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Brooke Steger is the founder and CEO of Vivian & Co. But more importantly, Formerly she was Uber’s General Manager of the Pacific Northwest region, where she took it from 1 to 100 in a rapid speed. Seattle was the 3rd market for Uber, where Brooke took it from an unknown brand to a 10-figure business.

Before Uber, she was the Director @ Lockerz, and is currently on the board of several other startups that are trying to make a splash.

Back to Uber: over the course of 5 years Brooke took the PNW region from a 1 million to 1 billion dollar P&L, spoke @ State Congress to get ride-share bills passed, and built the team from the ground up.

This conversation was incredible. Brooke HUSTLES and pursues what she’s passionate about which is a constant thread through her life. 

We dive deep into…inception days of Uber Seattle, fixing “supply” & growing an UberX solution, sacrifices of scaling, marketing to drivers & borrowing from different cultures, pop-ups & other experiments during early Uber, and life-after-Uber.

This episode is particularly valuable for a startup founder or marketer who’s curious of what the behind-the-scenes of an extremely successful marketplace looked like.

Learn from a leader who is confident in who they are, but didn’t know what she was getting into (really) when it was getting started.

Please help grow the show with us…by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform. 

Show Notes

• Why do you love traveling? [4:20]
• What interesting places have you been to? How many countries [5:09]
• It sounds like sustainable traveling is important to you? [6:57]
• Why is supporting & protecting the environment important to you? [7:52]
• Can corral start re-generating, after it’s bleached? [8:29]
• In a past life you were a travel writer. How did that come to be? [9:53]
• What’s it like staying in a 5-star resort? [11:12]
• What is Ohm Gaming? [11:56]
• Where does the name Vivian come from? [14:29]
• Can you talk about some of the companies you’re helping to advise? [15:33]
• Isn’t WEEKDAYS a marketplace for early-childhood education? [19:11]
• What were the early days of Uber like? Seattle was an early market [20:57]
• What were the beginning conversations & experiments? [25:28]
• People don’t realize there were a lot of attempts to make Uber work [29:35]
• Did you have Demand coming in? Did you just need cars [29:50]
• The early days of Uber Seattle and how they begged a driver to be on the platform [32:06]
• Where did you all start to see the work on Supply pay off? When did the flywheel go [33:03]
• How some drivers made 6-figure salaries, in the early days [35:02]

Links from Episode

• Connect with Brooke: LinkedIn | Twitter |  Vivian & Co
• Uber
• What was UberX
• Misool, Indonesia
• Misool Eco Resort
• Can corral regrow
• How do corral reefs work
• Xiamen, China
• WEEKDAYS
• Otter Learning
• Ledger 8760
• What does 1099 vs W2 mean
• History of Uber
• What is Uber Black
• What is regulatory compliance
• What was Sidecar
• What is a Tuk-Tuk
• What is a PT Cruiser

What’d you learn about Uber, that you didn’t know before? Comment below.