As some of you may have heard, Uber just announced that Kees Koolen has come on board as Uber’s COO. By way of introduction, Kees hails from Booking.com where as CEO (and member of the Global Management Board of Priceline.com) he built and grew the business from a small team with just a few people into the multibillion world leader of hotel reservations with more than 3,500 people working from more than 70 offices around the world. Now, while we normally don’t do much blogging about hiring, we bring on great people every day – and we’re looking for MORE!. But working with Kees, who hails from the Netherlands, is unique in that we’re not just bringing on a world renowned technology executive, but more importantly I’m bringing on a partner in the business. Ryan Graves and I know that deep experience scaling a global organization is our next big challenge, and Kees makes the promise of Uber truly everywhere, a real possibility.

So, we’ve got a whole world to light up with Uber, and I’m super-pumped about our new partner in crime.