Rebel Without a Crew: A Lyft Story – Chapter 2
Unfuck Everything
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso
Summer 2013
My first day at Lyft was July 1, 2013. I showed up at the Jack London Square office around 9 a.m. and the place still buzzed like I’d never left. Elliot Henrikson, one of the Ops Managers, spotted me and made a beeline–carrying a Nerf gun like it was an extension of himself. Fitting for the Rideshare Wars. Bright, wickedly sarcastic, and surprisingly decent. We’d end up becoming friends.
This time, I ditched the suit. Old polo, jeans, sneakers.
The office was open concept, desks clustered into pods. In the back corner, a medium sized office where Travis VanderZanden worked when he was around. Just outside the office was Steve Schnell’s desk–minimalist, a big monitor. A good view of the action.
Elliot walked me through intros. Everyone on the team was sharp. Everyone had a story. I’d come to learn that weird backstories were part of the Lyft Ops starter pack. I loved it. There was a method to the madness for Steve and Travis’ hiring.
“Welcome to the Drive Team,” Steve said, shaking my hand.
Drive Team. Makes sense.
We traded small talk until Steve paused. “Oh shit, I need to get you a desk.”
“I can stand or find a spot somewhere in the kitchen to post up,” I offered.
“Take mine,” he said, already grabbing his laptop. He disappeared into the office.
Moments later, he returned from the office with a brand-new Apple MacBook Air.
“You cool with this?” as he handed me the box.
Was I cool with it? I’d only ever owned budget Dells. This was my first Apple anything.
“Enjoy your first open experience,” Steve grinned.
“Open experience?”
“Just open it. You’ll get it.”
The iconic white box. The slow slide of the top lid. The laptop revealed itself like a piece of art. Cords were carefully wrapped and tucked in pockets beneath the machine–out of sight. Damn. I got it. Later, I learned Steve Jobs and Jony Ive believed unpacking an Apple product should feel like a ritual–it was an extension of the product itself.
Once I was set up, I had my first real meeting with Steve. The person before me hadn’t worked out. My first assignment? Unfuck everything.
He led me to the backroom. Probably ten by ten, a table and stool, a few spent nerf bullets littered the ground, sides were stacked with boxes of random stuff: aux cables, die-cut stickers, wooden promo coins, and random swag. Pure chaos.
“Take inventory,” Steve said. “We need to know what we have before we launch our next market.”
Hand counting this shit would’ve taken me days. I grabbed a handful of one item, counted exactly 100, and weighed it. Then I used that as a baseline for that item–subtracting the weight of the container and batch weighing the rest to estimate totals. It worked. By the end of day two, the place was spotless. Sorted. Labeled. Counted.
My time as a Hollywood assistant taught me to move fast and stay cool under pressure.
By then, members of the Drive Team started poking their heads in wondering what I was up to. Isamarie Perez, a former tennis player at Stanford, strolled in and nodded in approval while mid-call with a driver. Then Adam Wald, an Ops Manager, asked to use the backroom for interviewing candidates hoping to join the Drive Team since we were short on space. I agreed, as long as it didn’t mess with my flow.
By my second week, Steve called me into the corner office. Travis was there too, hunched over his laptop looking at a spreadsheet. Probably a growth forecast.
“We’re pivoting driver onboarding,” Steve said. “We’re going to ship onboarding kits directly to new drivers’ homes.”
Travis looked up. “The key is to waste no time between driver approvals and when they get the kit. We need you to find a way to get these to their doorstep when the driver gets approved, so they can hit the road immediately. That day.”
New drivers had to visit local offices for screening and gear. It worked–until it didn’t. It was a process. But physical offices weren’t scalable. Travis went into a mini speech about expanding across the country, and maybe even international.
“This is how we scale driver onboarding,” Travis declared. “And you’re going to drive a big piece of it.”
I was inspired.
“Awesome. How do I do it?” I asked–then immediately regretted it.
Record scratch.
Travis said nothing.
Steve smirked. “Figure it out.”
I emerged from the office with a loose list of kitting requirements: carstache, whatever swag we had, an aux cable. Someone at HQ said they would send a few boxes of stuff.
A courier arrived later with boxes of promo cards bundled like bricks and canvas bags to pack items in. But no blueprint. Just parts.
It was late afternoon at the office so I cracked a beer and sat down at a table near the kitchen. Everyone else was chasing leads or closing drivers. I was the odd one out, building something no one could fully picture yet.
I chatted with Mike Diaz, a member of the Drive Team and former manager at Wells Fargo, and asked him about his MacBook unboxing. I was curious. He loved it. Then I caught a glimpse of my MacBook box, which I hadn’t gotten around to throwing out, and instead used it to prop up my monitor.
Might’ve been the beer. Might’ve been the MacBook box staring at me. Either way, I had an idea.
What if I built a driver kit that could deliver an open experience? It’d be scrappy but thoughtful. Personal. Not transactional.
If I learned anything from Robert Rodriguez’s book, Rebel Without a Crew, it was this: use what you have, and use your creativity to make it work. Worst case scenario, you practiced making something and could add it to a portfolio of experience.
Steve became a kind of startup Yoda without realizing it. I’d pitch something, and he’d point me toward a tool or resource. That’s how I discovered ULine.
Side quest: If you’ve never heard of ULine, you’re missing out. It’s like the Costco of business operations. Need boxes? Office supplies? Warehouse shelving? A 55 gallon steel drum? They’ve got it. Order by 6pm, get it the next business day.
It saved my ass plenty of times.
I sketched out how I wanted the box to look. It had to have tabs to close the box, rather than flaps. It had to open in a way that revealed the carstache to the new driver. Then I went onto ULine and ordered a bunch of samples. The next day I tested about a dozen kraft mailers. Too flimsy. Too corporate. Too loud. Finally, I found one that struck the right tone: simple, sturdy, human.
No pink or teal boxes. That was too on the nose. I wanted this to feel like it came from a friend. The shipping label on the top left. A Lyft die cut sticker on the bottom right. A circular piece of clear tape over the tab to seal it and make it look hand-packed.
I secretly wondered if someone would film themselves opening it the way people did with Apple products.
And someone did.
Inside, the fuzzy carstache folded on its side. Three canvas bags tucked into it–promo cards, aux cables, stickers.
On top, a square shaped card with FAQs and safety tips. I initially didn’t want this on top because I felt it ruined the reveal of the carstache, and was overruled. Had it been up to me it would have gone beneath the carstache–but safety first–I get it.
Was it perfect? Fuck no. But it worked.
MVP. Ship it.
Steve gave me room to run. Travis backed the plan. Creative sent assets but never got in the way. I built it my way.
The first shipment went out to about twenty drivers. I built them all myself. I scheduled a UPS pickup, then watched the driver haul off the boxes on his dolly. Felt a wave of pride. I’d gone from cleaning out a messy closet to launching a scalable system.
I cracked a beer from the office fridge.
Elliot joined me. “Fuckin’ aye, man,” he said.
Fuckin’ aye.
I took a long drag. Savored the moment. Then it hit me.
“I’m gonna need more help.”
That driver funnel wasn’t slowing down. And neither was I.
CUT TO BLACK
🎧 Cue “Feelin’ It” – Jay-Z, feat. Mecca
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