#079: Max Crowley on Uber’s Wild Early Days, Selling Bandit, and Betting on Himself Again

Let's start back with the journey in Uber. So you joined, you were what, employee 25?

Yeah, 25. I was 24 years old.

That's nuts.

And there was only probably 15 people at the company when I started because, you know, they give out the employee IDs when people leave. So I was employee ID number 25. I mean, there was—

oh, interesting.

There was probably 15 people, maybe less, at the company when I started. And we were— Chicago was the fourth city, so it was literally You know, company launches in San Francisco mid-2010. New York was in the spring of 2011, and then August was Seattle, September was Chicago, and I joined in August to get it going.

How did you end up at Uber? Welcome back to Season 4, Episode 2, The Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Max Crowley, who's a struggling podcast host. Thanks for joining us today, Max.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Help me get my name out there.

Oh, such a cool introduction for someone who has sold a company, who has worked high up at some of the biggest companies in the world as we know it today. Uh, so I think it's a great way to like humble yourself as you, as you start on this new journey as a podcast host.

Thank you. Thank you. I mean, you gotta, gotta try and always bring the ego back down as much as possible.

I mean, there's no better way to do it than starting a podcast. I can tell you that as someone who, uh, who was there one day. Look, we're, um, I think this is maybe episode like 77 or something in that range.

Way to go, man. That's awesome.

Which is crazy to think about for sure, because I mean, I think we talked about this, but the statistics of podcasting, it's like the way the industry or the concept is set up is like you're designed to fail because it's so fucking hard to do and it typically requires a lot of resources and a lot of money. And so most people just like can't make it. But my mentality with it is just that like the number one way that you fail is just by giving up. So if you could just stay in the game long enough, hopefully, you know, it turns into something.

No, I mean, it's funny, as I've talked to people in the industry, it's like, what advice do they give you? And then people are like, what's your goal with the podcast? And it's like, my goal is to continue to do it. Like, can I just literally put one foot in front of the other, keep recording, and as you said, good stuff's going to happen? I'm going to meet people, it'll be interesting conversations, I'll— whatever the thing might be. But yeah, I mean, it's very easy. A lot of the hardest things in my life, I like, right before you do it, you say to yourself all the reasons that you shouldn't do it. You start, you start thinking, I don't want to do this. What's— what are all the excuses that I could have to not do this thing right now? And if you just give yourself a little bit of that push, it's where all the magic is made.

So we'll— in a few minutes, we'll go back to the beginning of your journey because I think you have a pretty crazy journey. But I actually think the podcast thing is a very interesting place to start. Because you went from working in like the most high-growth, chaotic environments, arguably in like startups as we know it. For people listening, like early Uber, sold the company to GoPuff, there through these crazy trajectories at both companies. And now you're in this phase of doing something that is a lot more slow. It's a lot slower and a lot more— there's a lot more intentionality around it, I think, or you have the privilege of that being the case. What was that like mindset shift for you after so many years of like in the trenches that you're like, I want to try something that for all intents and purposes, from my perspective, is so vastly different?

It's— I mean, look, I think one piece for me is I definitely believe in reinventing yourself as much as possible. So I don't think I was ever a person to do a 20, 30-year sort of corporate track and keep rising the ladder. And I love that stuff. I respect it. I've worked at amazing companies that you know, just for whatever reason, I still stayed there long periods of time in the scheme of, of how long people stay at companies these days. But I think for me, you know, it's part reinvention. So when I do something new, I want it to feel different. I want the, the success goals, the metrics to be different. And so, you know, first piece is just reinvention. And then I think the second thing is, look, it's a, it's a, it's nice to be able to take time off between jobs. I know that that's for the most part a privileged thing that I've had the ability to do. So I'm super thankful that I have had the opportunity to take some time between these various things that I've done. So, you know, took some time after Uber, took some, you know, joined GoPuff, taking some time now. But for me, taking time is not just I'm laying on the couch and chilling. It's actually, yes, I do a hard reset. I try and travel and try and be mindful. I try and really reset my brain, but then I'm back in grind mode. So this is a version of grind mode. It's just, it's just, you know, sort of maybe triggering different parts of me.

I have a friend who I was with 2 weeks ago. He was the CMO at a billion-dollar brand that you're very familiar with that I'll tell you off record because I don't want to out him. But he was there for a long time, left there, and for the last like 7 months or so has been on this like journey of like finding himself again because this whole thing was like, for the first time in my life, I don't have a commitment where I didn't have a significant other, I didn't have a dog, I didn't have kids, didn't have a house. Every moment of my life went into this business. And then the second I stepped away from it, I realized like I had been running away from my own thoughts and like sitting with myself because it's so easy to distract yourself with just doing work all day, every day when you're in a very stressful, fast-moving environment. I'm curious from your perspective as someone who's done this, like, how do you What are the things that you tell yourself or the parameters that you set for yourself after going from like all in, 100 miles an hour, to like stepping back with no responsibilities professionally at least, and, uh, having the discipline to not just like jump into the next thing right away? Because obviously the bigger things you do, the easier it is for you to get like poached or more opportunities come your way. So I'm curious to understand like your own self-talk in that journey of like actually forcing yourself to like take a minute to breathe.

For sure. I mean, look, I'd like to say I was better at the breathing piece, but I'm trying to like truly take the time. But I think the, the biggest thing for me is number one, still having the structure. So still saying I'm going to try and get up as early as possible. I'm still going to try and go to the gym in the morning. I'm still going to try and meet with a bunch of people, you know, still have this sort of day-to-day structure. Like I am working in a way. It's not, it's not like I'm totally disconnected from things. I'm still, sending out emails and doing cold outreach and still trying to build the network and figure out what people are doing. And so, you know, I think for me, you know, again, it's not like I'm getting up at bed, you know, out of bed at 3:45 and whatever that stupid meme is right now and throwing water on my face.

But Saratoga Spring water.

Yes. But I mean, you know, decently trying to still be an adult and take the time and be appreciative for it. And then I think for me, being able to trial things as much as possible has been a big benefit. So the podcast allows me to still work a few day— a few hours a day on something, still manage someone, still meet a ton of people, hopefully get smarter, learn something that I didn't know before. But I'm kind of dabbling in that, and I can also advise a few founders, and I can also maybe incubate something in a small way and just test something else out there. And maybe I can even do a job for a few hours a week and start to see how that goes. I mean, when I transitioned from Uber, I took some time off first. I traveled, I went to Asia and around the world and like really tried to take some time, did yoga retreats and maybe did some mushrooms and like whatever else to like try to reset. And then the next phase was a lot of, all right, I want to meet with people, I want to figure out what's going on. I want to learn as much as possible. What are trends? What are VCs investing in? What are things people starting? What are startup studios starting? You know, if you go talk to one of those teams, they've got a list of like 100 ideas on the wall they're thinking about. You'll see— you go to studio to studio, you'll see a theme in that. You're like, all right, this is what the market's working on, is what people are thinking about. And then from there, you know, I worked on a private jet startup for a few months for a former co-founder of Uber who just had another project that he was working on and trying to do.

Side project. Yeah.

Jets. And like, look, I love the company and I loved the time, but it also was clear, okay, this isn't a project that I want to work on long term. I'm pumped that I met some people. I'm pumped that I learned about a new industry. But then that helps me decide. I mean, I had a sperm banking business that I was kind of incubating and there ended up being a few of those and I still love the idea. And then I decided to start a coffee company. Very disparate ideas. But, you know, this time and having some structure, not crazy amount of structure, But some structure to, I'm going to try something for a bit. I'm going to hopefully know when to pull out so that I don't just get all in on something I don't want to do. And then that helps you. Okay, now a few months in, I feel really comfortable about the decision I'm making versus jumping into something and then a couple of months being in, being like, shit, is this— maybe this isn't the thing I should have done.

What are the signals that you're looking for when you're dabbling in something to know if it's what you should be doing long term or not?

I think I definitely want to be able to see an impact in what I'm doing. And so with the podcast, we can go to a bar right now and I may be doing this actively and say to the 3 people sitting at the bar, hey, do you have Spotify? At which time they look at you cross-eyed and they're like, of course I have Spotify. And then I say, subscribe to the Early Podcast.

Wow, I love that. I'm not doing that enough.

Oh man, I am. That's Yeah, because it's— for me, it's like, all right, in the least I know I'm good at that.

So I mean, that's valuable for something.

I mean, my Spotify subscribers are almost all hand-to-hand combat.

That's so cool.

And so, I mean, it was wild. I was walking down the street with a buddy and we saw a guy standing there and my buddy goes, hey man, I used to live in this building. Like, which unit are you in? He's like, I'm in this unit. My buddy's like, I was in that unit. Like, how old are you? And the guy's like, 25. And my buddy's like, 50. And the guy's like, he's like, you're gonna make it one day. Like, I was 25 living in this building. And then I said to him, subscribe to the early podcast. And then I got a DM from the guy and he was like, that was so cool that I had an interaction with your buddy. I'm pumped, listening to the pod, loving it. So like, I, it's, I love to be able to control and feel like the effort that I'm putting in is getting real value. And as companies get bigger, it's harder for that to be the case. And that's probably why I've gravitated towards things that are more early stage, more fruits of your labor. And again, look, anything that's worth scaling is going to then be hard. You're 77 episodes in. It's going to be harder to get the random subscriber off the street. You got other things to do. But, you know, I love that beginning stage where you can feel that. And then also scale with, okay, now we get people that do it and we build teams and whatever else. But that's the part that I, I love.

Yeah, but I actually think that last point you made is important, which is like you can't lose sight of what got you to where you are. Like, I don't— I think I have 77 episodes in the bank, but there's no reason— I haven't told one person standing on a sidewalk at a red light, like, have you subscribed to my podcast? So I think those are actually things I need to start doing regardless. Look, I don't know. I think I have 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. Which is like not zero.

Yeah, it's great.

It's cool the way that I always— someone said this to me because on this spectrum of like viewers, that's nothing. But if I said to you, we're gonna put all my subscribers right in front of us, like in the stands, to listen to our conversation, 1,000 people is like not zero.

And they haven't unsubscribed.

And they haven't unsubscribed.

Like, that's a real— those are people that are fans. They've subscribed, they're in. You should be super proud of that. I mean, It's— I am partly inspired to do my thing because I saw what you were doing. And, you know, I think I— the only reason I even hesitate in saying that is because I want to be able to actually come through with that. Right. I think a lot of people probably say to you, oh, you're starting a podcast, everybody's got a podcast. It's like, well, no, not everyone has a podcast.

A lot of people do.

Or a lot of people do or did. Right. And so it's— it's— I'm inspired by what you've done. And now I want to be able to, like, meet that bar. Right. I want to be able to meet that threshold and actually also keep putting stuff out and try and make it a thing and not give up because it's so easy to give up.

Yeah, that's the, that's the biggest thing. I think we've talked about this, but my, my philosophy around a podcast is how do you optimize for consistency and not virality? So if you think about like, what are the friction points or the drop-off points when you decide to quit? It's like if you try to solve those pieces first to just give you— to reduce friction, to do it for a long time, That to me is the hack, right? Like, you're living it right now. You walked into the living room of my apartment where I'm going to—

couch cushions are—

my couch cushions are in the stairwell. Like, it's pretty like— this is pretty startup vibe if you ask me. This is like no-budget hacky, like me and Owen, who's the producer, like carrying couches to move them out of the way to do this. But I'm also going to get 4 weeks worth of content out of like the grunt work that we put into this today. So like You know, I— if I can do this for an extended period of time, maybe one day someone will believe in what I'm doing enough to be able to pay for me to go sit in a nice studio that already has everything set up. So me and Owen don't have to sweat for 30 minutes before we start. But like, I, I also know it to be true that you need to enjoy these moments of the journey because like once you start to grow up a little bit, you will look back and remember like those were the days that were actually really cool.

No, it's the best. And I think it's also like I've learned that you sort of play mind games with yourself to stay committed to something, to force yourself to do something. And one of the interesting things about being even live and you've made a public commitment to your people, to your friends, to your family that you're doing this podcast, that you're investing time in it, and people should also care. And so the minute you stop doing that, you sort of break this like invisible contract that you have with them. And so, you know, I think that also is the thing where you're just like, okay, I got to keep doing this. I got to keep doing this. And I think that's— that goes for a lot of things. You know, how can you set up tricks in your life to say, okay, I, I want to make sure— I mean, even me quitting my job and not having another job is sort of a hack. And having a place in New York and knowing that that's expensive is sort of a hack to be like, okay, Max, you got to figure this out. Like, you need to figure out how to make money. You need to stay scrappy. You need to stay humble. You need to be out there. Grinding. And I do feel that. And it was like, yeah, I probably spent too much of my place and doing whatever else, but like that forces me to get out of bed and work out and stay active and meet that person and do some things that are easy to say, hey, I don't want to do this.

Yeah, but I think that's a fair transition into saying that you've kind of earned the right to be able to like fuck around and find out. I mean, you've— some of the things you've done, people will go through an entire career having not done, for better or for worse. But like Appreciate it. You— we can start with the, the early Uber experience because I think you probably dealt with some movie-like, uh, moments in that journey. Um, so you went from early employee turned founder turned, I guess, middle to late employee relative to the scale of GoPuff. Um, so I— that's something I really want to jump into is like going from not being in charge of the whole thing to being in charge to not again, but Let's start back with the journey in Uber. So you joined, you were what, employee 25?

Yeah, 25. I was 24 years old.

That's nuts.

And there was only probably 15 people at the company when I started because, you know, they give out the employee IDs when people leave. So I was employee ID number 25. I mean, there was—

oh, interesting.

There was probably 15 people, maybe less, at the company when I started. And we were— Chicago was the fourth city. So it was literally Company launches in San Francisco mid-2010. New York was in the spring of 2011. And then August was Seattle, September was Chicago. And I joined in August to get it going.

How did you end up at Uber?

I hustled. It was, you know, I was working in consulting out of school. I graduated in 2009 from college and was working at Accenture. It was great. Loved it. Loved the people I was working with, but it was tough. I mean, it was corporate as corporate gets. You know, I have a joke in the podcast when I talk about this of like, I was wearing these like baggy Banana Republic pants and like just wasn't vibing. I mean, it was hard. It was hard to conform. It was a great training ground for me to just know, hey, you gotta go to this job every day and show up and be presentable and not act like an idiot. And then, but I knew that was not, I needed something more entrepreneurial, more scrappy, more hustle. I had done a lot of things growing up that I didn't even realize were entrepreneurial and scrappy. I mean, you know, in college I was throwing parties and bar crawls and tailgates. I was the Monster Energy drink rep, you know, I was buying kegs and selling tickets at the door. And some of these things that I didn't even realize were entrepreneurial and scrappy and definitely skills I never thought they would translate. They definitely did not translate to Accenture, but they directly translated to Uber 2011, running around, getting people to sign up for the app, getting drivers to download and join and onboard and make money on the platform. And so, you know, I, whatever, I read about Uber, I heard about it, and then it was basically a multi-month process to convince them to hire me. And I got turned down, you know, a few times during that.

Really? So you got turned down multiple times even though they were only like give or take 15 to 20 people at any given moment?

Yes.

What was it? I'm curious, what was the strategy that you took that actually worked? Like, what was the moment in time, or what was the thing you did, or the person you talked to where they're finally like, all right, this guy's relentless, like, shut the fuck up, here's your employee ID, like, now it's time to work?

So it was one thing was they were asking me for projects throughout, which I think it's easy for people to say, "Oh, I don't wanna do free work," or whatever. But like, look, if we're being honest, whatever work you're doing before you work at a company is probably not that great. They're probably not actually using it for anything. They really are trying to test hustle, mental ability, and mental ability, I mean, more just, are you gonna be able to deal with the fact that there's gonna be a lot of ups and downs? This is gonna be hard. You're gonna be up against challenges that you don't know how to solve. And you have to push through. It's not like there's a training for being at an early-stage startup. I mean, yeah, maybe you've got some skills, maybe you've done a few things, but really it's a battle of can you persevere, can you keep showing up every day, can you hustle, can you work your ass off, are you excited, are you a good person people want to be around, be in the office with. I mean, that's kind of the baseline training for the earliest stage of a company. And so that's a lot of what was going on during those months. And then what happened was my mom actually said, you know, why are you— you need to turn the screws on them. Like, you're the one who's got a good job at a big corporation. Turn the screws, say you're the one taking a risk. You're the one taking a shot on them. And I sent a more aggressive email than I had sent previously. And the, the guy who's amazing, Ryan Graves, the man responds immediately and says, I'm on the next flight to Chicago. Let's hammer this thing out.

Um, so it was mom.

It's my mom.

Wow.

Yeah, well, I'm pumped. She'll be my Mother's Day guest on the pod. So if you, uh, we're gonna dive into it together. I'm flying her out, we're going to the studio, we're gonna do a Mother's Day podcast together.

Wow, interesting. I've never actually thought about bringing a family member on my podcast. That's an interesting thought. So mom helps you get into Uber, you're employee number 25. I mean, can you speak a little bit to just like that culture, because I know a lot of 25-person companies, right? We're actually 26 people, so we're like in that, that range right now. And when you just think about what Uber is today, like, people forget the fact that like most companies started from 1 or 2 or 3 people, depending on how many founders there are, and you got to build brick by brick. But like when you're at 25, I feel like oftentimes you can sense like this one's different and like here's why. What would you say, looking back on that experience, like stood out to you as like, this is, this is not your average startup?

Well, first, I mean, Travis was the best. I mean, Travis is the GOAT. Travis Kalanick, founder and was the CEO of Uber. I mean, you— I'll just, I'll never forget watching clips of him and, and videos of him. And, you know, before I started, and I didn't know who he was before I started the interview process and looking at Uber, but you knew he was special even in clips. I mean, there's a podcast of him and Jason Calacanis in early August 2011, and Travis goes through his vision, and it's— and at that point, Uber was only black cars. So it's black cars only, it's high-end, it's $15 minimum fare, and Travis is already talking about a world in which everyday drivers could be driving their own vehicles in Airbnb of transportation. And that was a crazy thought in 2011. I mean, ridesharing doesn't even come out until 2013. So we're still 2 years before this thing's really happening. This is before Lyft, this is before Sidecar, and Travis was just out there already on this. And so I think, you know, for me, probably 2 things. One is, you get there and you're in the mix with Travis and you're immediately just, the bar is so high. You know this guy's the best and just so smart and such a hard worker and you just feed off his energy. I mean, you're just so pumped. I mean, you're just so pumped to be in the room with him and that never wavers. And then he just had such a clear vision and it was so simple for people to execute against in the beginning, which was just, we have a micro strategy in the city. We stand up an operation in a city. It's very local in a city. We get drivers, we put them on, we pay them a base minimum to make sure they're on the road. We started with 2 drivers in Chicago. So it was literally start, you know, that in, in that, you know, 15 years ago, call drivers in the Yellow Pages, bring 'em by, they're professional licensed chauffeurs. You show them what an iPhone is, 'cause again, it's 2011. You give them that iPhone, which is crazy. It's locked down to the Uber driver app. They, you know, you convince them, hey, press this button, you'll see a little man on the screen and go drive to that person and pick them up and take them wherever they need to go. And we promise we'll pay you at the end. And it didn't even have, you know, routing in the app.

So, so what, they'd switch to like Google Maps or something?

We didn't put your destination. We didn't put your destination. Was that even a, Oh, they—

what, they would just tell you where you were taking them?

You literally just request a car. You don't— you tell them in person where you're going. That was the beginning.

Was there a parameter? What if you got in the car and you're like, take me from Chicago to Atlanta?

We had some crazy stuff like that, and we would see it because we had—

and drivers would do it.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes they would call us and like check, like, hey, can I take this person to St. Louis or whatever? I mean, some of it was fraud and other things. But yeah, oh yeah, we had wild things. And almost immediately you also get stories like that. Hey, it's winter. I'm at the airport in New York. My flight's canceled. I'm trying to get to a thing or Christmas or whatever. I need to take it across a couple states. Driver's down. Game on, let it go. And that's like when you know too the magic of product market fit and this thing's working and you see it out there. And those types of connections are happening. But I mean, the first, they didn't even have an app to start. It was just texting. You would just text in and the driver, you know, you text your address where you are and the driver would come to you. And that's where I think people also don't understand how simple the beginning of something can be, you know, and even something as crazy and massive and successful as Uber is, it started as, you know, a little SMS, Twilio. Text to get someone to come and pick me up.

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest learnings I've had on my short founder journey thus far is like the misconception around how crucial it can be to just figure out the cheapest and fastest path to like testing a concept that can become so much more sophisticated later on. But like, I think, um, I think it was the BarkBox story. I might have talked about this once on the pod a long time ago. Do you know how BarkBox started?

No, no, I don't.

It's like the founders went to Washington Square Park and we're like talking to dog owners. We're just like, hey, like, would you buy— like, if I sent you a box of toys and treats every month, like, would you pay for that? Yeah. Like, what would you add? What would you want in it to make you pay? Whatever. They just like literally talked to a bunch of people. They went back to the drawing board, did a bunch of research, went back to the park with a more formulated thought, did the same thing, and then we're like, all right, like, put your money where your mouth is. And like walked around with like a little Stripe machine and got like their first 1,000 subscribers like hand-to-hand combat before they ever like sold an actual physical box of goods to someone.

Amazing.

Which is like the epitome of this— like, I'm— I don't know if I got that 100% accurate, but it's the message, the through line of like validating that idea, um, before like raising a bunch of money and doing all sorts of crazy shit with it, which I think is another issue that we could probably—

yeah, talk about in building and doing all these things that you don't even know if they're they're going to work. And I say to people all the time, can you do this on text? Can you do this on email? Can you do this on WhatsApp? Like, what, what are the things, the ways that you can hack something to just see if there's any signal before— why are you building something if you don't know if there's signal?

Yeah, it's, uh, my, my philosophy with that is like, raise money or put resources against something and double down on solutions instead of to try to solve a problem. So if you can solve it at a micro level, there's probably opportunity to solve it at a much larger scale.

Absolutely.

Um, another thing I want to talk about, which I was joking when I said he's a struggling podcast host. It's just that he's early in his journey. But I think you are shedding light on a really interesting concept with the early podcast, which is around talking to early employees at companies, right? A lot of early employees at companies go on, oftentimes either become founders of their own or like ride that journey and become like an integral part and make a shitload of money doing it, like at successful businesses. Um, something I'm curious about from your perspective, having done what you've done in your eyes, like what separates good from great in terms of talent? Because like those first couple hires that you make are just like so important. I think there's an element of like the entrepreneur, someone who like you think has that gene to be a founder one day but maybe isn't there yet. And even just like learning about what your podcast is about and your journey, I was thinking about like, who are those people to me in my company where I'm kind of like, holy shit, if they left tomorrow, like I would be really, really upset about it because they're absolute A-players. How are you— how do you think about identifying those people?

I probably— obviously there's no perfect framework, but I probably tend to go slightly more junior, slightly more inexperienced because— and ideally have some sort of chip on their shoulder. You can't necessarily find the chip on the shoulder during the interview process, but that's sort of like a win when you do find that person. But I think Ideally someone who's more moldable, more scrappy, more kind of game for anything. I mean, you really want someone you can throw into the deep end and they're down for whatever. And, you know, I think one of the beauties of the early days of Uber was there was a lot of people that were down. And like, look, the numbers are going like this. So you get the benefit of if you're growing and it's exciting and it's fun, people are willing to do a lot more things than they might be willing to do if they thought the company was tanking and doing worse and whatever. So you definitely benefit from a company succeeding, but I'm looking for people that are scrappy but have talent and are positive and just gonna like kind of throw themselves into things and stick through it. And I think not always, but sometimes people with more education and more credentials and more experienced tend to be people that maybe it's harder for them to deal with the chaos of a startup. It's harder for them to deal with, wait, I don't have the title that I thought I would have at this point, or my parents promised me I would have if I took that class and met with that tutor. And so, and like, look, that's, that's me, right? I mean, I'm not someone who's overly credentialed or overly educated or whatever. And, you know, neither of my parents, you know, have a college degree. I mean, it's more, you know, I think for me, I come from a more kind of scrappy environment. And so maybe that's, you know, me also kind of seeing myself, I think, in people that I gravitate towards.

What does that look like on a tactical level? Like, are there questions you're asking in interviews? Are there just like qualitative activities that you're doing with people to just gauge like how they behave? I'm curious because I think hiring and identifying talent is something that's so important to me because I've learned over the last 3 years of building my company, that at the end of the day, like, the thing that a CEO needs to be best at is like identifying the right talent or knowing who the people are that can help you identify the right talent. Because at the end of the day, you just need to find people who are better than you at something because your time becomes limited as you're trying to do a lot. So I've been like hyper-obsessed with just continuing to hone in on like, how do you sift through noise to like find A-players.

It's like almost like controversial at this point, and I've gotten a few, uh, Glassdoor negative reviews.

I love this. Hit me now. I'm interested.

I mean, uh, you definitely want to put people through the wringer a bit.

Max is like, meet me at 3 AM, we're going for a 12-mile run. I'll see you.

I mean, that's the thing, because I do hear the extreme, and it's not that, but I want to test you a bit if I can, within reason. I mean, I'm probably going to be—

give me details. I want like the—

like the interview, I'm probably going to be sort of a prick. Like, I'm going to be dismissive. I'm going to push back. I might be a little loud. I might ask you some weird questions. Nothing like creepy, but yeah, yeah, I first of all, I want to know more about your background. Like, why are, why are you like how you are? How did you get to sitting with me today? Where are you from? What, you know, again, you're not going to be able to suss all this out in interviews, but if you and I were just having a drink and I wanted to get to know you better, like, I want to know where your parents are from. I wanna know what your parents did. I wanna know where you went to school. I wanna know one of the hardest things you had to deal with growing up. I wanna know what your career's been like. What are the tough things that you struggled with? What are, what, what are the times that life didn't meet your expectations? How did you react? How do you feel about that in retrospect? I mean, I, I, I don't wanna know about the good stuff. I don't want you to sit down in the interview and say, let me tell you about myself. I say, I don't, no, stop. Stop. Don't, I don't want to know your script. I'm going to ask you some questions. Like, I don't want to know what your version of the events are. We'll get to that, but I want to suss that out. And I want you to do something ideally. I want you to put together a project or go bring me a lead or go identify who you would target or come work with me for a couple months or a couple weeks. Come be an intern. I mean, I, at GoPuff, I had like 4 or 5 adult interns. And I feel bad calling them interns 'cause they were like in their late 20s or early 30s, but we did it in a more trial way and they were all rock stars. They were like, screw it, I do want this job, I do wanna work here, I do believe in the opportunity. And like, look, I'm not saying it in a demeaning way. I'm saying, look, I believe in you, I just don't necessarily have a spot. Or look, for these reasons, I just can't bring you on full-time. Or I need you to kind of prove yourself a bit. I'm not going to treat you bad, I'm not going to do anything else. I'm actually— I want you to succeed, but I need to see it. And a lot of times those people just rip because then they have a chip on their shoulder. You see the chip, and they don't want the title intern, and they do feel like they've done something in their past, and they do feel like there's something to step up towards. And so, you know, again, it doesn't always work like that. You can still piss some people off. You can accidentally be meaner to someone that you mean, or whatever else. But when that sweet spot— and that's kind of what they did at Uber to me, and a lot of people, not necessarily purposefully, but like they sort of tried to see, are you a culture fit? You know what your culture is. You have to figure out, how do I then put someone through whatever puzzle to see if they're gonna fit this culture? Because if someone's not a culture fit, it is never going to work out.

Yeah, and I've, I've learned that the hard way with a handful of people. It's like you can have all the credentials, but like certain businesses are built certain ways and you need to be able to like fit in or not.

The GoPuff guys, there's a, a ton that I just, you know, love and respect about Raf and Nikir. I think one of the things I really learned from them was the culture piece of just, look, they're big family guys, they're very supportive, they're gonna you know, ingratiate you and, you know, be kind and whatever else. But ultimately it's their company, it's their culture they're trying to build. Again, they're collaborative, they're great. I was in those meetings with them. We were trying to figure out a bunch of things, but at the end of the day, it's their culture and it is their company and it is their vision and it should be. And they, of course, they, they shape-shifted and evolved and whatever else, but You know, they also tried to be clear about what their principles were and make sure that people fit into their puzzle. And, and it, again, there's, there's back and forth on that and it has to work right, but like, that's right. And when I talk to entrepreneurs now, it's like, well, you're trying to be open for everybody and this and that. It's like, eh, that's too much. Like, what is the thing you're trying to build? What is your vision? Be clear on it and find people that fit into that. Again, it's going to evolve. It's not that it's, it's totally black and white, but it needs to still be your thing. And if people aren't going to fit into that, they're going to likely not work out.

Yeah, you actually— so you bring up something interesting I want to talk about for people who are listening and don't know this. I was at the bottom of that totem pole at GoPuff.

Not the bottom, not the bottom, but pretty low to the bottom on the—

on like within one team at the— I think I was like the first BD associate or whatever the made-up title was at the time. and got to like see firsthand. That was like my first exposure at a company that was, you know, moving at that pace, had raised that amount of money, had that many like heavy hitters around the, around the table. And I think, look, I, I definitely felt like I brought a couple unique ideas to the table, but at the end of the day, like, it's really— you got to like know your role, uh, and yeah, it's important, like, don't take no for an answer and recognize that like you can create— you, you create your own luck by like doing things, adding value, whatever it might be. Um, but it was a lot of like sitting around and seeing what others are doing to like understand what it takes, like operate at the next level. Because if there's one thing I've learned from starting my own company, there are levels to this game. Like, you think you're doing something cool and then you see how other companies are operating and you're like, holy shit, like they're just thinking about problems in a way that I just didn't even know existed. Uh, which brings me to my next question. You have like sat at the table in some of the like most high-stakes conversations? I mean, you were the chief of staff to founders of a company that have raised, what, $4 billion? Right? Like, it's like hard to fathom the amount of zeros at the end of like these numbers that you're looking at on like a P&L. What is it like having those conversations when the stakes are that much higher compared to maybe like other situations you've been in? Because honestly, you're shedding a light and giving a lens to the people listening to this that I don't think we've had before of like You're sitting in a room with the founders of a company worth billions of dollars, with investors who've deployed 9 figures into this company, having to like make decisions and have hard conversations. Like, walk through the framework around that a little bit, because I just think that's experience that you can't, you can't really like read about.

You know, I think, well, one thing is imposter syndrome, or whatever you want to say. You know, if there's like, if you're like what's something you would tell your younger self? It's like, you always think you don't know what you're doing. Like, you're always, you're, and you should be putting yourself in situations where you are beyond what, where you think your skis are, right? Where you think, oh man, I've pushed myself again. I can't believe I'm in this room. I can't believe I'm in this situation. I don't have the experience for this. You know, so I think it's a bit of, you should be pushing yourself to be in those environments. And that's a good thing. It's good to still feel the, I don't know if I know how to help in this situation, but so I think some of it's balancing the humility, knowing your place a bit, which is I'm here to help facilitate this conversation. I'm not the main person, but that's okay. I can still make a big impact. And honestly, a lot of times it's better to be a secondary player and still make an impact and be in the mix and stay in the room. And then I think it's, yeah, how do you just lean on your experience enough to know, okay, you know, I might not know this thing we're discussing exactly, so maybe I sit back on it. But like this thing, I do have something that I saw before that mirrors this. And maybe it's not even advice as much as it's, hey, look, this thing we're discussing, I saw this before at Uber. I saw this before when I had my own company. This is how it played out for us. I'm not saying it's an equivalent situation, but it's damn near close. And this is how this played out. So can we all just agree maybe we should think about this a bit differently if we think that this piece is true? And so it's, it's like, how do you influence more than you say, more than you tell? And how do you influence on the right things? Because when you're lucky enough to find yourself in these rooms or these situations, you want to stay in the room, and you only have so many bullets or whatever to be able to deploy to say, hey, I think I might be kind of right, or I have an example on this thing. So look, it's, it's, it's a balance, um, in something that, you know, I mean, I worked for Emil Michael, who's unbelievable, and, you know, was number 2 to Travis at Uber, and I saw him play You know, one of the best number 2 jobs ever. And it inspired me in a lot of ways of, okay, you don't need to be the number 1 person. You don't need to be the founder. And that's kind of what the podcast is about too. It's just like being an employee is awesome too. You can still rise the ranks and be in these interesting meetings and be in these rooms and make a big influence and not be the founder. And I think it's just, it's so, it's like a misnomer at this point that you have to start things.

There are so many early employees that make hand over fist more money and accumulate more accolades than like majority of founders.

Yes, right.

Like, and that's actually really underestimated. I think there's a piece of ego involved in that as to like why there's probably people starting things that maybe shouldn't be. Um, there's a piece of it where you're starting something that doesn't actually have legs, but you don't want to give it up, so you end up doing it. Versus some people who find themselves in a situation of being an early employee at some companies that go on— I mean, the— look at what just happened with NVIDIA. I think, wasn't it like 1,000 employees? I don't know the number. I think it was something like 1,000 employees made like over half a million dollars. Something like hard to even like comprehend.

Yeah. And even if it's not financial, I mean, just some of my best friends in the world are people that I've worked with. And so you just from an experience standpoint, even if the monetary rewards aren't outsized, the personal rewards certainly are, right? I mean, you're in the trenches with people, you're in day in and day out. I mean, I love everyone I've worked with, even if they're people that were dicks to me or whatever, or would, like, you still have these, these bonds, right? I mean, you know, I'm, you know, so I think it's, that's something where it's, I don't, I don't, I don't sort of get the culture of everybody's gotta start things and do this and solo entrepreneur and blah, like all this entrepreneurial stuff. And like, look, I still respect it. I did start something. We did have a successful exit. So I get it. But man, working in a company has been awesome too, and an unbelievable experience that I wouldn't give up for anything.

I want to talk about that though. You, you're so humble about it. You left Uber, maybe had some stops along the way and started, started Bandit. I want to understand two things. The first one is like, what was the moment in time at Uber where you were like, all right, like, I'm ready to go off and do my own thing? And then the second one was, how did you land on Bandit?

You know, I think so Travis left in whatever in mid-2017. So that was, that was a bit— and Emil left and that was tough. I mean, I was definitely tied to those guys in a lot of ways and it was tough when they, when they left the company. So I ended up sticking around like another 12 months after they departed, but it was a different company. It was, it was clearly Uber the corporation now, not Uber the startup. And that's great. I mean, Dara's the man. I know some of the leadership team over there. They're awesome. Like more power to them. I think though, I was like, eh, this probably is no longer my thing. And like, look, I like earlier more. I think I thought that at the time and I still believe that that's correct. And then I think I left with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I left with, okay, I was really lucky to get this job at Uber. Again, I worked my ass off to get it. I was really lucky though to be here, make the money I did, the success that we all had. And, but I wanted to kind of prove it again. Uh, and so I, I thought about doing, you know, working somewhere else, but then it was also so hard to recreate that magic. And that's, you know, I find that in a lot of people that have been on a rocket ship like Uber and left, it's hard to catch the high again. It's hard when you kind of are, you know, in some ways on a peak and you're trying to find it again. It's tough. There's not a lot of Ubers. There's not a lot of those experiences. And so that was also where it was like, all right, I'm not gonna recreate this by working in another company right now. Maybe starting something is the move. And then with Bandit, it was, you know, we saw what was happening in China with Luckin Coffee. You're basically launching—

Oh, just give a quick 2 seconds on what Bandit was.

Yeah, so Bandit was a sort of digitally native, you would say, coffee shop. So we were app-only before anyone was app-heavy, cuz it was 2018, 2019. So app-only coffee shop, you walk in, it's still a normal coffee shop, but you have to use our app to, to order and purchase, which again was a big deal in 2018, 2019. And then the infrastructure was modular and, and more mobile so we could move it around. So we were doing revenue share deals with landlords where we could just drop the coffee shop into place. And only took us a few hours to set it up. And then we would do a revenue share deal. And so we were doing these in like office building lobbies and white box, you know, retail real estate, in a way of doing this in a way that, um, was scrappier and we could move it around and, you know, didn't require all of the, uh, upfront cost that a normal kind of brick and mortar restaurant would cost. So that was, that was Bandit. We ended up having 4 or 5 locations in the New York area and then 3 locations down in Austin. Before we got acquired.

Can you walk through that journey of getting acquired? I think, um, you know, we've had a couple founders on here who've sold businesses, but I've never actually gone deep on like the moment in time where you're like, wait, I think I'm gonna sell this company, to like, who are the potential buyers, to wait, they actually just told me they're gonna do it.

Oh man, it was crazy.

I—

so I mean, if you think about, it was a very condensed timeline for us. Overall, from start to finish, uh, you know, we— March 2020, we've got 3 locations in New York. They're humming. The newest location we just opened like a month prior, and it was doing like $3,000, $4,000 a day in sales, which is pretty good for the one in New York. Yeah, the second one, because we had closed one. So it was basically our next location. So we had 2 active at that time. We had opened 3. and the third one was humming. We launched food, it was in a good building, people were in the office every day. It was humming. And you know, we were on to something. We had raised, you know, almost $4 million from investors. Like, all right. I mean, we didn't know what we were doing and a million mistakes. And James, my co-founder, is the best. And you know, we were having fun, but it was crazy. We were trying to figure it out. And then COVID hits and then New York shuts down. You know, we were literally meeting with investors Wednesday night. Do we do another raise? How do we launch more of these? How do we sort of playbook this to, you know, because the idea was we want to launch a bunch of coffee shops and then COVID hits, the city shuts down. No one's going back into an office. We know now for years. And so we just shut the business down. And then within a few weeks, we were like, all right, we can either give whatever money we have back to investors. Or we can relocate, relocate the business to somewhere else that's warm in like a Republican city. So maybe there's less restrictions.

Yeah, we're going to Texas.

Yeah, so it was like, screw it, we're going to Austin. And, uh, we reopened in July in Austin. It was awesome. I mean, Sam Doyle, the man, uh, Ron, like these guys, you know, flew down with us. We flew down to Austin, we found real estate.

Wait, I actually didn't know that's what happened. Oh, that was a complete joke when I said we're going to Texas.

Oh no, no, it was literally like, because you said warm weather Republican, I'm like, well, that's kind of like option number one. Yeah. And again, it was like kind of pre even knowing what was going on with the world at that time. Yeah. But yeah, it was like Nashville, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Miami. You know, Miami's weird because like culturally we were like, I don't know if we can figure it out there. Austin's cool, but still Texas. So yeah, we went to Austin, flew a couple of guys down. They were kind of our launchers to figure it out. And then by July 1st, We were all there and, uh, we launched the food trucks. You could request our food truck to come to your neighborhood and we would give, you know, sell coffee off of it. And we launched an actual retail location pretty quickly. And then we just moved that infrastructure. So we moved it from New York down to Austin. Again, white box the real estate, drop it in and you got a coffee shop. We built an Airstream trailer. I mean, all in a pretty quick timeline. What happened was I knew some people that had joined GoPuff. We were in desperate mode. I was just like, I'll do anything with anybody right now. Like, hey, GoPuff, do you want to sell coffee beans that we could brand as Bandit? Do you want to? And then it was like, we don't want to do that, but maybe we would do, you could put your truck in our parking lot and sell items on our menu. She's like, all right. And then it kind of escalated from there where they're like, you know what, screw it. What if we just bought you guys and you ran that whole operation for us? We want to get into food, we want to get into coffee. And for us at that point, you know, it was tough to see a path forward. I mean, I still believe that we could have figured it out, still trusted, you know, what we were doing. We still had money in the bank, but it's tough. You go from riding high in New York, shutting down, reopening, you know, all the issues of changing cities and whatever else. I mean, to find maybe a successful off-ramp was like Hallelujah. Oh my God. Please, please, please. Let's make this happen and make our investors whole. I mean, this is the whole thing. It was, it was unbelievable. And so when it was done and like, it was tough, I mean, there was a time where we thought the deal was dead, you know, but when you—

can you walk through that? I mean, you obviously have to go into extreme detail to the point where like, I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but I, I want to get as close to like the reality of that as possible because I feel like that's the, that's the thing I'm curious about.

So we, the first thing we were gonna do was this trial with them. We were gonna put the truck in the parking lot and sell the coffee on their app. And then, you know, we were apprehensive to do that because we didn't know if it was gonna succeed. And I think at that point you, you hit a point where you're like, all right, this is a sick partnership opportunity. Then you hit a point where you're like, shit, they could buy us. And then you're like, that's crazy. And you're like, wait, no, they actually might buy us. So then you have to have a conversation of, well, do we even do this trial? Because if we do the trial and it doesn't go well, it may be way less likely that they buy us. Like it might be a zero. And I think it will go well, but you know, you start to look at data, you start to project some things out and you're like, shit, like maybe we lean harder. What are you trying to optimize for? You gotta stop and ask yourself that a lot of times, right? Wait, hold on a second. We're jumbled up. We've been working on this thing for a bit. What are we trying to optimize for? And then you're like, I think we're actually optimizing for getting acquired. I think that's a better outcome. And I think a better outcome for them too, because they had a team working on it and it wasn't getting off the ground. And we started working with that team. And I remember calling Dan Folkman, the man who was running the deal on the other side and being like, hey, I don't know. I think we're going to hold our end of the bargain of the partnership, but I don't know if they're going to. You know, these guys that you've got there. And that, and again, it was, that was real. And, you know, I think, look, I mean, people know me. I mean, I wasn't, you know, none of it was, was BS, right? And we, and we had similar investors and stuff. So it was all, you know, everybody was trying to do the right thing by each other. And then they sort of look into it and they're like, yeah, you're right. Like, we don't know if these are the guys to execute. Um, and then, you know, so you start to try and position, okay, let's actually try and position this thing for an acquisition path versus a partnership path.

And then from there, you know, was there a moment in time where you actually were the one that initiated like that literal conversation to someone at GoPuff where you're like, look, I know we're doing this partnership, but like, do you guys have interest in buying us? Is that like actually the conversation?

It starts to come, at least I think this is probably how it goes, something it almost starts to come up as a joke or like offhand, right? Like, well, you know, maybe we just buy you guys. You're like, yeah, yeah, maybe. And then you're like, okay, but really? You know, it's almost like dating or something too where you're like, okay, well now how do I not act desperate? You know, getting on my knees and begging you right now probably is the not right reaction, but okay. And then you're like, I guess I gotta like play it cool. Like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe we'd be down, you know? And so like, it kind of starts more casual like that. And then it's like, all of a sudden we're doing diligence and talking to lawyers and I talked to my lead advisor investor and he was like, this seems like a no-brainer if we can figure it out. And then I think we had the op— we were like, do we go try and get a competitive offer? And then we made the decision not to mess around. We knew these guys, we trusted them. I think they trusted us. We had really good interactions with the founders. It was like, let's not mess around here. Let's not play, play any games. Let's try and figure out— so we had a deal in place, kind of, it kind of fell through, so we thought the deal was dead, and then we had to, you know, revive it, change a couple things, and then, you know, we felt good about it, and then it was, you know, came together.

What was that, that, uh, journey like for you, going from early employee to the man in charge back to employee? Like, was there, was there a moment where like the— you had to like reframe your approach to like every day because now you're like reporting to someone?

I mean, dude, I was so thankful to start that it was just like, this is salvation. Like, you know, you just go from Friday at 3 o'clock and you're like, you know, can we pay for this thing? Can we not pay for this thing? I'm not paying myself, you know. This is hard, how are we going to do this, we're having an issue, someone just quit, we have to fire this person, you know, sales were down yesterday, to oh my God, we're like safe, this part of the journey is over. I mean, it didn't feel job mission accomplished, but it just felt like, wow, a bunch of the things that were stressors yesterday are not stressors today. And that was just a feeling I'll never forget. And so I think from that standpoint, I was so thankful to just be there. And then it was cool because we had resources. They wanted me to build, they wanted to fund that, they wanted us to grow. And I was kind of back in my Uber seat a bit, except a couple years older, hopefully a couple years more mature, hopefully a little bit more humble and whatever else. And a fresh start to be like, okay, how do I wanna do this the second time around? Doesn't mean you still make a million mistakes and whatever else, but it was like, this is cool. I actually, I'm good as an, as an employee. I think I am. And I'm good at like figuring out how to shape-shift a bit and like running my mouth to a point and finding the line, maybe stepping over it a bit, but like staying behind it and trying to add value, whatever else. And so I think that's part of also why when the podcast came together, it was like, I think being an employee is awesome. And I think people aren't out there talking about how great it was. And I had the experience of we start something and it was great. I loved having Bandit. I loved being with my co-founder, but also getting back to GoPuff with those guys and a little bit less stress on that level, a little existential stress and being back in the driver's seat of growing and building again was like, this is great.

And you were like, you made this comment earlier, like when I left Uber, I didn't know if I'd ever get a chance to like be on this rocket ship again. And it's like, like you kind of found yourself back in the same seat, ironically enough, with a lot of the same people.

Ironically enough, with a bunch of the same people, which again shows you how your network is everything and how the people that you meet throughout your career, you end up sitting with them recording a podcast years later, right? You don't know where any of these things are going to go. So it's just like, curate your friendships, curate these relationships, keep growing, keep building, try and stay humble. Keep doing stuff. And yeah, then obviously you're back— I'm back in the seat again. You're like, God, I can't believe how all this comes around. I can't believe how all this works. This is awesome. And it was just a lot of positive. And then you just rip it and you just see what— see what happens.

One other thing I wanted to talk about with you, because you've been like front row seat for this, is just the concept of fundraising. I mean, you've arguably been exposed to some of the best fundraisers in the world of startups as we know it today. I mean, yeah, between Uber and GoPuff, I don't even know how many zeros are included in the amount of dollars raised. And not to say that— I mean, we know for sure not every business needs to do that, but for those who do, like, they could probably learn a thing or two from what you've seen on like what a good fundraiser does versus a bad. Having had a front row seat to people who've raised like hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, like, what are your biggest takeaways or learnings?

I mean, momentum is everything. You gotta ride the wave. You know, you, you think you've got the magic and the magic goes away. So you've got to take a— take advantage of every opportunity. I mean, look, you want to be— obviously there's some balance there. You want— you don't want to overraise. You don't want to, you know, raise incorrectly and whatever else. But like, if you feel like you've got some momentum and people are interested, you should take advantage of those moments. Because I've seen the ups and downs. I've seen you're on the come up, people are pumped. I mean, even on The Bandit, at the small scale that we were at, when we had momentum and there was some FOMO and whatever else, you can raise and you can, you can create FOMO and you can get people excited. You can take advantage of it. But the minute it's gone, it's very hard to recapture. So you gotta seize the opportunity when you have it. And then I think it's like, you know, some of the process stuff of actually running a real fundraising process, actually having data rooms and decks and things and teasers and whatever else, and curating your list of people and, and saying, we're gonna do this over a multi-week process and we're gonna do upfront meetings and then elevate to the next thing and then elevate to the last round. And we're gonna make a decision by this last date. Again, some of these are champagne problems. Some of these are harder to do in, in, in tougher environments or whatever else, but that allows you to create some FOMO, create some intrigue. These investors talk, they know what each other are doing. You have one person pass, someone else is gonna know they passed. That might lose a second person. So you just, you wanna have some structure to these things and you don't necessarily wanna dabble in it when you're not fundraising. Like you're either fundraising or you're not fundraising and you can really screw yourself if you start to dabble in some of these conversations.

Before you're ready for it, especially at the institutional level. I think like with earlier stage companies, you know, with us, for example, like we raised on a SAFE. It's like if you come across an interesting angel investor who like can bring a unique lens to it, it's like we're not fundraising, but will I make room for you? Like, yeah, probably. It probably makes sense for my business.

Yeah.

But yeah, I've always just wondered like how the calculus changes in these— in the optics of these conversations when you're raising like $1 million versus $5 million versus $500 million. Um, because I do think though the, the narrative is definitely different and like the antics you have to use for better or for worse cannot be the same for someone trying to get $1 million versus $500 million.

When— but that also just comes back to the relationship piece is so important. I mean, I saw that with Emil at Uber and with, um, you know, Cameron who ran Corp Dev at Uber and, uh, Rafi Nikir at GoPuff, Dan. At GoPuff. I mean, these guys are actively having conversations with the investors, you know, again, the appropriate ones, not necessarily, hey, outright, we're raising right now, or like, but curating these relationships, teasing out enough info. It's much more of a personal relationship at that point when you're raising those, those massive dollars. And all those guys who are some of the best fundraisers in the world are, are great. And they're real. Those are real relationships. I mean, it's not like they're playing a game. I mean, those people totally care about people and and are best in the world at it.

What advice would you give to someone who maybe doesn't feel like a founder but wants to like start something great?

Oh man, why go work somewhere? I go be an employee somewhere. I go work in the early stage. I think that— I mean, that's what I'm trying to do with the pod is like bring back— make startups great again. Like make, make work in early stage great again. I would— my advice would be find a list of 5, 10 companies that you think are just cool. Like, I just thought Uber was cool. If you're like, did you know anything? I was 24 and I'm like from Chicago. Like, I— you're lucky that I was able to tie my shoes. Like, I just thought it was cool, right? I just wanted to run around Chicago and tell everyone to use a black car service that they could request through their phone. I was just pumped about that. I'm a promoter and I think, so you make a list of 10 companies that you're pumped about and figure out how you can add value and try and get ahold of a founder or an employee or anybody there and try and get in the mix. And even if it's like you're working a sales job, you feel like you don't have a lot of time, like, I don't know, can you give somebody 5, 10 hours a week? Can you bring somebody leads? Can you do some, but thing I just think if you wanna do something entrepreneurial in an early stage, the best way to get in the mix on it is join something early, join something cool, build your network, meet interesting people, and your world's going to explode in a good way.

Looking back on your journey, what would you say is the biggest turning pro moment that you've had along the way? That moment where you feel like everything just changed and you were playing a different game?

I mean, I think— I mean, joining Uber was insane. Joining Uber was insane. It definitely felt— I couldn't believe, you know, as you ask what's my advice for someone trying to figure it out, I just— you start probably thinking about your future when you're 16, 17, but so much is kind of decided for you, right? Like, you're— where you are at that point is decided for you, where you're going to go to college and some of those things. Yeah, you've got some of the— but you have barely even You don't even know what you want to do at that point. You don't know where you want to be. You don't really know who you are. And then all of a sudden you're like 22 and you emerge from college, this construct that we've developed, and now you like still don't know where you want to do or what you want to be. You're just probably in debt and like whatever else. And I think for me, the fact that a couple of years out of school where I still didn't know who I was or what I wanted to do, I was able to find myself in a situation where I was just so pumped. And it was like, wait, these people are more like me than other people I've met. And their values are more like mine that I didn't even know I had these values. But like, you start to piece together and you're like, wait, this— I know this. I don't know it, but I kind of know this game a bit. I feel like I can learn this game. And that's why I just push on people that are trying to figure things out or earlier in their career or whatever else, just like, just get in the mix, experience new things, try new things, because you just don't know which part's going to sort of pull you in. And if you are lucky enough to find that, then you just keep going down that rabbit hole. And so I think for me, probably joining Uber was a huge moment, huge turning pro moment. And then probably the Bandit to GoPuff where you were like, holy shit, like I can't believe I have the privilege to be able to do this again. And like, let's make the most of this experience and I'll do it until it's no longer a thing. And then when it's not, I'll be sitting here with you and like, all right, how do we figure out what the next thing is?

Max, this has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on today.

Dude, thanks for having me.

You want to look at that camera and let everyone know where they can find the Early Pod?

EarlyPod.com, on Instagram, Early Pod, on TikTok, Early Pod, and we are on Spotify, Apple, YouTube. Early Podcast. Subscribe, please. Hell yeah, dude, you're the man. Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.