Garrett Camp

The investor who passed on Uber's seed round

Greg recounts a very smart NYC friend whom Garrett Camp pitched on Uber's seed round. The friend dismissed it — in Manhattan you just raise your hand and a car comes — missing that Uber was a 10x better product elsewhere.

“Garrett pitched him on the seed round of Uber, and this is in Manhattan. He was just like, "Garrett, I don't know what you're thinking about, man. People aren't going to press a button and a car is going to come. It's just, you raise your hand. Look at me." He raises his hand, a car comes.”

Belsky told Garrett Camp the black-car app was a distraction

StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp showed Belsky sketches of an app for summoning a black car in his New York apartment. Belsky told him it was a textbook distraction; fortunately Camp ignored the advice and it became Uber.

“Literally showed me these sketches of this product where it's about summoning a black car as opposed to having to dial for it. And, um, and I'm like, dude, you should be focused on your business. You just bought it back, right?”

Why Uber chose an expensive, elite brand even while aiming for mass access

Belsky recalls the early Uber Cab debate over whether the brand should feel accessible to everyone or aspirational. Garrett Camp won the argument: make it feel like a superpower, everyone's private driver, hence the black, luxury identity.

“Should it be an expensive feeling brand where it looks like it's aspirational but something you couldn't afford, or should it be an accessible brand where it feels like this is something that everyone should be doing, right? And it was actually a really healthy argument because you intuitively think it should be accessible to everyone. I mean, if you want to make a big company, um, but Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower, like everyone's private driver. It should feel expensive even though it was intended to be accessible.”

Steal thisMake a mass-market product feel like an exclusive superpower; aspirational branding can coexist with broad access.

Behance sold for ~$150M, mostly bootstrapped

Scott Belsky built Behance through 5 years of bootstrapping (funded by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences), raised only $6-7M right before exit, and sold to Adobe for about $150 million.

“He sold that company for about $150 million, and when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped. He eventually, uh, raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that money like right before they sold. So, they had built most of the business without funding. And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences.”

Behance was funded by selling paper Action Books

Before Behance was a software platform, Belsky bootstrapped it by making physical 'Action Books' — paper organizers for creatives. Giving one to Garrett Camp is literally how the Uber pitch came his way.

“so we were bootstrapping our business, Behance, early days with paper products of all things. We were making paper products for creatives to be organized. They were like actual paper. And they're called Action Books. They're actually still out there.”

Why Uber chose to feel expensive even though it was for everyone

Belsky recalls debating Garrett Camp on Uber's brand: accessible-for-everyone vs. aspirational-but-expensive. Camp insisted it should feel like a superpower — 'everyone's private driver' — which drove the black, luxury identity. Belsky agrees it was the right call.

“But Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower, like everyone's private driver. It should feel expensive even though it was intended to be accessible. And so that was part of the, you know, part of the thought behind the black kind of logo and the brand identity that like sort of suggested that feeling. The luxury, elite feel. Exactly. So I remember that debate, and I think that was also the right choice.”