@andrewchen

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Personal update- I’m joining Uber! Here’s why

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Hi readers,
Big news: I’m headed to Uber to join the growth team.

I’m incredibly excited to apply everything I know about growth and combine that with an explosive company on a historic trajectory. My new role will head up everything related to driver signups, referral programs, and top-of-funnel for the supply side. I’m lucky to join the incredible team at Uber to work on a product I use every day. Thank you to Ed Baker, Travis VanderZanden, and Travis Kalanick for bringing me on board.

I’m joining Uber because it’s changing the world. It’s one of the very few companies where you can really say that, seriously and unironically. I’ve gone from being aware of the potential for Uber transforming our lives – from reading all the same articles we’ve all been reading – to truly believing it, after some deep and thoughtful conversations with the team. It’s still very early for the company and its impact, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Not surprisingly, this also means I’m going to stop writing for a bit and take a blog vacation – I’ll check back in when 2016 rolls around to write an update though.

Finally, those who know me well also know that this is actually the last chapter of a startup I had founded a couple years ago, that achieved some success but didn’t take off the way we all wanted. (Longer story there, that I’ll write about some day). Thanks to everyone who supported me, including Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Mitch Kapor, Akash Garg, Bill Gossman, Bubba Murarka, Rishad Tobaccowala, Jim Young, Stephen DeBerry, Jameson Hsu, Grant Ries, and Ron Conway. Also Chris Howard, Brad Silverberg, Danny Rimer, Xuyang Ren, Jianfeng Lu, Tom Bedecarre, Sheila Spence, and the folks at Docomo and Recruit. My family, Ada Chen and Sachin Rekhi, who listened to my constant hand-wringing as I made the final decision. And of course, my team, in particular my close friends John Richmond and Arnor Sigurdsson, and also Steve, Logan, Alan, and the other folks I’ve worked with over the years.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be touch after the New Year.

Regards,
Andrew

 

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