Uber turns five this week. For many users it’s hard to imagine a time when taxis or dial-a-number car services were the only way to be driven around. If Uber isn’t quite grown up yet, it certainly has grown. It is now in 311 cities in 58 countries, and it employs more than 3, 000 people worldwide. To celebrate its anniversary the company is running a series of promotions in its home town and first market, San Francisco. Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive, also plans to give a speech to Uber’s employees, drivers, and various dignitaries. He’ll focus on the challenges that cities face (including safer roads, congestion, and economic opportunity) and how he thinks Uber can help. As well, Uber’s San Francisco employees plan to fan out across San Francisco over the weekend, volunteering on a handful of public-works projects.
Uber已经整整5岁了。对于许多用户来说，那些只能靠出租车或打电话叫车外出的日子，似乎已经成为一段难以想象的历史。Uber当然已经长大，就算它还没有成长为一家巨头级企业。目前，Uber已进入全球58个国家的311个城市。为了纪念成立5周年，Uber在它的家乡和第一个市场旧金山举办了一系列推广活动。该公司CEO特拉维斯•卡拉尼克将对Uber的员工、司机和各路贵宾发表演讲。演讲的主题包括大城市面对的挑战（比如，怎样让道路变得更安全，怎样应对交通拥堵，怎样提高经济增长机会等），以及Uber计划如何应对。此外，Uber在旧金山的员工本周也将分头赶往城市各处，志愿参加一些市政工程建设。
In celebration of its anniversary, Uber recently made five of its earliest employees available for interviews to talk about how they came to Uber and what some of their first tasks were. Their stories have some common themes, including the serendipity of joining something that didn’t look like much at first, scrapping to get something new going, and using Twitter to job hunt and stay abreast of critical developments. Their comments follow.
为了纪念成立5周年，Uber最近允许最早加入该公司的5名员工接受媒体采访，谈谈他们是如何来到Uber的，最早的任务是什么。他们的故事都有一些共同的主题，比如意外加盟了一家一开始似乎毫不起眼的公司，然后拼命创新，利用Twitter求职，与重要的科技发展保持同步等等。以下是采访记录。
Ryan Graves was working for GE in 2009, and he decided he needed a change.
2009年，莱恩•格拉维斯还在为通用电气工作，他觉得自己需要改变。
I said, “I cannot be the GE guy.” I wanted to get into the startup world. I started following on Twitter a lot of guys in New York and angel investors around the country, figuring that angel investors know what’s coming next.
我说：“我不能当一个通用人。”我想进入创业界。于是我在Twitter上关注了纽约的很多人，以及全国各地的天使投资人，因为我猜想天使投资人知道下一个大事件是什么。
I wanted to know what was coming next in terms of starting something. I met the Foursquare guys when there were four or five them. They weren’t offering any kind of internships or business roles at the time, but I went out to Chicago and essentially started working for Foursquare. I did that for about three months. Then I saw a Tweet from Travis through some random angel investor who I was following who didn’t know him from Adam. He talked about big equity, big people involved. And I thought that sounded interesting.
我想了解下一个创新。我去见了Foursquare（一家基于用户地理位置信息的手机服务网站）的人，当时他们只有四五个人，也没有提供任何实习机会或业务岗位，但我还是去了芝加哥，其实就算开始为Foursquare工作了。我干了大约3个月，然后通过我关注的某位天使投资人的Twitter账号看到了特拉维斯发的一条推文。他谈到了Uber获得大机构投资，有大人物支持。我觉得那听起来非常有意思。
So I tweeted at him and I shot him a couple of paragraphs about who I was. We spoke that night ’till one in the morning. It was a two-hour conversation. I woke up my wife in the middle of the night and said, “Hey, what do you think about moving to San Francisco?” We were in Chicago at the time. To her credit, she said, “If you think it’s a good idea, I’m up for it.”
于是我给他发了私信，然后写了几段话介绍我自己。我们整整聊了两个小时，一直聊到凌晨一点钟。然后，我在半夜叫醒我妻子说：“嘿，我们搬到旧金山怎么样？”当时我们住在芝加哥。她说：“如果你觉得好，我支持你。”
Graves moved to San Francisco in February 2010. There was a lot of work to do at the new company, including improving on the work of one of Uber’s co-founders, Garrett Camp.
格拉维斯于2010年2月搬到旧金山。新公司当时有很多工作要做，特别是要继续完善Uber联合创始人加勒特•坎普开发的产品。
Garrett had a prototype that didn’t work very well, so one of the first things we did was go out and get a firm to rebuild it before we pushed it to the App Store. They were called Mobley and were later acquired by Groupon. Then we designed the site for UberCab.com. We also worked on things like the sign-up flow and integrated credit card payment systems. All of the basics of commerce needed to be built out. We had one guy who was a driver that we would meet with at coffee shops, asking him questions so we could get an idea if the real world would accept this idea.
加勒特有一个原型产品，但运行得不是很好。所以我们首先做的，就是在进入苹果应用商店之前，找家公司重新构造。那家公司名叫Mobley，后来被团购网站Groupon收购了。然后，我们设计了UberCab.com的网站。我们还完善了注册流程和集成信用卡支付系统。所有最基础的商务框架都需要被构建出来。当时我们经常约一名司机在咖啡店见面，问他问题，以了解现实世界能否接受我们的理念。
Conrad Whelan had been working in technology his native Calgary. He’d known Garrett Camp, a fellow Canadian, for years. An eye-opening trip and a phone call changed everything.
康拉德•惠兰此前一直在他的家乡加拿大卡尔加里市的科技领域工作。加勒特•坎普也是加拿大人，他们二人相识多年。一次令人眼界大开的旅行和一通电话改变了一切。
I did a crazy road trip across Europe, across Spain and Portugal in January of 2010 and realized: There’s a whole world out there. I’ve got to get my stuff together and get out of Calgary. I wasn’t actually really intending doing another startup at that point. I was actually planning on taking some time off, but I just happened to give Garrett a call to see how he’s doing. When he found out I was sort of free and ready to move, he basically told me I was hired and to move to San Francisco and help him get Uber Cab started.
2010年1月，我进行了一次疯狂的横穿欧洲自驾之旅。在穿越西班牙和葡萄牙之后，我认识到，外面的世界原来这么大，我必须走出卡尔加里。但当时我并不想再去另一家创业公司，而是想休息一阵子。有一天，我顺手给加勒特打了个电话，想知道他最近过得怎么样。当他发现我正好闲着，并且准备搬家时，他差不多就等于向我下达了录用通知，要求我来旧金山帮助他一起启动Uber。
Whelan was Uber’s first engineer.
惠兰是Uber的首位工程师。
When I joined the company, you couldn’t actually sign up for the product. It was just a way to order the car. So I built the sign-up flows that would take a credit card and make user accounts. So as soon as we did that, we could officially launch, which was June 1st, 2010, two months after I started.
我刚加盟公司的时候，那款产品还没法接受注册，只是预约车辆的一种途径而已。所以我构建了一个需要信用卡，能够生成用户账号的注册流程。等这些做完，我们就能正式发布产品了。当时是2010年的6月1日，距离我加盟Uber正好两个月。
I think the next thing I did, which I really enjoyed, was optimize the dispatch algorithms to take into account drivers that might miss a dispatch. That lasted like three years, or something like that, which is pretty cool.
我做的下一件事就是优化Uber的调度算法，以避免司机错过一次车辆分派任务。这个过程大概持续了3年左右，这事儿挺酷的。
Ryan McKillen was Uber’s second engineer. He learned about the company from Graves, a fellow alumnus of Miami University of Ohio whom he’d gotten to know in San Francisco. The company was using a small amount of office space from another startup called Zozi.
莱恩•麦基伦是Uber的第二位工程师。他是从格拉维斯那里知道这家公司的。格拉维斯和他一样都毕业于迈阿密大学俄亥俄分校，两人是在旧金山认识的。当时，Uber从另一家名叫Zozi的创业公司那里租用了一小块办公室。
Somehow we ended up in a tiny conference room in their office, this glassed-in little conference room. The table was about as big as the room. On the morning of my first day I remember crossing the threshold of the door and noticing this stack of books on the table. All these computer science books, programming, databases, all this stuff. They’re pristine—the bindings on the books had never been broken. And there’s this one tattered book on the table that looks like it’s gotten all kinds of love, a lot of use. And so, first thing I say is, “Hey, Conrad, why is there a Spanish-to-English dictionary on the table?” And he looks back up at me and goes, “Well, Ryan, because the code is written in Spanish. Welcome to Uber.”
最终，我们在他们的办公室租了一间小会议室，就是用玻璃幕墙隔开的那种。那张桌子几乎和房间一般大。我还记得到公司的第一天早上，刚跨过门槛，我就注意到了堆在桌子上的一摞书，都是关于计算机科学、编程和数据库的。它们都是原装的，连封皮都没撕。还有一本破破烂烂的书看来已经被翻阅了无数次。我说的第一句话就是：“嘿，康拉德，为啥桌上还有一本西班牙语辞典呢？”他看着我说：“因为代码是用西班牙语写的。欢迎来到Uber。”
Austin Geidt started at Uber as an intern. Eventually she’d do so many jobs that she’d be the expert on Uber’s “playbook” for opening new markets.
奥斯汀•盖特是从实习生的身份加入Uber的。最终她干了非常多的工作，成了Uber开辟新市场的“剧本”专家。
I was out of school. I was looking for jobs. It was a bad economy. I was following a few random tech people on Twitter, and I think it was from Jason Calacanis, but I saw some tweets about Uber, and it looked interesting. I heard they were looking for an intern, and so I reached out to Ryan Graves, who was CEO at the time, and basically was like, “You’ve got to give me a shot.”
当时我刚出校门，正在找工作，经济环境也很不景气。我在Twitter上随机关注了一些科技界的人。后来我看到了几条关于Uber的推文，可能是贾森•卡拉坎尼斯发的吧，看起来很有意思。我听说他们正在招实习生，于是我找到了莱恩•格拉维斯，他当时正担任Uber的CEO。我对他说：“你必须给我一次机会。”
This was in August of 2010. And he called me pretty immediately. He said, “Answer a few questions for me.” I put together a little deck of some sort. I’d love to see today what it looks like. And then, pretty immediately, he was like, “Why don’t you come on in?” And then I met with them.
那是2010年的8月。很快他就打来电话：“先回答几个问题吧。”我尝试着给出自己的答案。我喜欢看Uber今天的样子。然后他很快说：“你为什么不来一趟？”然后我就去见了他们。
They were sharing Zozi’s office. They had very little space at the time. I met them. I don’t remember what we talked about but it was very casual. I liked that. I remember that I came very overdressed and they were just, like, these nerdy guys.
当时他们正在借用Zozi公司的办公室，空间很紧张。我去见了他们。我不记得当时我们谈了什么，但氛围很随和，我喜欢这一点。我记得那天我打扮得非常正式，但是他们都是一副书呆子的样子。
I remember thinking, “These guys are really cool, they’re really passionate about what they’re doing. Their products are really interesting.” And so I pleaded [to Graves] and he gave me a shot. I wasn’t super-qualified at the time, to be completely honest. It was a struggle for the first couple of months. I didn’t do super well, but they kind of hung on to me while I was green until I got the hang of it.
当时我心想：“这些家伙真酷，对他们的事业充满激情，他们的产品也非常有意思。”所以我诚恳地请求格拉维斯给我一次机会，他答应了。老实说，我其实并不是非常够格。前几个月挺煎熬的，我做得也不是很好。但即便是在我还比较生疏的时候，他们也没有放弃我，直到我渐渐熟悉了业务。
I was an intern, so the job wasn’t very defined. I remember handing out flyers at the Moscone Center that no one wanted. I remember cold-calling drivers off of Yelp. Then our first support ticket came in. I was like, “I got this.” And we experimented with phone support early, which just went to my phone. If I didn’t pick up, it went to Graves’s phone, and then to Travis down the line. But then I would get calls at 3 a.m. saying, “I can’t get a car.” So we shut that down. But in the beginning, it was just kind of making up value where I could find it.
我是个实习生，所以我的工作也不是很固定。我记得我曾在莫斯康会展中心门口发过传单，但是没人想接。我也给Yelp上的很多司机做过电话推销。后来第一个支持我们的司机来了。当时我就觉得：“我能行。”早些时候我们也试过电话支持，那些电话会直接转到我的手机上。如果我没接，它就会转到格拉维斯的手机上。如果格拉维斯也没接，就会转到特拉维斯的手机。但随后，有人在凌晨三点打电话说，“我打不着车了。”于是我们关掉了电话支持功能。总之一开始的时候，这就是我能够做出的贡献。
I was so green out of school that I thought I didn’t know how to write a proper email. Then I quickly learned: “Oh, everyone’s kind of making this up.” In a start up, no one knows what they’re doing. As soon as I got confident on that, I was pretty much off to a running start.
由于当时我是刚出校门的菜鸟，我一度觉得自己写不出一封得体的邮件。然后我很快意识到：“噢，大家都是写到哪算哪。”在一家创业公司里，没人知道他们自己在干什么。自从我对这一点产生了信心以后，我的工作很快就上手了。
When we started getting support, I was like, “All right, I’m going to do all the support.” I took on the community-management side of blogging and whatnot. And then our driver operations guy left the company. They said, “Austin, can you take this along with what you’re doing?” And I said, “Sure.” And so then I was managing relations with partners.
当我们开始得到用户的支持时，我想：“好吧，我要做所有的支持工作。”我承担了博客社区管理方面的工作和许多琐碎的事务。然后我们负责司机运营的人从公司离职了。他们说：“奥斯汀，你能把这一块的工作也兼了吗？”我说：“当然可以。”于是从那时起，我开始负责管理与合作伙伴的关系。
Remember, we were just limos at the time, right? And so I remember onboarding someone. I happened to walk him out and see that he was in, like, a pink [Chrysler] Caravan, and I was like, “Oh, we should probably do vehicle checks going forward.”
当时我们做的还仅仅是礼宾车这一块。有一次我去接客户，我正好陪他走出来，结果看到他走进一辆粉色的克莱斯勒Caravan里。我想：“我们以后最后提前做一下车辆检查。”
I took notes on everything that I was doing as I was launching a city. It kind of became a very sloppy version of our first playbook. And then each city I would go to thereafter, I would try and refine it, make it more efficient, just streamline this process. Then they said, “Okay, why don’t you hire a couple of launchers?” I ultimately hired about 50. My attitude was, “Ask for forgiveness.” I managed the expansion.
每次我在一个城市做推广时，我把我做的每件事都做了笔记，那就是我们最初的一个非常草率的“剧本”。后来每到一个城市，我都会修改“剧本”，使它变得更高效。他们说：“为什么你不招聘一些推广人员呢？”最终我大概招聘了50人。我的态度是：“寻求宽恕。”我负责了这次大扩张。
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