Walker Drewett (NuBrakes) - How He Started a Mobile Brake Repair Company with No Automative Experience

Thank you Mike Ghaffary for the introduction to our guest today, Walker Drewett, CEO and founder of Nu Brakes. We want to make the brake repair process simple and frustration-free. We discussed why Walker always had his heart being an entrepreneur, the inspiration behind helping people with their cars even though he didn’t come from an automotive background, approach to scale and hiring being a first time CEO. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship?How did you become interested in cars? How did this lead to Nu Wash? What was the day-to-day operations? How did you approach growth? How did Nu Wash evolve into Nu Brakes? How did you discover the opportunity? When did you decide to make the switch? How did you think about the competitive set? How did you have to change your day-to-day operations? What was most challenging when you pivoted? How did you approach customer acquisition? How did you approach the experience 15-30% less than a dealership When did you decide to raise your first round? How were you able to raise? What were your objectives after you raised? Now lots of car companies have extended warranties for repair, how does that affect Nu Brakes? When did you decide to expand outside of Austin? What was your approach to hiring and getting people who had years and years of experience excited to work at Nu Brakes? How do you think about culture? Culture is a shared way of doing something w/ passion How did the pandemic affect your business? Did you have to make any pivots? What’s the mission and vision of Nu Brakes? What’s one thing you would change about VC? What’s one book the inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally? Six Tires, No Plan (Business) Extreme Ownership (Personal): What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?