Two things every startup founder should learn from Uber drivers
Living in the middle of West Texas, you don’t get very many opportunities to use Uber. As a matter of fact, while I’m writing this blog there are only 2 drivers available for a city of 200,000 people during a holiday weekend. Over the last 3 months, I had an opportunity to travel to NYC every other week. Every person has a story to tell, whether it’s a story too good to be true, an inspirational story, or a story that makes you grateful of everything you have people are never short of stories. Listening to the stories Uber drivers had was always a highlight of the trips.
Startup founders always have stories to tell, the story of deciding to start a new company, the story of the company or even the story of success and failure at the end of the day every startup founder should learn from the stories of Uber drivers.
Here are some of the people I had the honor of meeting while using Uber in New York City.
The lawyer from Dominicana — The first person I met on my very first ride started with a love story that was too good to be the truth. He was a law student in the “Dominican Republic”. While in school, he met what he described to be the most beautiful woman he had ever met, a tourist from NYC. He started a conversation with her, and after she returned back home they stayed in contact. She would visit him every couple of months in the Dominican Republic, after about a year of dating she got pregnant. That’s where the recent lawyer decided to move to the states to be near the family and work as a janitor. 15+ years later, he is married to the same woman, the daughter is an AB honor roll student, and he now drives Uber to help his daughter have music lessons.
I asked him if he regretted moving and leaving what could have been a comfortable life in his home country as a lawyer and his response was “Not one bit”.
The gold miner — I wish I could remember where my driver was from but he had some pretty crazy stories. Back home, he was a gold miner. I don’t mean some of those tv shows you see on the history channel where they find gold and then hire a bunch of local people to dig it. He was the local person hired to dig the gold. He was telling me a story on how a developer went crazy after not finding anything and he would make the diggers strip down naked to make sure they would not steal anything. He said that out of all the projects he worked on not once did his employer paid him the full amount he was owed. They would always leave early and leave without paying.
The accountant from Guyana and Sweden — This one was one that really caught me off guard. It was a short trip so I didn’t get to really know my driver but he is an in-house accountant for a major company. He was originally born in Guyana, his parents migrated to Sweden where he got his accounting degree. In Sweden, he worked for a multinational corporation. He was rotated into an office in the Boston area where he eventually met his wife. He ended up getting a better job at another company in NYC so he moved. What makes this story crazy was that he is an upper-level accountant at a major company with a great salary but he drives Uber to help his daughter pay for her wedding.
The Doctor form Costa Rica — This one was easier for me to relate to because my dad is a doctor in Mexico but for people reading might be hard to understand. Even though doctors in other countries still have to go through all years of training with med school, specialty, etc, they don’t make a lot of money. I know in some places a doctor will make less than $800 a month in their home countries. My driver never actually told me how he ended up in the United States but he was a doctor in Costa Rica. He hasn’t practiced medicine since he came to the United States 8 years ago but he still tries to read journals and articles to stay updated. Somehow during our conversation, we started talking about salaries and he explained to me that one week of driving Uber in NYC makes him more money than one month of being a doctor in his home country.
The Brazilian chef — This guy by far had the best set up in his car for a quality service. He had candy, a tablet for you to control music, all types of chargers, and even had a book of coupons for riders to scroll while riding. This guy had super broken English so we decided it would be easier if he spoke Portuguese to me and I responded in Spanish, with that being said there might have been something lost in the impromptu translations. This guy had just been in the United States for 5 months. He was going to a county college to improve his English. I instantly regretted asking him what he did back home because he was a trained chef. He started explaining his favorite dishes from his home town. He even told me about the best way of making tacos because he always thought everyone should eat tacos. He seemed to be extremely excited at the opportunity to talk about food I had to ask him to slow down because he was speaking too fast for me to understand. I have never been in a situation where I instantly got hungry after speaking to someone.
So far you might have noticed that all my drivers were born and raised in other countries. If it wasn’t for my last day they all would have been immigrants but my last day I actually got a “local” driver.
The corrections officer from NJ — This was a long ride after an extremely long day of traveling but the driver was a 20+ year corrections officer and an army veteran. When I asked him why he drove Uber he said it was simple to finish paying off his house. He had been a correction officer and was getting ready to retire but he wanted to make sure his house was fully paid for before he took the leap. He had an exciting glare in his eyes when he mentioned that and after some investigating questions, it was because he was going to be the first person in his family to own his house outright. Good for him. I asked him what was some of the craziest things he had seen as an Uber driver/correction officer and he mentioned two:
- A group of women were out on a “bachelorette party” the bride to be got so wasted she started hanging out of the window car flashing at passing drivers. My driver mentioned he tried to do everything in his power to get the drunken girls back in the car but he couldn’t so he stopped the car. It all started going downhill when the bride to be flashed a police car driving by. Her friends tried to pull her back into the car but her dress broke. The officer happened to know the driver since they both worked in law enforcement and he let the girls go without any tickets. My driver said to this day that was the biggest tip he has ever received.
- As a correction officer, he said it happened pretty often but he would have his childhood friends be prisoners at the jail he worked. He mentioned the first couple of times they always asked for special treatment but he didn’t want to mess his job so he ignored them. He mentioned it being one of the hardest things to do but he kept reminding himself it was for his family. After a couple of years, they knew not to ask so it got easier on him.
Thinking back to the drivers I had the honor of meeting I can’t help but think of 2 things all startup founders can learn:
- Adapt
- No Regrets
ADAPT
As founders, we can get caught up in the direction our companies are heading. After all, we are all on track to build the best thing since sliced bread but what happens if we don’t adapt to our environment. New technology can be released, new competitors in the market, a big benefit of being a small startup over a giant corporation is that startups can pivot and learn a lot faster. Just like all the Uber drivers mentioned above they all adapted to a new country and are thriving in their personal lives.
NO REGRETS
As the rides were getting close to reaching the final destination I would always ask the drivers, “Do you regret your decisions?”. I can honestly tell you that every single driver said they didn’t. Why? Because they had the opportunity to learn and live. Don’t get me wrong, some of them would explain that they wished things would have gone a little different but regretting the opportunities and the learning experiences they had is what makes life so beautiful. As founders, we get caught up in all the noise that is going around us, we need more sales, we need to add more people, we only have 2 months left on a 6-month project but yet we never sit back and appreciate all the learning opportunities we get to go through in the beautiful rollercoaster of a startup. Sit back, enjoy and don’t regret anything.
Regardless of where you are in your startup journey, just getting started, looking for investment, you are about to be acquired or you are at the end of the rope, remember these two things we can learn from our Uber drivers:
ADAPT & HAVE NO REGRETS!
