I was sitting, I started my first company, tough strategies in 2010. It's a political consulting firm that runs big legislative and policy campaigns all over the U.S.

And I was sitting in a meeting early 2011 and a friend of mine called and said, hey, there's a guy with a small transportation startup.

He's having some regulatory problems. Would you mind talking to him? I become Uber's first political advisor that day. And then when Travis Callan called me back, Travis was the founder and CEO. He said, listen, I can't afford your fee. Would you take equity? I didn't know what equity meant, but for some reason I just heard myself saying yes. And that meant I started getting stock in Uber very, very early on. but more important it meant that became my job to legalize Uber in New York and then markets all over the U.S.

Bradley Tusk, thanks for coming on and talking to us today.

Yeah, hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

So we're going to talk about your career.

And as a lot of people know, the whole point of your career is this sort of like intersection between tech and politics and governance.

But if I made you say, what is your true love?

Is it politics or is it technology?

Oh, it's definitely politics,

for sure. That came first, right? Yeah, and I think I'm kind of more of a political junkie than a

tech junkie for sure. But the funny thing I've noticed, though, is that people who work in politics

now see me as like a tech and business guy guy and people who work in tech see me as a

political guy. So whatever you are, you assume on the opposite. We assume that you're on our

team, I guess, is the way. Or maybe not, actually. That's true, I suppose. But you did, you,

you went to school, Penn, Chicago Law.

What did you think your career was going to be?

Paul, well, so when I was in college, I was actually in the creative writing program.

But at the same time, I had worked for the mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Randall, all through college.

And so I kind of hit that point towards the end where I'm like, okay, I could probably pursue a

career in either of these. And I really liked both a lot. And my thought process was, I was a pretty

good writer, but like my ceiling would have been like a showrunner on a sitcom.

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