Ask Sendai

Stripe Issuing is an API that allows you to create and control virtual and physical cards. Today, we’re opening access to all businesses in the US, so you can sign up and start creating cards instantly. Now, any US business can instantly launch a commercial card program, right from their Dashboard, at no cost to get started. And Issuing comes packed with capabilities that ensure that any business—from a new startup to a tech giant—can build flexible cards with our APIs.

We take pride in our mission to improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation. More than 50 million carbon neutral Lyft rides happen every month across the US and Canada—and we’ve barely scratched the surface in the potential for rideshare. Part of our growth is improvements in our acquisition process—like launching region-specific ad campaigns that increase awareness, and consideration of our multi-modal offerings. Coordinating these campaigns to acquire new users at scale has become time-consuming, leading us to take on the challenge of automation.

Thales Teixeira, associate professor at Harvard Business School, believes many startups fail precisely because they try to emulate successful disruptive businesses. He says by focusing too early on technology and scale, entrepreneurs lose out on the learning that comes from serving initial customers with an imperfect product. He shares how Airbnb, Uber, Etsy, and Netflix approached their first 1,000 customers very differently, helping to explain why they have millions of customers today.

At Uber, real-time analytics allow us to attain business insights and operational efficiency, enabling us to make data-driven decisions to improve experiences on the Uber platform. For example, our operations team relies on data to monitor the market health and spot potential issues on our platform; software powered by machine learning models leverages data to predict rider supply and driver demand; and data scientists use data to improve machine learning models for better forecasting.