Russell Brooks

Hello, I'm Russell! I run my own business, Thistle Growth, as an early-stage investor, startup consultant, and fractional COO supporting early-stage high-growth companies in the Pre-Seed stage through Series C. I help companies prepare for the fundraising process and support through fundraising. I specialize in building, launching, and scaling infrastructure for a company to snowball. This support includes building operations, customer experience, product, people operations/HR, and recruiting. I have over 12 years of experience in health care, ride-sharing, food delivery, hospitality, residential & multi-family real estate, trucking, and transportation. My focus has been on services and two- and three-sided marketplace businesses. I worked at CVS Health for five years, focused on building new programs around medication adherence for chronic conditions such as Diabetes, Heart Disease, and Depression. In the last year, I helped rebuild CVS Medicare Part-D enrollment department. I joined Uber and spent nearly three years helping grow the business in the earlier stages. I oversaw 20 market launches and management of 20 markets in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, launched UberEats in Arizona, and grew the business from $40M in gross revenue to $500M. At Sonder, I launched the Arizona market, creating a go-to-market strategy, recruiting and hiring 25 employees, constructing an operational model and supply chain, negotiating 180 short-term rentals, and growing revenue to a $6.5M run rate in the first 15 months. While at Getlabs, I was responsible for building a launch strategy to expand from 1 market in Phoenix to 8 nationwide, covering 15% of the country. I also helped raise a $16M Series A round, built the operational infrastructure, and grew the company from 10 to 45 employees in 8 months post-Seed fundraising.