This is a chapter of a memoir-style series about my time as an early employee at Lyft – the pink mustaches, the hyper-growth, the ride. I’ll keep dropping chapters until I’m done.
I always wanted a career in Hollywood. My desire to become a Hollywood producer started the summer after 7th grade, watching Independence Day on opening day – it was a religious experience for me. There I was, watching Randy Quaid’s character, Russell Casse, a washed-up crop duster and town drunk, someone even his kids didn’t respect, redeem himself in the most heroic way imaginable. He flies his F-18 straight into the belly of the city destroyer spaceship.
“Hello, boys… I’M BAAAACK.”
The spaceship explodes. The crowd in the theatre erupted. Humanity wins.
In that moment, the joke became the hero. The build up to that scene still gets me, even today.
Cut to credits. One of the names on screen: Dean Devlin – Producer.
What did a producer do? I knew what a writer and director did. I later learned that a producer oversaw all aspects of filmmaking: from idea to release. Part project manager, part facilitator, part magician.
Side note: I actually talked my way into an internship at Dean Devlin’s production company right after landing in LA and started grad school. Maybe a story for another time.
Cut to the present.
Summer of 2012.
It was a scorching day in LA. I stood in the cracked parking lot behind my Hollywood apartment as a stout Mexican dude in worn coveralls poked under the hood of my 1995 Honda Accord, Betsy. My first car. A hand-me-down. She’d lasted longer in LA than I expected.
“No A/C, transmission’s done, radiator’s cooked… but the interior’s clean” he chuckled.
He was right – the interior was immaculate.
“I’ll give you $500 bucks.”
Sold.
He wrote me a check, backed up his tow truck, hitched the car, and drove off. Betsy would live out her days in a pick-n-pull yard somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. The check felt heavy in my hand.
I was working as an hourly contractor at Warner Bros., Hollywood’s top-grossing studio at the time, but still living paycheck to paycheck. My grocery budget was designed to stretch $1 a day, thankfully there was a Food 4 Less and a Dollar Store nearby. I wasn’t doing Elon’s challenge for the story – I was just broke.
I glanced up toward the Hollywood Hills. My apartment complex sat near Melrose and Vine, behind the Pavilions. My neighbors and I nicknamed the complex “the DMZ,” short for the Demilitarized Zone. The complex had a peaceful courtyard where we would congregate every evening and that shielded us from Hollywood’s chaos. I could see the Hollywood sign from the lot. That day, it felt farther away.
Without a car, I started taking the 222 bus to work. And weirdly, I liked it. I met other WB workers: the other car-less assistants, security guards, facilities staff. People grinding. People like me.
I applied to every open entertainment-related job that I could find. At Warner Bros. alone, I submitted 120 applications in a year. I even knocked on an HR manager’s door when I saw a job I wanted. It annoyed them, but I didn’t care. I was hungry. Literally.
One day in August, on a bus ride home, I spotted Chris, an HR guy from the building I worked at. We’d interacted a few times. Always pleasant. I waffled for a few minutes before mustering the courage to get up and sit closer.
“Hey, Chris, any advice on landing a full-time role? I’ve applied to just about everything.”
I laughed after saying it, half joke, half cry for help.
He gave me a look and smiled. He knew. HR knew.
We started chatting. He told me he’d studied theatre at UC Riverside. Done some stage work. I shared my story too.
As we approached my stop at Hollywood and Vine, he left me with something I still think about:
“You don’t want to get 10 or 15 years into your career only to look back and realize you never did the thing you really wanted to do.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but he was right.
“You want to produce? Go produce. Make anything. Then someday, they’ll find you.”
Fall of 2012
By the end of October, I’d moved out of my 360-square-foot Hollywood apartment and headed north. I split time between my brother’s couch in San Jose and my old bedroom in Stockton.
Betsy II, my next hand-me-down, was a 2002 Honda Accord. Still had transmission issues, but she had A/C. Light years ahead of the original.
My mom suggested I help my stepdad, Gerardo, start his new business. Years earlier, she’d bought a 4,000-square-foot former grocery store on Main Street in East Stockton – scooped it up cheap after the real estate bubble popped. She grew up in a small town in Mexico, worked in the fields of the central valley in California, raised two kids on her own, and built a nice portfolio of real estate. She’s a survivor in every sense of the word.
The building sat empty until my stepdad – a trained electrician turned tortilla maker – started renovating the building’s interior by himself.
I helped with permitting and random odd jobs. Gerardo had been collecting old machine parts for several months. One day we jumped into his old pickup truck and drove out to some guy’s property in rural San Joaquin County. We picked up these big, greasy chunks of used machinery. At first glance, they looked like junk.
I was skeptical. “How useful can these be?”
When we brought the parts home, Gerardo pulled them apart, cleaned them up, and rebuilt them like he was assembling a gaming PC. Before I knew it, he had custom built a corn tortilla machine from scratch. Anything he didn’t need, he sold off.
The man’s a self-taught engineer. I was like his non-technical co-founder, mostly bringing the pizza or donuts, but proud all the same.
A few months later, Mi Canasta Tortillas opened its doors. Business was slow at first before building a following, but I got to be a fly on the wall for something real. Something we built.
Early Summer of 2013
One Saturday night, I visited my cousin Ivan in San Francisco. He lived in the Mission and took me bar-hopping. The neighborhood had my kind of energy and is still one of my favorite places I’ve ever lived.
As we left Zeitgeist, he walked me to the 16th Street BART station. That’s when a car with a pink fuzzy pillow strapped to the grill pulled up across the street. I stopped and watched as someone climbed in.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
Ivan shrugged. “Some new taxi service with an app. They’ve all got those pink mustaches.”
The next morning, I googled “pink mustache taxi” and started digging.
I eventually landed on a job board and applied for an Office Manager role. Fuck it – I’d helped manage a busy VP’s office at WB and figured this would be a piece of cake.
A few days later, I had a phone screen with a recruiter named Helen. She mentioned that the Office Manager role was filled, but told me about an unlisted opening for a Shipping Lead role.
“I think you’d be great,” she said. “Come in and meet the team.”
I threw on my black suit from Express, and drove out to Jack London Square in Oakland, where the Lyft Ops team was based.
I walked in and immediately bumped into a tall guy in a headset–Luke Greenwood–chatting with a potential new driver. The place was buzzing. There were about a dozen other people in startup casual attire, all in headsets, talking a mile a minute. It felt like a cross between a college dorm and a boiler room. A world away from the polished studio lot.
Helen emerged from the fray, greeted me, and led me through a maze of giant cardboard boxes stacked like a giant fort – each one filled with a few dozen bright pink carstaches. This fort took up half the office. She guided me to a tiny conference room behind the wall of boxes. Inside there were two chairs and an Ikea desk. I loosened my tie.
I interviewed with two people: Stephen Schnell, VP of Ops, and Travis VanderZanden, COO.
First up was Steve–Hoodie. Ball cap. Easy smile. Beard. We hit it off like buddies. Good cop.
Near the end of our conversation, he asked,“Hey, have you ever shipped anything?”
“Like, mail?” I replied.
“Yeah, we’re probably gonna ship a lot of packages.”
I had. Kind of. At Warner Bros., I’d handled plenty of shipping: brand decks, scripts, merch. Plus, I ran a little eBay side hustle in grad school–buying discount toys, shoes, and Nike gear from outlet stores and flipping them for a markup. That seemed to impress him.
Then Travis walked in.
Button-down shirt. Styled hair. Cool and polished. All business. Bad cop.
He scanned my resume for what felt like a few minutes.
Then:
“What makes you think you’re qualified for this role? You have a master’s in Film & TV Producing and zero tech startup experience.”
I paused. Then I just went for it.
“Film producing is just like entrepreneurship.”
He leaned back, listening.
“You start with an idea. Then it’s your job to bring it to life. That means gathering the right people, managing resources, solving problems, seeing it through.”
I probably rambled. But I wanted him to get it.
When I finished, he stood, shook my hand, and walked out.
Helen popped her head in and smiled.
“So… what do you think?”
I walked out with no real idea of what the job even was.
“It seems like a great opportunity. I’m excited to hear the next steps.”
She laughed and pointed at the wall of boxes with pink fur poking out around us.
“Things are going to be moving really fast around here. I’ll chat with Steve and Travis.”
Everyone in the office seemed in on the joke – except me.
The next day, I got the call. I was officially Lyft employee #63.
I didn’t make it in Hollywood.
But I was about to help build something that might just move the world.
CUT TO BLACK
🎧 Cue “Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
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Next stop: Chapter 2 – Unfuck Everything
Great story, but I already knew all of this. Write something else, gah! Appreciate the cameo appearance though. You shoulda mentioned I was holding a burrito and a forty though 🌯