The man who turned 6 salespeople into 49 - and a charter bus startup into a $100M machine
Transformation and Performance Lead, Office of the CEO at CharterUP. Berkeley sociology honors grad. Sales architect. The quiet force behind one of transportation tech's biggest growth stories.
When Brandon Fagan joined CharterUP in February 2021, the company had a sales team of six people and a platform that promised to do for charter buses what Airbnb did for hotels. What happened next is the kind of growth story that gets written on whiteboards in board rooms.
In 21 months, Fagan built the sales organization from 6 to 49 people. Revenue grew 440% year-over-year. The company crossed $100 million in annual revenue and raised a $60 million Series A in October 2022. He started as a Customer Success Account Manager. By August 2021, he was Sales Manager. By 2023, he was running transformation inside the Office of the CEO.
That trajectory - Customer Success to Sales Manager to Transformation Lead in the span of two years - is not the result of luck or tenure. It is what happens when someone with a genuine framework for understanding human systems gets placed inside a company scaling fast enough to need one.
"He led the sales department to achieve 440% year-over-year growth, expanded the team from 6 to 49 salespeople and managers within 21 months, and contributed to over $100 million in annual revenue."
- CharterUP / LinkedIn ProfileThe framework came from an unlikely place: a UC Berkeley sociology thesis on drug addiction. Not a typical origin story for a revenue operator, but that is precisely the point. Fagan was one of only 18 students admitted to Berkeley's Honors Thesis program, where he spent a year conducting graduate-level independent research on casual drug use - challenging the prevailing static models by arguing that drug use is contextual, not fixed. Most drug users, his research found, are casual users. The field had been looking at the wrong category.
That same instinct - question the default category, look at the actual data, build a more accurate model - runs through everything he has done professionally. At MessageMedia, he sold business messaging. At Aviatrix, he sold enterprise cloud networking. At CharterUP, he did not just sell charter buses. He redesigned how a sales organization grows.
The Transformation and Performance Lead title inside the Office of the CEO is one of those roles that sounds bureaucratic and functions as the opposite. It is the seat closest to where decisions get made - the person who watches the whole machine, finds what is not working, and has the authority and trust to change it.
CharterUP is not a simple company to transform. It serves 25 million+ riders across 135+ cities, operates partnerships with 700+ bus operators managing 10,000+ buses, and counts Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Delta among its corporate clients. The platform runs real-time vehicle availability, instant booking, transparent pricing, safety compliance monitoring, and a rider management system - all on a cloud SaaS infrastructure that did not exist five years ago in this space.
Fagan operates within that complexity from San Francisco - physically removed from CharterUP's Austin, Texas headquarters, intellectually embedded in the company's core challenges. That kind of trust, extended across geography, is not given to someone with a good quarter. It is given to someone who has repeatedly delivered at the organizational level.
The arc from academic researcher to enterprise seller to performance executive is not accidental. Sociology - the study of how humans organize, how systems shape behavior, how context changes outcomes - is about as direct a preparation for organizational transformation as you can get. Fagan just did not follow the conventional path from that degree.
Berkeley graduated him with Highest Distinction. A 3.95 GPA. Named the Most Exemplary Graduating Senior. One of 18 in the entire cohort who conducted truly independent research. The academic record is not decoration - it signals a person who takes systems seriously enough to question their foundations.
What comes next for someone with this trajectory at 30-something? The Office of the CEO is a proving ground. The people who sit there either become COOs, founders, or the rare category of operator who gets placed into every hard problem a company has. Fagan has shown enough velocity that any of those paths is plausible.
For now, he is inside one of the most interesting companies in transportation tech - a sector that has been waiting for a software-first approach for decades - helping shape how a $60M-funded, $100M+ revenue platform continues to grow. The bus industry has never moved this fast. Neither has he.
From joining as Customer Success Manager in February 2021 to leading transformation inside the Office of the CEO - a compressed timeline of outsized results.
440% Year-over-Year Growth - Led CharterUP's sales department to 440% YoY revenue growth, one of the most dramatic revenue scaling stories in transportation SaaS.
8x Team Expansion in 21 Months - Built the sales organization from 6 to 49 salespeople and managers, redefining what a high-velocity sales team looks like in the transportation industry.
$100M+ Revenue Milestone - Contributed directly to CharterUP crossing the $100 million annual revenue threshold - a landmark for any SaaS marketplace.
UC Berkeley Highest Distinction - Graduated with a 3.95/4.00 GPA in Sociology and was named the Most Exemplary Graduating Senior by the university.
Honors Thesis - 1 of 18 Selected - One of only 18 students admitted to UC Berkeley's independent Honors Thesis program, conducting graduate-level research on drug addiction and casual drug use.
Office of the CEO Elevation - Selected for one of the most trusted and strategically influential roles at CharterUP, reporting directly into the CEO's office as Transformation and Performance Lead.
Fagan's Berkeley honors thesis challenged the conventional static model of drug addiction - arguing that most drug users, including hard drug users, are casual users. His academic framework: context changes outcomes. His sales framework: same thing.
He was one of only 18 students in his entire UC Berkeley graduating class selected for the independent Honors Thesis program - a self-directed, graduate-level research track. The selectivity rivals top PhD programs.
His Instagram handle is fitness-focused - suggesting a discipline outside the office that likely mirrors the rigor he applies inside it. High performers tend to be high performers everywhere.
CharterUP's CEO Armir Harris has been named a Best CEO in Austin. Fagan sits in his office, as Transformation and Performance Lead - a role that requires an operator the CEO trusts completely.
Before transportation, Fagan sold enterprise cloud networking at Aviatrix - a fundamentally different industry. The common thread: complex B2B sales cycles, technical buyers, and the patience to find real product-market fit.
8x team growth in under two years. For context: most sales organizations that try to triple in size end up with quality dilution, culture problems, or both. Getting to 8x cleanly is a feat of organizational design, not just hiring speed.