Building Marketplaces with Data: What We Learned at Uber and Faire | ExperiMENTAL Ep. 4

Building Marketplaces with Data: What We Learned at Uber and Faire

On this episode of ExperiMENTAL, Sundar is joined by Gopal Nath, Director of Strategy and Analytics at Faire and former Marketing Analytics Lead at Uber. Together, they explore the data-backed decisions that shaped two of the world’s most dynamic marketplaces. From measuring efficiency to testing branded search strategy, this episode breaks down how growth actually happens behind the scenes. Expect tactical takeaways, sharp insight, and a few laughs as Sundar and Gopal reconnect and reflect on lessons from Uber, Faire, and life in between.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Efficiency means balancing ROI with payback periods, not chasing perfection
• Uber’s marketplace matured by shifting from growth-first to ROI-first models
• Strategic finance teams need embedded marketing context to partner effectively
• Paid marketing is a two-way door, you can turn it off, learn, and turn it back on
• Pre-post tests still work when applied with high intent and channel focus
• Branded search efficiency varies by region and even by language nuance
• B2C and B2B marketplaces share similar dynamics on both sides of the platform
• Culture impacts data science effectiveness, ego-free collaboration drives scale
• Faire prioritizes truth-seeking and kindness as core hiring and cultural values
• Family life and high performance can co-exist with flexibility and trust

BEST MOMENTS
00:00:03. “Brand to me is how you become top of mind.”
00:01:33. “I switched over to Faire, leading our marketing analytics team here for both sides of our marketplace.”
00:03:02. “We had a six-line-long definition of efficiency at Uber.”
00:04:49. “Your return might take two and a half or three years to make that money back.”
00:07:28. “Because there’s a dedicated individual, they’re able to learn quickly about marketing.”
00:12:06. “Let’s double click on that, because I imagine a lot of people are going to be in the situation of...I don’t have the resources.”
00:14:20. “We were able to recoup 99% of the signups.”
00:17:08. “Paid is a two-way door. You can turn it back on and get back to prior efficiencies.”
00:21:25. “You don’t get the zero moment of truth only through having a great product.”
00:28:22. “Focus on that one team, one dream mentality.”

🎧 ExperiMENTAL is hosted by Sundar Swaminathan, Head of Data Science at Bounce and former Uber leader. This show is your behind-the-scenes look at how top marketers and data scientists make smarter decisions.

🧠 Expect unfiltered conversations, mental models, and case studies that help you cut waste, build conviction, and grow your B2C business.

📬 Subscribe to the ExperiMENTAL newsletter for deep dives and frameworks: https://experimental.beehiiv.com/

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Transcript

0:00

Brand to me is how you become. Top of mind. How do you make sure that you stay top of mind for the folks that are on the platform? Whatever your platform is. You cannot market your way out of a really bad product. And so you probably have to be really good. But I think in order to really grow your brand and to become the persevering brand, you have to work on some of that. Welcome to experimental, the podcast that cuts through the noise to bring you actionable insights in B2C growth, marketing, and data science. I'm your host, Sunder, former head of Brand Data science at Uber and the mind behind the experimental newsletter. Join me as I talk with industry leaders who have driven growth at companies like Uber, Spotify and Netflix. We'll uncover the experiments, failures, and breakthroughs that lead to real results. Now let's get experimental. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of experimental. I'm joined by Gopinath, someone I've worked with in the past, for a few years, and had an absolutely great relationship with, is an amazing person, but also a fantastic marketing data scientist and leader. I'm excited to have him on here. Gopal, why don't you go ahead and just start by introducing yourself and just a brief background about you and your career. Yeah. What a nice intro. Like somebody said. My name is Gopal. I've been in the marketing analytics space for maybe 12 years now, working in a couple of different fields, both a nonprofit. And then I switched over into tech, where I started Uber, which is where Sunder and I started to work together. Midway through my career there. And then recently, I switched over to fair, leading our marketing analytics team here for both sides of our marketplace. So one thing I wanted to start off with is you work now for two incredible marketplaces, and marketplaces are just an intense business model. But they're also really hard from a marketing aspect because you have to always balance supply and demand. Tell us a little bit about, you know, how do you think about marketing in a marketplace? Yeah, I think for me, and maybe this is a little bit biased just because of both fair and and Uber's kind of position on growth. But I think when you're growing a marketplace, it's particularly through marketing ensuring that you're doing it in the most cost efficient and ROI positive way is probably the number one thing I'll say. You know, at Uber, we were pretty blessed in that our marketplace, like, was very, very healthy for the most part, particularly on rides. Each obviously in the beginning was a little bit harder, particularly because it's three sided marketplace. But I think when you're making those decisions of how you want to scale your marketplace, you're probably going to lean a little bit towards a little bit less efficiency. And then over time you're going become more and more efficient. For me, I think the way that marketing shows up there is to help drive the right customers on the demand side and the right, drivers career is restaurants, brands, etc., on the supply side of the marketplace in order to drive efficient growth, both from a dollar perspective as well as from a supply and a marketplace balance perspective. And you've now mentioned efficiency. Tell me a little bit more about what did efficiency look like at Uber, and what does efficiency look like in Uber like what is the definition of efficiency for you? That's a great question. On the marketing side, you know, we had I want to say there's maybe like six line long definition of efficiency. But really what it comes down to is you're going to set your goals around kind of what you want your CPU dollars to be, and how long you're willing to wait in order to get that those dollars back. And so efficiency is just going to be based on how much are you spending relative to how much you get you're planning to get back, and are you making it within the time frame that you want? You're going to have different efficiency levers at different points in your growth, particularly in a marketplace, you know, earlier on in your in your growth as a marketplace, efficiency is not going to be something that you're going to be hyper focused on. You're not really worried about what the payback time frame, for instance, is going to be, or what the return on ad spend is going to be right away. You're worried about. I need to keep growing at x percent amount year over year, and make this marketplace as big and as healthy as I can. And then over time, you're going to get to a point where you're going to be a little bit more, conscious of the dollars that you're spending. And then, you know, it's between I wouldn't say there's any one right number. I think depends on the marketplace, how healthy you are, your liquidity, and then the growth path that you have between not just paid, but also the other channels, that are driving growth, and what your appetite for kind of burn is basically, you know, I can say that Uber, I think we were looking largely towards like a two year LTV, and our goal was to be our return on ad spend goal was varied by continent. And so what we were looking at was basically some kind of ratio, one being, you know, break with at a time frame above one being you're making more money than cost to acquire that, that, incremental rider or car eater. And then below meaning you're losing a little bit of that money. And so really, it's up to your, return that you're going to get it's maybe like two and a half or three years that's going to take to, to make that money back. And so I think that's largely going to be a joint decision, both between marketing but also in particular, kind of like your strategy and planning, your ops and your finance teams to understand what the balance is and what you're willing to kind of burn in order to, to grow. Interesting one that you brought up is even just that relationship with strategy and planning, because I know at fair you're the director of strategy and analytics, right? So that's are you a little bit more tied to the strategy and planning team, or is that a separate function. Like what is that dynamic look like. Yes. There. And then what does it also look like. And that's a great question. So the way that we're structured affairs, my team sits inside of a strategy analytics team. And so we're organized in pods and pillars. And so our kind of pod if you will is on growth. So particularly more focus on on retailer growth. Right now though we we do a little bit on the brand side, just not right now. And so we're really focused on kind of how are we going to drive retailer growth and in two different places, one being life cycle, which is a little bit, kind of separate from this, and then unpaid. And so the way that we work, it's definitely not, just, you know, myself or my team making the decisions. We work really, really closely with our finance team are our finance, strategic finance team to help drive these goals, because there's both a kind of bottoms up approach to planning and our forecasting that that we're doing it, you know, a channel, some channel level to say, hey, this is what we expect out of these. This is the return that we're going to get, etc.. But then there's also kind of the top down from are finance teams that are telling us, hey, our long term plan, you know, we want to be able to grow by this percentage year over year. And so in order to do that, certain channels have to grow. And so there's kind of going to be a balance in between where, you know, our bottoms up may say, you know, we're going to grow at x percent. Top down says we're going to go. We need to grow at Y percent. And so we have to figure out how can we like kind of bridge the gap there and like how much of that is feasible? How much more spend would we need in order to bridge that gap versus kind of our you call like our expected run rate plus our testing spending? Something I've found with some strategic fighting teams is like they often don't have the context into marketing. Right. So they don't understand, you know, how marketing works or even just type measurement strategies, you know, how have you found that at the two places you've worked at, how do you overcome that? Right. How do you have a good relationship with strategic finance? Yeah, I think it's a great question. I would say both at, at Uber and at fair. I think we were particularly blessed in that the organizations are set up in such a way that they understand the value and the incremental lift that that marketing, particularly paid marketing, can bring when done right. And so we've been really lucky in that we have kind of a dedicated POC for each of these. So we have a finance, and strategy person who is primarily allocated towards paid and like within like retailer growth basically as our as our pod. And so you know, we're really lucky in that sense in that, you know because there's a dedicated individual. They're able to learn very quickly much more about what goes into the marketing out of the metrics come in. What can we measure? What can we not measure, how do we need to do it. And so that's they're able to kind of build that knowledge base and that muscle really, really quickly. And at Uber, I think it was kind of the same way. Right? We had a huge I mean, Uber was massive in any way, but we had a huge finance team. But there was a team, effort as folks that were allocated towards marketing, of which there was a subsection, I think it was maybe like 3 or 4 people that were allocated specifically towards paid marketing within, a global sense. And then we had kind of our content folks as well. And I think in that model, it works really well because they're basically embedded within marketing. And because of that, they're able to build the knowledge and the skill set. I think it's when you're at a smaller place and you don't have that there can it can be a lot harder to communicate and bridge the gap of, you know, like, hey, why isn't it as easy as turning on 10% more spend? It equals 10% more riders or more eaters or more retailers that grow on your on your platform. And, you know, having to explain kind of where you are within the curve and how efficiency changes and why it's not 1 to 1, you know, as when you don't have someone who's embedded in that spot, it makes it a lot harder to communicate and build, and it takes a lot more reps than when you do have someone who's embedded. But you had joined Uber in 2014, so right at 24. 25, 20, 2015. Yeah, and. I joined in 2016. But they didn't have a robust global management team at that point or even like. Right. So you know, we started on local operations teams. And it's a little different because also the tooling, the resourcing and the context of knowledge are not as much there. So kind of what you were talking about when you're on these local teams, I'm sure there are situations where like, hey, we're going to distribute 10% more marketing spend or promotion spend or whatever, spend. How did you work, you know, with with local weather? Was it general manager or a local operations manager to communicate that? Because it's not the same as working with, you know, a seasoned strategic finance person or a strategic, you know, marketing leader. Yeah, I think there is there's kind of two things that that were occurring then at least one, I mean, and the the rapid, evolving change of what when I started of being from a city team and then that morphing into like a subregional team that covered a handful of states, you know, it took a lot of different iterations. What I would say is that I think from a marketing standpoint, the number one thing that we had to be able to do when we wanted to increase budget was to be able to show what we expected out of that return and how we were going to deploy it. And I think if you're able to do those things, being on that local team, it was a little bit easier to kind of pull the levers there because the team was considerably smaller, and you had a GM who was effectively acting as a CEO of a locality, maybe at a city or a subregion or outside of, set of states. And so we would generally have to work with and I know it's like kind of is an interesting situation where we had a global marketing team that was doing a lot of stuff for us, particularly on the paid side. We weren't running our own kind of individual local ads, but when there were changes that came down as basically top down changes that we needed to then understand what the impact could be and then get by it. And so there's a little bit of a different like versus, you know what we might do now, which is kind of bottoms up or we're like, hey, we want to change X amount of spend. This is what we want. What we expect to get in return. Can you guys sign off on it? It's kind of the other way around. And so really, the primary thing there was to get an understanding of what was changing. Y what do we think the impact was going to be? And then getting the buy in from that. And then from a measurement standpoint where we could, we would always try to do the measurement. Obviously, as you know, with paid marketing, it is not always easy to get, measurement. And so you'd have to get kind of creative using pre-post diff and diff, things like that where possible. Obviously not the best ways to do it. But when you're trying to measure at a local level, you're not always going to be able to do something like a geo live test, in order to be able to measure. And so you had to kind of get your best methods that you could and have confidence in and what you're able to measure and maybe use two, 3 or 4 metrics to try to understand the impact versus just getting a clean glove test. Let's double click on that, because I imagine a lot of people are going to be in the situation of, listen, I don't have the resources, whether it's sample sizing for AB testing or whatever it is for glue to go through, like your framework for how do you do measurement in a period in a place at a time where you, you don't have, you know, great options? That is always a fun question, because I think it's always an interesting problem when you're working with like an analytics or a data science person, because our goal is to try to get the most accurate thing possible. And when you know that that's not going to be the case, you try to have to figure out what you can do in the meantime. And what I'd say is, I think using the data that you have in hand, and particularly understanding the consumer behavior within the channel that you're trying to measure on, I think is going to be what's most important to understand. It is, a good example of this is recently, you know, we did a test where we were basically identified that, our local teams particularly identified that our branded spend in France just, like, wasn't really performing well, I don't speak French, but there's something around the word, the term fair in France, and it was not giving kind of the best results that we would want versus like, you know, the fair, the term fair or searching fair in the US. And it had something, something to do with the language. I don't remember exactly what it was, not a linguist, but what we were going to say, where I was going with this was that, you know, we wanted to try to understand. Okay, well, if we think the spend is inefficient, is there a world where we could remove this spend but not lose the impact that would have? And so what we ended up doing at that point was basically saying, okay, well, it's branded search. If you're searching for fare and we don't show up, there's still a significant amount of intent to look for us. And so what we might see is that, you know, if I click to sign up, rates were incredibly low because of the term that was showing up and what people might have been searching for given the language discrepancy there, then you kind of come in and say, okay, well, you know, we're getting this many signups. Call it let's I'm going to make up numbers here, but let's pretend that we were getting ten signups a week. Well, if we turn off branded spend for the term, we would hope then to see our SEO branded signups kind of eat that our cannibalize that that ten signups. Right. And so we basically were able to set up kind of a pre post a longer tail kind of pre post where we were then able to turn off spend on a given week and then monitor to see how much of the the estimated brand level signups we were going to get back. And what we were able to identify was that because of the high intent of searching for that term when you were looking for the company, we're actually able to recoup 99% of the signups. So really there it's pre-post. So a methodology that most people would, you know, Fuku on. Yeah. But because you're doing it a bit more focused, you're able to get cleaner signal is that is exactly. Yeah. Where it's very focused. One particular channel with a very, very high intent search that we know from the existing spend was not translate into a ton of really efficient signups and conversions for us. And so we were able to set up this test to then say, okay, well, how much are we going to get back if we don't spend this, we're able to recoup 99% of the signups, which if you can do that and not have to spend, it's kind of an optimal solution. And so, you know, a lot of this also came from an eBay study that was done around branded search and how they went about looking at branded search and their ability to kind of recoup traffic. You know, that was kind of a secondary point for us when we were thinking through the test to say, okay, you know, are there legs here? Has anyone else tried this before? And seeing that other companies, obviously much, much larger, have done this with success and seen the similar behavior kind of gave us enough of a push to say like, okay, we know we think there's legs here. We should be able to to measure this and see this and have confidence and, the output that we can get. Yeah. And how did you go about starting to test, you know, what was the original test. How did you convince leadership to do it? Because for my point, that's where it always struggles to get past is like you say, you're going to turn on a branded search and everyone's like, oh, like, whoa. Like, you know, what's that going to do to the business? So yeah, how walk us through the process there? I think we were we were lucky in the sense of, you know, our local teams were the ones who kind of identified that, you know, there's the terminology differentiation there, was causing some inefficiency is and really what we were able to say was, I think two things. One, we're going to be able to, to measure this, it might be pre-post, but we are going to be able to measure. It's not like we just turn it off and we don't know what's going to happen. So you can build some confidence around that. We were able to use other studies to kind of help back up that there there's legs within this idea of like turning off branded spend. Once you get to a certain level could mean that you you don't need that anymore because people are specifically searching for you. The last piece, I think, that's pretty important too, is that, you know, we can set this up to say, hey, we're going to run. Let's say we run this test for four weeks or six weeks. We can estimate what the total loss of signups is versus the total spend, and know that it's a two way door. And I think that's probably the one of the most important things with paid overall is that it is a two way door. It's not the same as, you know, removing something off the platform that might take months to get back on. You know, like a physical product or something like that. It's more so that, okay, we're in turn the spend off. There's a risk that we're going to lose a little bit, but it's a two way door. We can turn it back on and once, you know, Google looks at you kind of recalibrates after a week or two, we'll be back at prior efficiencies, particularly on something like branded search. And so, being able to have that confidence, and be able to help leadership understand that, you know, it's a two way door, I think is part of what helps make that. So, yeah, that's a really great phrase, too. Most product decisions feel like one way doors. And I think there's this entrenched thinking of everything as a one way door. Dig a little deeper on marketing being a two way door. Like, I don't know if you have more examples you could share about that, or even just, you know, how you've been able to frame that because there's a lot there. That's cool. Yeah, I would say the two way door terminology I definitely picked up while I was at fair, but I think it's a really important one in that it's important to remember what changes are permanent and what changes you can walk back. And I think for a lot, a lot of times from marketing, you can flip the switch back to what you were doing before relatively easily. Like you see that through creative or through, even on something like Life Cycle where you're experimenting, the treatment doesn't work. This year, the cadence of emails or the cadence of SMS or whatever it is doesn't work. You can always turn that off. And then as your you revert back to the control, new folks who are getting it will have still have the optimized experience that that one. And so understanding that some of these changes are not permanent, I think can help make it a lot easier to get testing and, to build confidence with leadership, particularly in being able to test things that might seem a little bit riskier, like turning off a branded search, for example. Maybe a bit of a segue into just branded, right, and its impact on performance, brand versus performance for events. I'm sure you've been seeing the conversation around, like Jaguar and and not to get specific in the Jaguar, but like walk me through your experience of how does brand impact performance? How have you been able to measure it? How do you think about it? Let's go down that rabbit hole. From what I remember, you know, of our time at Uber, you were definitely the king of brand management. There. But yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know, I think in tech there's always this thought that, you know, the product is king. And I think that's that's definitely, true. You cannot market your way out of it. I mean, maybe you can, but you really it's really hard to market your way of a of a really bad product. And so your product has to be really good. But I think in order to really grow your brand and, and to become a persevering brand, you have to work on some of that. The touchy feely brand marketing type stuff that shows up. And I think, you know, a rebrand like Jaguar is a really interesting one because, you know, on the surface, you know, you kind of see there's like this like new text in kind of this like different vibe that they're going for. But, you know, being in marketing, you know, that there was a lot of consumer research studies and things behind the scenes that were helping to push this. So while it might seem funny to some folks who are really entrenched in the old brand, there is a lot of work that went on behind the scenes to help drive the vision of where this new brand, when it wasn't just like one person in a room saying, hey, this is what our type of typography is going to be. To go back to your original question of how these things kind of go together, brand to me, is how you become top of mind, and whether that's you've never heard of that company before, and then you kind of break through for awareness, and then you move down through that top of funnel, all the way down through consideration and then conversion. And then secondarily, how do you make sure that you stay top of mind for the folks that are on the platform already, whatever your platform is? And so from like a measurement or, perspective, I think, you know, both at Uber and at fair, we've used, you know, glyph studies to help kind of measure, the impact here. And I think we see what a lot of other, you know, companies that are doing marketing, I think really, really well and able to invest in the right set of kind of experimentation tools and things like that. I see that there is an additive effect. When you have really good brand marketing, you are able to increase the overall bottom line of the business and be that through new user acquisition, which is what a lot of, I think both, at Uber and at, at fair, what we're focused on, you know, you can see that, but I think you're also able to see that particularly at Uber, I remember seeing this and that we were able to move existing user behavior as well through branded marketing. And I think that that becomes really important. There's this old book called Zero Moment of Truth. And I think basically kind of like the summary for that is like, you want to be like top of mind as soon as someone wants to make a decision about a purchase. And you don't get that only through having a really great product, there has to be kind of reinforcement messaging of what the product does, why it's valuable, how it ties in with your your use case, your lifestyle, whatever it is, in order to to make sure you win that zero moment of truth so that you get what we had a number which was kind of like that first look advantage right where we knew because and I would say this is arguably both because of the product, but definitely also because of the brand that users who had both, you know, who brand a competitor were more likely to open Uber first as an app in order to to get from point A to point B, and that doesn't just happen only with a product or has to be kind of reinforcement messaging through brand in order to drive that. Yeah. And and you saw it work the opposite way with delete Uber and things like that were a negative brand perception very clearly takes it away. And it's very hard to build back that trust. And I don't know, you know I left in 2021 I know I think you would love soon after. But like it's not clear whether we've won back those those consumers. So yeah. So being top of mind, I love that the zero moment of truth. Right. Just being there, you have to put in the work to be top of mind for that one purchase moment. And so, you know, fair is a B2B. Uber is a B2C, right. Like that's is that the best way to categorize a. I think that's where I think for, for a 99% of the people. Yeah, that's what I would look at it. You can make an argument that Uber does also have like a little bit of the B2B vibe on the side, but I think B2C is probably the best way to describe it. What is that transition from B2C to B2B look like for you? You know, where there are some things that surprise you, things that you found more interesting, less interesting. So it's really interesting. I would say unfair is definitely B2B. I think by definition, but it's almost like it's like a lowercase b because our primary kind of target market on the demand side happens to be, you know, more so like, I don't wanna say mom and pop only, but not quite so many like Multi-Location stories. We're not. It's not like, you know, Walmart, you know, a retailer that we would expect it to have on the platform. It's more so like your main street. And so, you know, I probably have a little bit of an easier segue transitioning all the way into B2B because of this. But I think a lot of the characteristics are still the same, right? Like if you look at a B2C company like Uber and you look at a B2B company like fair, you have two sides of a marketplace and we focus on the right side on, on this or, you know, heaters, but you know, you're looking for particular product, particular price, and you want to have good experience being able to get that right. And I think at the end of the day, that part of a marketplace is the same, whether you're B2C or you're B2B. The supply side, if you will, you have folks that are looking to make money on that platform. Right. And so being able to make sure that the right portion of that supply is being surfaced to the right side of that demand becomes increasingly important as you try to strive to balance your marketplace and make sure that folks are getting the best experience possible. You know, for instance, you know, an interesting kind of like parallel would be on the ride side on on Uber. I believe the product still does this classic this. But what happens when you open up the app? It used to be that you would just have kind of a stack rank of products, and it would be static. Now, what happens is that they, bump the last type of trip that you used. So be it Uber ax or Uber black. Whatever was it you use last tends to be at the top of the the menu. When you decide to choose kind of what product you want to get a ride on. That to me is like, it's sort of similar to like a recommendation. Right? And I think on the B2B side, particularly in a marketplace where you have retailers and brands who are trying to, you know, retailers are trying to stock and store their businesses, brands who are trying to, get their products out. You kind of the same thing where, you know, recommendations, helping retailers understand what what the best brands might be for them becomes increasingly important. Right. And so there's a lot of parallels that exist there. It's just kind of the scale at which you operate is very different from like an Uber, an Uber rider to a retail business. And makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, really still the same marketing concept, still the same goals, maybe a different, you know, set of lead times, different, payback periods, LTV calc ratios, all, all the good stuff. But it's it's fundamentally the same concept. So, I want to pivot a little bit to the culture and people. I think we had incredible people at Uber culturally from like an analytics, experimentation, data driven ness. We were, you know, world class. Yeah, there's other type of culture people can argue about, but that I think to me is huge. Neither here though there for this. You also have now worked at fair, which to me from the outside seems like has a great culture. I follow, Dan Hocking Meyer on LinkedIn. He I think you report to him, talk to me a little bit more about culture and people and how that's been a big part of your career. Yeah, for sure. I will say, you know, probably early on, I think it was just very early on in my career to have really, really great managers. And I, I learned very quickly that my ability to scale and succeed within a role would be really heavily dependent on both my manager and the people that I work with. Right. And I think you're right. You know, we were we had an incredible team, a lot of just unbelievably smart people that had a unique drive and hustle to get things done. That it's really hard to replicate, in other places. Right. I think there's like something just very special about that time at particularly like the earlier years, you know, 15, 16, 17, that's, you know, it's kind of sometimes can be, tough to think back and see, like, how can you replicate that? Right. By the end of the day, I think the culture that makes a role or a company successful, not a role, but just like a team or a company successful, for me at least, comes down to kind of management of, of ego. And then kind of marrying that with a drive to get things done, and an understanding that, you know, good ideas can come from anywhere. I think if you can get those things together within a team, you're going to be set up for success, particularly, I think, you know, probably one of the big things I remember, you know, at Columbia particularly was at least in the early days, the number one thing there, that I mentioned about, you know, kind of managing of egos, I think was something that was definitely, I think, hard to do. You know, we had some, some culture values that kind of pointed things the other direction, if you will. You know, a culture of toe stepping that. Yeah, I think kind of sometimes made it hard for folks to work together because of the friction that that could cause. And I think if you're able to kind of get rid of that friction and it sounds like, you know, relatively cheesy, but like focus on kind of that one team, one dream mentality. I think you're able to get a lot more things done with a lot less friction, and a lot less downtime basically. Yeah. And are there similar cultural values that fair that you've really been able to resonate with and you feel like, just like really like you're drawn to? Yeah, I would say, you know, the, the way that I would, you know, I think kind of define fair is that fair is basically it's kind of like Uber 1.0 hustle. With Uber 2.0 culture. I mean, for folks in Uber, you if you were there during that time, you probably kind of understand how it went dark came in. There was kind of, a complete shift of how we operated from a culture perspective. And I think it made things honestly, considerably better for, for everyone. But really, you know, for us, you know, we start with our mission. We're focused on, trying to do the right thing for the customer. And help the customer succeed. And then for me, I think the core value that resonates the most is that we, we have one called Seek the Truth. So basically, you know, one of our mantras is basically like dig to the root. And regardless of what the the truth is, that's what prevails, whether it aligns with what we want or not like that is that should be what, what takes, precedence. And so for me, that's probably my favorite one, particularly from like analytics perspective because, you know, numbers don't lie. And so having confidence and understanding that the data can drive you and that we seek the truth through that data, is something that, for me really, really resonates. And I think as a company, Fehr does this unbelievably well. And because of that, I think it lets something like a B2B two sided marketplace, which is like inherently incredibly complex. Having this, I think, helps distill a lot of things and help us make the right decisions to grow the business faster. Yeah. And is there anything that fair does to strike that balance where, you know, seek the truth? Is it a weaponized or is it, you know, used in a negative way? You know, honestly, I haven't seen it be used in a negative way or weaponized at all. And I think part of the reason for that is the way that we go about hiring and one of our core values is we are kind. I haven't seen very many other companies just like put that out there specifically. But I think doing that and like having that as part of your DNA helps mitigate the amount of times that, you know, you might see a core value be weaponized. Right? Like I think, to your point, like it could very easily be using seek the truth could be something that could be weaponized by, you know, cutting the data certain ways or, you know, trying to tell a different narrative. But with the the other core value of, you know, we are kind being there. And the way that we hire, I think mitigates a lot of that. Yeah. And let's talk a little bit more about how fair hires, I think, for founders, like hiring is one of the biggest decisions you can make right. But how is fair being able to sort of it sounds like, you know, nail that process, do a really great job of bringing in good talent, like what's not the secret but what's what's sort of the magic there. And that's a great question. I think, you know, primarily for me, I would say, I think the thoughtfulness we put into actually sourcing and finding candidates, I think is one of them, we have a really strong referral program within fair. And so I think because of that and the culture at fair, you know, we routinely see that people are, you know, really proud to work at fair. And so you're like more likely to refer your friends who are likely similar minded like you. And so, you know, it helps build a really good culture through kind of that referral process. And then also, I think our talent teams also do a really great job of filtering and sourcing, the right folks. And so, you know, we have to me at least, I think a good balance of both technical and non-technical questions throughout our interview process, as well as like that, I think it's, you know, probably wouldn't call it a bar raiser, but we do have, you know, a similar ish concept where you have someone, come in at the end to kind of ask and, like, kind of tally up, things that you may not have got around our need, need a second look on to, during the initial process. But I think we do a really good job of balancing both technical and non-technical there. And using that feedback almost equivalently in our kind of review processes, where but the fact that you're a PhD that can code in six different languages doesn't necessarily trump the fact of how you would show up in the workplace. If we're asking, you know, how do you manage your stakeholders? And if the answer is like, oh, I ignore them, I'm just going to do whatever's best. Like there's no amount of technical knowledge. I think that's going to like offset. That's right. I think we're really conscious about that. And so from that perspective, I think we do a really good job of balancing both things. And there can sometimes be a trap of hiring people that are culture fit versus culture. Add right. How is fair being able to continuously I think it sounds like the culture better and better while still adhering to hey, it's still the the root culture I guess. Yeah. I think, you know, the the root culture really stemming from kind of being customer focused, data driven and acting kindly, I think has such a strong foundation that when you find people that fit that the bare minimum is that their culture fit. More times than not, you're going to get a culture ad, because I think we do a really good job of looking at folks who had different backgrounds, right? They may have worked in different sectors, or they may have like kind of unique perspectives to what, you know, fair does. And I know there's a lot of folks at fair who have family who are on the retail side of the business or who may even have their own brand or their own retail business. And so and there's a lot of like, unique perspective that's added on to the company that way through our hiring processes. And I know this is not how you meant family, but I'm going to go down this route. I think a question often asks of women, and I'm trying to normalize it to everybody. But what is it? I mean, you're a parent of two, right? Obviously. Great relationship with your wife. Like how are you able to maintain family life and professional life? That's a great question. I would say fair is a phenomenal place for that because, you know, obviously there are a lot of things to get done. It is, you know, there are tough, you know, problems to solve. But I think everybody here is very well aware of the fact of the fact that, you know, when you have a family that you need to take care of them. And I think a lot of that has to do also, you know, primarily with, you know, who my bosses are, and have been and that, you know, they value that as well and understand the need to be able to balance that family and professional life. And so it's been great. Right. And I think what it really comes down to is, you know, being able to have that flexibility to, you know, work when needed and to be able to balance the family life when needed. With the understanding and the trust that, you know, the things that need to get done are going to get done. Right. And so, you know, I can give you a couple examples where, you know, our daycares, like randomly closed. Even last week, our daycare closed because the power went out at the daycare, like the entire block from that building down into, like, the middle of the city, in Fairfax was the whole thing is just out. No reason. So, you know, I had to leave. I had to go get, my, my older daughter and come back and my manager, Paul, was more than understanding of this, and and you knew, like, okay, you know, you to you got to do what you got to do. And that meant, you know, obviously it doesn't mean that I can just, you know, push all my deadlines out, but it does mean that, you know, I can take the time to take care of my daughter when needed. And then I can hop back on later that night and get things done that I need to. And so I think being able to have that balance and the trust and understanding that, you know, you're an adult, you're going to get your things done is great. And then I think there's a particularly great job at that. I mean, that's crazy here. And I think, you know, many of us listening will probably think that cultures like Uber and Fare have to be always intense. And I think you and I have experienced that. That's not the case. One last sort of thing I wanted to bring up, as you and I have had, is a very interesting tag team experiment where you and I co-lead a team and something that your boss, Dan McNamara, just posted about was org that and how, you know, org debt can be just as bad as tech debt. And so I think there's this interesting concept of how you can actually experiment with organizations and structure and things like that. You and I, I think we're able to really thrive off this. And so maybe just a quick context on the co-leading for people listening, our manager, Jan Hiller, both have a really great relationship was like, hey, you know, you guys are both new to managing. Why don't you co-manage a team? And it was a, I think a small team of three, but we were able to rely and and feedback on each other and really managing for the first time especially go from I see senior managers really tough. And so it's kind of cool to have someone to be like, hey, how are you thinking about this? How are you doing this? Give me maybe if you have other examples of or experiments that you've seen and and how that's actually a pretty that can be a big unlock to business impact when you get the org right. I was such an interesting time and I think I would say like, you know, I had I had managed once before in my career, but that was this. The co-leading was, I think, the most unique example of that that I could think of. And I can say pretty confidently, I think, like, you kind of hit it on the nail. It's very rare that you have like someone to just bounce ideas off of with the exact same group of people that you're managing. Trying to figure things out, obviously was, you know, a little rocky to start, but I think we we got really good at it. And I think it worked really, really well and set both of our careers up for, for success. So thank you again for trusting in us, and, experimenting with us. And I'll say, you know, with work structures and experimenting, I don't know how many other ones I can say that I've seen that are really true experiments. I think what tends to happen, I think, is folks will try out a new structure and then not revert. I think is more often what I've seen. And I think that's where like the two way door scenario, comes into play, which is that I think even with things like an org structure, you know, assuming that you're not, you know, completely rebuilding from the ground up when you're doing these things, more of the time can be a two way door. And so if there's opportunities for you to think through and you think that there's a new structure, a new cadence of something that can help open up bandwidth, help open up ideas, help drive impact in some new way. I think just going back and thinking through like, okay, if we do this, how quickly would we need to revert if things went bad? And understand that you can do that, I think is, interesting mindset to like kind of help tackle some of that work. But again, this concept of a two way to a door or something, I think many folks should hopefully dig into research and just really sort of take a step back and realize, like most many decisions are two doors, three more questions. What's been your favorite part of 2024? What are you looking forward to in 2025? Oh, that's a great question. 2024 I think my favorite part of 2024 is my youngest daughter was born in April. And so our family is now considerably more hectic. But it's it's worth, every minute of it. So I think that's definitely my favorite part. And watching her groceries, my wife listens to this, and I get this wrong. This is going to come back to bite me. And yeah, she sees what, she's going to be eight months this month. And watching the relationship between her and our older daughter, kind of grow over time, has been amazing. It's weird. Like, so I didn't have any siblings growing up, and, you know, I think, like, that sibling bond thing is not something that I'm used to, but there's definitely even at this age, I can see that there's like a very strong bond between the two of them. Like, my older daughter can get the younger one to laugh. I like no matter what and like, laugh like uncontrollably. And like neither my wife nor I can replicate that no matter how much we try. And so like just seeing that bond there, I think is has been really great. And I think what I'm looking forward to most in 2025 is, you know, continuing, to grow and expand my, my personal skill set within the fair. And, and, you know, just as a, as an analytics leader. And then I think also, you know, continuing to grow and refine the skill set of being, a parent of two, which I have found the playbook from being a parent of one does not translate super well. Tell me about that parent of do. And so I think trying to figure that out and and get better at that I think is something else I'm looking forward to in 2025. And just again, last question. Where can people find you if they want to reach out and learn more about what you're doing? Yeah. You know, I'm on LinkedIn. Feel free to, to search me that way. I don't have much of a other, social presence, for the most part. But I'm working on some things, so we'll see if there's anything else that we can tag on to you later. But primarily, if you need to reach out to me, I think LinkedIn is probably the best way. Yeah. You should. You've got a lot of knowledge shared a lot of cool story. So I think you should start focusing more. Yeah. But go back. It's been really great talking to you and reliving some of the great times we've had, but also just learning about. You're working at you've worked now at two of the coolest marketplaces in the world. A lot of learnings. Really excited to thank you for for being a part of this. And, yeah, we'll we'll talk soon. Yeah. Thank you for having me as well. Yeah. Thanks. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to experimental. And today's insights spark new ideas or made you feel like a smarter marketer. Consider leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform. It really helps support the show for more in-depth discussions and resources, visit Experimental beehive.com. Until next time, be curious and stay experimental.