On Joining Uber
For the past couple of years, I found myself immersed in thinking about the challenges of on-demand economies.
In 2014, I was the Head of Product Design for a startup that focused on serving meals to families, prepared by an actual chef in the customer’s home. More than just designing software, our work considered the private physical spaces of our customers, interpersonal interactions between chef and customer, and the customer journey, operations and logistics of order fulfillment, food preparation, transportation, and delivery.
The year following, I was the Interim Head of Product for another startup that had a similar model — this time, instead of chefs, we had veteran beauty professionals, and the company was disrupting the brick-and-mortar salon by helping busy working women get beauty services in the convenience of their own homes.
These two companies couldn’t be more different in the services they offer, and yet I found myself grappling with many of the same challenges for both:
- Getting customers comfortable with a behavior-changing service in which strangers provide them with a service they would come to rely on.
- Helping 1099 professionals understand how to make the platform a viable career alternative that is flexible, lucrative and fulfilling.
- Reducing all points of friction between the customer and the professional, from communication to service to support.
With those experiences fresh in mind, I couldn’t be more excited about joining Uber as Product Design Lead on the Uber Everything team. I will initially be focusing on courier growth — trying to help Uber partners understand all the ways that the evolving Uber platform can fit into their lives as the company continues to explore services beyond just transportation. The team has already built some incredible software for businesses, couriers and customers, and I’m thrilled to be joining at a time when there are many juicy product challenges on the horizon.
For friends in New York City, not to worry — I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I have been hoping for a chance to work with Uber in NYC for some time. In 2011, when I was just starting to build a product design agency in San Francisco, an Uber executive and friend saw me sketching icons in a tea shop in Hayes Valley, SF. With the Uber product in its early stages, I was asked to help with a campaign at SXSW in Austin to drive awareness of the brand, which was just starting to move beyond SF to other cities. Remember those SXSW pedicabs in 2011 and 2012 that picked up customers via the Uber app and had hamburgers on hand for the ride home? You might say that was UberEATS, a few years ahead of its time. I loved working with the team back then, and I have been patiently waiting for the day that Uber set its sights on building a product team here in New York.
That day has come and I am excited to be a part of the new team and help it grow. Stay tuned for open product/design positions.
