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The Hidden Dynamics of Market Selection: How 99 Taxis Achieved Unicorn Status Through Counterintuitive Growth

Product-market fit rarely follows conventional wisdom. While most startups chase obvious markets, the real opportunity often lies in unexpected places. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Jason Radisson shared how this counterintuitive truth led to one of tech’s most capital-efficient scale-ups and Latin America’s first clean unicorn exit.

The revelation came during his time at 99 Taxis, where they discovered that ride-sharing’s strongest market fit wasn’t in tech-forward cities, but in Latin America’s secondary markets. “The best product market fit, really, in the world. Ride sharing was in Latin America in particular in secondary cities,” Jason explains. These cities of 3-5 million people created perfect conditions for explosive growth.

The reason was structural: “You’ve got a really ready pool labor, you’ve got a ton of underemployed folks all around the city and in the surroundings, and you’ve got a really sort of snarled infrastructure and lack of infrastructure and terrible traffic and other inconveniences. Then you’ve got an emerging middle class, upper middle class folks with not a lot of time, but plenty of disposable income to spend on services.”

This insight led to remarkable capital efficiency. “We pride ourselves, were able to get to our first billion dollars of GMV having spent $50 million. So that’s a 20x ratio, which is to this day, one of the most efficient scale ups that’s ever been in the technology industry,” Jason notes. The key wasn’t just picking the right market – it was methodical execution.

Their approach challenged the “move fast and break things” mentality common in tech. Instead, they focused on being “very thoughtful and planful in terms of how you’re sort of rolling the service out and these growth activities and essentially just not doing careless things. Still experimenting a lot, but being very planful in the way you build up the company.”

This disciplined approach to growth, combined with their market insights, led to 99 Taxis becoming “first unicorn, clean unicorn exit in that ecosystem in particular.” But the lessons learned went beyond just market selection.

The experience revealed deeper truths about building transformative technology companies. As Jason reflects, “All of us who are out there building technology companies, we’re all having impact in our own ways. I think what’s very unique about a lesson like that, and one that was possible, is still possible in some parts of the gig economy, is the transformative nature you can have on a city and on the lives of millions of people.”

These lessons now inform Jason’s approach at Movo, where he’s applying marketplace dynamics to workforce management. Rather than chasing obvious markets or following conventional wisdom, they’re focusing on fundamental productivity improvements: “If you want to come up with win situations for workers and employers, the bottom line is you got to help people be more productive.”

This focus on core value creation shapes their go-to-market strategy. Instead of broad marketing campaigns, they’re “working with early adopters on big problems. We’re not sort of out there just trying to do everything with Internet advertising or relying on cold calling or these kinds of things, but more kind of in the trenches deep with big blue chip companies working on big problems.”

The approach is particularly relevant given current market conditions. “If you look at the US, we’re in a situation of a declining workforce. We’ve got more people retiring than ever before. We’ve got fewer people entering the workforce. We’ve got a lot of people checking out. We’re in a difficult time,” Jason observes. This reality makes focusing on fundamental productivity improvements even more crucial.

For founders navigating their own GTM strategies, the key lesson is clear: success often lies in challenging conventional wisdom about market selection and growth strategies. The biggest opportunities might be found not in the most obvious markets, but in places where structural conditions create perfect storms of supply, demand, and need for innovation.