During my first year living in Res, getting food in the evenings and on weekends was often a challenge, since the Bishop Mountain Hall (BMH) cafeteria seemed to only keep bankers’ hours and the top of the hill was a food desert. That same year, my brother, Mark, a fellow McGill student, lived in an apartment on Dr. Penfield that housed a family-run restaurant beneath it. On one of my frequent trips to raid his fridge, I stopped by the restaurant to tell the owner about the potential market opportunity of the hundreds of hungry students living in the residence halls nearby.
McGill’s campus was ripe with entrepreneurial opportunities. In retrospect, these experiences taught me more about starting and running a business than any textbook ever could.”
Within days, colorful, hand-painted signs with the restaurant’s phone number and menu were posted in the lobby of each BMH Res. Since this was 1997, we had to use a telephone to place orders and pay with cash, but that didn’t stop scores of hungry students from ordering mini-cheeseburgers and chicken caesar wraps at all hours of the day. Seeing the success of this small intervention, I was inspired to find other ways to improve the campus experience for my friends and classmates.
McGill’s campus was ripe with entrepreneurial opportunities. In retrospect, these experiences taught me more about starting and running a business than any textbook ever could. After throwing the inaugural event for SSMU’s First Year Student Association, I sensed a formula for marketing live nightclub events to students, which led me to co-found my first real venture: a promotional party-planning business that organized events at the penthouse club of Place Ville Marie. Given the proliferation of pubs and dive bars in and around the McGill Ghetto, students were thrilled to trade a high cover charge for a more upscale scene.
Later in my McGill career, I was honored to be elected President of the Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) – a student-led group that was charged with running all Bronfman building student operations, including the cafeteria, computer lab, newspaper, and the student-run store – ironically called “Chapter XI.” (Chapter XI is now called Dave’s Store, named after one of my best friends from our class, the legendary Dave Phillips, whose magnetic charm, irresistible friendliness, contagious laughter, and boundless energy brought joy across McGill. Dave tragically passed away the year after we graduated.)
My entrepreneurial journey continued after I graduated and moved to New York. Here I co-founded an interactive e-book company with a close friend who I first met when we worked together on SSMU. We named it Open Air Publishing (OAP) – an homage to the beloved McGill tradition. One of our first hires was even a McGill grad.
After OAP was acquired in 2013, I joined Uber to run one of its earliest ridesharing City Operations teams, when there were only around 500 employees worldwide (today there are 20,000). At the time, each city team functioned as its own startup, which led to countless ground-up innovations – many of which have since been scaled globally.
I’m proud to say that the McGill network has made a big impact on Uber, boasting an impressive alumni group that’s held leadership roles across Strategy & Operations, Marketing, Public Policy, Communications, Legal, Sales, and Business Development.”
One of those early innovations was a food delivery experiment, born in Toronto out of the desire to get meals to people as quickly and reliably as we could get them a ride. Today, that experiment is known as Uber Eats, which is available in over 6,000 cities around the globe, and facilitates the delivery of millions of meals each day (mini-cheeseburgers and caesar wraps among them) from over half a million restaurants – mostly small, local businesses, like the one below my brother’s apartment.
I think back to my McGill days fondly, and am thankful that the campus provided both the inspiration for entrepreneurship and the platform to enable it. I’m proud to say that the McGill network has made a big impact on Uber, boasting an impressive alumni group that’s held leadership roles across the company’s Strategy & Operations, Marketing, Public Policy, Communications, Legal, Sales, and Business Development teams. At one point we even had a dedicated McGill network chat room, where we’d reminisce about cold winter walks in Montreal when you couldn’t find a taxi (in the pre-Uber days), and, of course, our favorite poutine spots.
I’m always thrilled to see more recent McGill grads join Uber and other startups in New York, and am excited knowing that the McGill entrepreneurial spirit continues to make waves worldwide.