I doubt they had the budget for that or they likely wouldn't have been essentially trying to get someone to making their MVP under the guise of a new hire interview.
Keep in mind the OP mentioned that this was pre-launch, when they were still UberCab and only had aspirations to be a peer-to-peer cab app. Long before they started marketing themselves as a logistics juggernaut or world changing self driving car creators for valuation justification purposes.
I doubt they had the budget for that or they likely wouldn't have been essentially trying to get someone to making their MVP under the guise of a new hire interview.
Keep in mind the OP mentioned that this was pre-launch, when they were still UberCab and only had aspirations to be a peer-to-peer cab app. Long before they started marketing themselves as a logistics juggernaut or world changing self driving car creators for valuation justification purposes.