New York (CNN)Mike Walsh was busy trying to manage his doomed software company in 2009 when he agreed to take a 15 minute meeting with a little-known figure in the tech industry named Ryan Graves.
Graves, a friend of one of Walsh’s employees, was debating whether to take a job as the CEO of UberCab, a new startup looking to let customers hail black cars on demand from their smartphones. He had effectively found and applied for the position on Twitter (TWTR), in response to a tweet from one of the company’s two cofounders, Travis Kalanick.
Walsh saw the potential for a company to improve on existing car services where you “wait 45 minutes for a taxi and then they cancel on you.” He also had a “good feeling” about Graves and knew the founders were well-connected. So not only did Walsh encourage Graves to take the job, he also said he’d invest in the startup if Graves joined UberCab.
