品，买家才会留下来，而不是点开两次发现「没货」就走了。
换句话说，冷启动阶段，先解供给，用户才会来。
3. 平衡点的关键
当然，如果只有供给没有需求，司机没单、卖家没单，马上就会流失。
所以冷启动的正确打法往往是：
- 先堆供给，让平台有东西可选；
- 同时保证最低限度的需求，给供给端「有单可接」的希望。
这是双边市场的普遍规律：外卖要先拉餐厅，电商要先拉卖家，出行要先拉司机。
4. 成长期的反转
当供给足够了，逻辑会发生反转：
- 电商进入成长期时，用户规模决定 GMV，卖家自然会跟上来。
- Grab 在司机饱和后，重点就要放在教育用户，把更多人从传统方式转过来。
冷启动看供给，成长期看需求，成熟期则要维护供需平衡。
别停在「要平衡」
创业初期，不能只停留在「供需要平衡」的想法。
在大多数双边市场里，先解供给，才有体验；有了体验，需求才会进来；最后才谈平衡。