????萊恩?麥基倫是Uber的第二位工程師。他是從格拉維斯那里知道這家公司的。格拉維斯和他一樣都畢業于邁阿密大學俄亥俄分校，兩人是在舊金山認識的。當時，Uber從另一家名叫Zozi的創業公司那里租用了一小塊辦公室。

????最終，我們在他們的辦公室租了一間小會議室，就是用玻璃幕墻隔開的那種。那張桌子幾乎和房間一般大。我還記得到公司的第一天早上，剛跨過門檻，我就注意到了堆在桌子上的一摞書，都是關于計算機科學、編程和數據庫的。它們都是原裝的，連封皮都沒撕。還有一本破破爛爛的書看來已經被翻閱了無數次。我說的第一句話就是：“嘿，康拉德，為啥桌上還有一本西班牙語辭典呢？”他看著我說：“因為代碼是用西班牙語寫的。歡迎來到Uber。”

????奧斯汀?蓋特是從實習生的身份加入Uber的。最終她干了非常多的工作，成了Uber開辟新市場的“劇本”專家。

????當時我剛出校門，正在找工作，經濟環境也很不景氣。我在Twitter上隨機關注了一些科技界的人。后來我看到了幾條關于Uber的推文，可能是賈森?卡拉坎尼斯發的吧，看起來很有意思。我聽說他們正在招實習生，于是我找到了萊恩?格拉維斯，他當時正擔任Uber的CEO。我對他說：“你必須給我一次機會。”

????那是2010年的8月。很快他就打來電話：“先回答幾個問題吧。”我嘗試著給出自己的答案。我喜歡看Uber今天的樣子。然后他很快說：“你為什么不來一趟？”然后我就去見了他們。

????當時他們正在借用Zozi公司的辦公室，空間很緊張。我去見了他們。我不記得當時我們談了什么，但氛圍很隨和，我喜歡這一點。我記得那天我打扮得非常正式，但是他們都是一副書呆子的樣子。

????當時我心想：“這些家伙真酷，對他們的事業充滿激情，他們的產品也非常有意思。”所以我誠懇地請求格拉維斯給我一次機會，他答應了。老實說，我其實并不是非常夠格。前幾個月挺煎熬的，我做得也不是很好。但即便是在我還比較生疏的時候，他們也沒有放棄我，直到我漸漸熟悉了業務。

????我是個實習生，所以我的工作也不是很固定。我記得我曾在莫斯康會展中心門口發過傳單，但是沒人想接。我也給Yelp上的很多司機做過電話推銷。后來第一個支持我們的司機來了。當時我就覺得：“我能行。”早些時候我們也試過電話支持，那些電話會直接轉到我的手機上。如果我沒接，它就會轉到格拉維斯的手機上。如果格拉維斯也沒接，就會轉到特拉維斯的手機。但隨后，有人在凌晨三點打電話說，“我打不著車了。”于是我們關掉了電話支持功能。總之一開始的時候，這就是我能夠做出的貢獻。

????由于當時我是剛出校門的菜鳥，我一度覺得自己寫不出一封得體的郵件。然后我很快意識到：“噢，大家都是寫到哪算哪。”在一家創業公司里，沒人知道他們自己在干什么。自從我對這一點產生了信心以后，我的工作很快就上手了。

????當我們開始得到用戶的支持時，我想：“好吧，我要做所有的支持工作。”我承擔了博客社區管理方面的工作和許多瑣碎的事務。然后我們負責司機運營的人從公司離職了。他們說：“奧斯汀，你能把這一塊的工作也兼了嗎？”我說：“當然可以。”于是從那時起，我開始負責管理與合作伙伴的關系。

????當時我們做的還僅僅是禮賓車這一塊。有一次我去接客戶，我正好陪他走出來，結果看到他走進一輛粉色的克萊斯勒Caravan里。我想：“我們以后最后提前做一下車輛檢查。”

????每次我在一個城市做推廣時，我把我做的每件事都做了筆記，那就是我們最初的一個非常草率的“劇本”。后來每到一個城市，我都會修改“劇本”，使它變得更高效。他們說：“為什么你不招聘一些推廣人員呢？”最終我大概招聘了50人。我的態度是：“尋求寬恕。”我負責了這次大擴張。

????Ryan McKillen was Uber’s second engineer. He learned about the company from Graves, a fellow alumnus of Miami University of Ohio whom he’d gotten to know in San Francisco. The company was using a small amount of office space from another startup called Zozi.

????Somehow we ended up in a tiny conference room in their office, this glassed-in little conference room. The table was about as big as the room. On the morning of my first day I remember crossing the threshold of the door and noticing this stack of books on the table. All these computer science books, programming, databases, all this stuff. They’re pristine—the bindings on the books had never been broken. And there’s this one tattered book on the table that looks like it’s gotten all kinds of love, a lot of use. And so, first thing I say is, “Hey, Conrad, why is there a Spanish-to-English dictionary on the table?” And he looks back up at me and goes, “Well, Ryan, because the code is written in Spanish. Welcome to Uber.”

????Austin Geidt started at Uber as an intern. Eventually she’d do so many jobs that she’d be the expert on Uber’s “playbook” for opening new markets.

????I was out of school. I was looking for jobs. It was a bad economy. I was following a few random tech people on Twitter, and I think it was from Jason Calacanis, but I saw some tweets about Uber, and it looked interesting. I heard they were looking for an intern, and so I reached out to Ryan Graves, who was CEO at the time, and basically was like, “You’ve got to give me a shot.”

????This was in August of 2010. And he called me pretty immediately. He said, “Answer a few questions for me.” I put together a little deck of some sort. I’d love to see today what it looks like. And then, pretty immediately, he was like, “Why don’t you come on in?” And then I met with them.

????They were sharing Zozi’s office. They had very little space at the time. I met them. I don’t remember what we talked about but it was very casual. I liked that. I remember that I came very overdressed and they were just, like, these nerdy guys.

????I remember thinking, “These guys are really cool, they’re really passionate about what they’re doing. Their products are really interesting.” And so I pleaded [to Graves] and he gave me a shot. I wasn’t super-qualified at the time, to be completely honest. It was a struggle for the first couple of months. I didn’t do super well, but they kind of hung on to me while I was green until I got the hang of it.

????I was an intern, so the job wasn’t very defined. I remember handing out flyers at the Moscone Center that no one wanted. I remember cold-calling drivers off of Yelp. Then our first support ticket came in. I was like, “I got this.” And we experimented with phone support early, which just went to my phone. If I didn’t pick up, it went to Graves’s phone, and then to Travis down the line. But then I would get calls at 3 a.m. saying, “I can’t get a car.” So we shut that down. But in the beginning, it was just kind of making up value where I could find it.

????I was so green out of school that I thought I didn’t know how to write a proper email. Then I quickly learned: “Oh, everyone’s kind of making this up.” In a start up, no one knows what they’re doing. As soon as I got confident on that, I was pretty much off to a running start.

????When we started getting support, I was like, “All right, I’m going to do all the support.” I took on the community-management side of blogging and whatnot. And then our driver operations guy left the company. They said, “Austin, can you take this along with what you’re doing?” And I said, “Sure.” And so then I was managing relations with partners.

????Remember, we were just limos at the time, right? And so I remember onboarding someone. I happened to walk him out and see that he was in, like, a pink [Chrysler] Caravan, and I was like, “Oh, we should probably do vehicle checks going forward.”

????I took notes on everything that I was doing as I was launching a city. It kind of became a very sloppy version of our first playbook. And then each city I would go to thereafter, I would try and refine it, make it more efficient, just streamline this process. Then they said, “Okay, why don’t you hire a couple of launchers?” I ultimately hired about 50. My attitude was, “Ask for forgiveness.” I managed the expansion.