Lessons from scaling Uber and Opendoor | Brian Tolkin (Head of Product at Opendoor, ex-Uber)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/d42a21c6f099acbb

You've worked at two businesses that have done incredibly well combining product and ops. Uber always have this mentality and Open Door does too of the product and versions twin turbine jet plane where you can like fly the plane on one engine for a little bit if you need to, but it's operating most efficiently and effectively if both are working together. What has having been an ops done to
make you a better product leader. Gave him really deep understanding of how the business actually works. It's a pretty good foundation for them going on to say, Okay, we actually want to build in a more uh scalable technology. Something else I've heard that you're very good at is staying very calm under pressure. I've
slept on the floor in China before launching Uberpool and like when you reflect the stress onto your teams, everybody tenses out. It counterintuitively doesn't produce better outcomes.

Today my guest is Brian Tolkien.
Brian is currently head of product and design at Open Door.
Before that, he spent nearly five years at Uber, where he joined as employee one hundred.
Before Uber had Uber X or Uber Pool or any kind of shared rides.
He actually started on the ops team at Uber, moved into product, ended up leading product and launch of Uber Pool, and then taking it global.
He also started the product operations function at Uber before that function was really even a thing, which I didn't know until the chat that we had.
In our conversation, Brian shares a ton of lessons about building products with a heavy operational component.
Also, how to run great product reviews, how he implements the Jobs to be done framework at Opendor successfully, the story behind Zillow trying to compete with Opendor, failing and then partnering instead, plus a ton of great stories from the early days of Uber and Open Door, and so much more.
If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.
It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you Brian Tolkien.

Brian, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, appreciate it, thanks for having me.
First of all, just a huge thank you to Kavon Bakepour for connecting us, introducing us.
He said all kinds of amazingly nice things about you. He also gave me some very hard questions to ask you. I hope you've come prepared.
Terrific. Put me in the heart seat.
Okay, I wanna spend a bunch of time talking about
Product and ox.
You started your career in operations at Uber. You actually started on the ops team and you moved into product.
You've also worked at both Uber and at Open Door, which have both huge operational components. I think it's
Really rare that people won
T.
a company scale to the heights of Uber and Open Door.
With such a heavy operational component that are still tech companies.
And also
It's really where someone starts an option then moves into product and ends up
where you are, where you're chief product officer, really successful company.
So I have a bunch of questions here.
Maybe the first is just
What has
Having been in ops
Done to make you a better product leader? How does that change the way that you operate as a product leader? Starting on the operation side gave a really deep understanding of like
how the business actually works, right? You are you are truly operating it day in and day out.
And the success of a city.
is, you know, in large part driven by
the input that you are putting into it every single day on the ground.
And whether or not there was rain that weekend, uh, which was uh a nice driver of metrics, but
Talking to customers every single day, like
one on one onboarding drivers.
uh responding to support tickets. There's no centralized support team.
There was no closer to the customer.
Right. And I so I think that foundation actually
for really understanding what moves the business and being super close to the customer.
Actually it's a it's a pretty
Good foundation.
for then going on to say, okay, what do we actually want to build?
in a more um scalable technology.
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I've seen that a lot of companies and this was definitely true at Airbnb where the product team kinda looks down a little bit on the ops team.
Whether like, Oh, we're gonna we're doing things that are gonna scale to
millions of users were doing these things that are gonna apply to everyone.
There's this like ops team over there doing a few things that are gonna
Not scale there's
keep asking us for things to build for their one off ideas.
Uh what do you think that
product teams often maybe miss or don't understand about the ops teams that
would help them.
See them in a different light.
Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. And I think Uber always had this mentality and open door does too.
of um kind of like a twin turbine jet jet.
plane where you can like fly the plane on one engine for a little bit if you need to
But it's operating most efficiently and effectively if if if both are working together.
And uh
And I think that's that's really true, right? The
The reality is operations teams, local teams
Can iterate faster, can
Uh scale talking to customers really.
Mu much more efficiently.
uh have great qualitative insights and so if if
It's less if it's seen more as like a
Harmony instead of a a a competition. I think that that that's that's really, really helpful. Where it's like okay
How do we get the insights that are happening day in and day out in the field on the ground, whatever that may be?
And help us.
build better products because of that, right? Like a PM sitting in San Francisco.
Can't be in
In open doors case, fifty markets walking houses every single day.
In Uber's case, you know, whatever a thousand cities.
Understanding the nuances of
safety in South America. Right. That's just like not not possible. But what you can do is foster a really good relationship and a really good feedback loop.
Of how
People who
Do deeply understand those things.
Can help give it give insights. Now's actually the birth of
Um
Product operations.
was was sort of that that insight as well.
Can you say more on that?
Yeah, sure. So I I I should probably define what what proper operations was that.
at at Uber and it was basically this notion that we had
Sanchise this was later in my career at at Uber, but
We had a centralized product team.
Um building.
stuff mostly in San Francisco, not strictly to their offices, but at this point around the world. But
Uh, mostly in San Francisco. And then we had
a very globally distributed operations team.
And there's sort of a bi directional feedback loop.
wasn't wasn't super strong in that that feedback loop was basically
When
the EPD teams in San Francisco built new features, how do we effectively put it in?
global markets and then how do we effectively get input from global markets to better build
Features.
And uh so one solution to that problem, our solution at the time was to start up a new function called product operation to
had accountability and report it into
operations but physically sat with.
and operated much like a um a member of the product team.
To help solve that.
Is that maybe the first time there's a like did you invent product operations as a function? I I I don't I don't think so because at the time I believe Google had had a function. I don't remember what Google called it. It was something slightly different, but I met with a few folks.
Who and
I had been in similar type roles at Goodwall.
And a couple other places. So I I I
I don't take credit for for certainly for for inventing it. And other people have sort of actually dabbled in this model at at Uber before me. Um there's just a a formalization of it and their actual building out of the organization.
Uh basically helped.
Make it a thing. Uh I know you're
Yeah,
You're being very modest, I think. Um
Coming back to your point about decentralized operations teams, something I've read is that search pricing came out of one GM and a market just testing.
Emailing all the
Drivers.
Give you extra if you drive on Saturday night.
Is that true?
That would have been probably a little bit before my time.
Um but that being said, one thing that is true is that um
Surge pricing for for actually quite some time. All of twenty twelve, certainly, twenty thirteen. Probably I don't know, when when we necessarily switched.
was uh very much a human in the loop system or a very manual system.
Where GMs in every city would control
Basically the parameters in which Surge would operate.
And so
Um much of the time that would mean, for example, like
Monday through Friday.
Mm.
There would be no surge.
Like it was just
It it couldn't flip on.
And then
And Saturday night it would flip on from whatever.
You said seven PM to three AM
And the cap was
you know, X, whatever the cap was. And then within those parameters, the algorithm would would optimize for what the price was.
But yeah, GM controlled whether it was on or off and what geographies.
Yeah.
We're surgery.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Was that out of uh
we believe we are better than the algorithms or we just don't have time to make them
Amazing yet. So we're just gonna
Help help them all. Yeah. Um I think it was it was it was probably a function of of a bunch of stuff. One of which is like, hey, this is a fairly new concept and it's it's powerful and
Uh uh dangerous and so less like
make sure we understand what's happening. The second is kind of this belief
Yeah.
Yeah, local city teams know their cities best. And so
You might know that an event
is happening a baseball game gets out.
Right? And it's like oh
I know that this baseball game's gonna get out at ten PM, so I'm gonna set surge at nine forty five.
And the algorithm may not be may not be able to pick that up. And then the third is yeah, the technical constraint of like
Nowadays, clearly it's all automated.
Uh, but it's it's really hard to build a fully dynamic always on
um geospatially aware.
pricing system.
And not just
Little bit of time.
That makes sense.
Uh, I feel like you're full of wild stories from your time at Uber.
Is there one that comes to mind of just and I think you'd like help scale in China, Uber Pool?
Yeah. Uh maybe that's one I don't know. What's he share a wild story from early Uber days.
Yeah, so in the in the early days of of Uber one one kind of fun story
is uh obviously Uber Acts is a is a very main mainstream product, but has a uh
Kind of funny.
silly name, um Uber Uber X. Uh this this product in the early days
Wise uh
going to be all hybrid and having had it
bunch of different uh potential
names. I was not uh personally driving this. This was someone else on the operations team, but they built the model for
What this product could be.
And there's no name for it yet. So it was going to be a placeholder, so
What do you put as a placeholder?
X.
So Uber X and then the company was moving quickly enough. The product got got green light and launched and
Here we are.
Oh.
twelve years later, eleven years later, whatever it is, then uh Uber X is the name that stuck. So
That is hilarious. I love it. So as a placeholder
It's like
Many products start that way where they're like, This is just the temporary name and then like, Okay, I guess everyone just knows it this way. Now we're gonna stick that.
That's an awesome story.
One that um
is good about scaling Uber Uber pool in China is yes, we so we're launching Uber pool.
in China and this was going to be China at the time was pretty big for
For Uber, but Uberpool was not there yet.
And so we're gonna
We're gonna launch.
And myself and a few other folks uh were were in
Chengdu China, which is the the first
Chinese market that we're launching that we're pooling.
And
uh we're gonna you know be on the ground to to to to launch.
Um, we wanted to go live at I believe it was six AM for rush hour on
Whatever Monday morning.
And uh so we're there over the weekend, um getting getting ready to set up.
And at the same time we were doing some uh data center testing.
And so we flipped on all the testing infrastructure and and thought it was going to work.
And nothing works.
Uh and
The the the matching algorithm just
Is it is it working and like, Oh my god, now it's you know.
Whatever. Five PM the day before we're supposed to go live. Six PM, seven PM
Okay, let's get on the phone with the US, try and figure out what's going on.
I remember I snupped it out.
thirty minutes that night between two and three AM.
Uh being like Okay, well we like
We have to go live at at six AM. I think there was some press around it.
Right. Like we were planning on going live.
Uh and I think we got everything finally working at probably about five thirty or six in the morning. And uh
launched just in the nick of time and I'll I'll I'll never forget it was we launched
It was great. We monitored everything was good.
And then we walked out um for breakfast at like seven thirty in the morning. Everyone sleep deprived. No one slept all night.
And we got this um these like pancake street food.
things and I I have to imagine they were not that good, but in my mind that was like the best meal I've ever had in my mind.
So
Like a meal after a marathon or uh
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
So delicious.
This comes up a lot of just like these.
Moments that are so incredibly stressful and hard and
Sleep deprived, end up being like the best memories and the best stories to tell and things you look back at fondly. It's so weird how human nature is like that.
Yeah, I mean another one more more recent for for open door.
was uh we
Um when Covid hit.
Right, we like physically we buy and sell homes and so we were physically going into people's homes.
And
Uh.
Yeah.
Tell me March twenty twenty, like going into people's homes was not uh not something you were r people were comfortable with. And you look at the real estate data coming out of China.
at the time and it it looked like sort of coming to a standstill. And so
We we actually turned off the core business and we stopped buying homes for a few months. Hey, we we can't go in.
And
We don't know if anyone's gonna be buying.
uh any homes and so
You know, what what do we do? And and we took those few months in there and
I came out the other side and had virtualized the whole process then.
That was pretty stressful, right?'Cause you're looking at
a business that relies on going into people's homes and
I mean you can't do that anymore. When what do you do? So
Again, a fond memory to look back on, a very stressful time in the moment um where where it feels very, very difficult.
Just since you mentioned open door, I think many people have heard of open door.
Maybe just give a quick explanation of what Open Door does for people that are aren't exactly sure.
So we're a digital platform to buy and sell real estate. Um the
The core product today, um, is a seller focused product where people can go online.
um enter some information about their home and we'll make um an all cash offer to be able to sell
sort of show simplicity and and and certainty.
And uh
Yeah, so so the the product really
works for people who
have a want something that that is certain and simple and easy.
Um, I don't know if you've ever uh sold a home, but it can be a very, very
Successful difficult process with showings and open houses and
How to price it and will it sell? And all of that stuff. And so we offer
Um, basically a way to to
Skip the whole process.
So basically sell your house to open door and it's just like cool, done, move on.
So uh you pick your closing date, you move out when you want.
Um
Yeah.
There's no uh
No hassle.
Sounds sounds amazing. I want that.
Um
Coming back to ops and product just to kinda close this thread.
Uh again, you've worked at two businesses that have done incredibly well combining product and ops.
Are there any just broad lessons you've taken away from how to make these two teams and
functions work well together and to build a business that's very ops heavy.
But also
Alpha driven.
Yeah, the f the first one we we
touched on, which is A, there's there's just got to be mutual respect, right? Both both functions
their their time and their place and their skill sets and
Uh you just don't.
Don't the b big
build big businesses of this type without respecting the fact that that both need to exist.
The second, uh, particularly on the product and engineering side is really understanding
where and how the technology leverage comes from the business and then
Being really focused on making sure
Generally, especially in the earlier days.
Uh, you are more limited on the technical resourcing side than you might be on the operational resourcing side.
And so how do you be really focused on where to invest?
your time, effort, and energy uh uh technically.
Which is why most of the engineering effort uh for Uber was on the dispatching system and the pricing system.
That's just
where the leverage was at the time given
given the scarcity of resources. And so I think the second one is being really intentional about
where those type of reasons are and then being really forthcoming
And saying hey, that means all these other places where yes
It can make
Things easier, more efficient.
Excitera, except we are okay.
not investing in right now. And that needs to be an explicit decision.
Um and and very transparent.
And then uh
The last bit I would say is
A deep understanding that
The real world has entropy.
And it's hard.
And it's messy.
Yeah, for us we
And open door we go into homes.
You know.
Someone may not be home, scheduling may be off, and that Uber driver may cancel the review load GPS.
All these things happen, right? Computers are deterministic, but humans aren't.
Right. And so
Building products that have a little bit more
Flex are a little bit more.
Fail safes in case those things happen.
Uh it becomes a little bit more of a
Uh paramount.
One other thing the last thing I would say is
I think the the
Companies evolve as well. So
What I talked about at the beginning of Uber.
being you know very focused from an engineering and and and product side on
dispatching system the pricing system obviously over time that's evolved now there's a is a centralized all of these functions as the company got bigger
And more mature and scale and
optimization started to be more important than
expansion and
Sort of.
That P tree desert.
Petri dish of trying new stuff and the tools got better and
the tech got easier and there was more internal infrastructure.
And so over time
Things can start one way and and shift over time.
That's the basic means.
Let's actually spend more time there. You keep saying things that I wanna that make me wanna dig deeper.
So at Airbnb we went through the same thing where
There was all these uh local ops teams driving supply, finding homes, bringing them on the platform.
And then there's like this tipping point where the product in organic
Growth or word of mouth ended up driving
More and then orders of magnitude more. So there's no need for these folks to spend time doing these sort of things.
Can you just maybe share s an example either we we're open door when you talk about like there's a time and a place and a skill set for ops?
how that evolved, like what was the team doing initially, and then what did they end up doing as things grew.
Yeah, I mean maybe maybe a very um
Easy good example.
to pick just one part of the the Uber process in the early days is
At small scale.
Uh actually back one is is the Uber Black drivers.
Every
um driver was individually onboarded in like a ninety minute to a two hour
In person in the office.
Onboarding um with deep setting of expectations.
The next version of that.
So that's obviously very obstin.
The next version of that is kind of like a small classroom type setting of three or five or six.
Drivers at at a given time.
Um
Also very obstinate and and then
as we we got into more mass market products like Uber Taxi or Uber Axe.
Okay, maybe twenty or thirty at a time. Okay. So now it's a little bit bigger classroom setting and said, Okay, let's make a video. Instead of giving verbally the same presentation, let's just make an onboarding video and uh
Yeah, that was
the next center scale. But that now suddenly we have a different problem, which is
Okay, you have to validate all of these credentials.

Mm who they are, all that stuff.
At one person easy. At three to four at a time.
Easy.
Ten at a time.
A little more child, but
Fine. A twenty at a time, okay starting to run up onto it.
Now at
you you fast forward six months and you're doing
thousand a week or whatever, okay, suddenly your system breaks. It's like okay.
We have reached the point where like operational system improvements is like no longer viable.
So you say, Okay, what are what are the like that
We've gone from the iteration stage to the scale stage.
and and technology is is uniquely good at scaling. So now we say okay, instead of having
a bunch of folks around the world taking pictures of driver's licenses and validating and doing all that stuff.
How do we integrate with some type of OCR technology or auto recognition of driver's licenses?
feeds to a system that knows what a driver's license is.
I can do automatic validation.
And suddenly you've done two things. One, you've scaled your system.
And two, you've just created a ton of time for
at the time was probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people running these onboarding sessions all over the country.
the world at the time.
To do other stuff.
Right. And so now you can sort of level that up and say
Okay, do we do more analytics? Do we do more
Figure out the next process that needs optimization or whatever the case may be in that virtuous cycle just continues.
The way I like to think about this is
Do things that don't scale and then scale the things that you're doing. That's the freeze I always come back to.
Exactly.
This reminds me of a hot take that uh previous
Podcast guest.
Share it in a newsletter post. Casey Winners he
Talked about.
That
Operations is usually
And this is kind of it's a hot take.
The operations is a sign of inefficiency and over time your job is to kind of squeeze that
Away and make it.
product software as much as possible. Doesn't mean you always get there.
Thoughts.
Yeah, I I I I actually don't
Fundamentally it depends on what the operations is.
But I don't fundamentally disagree, but I think that the the right lens to think about it is
Um
And then those
Those folks can move on to the next challenge.
Um, right, and so there's always another hill to climb.
Right. And so I think that was one of the things
At Uber and Open Door, where there's sort of this culture of on the ground experimentation that's really helping where yeah.
Like we were just talking about. Driver onboarding may now be solved.
the technology save a few uh extra hours a day, like
How do we get better at?
Um
Optimizing the Uber Axis.
system, how do you start tinkering with food delivery? How do you start
you know, thinking about higher capacity vehicles. Have you think about
A better feedback loop for those manual surge pricing.
sort of how both that we talked about, right? There's
So I generally agree it just generally freeze that capacity and solve more problems.
It feels like a big part of this is uh making sure the operations teams understand
There's more opportunity. Even if this ends up being automated, you your job's not gonna go away. We're gonna find something new.
Take a try and experiment and do you think they don't skip?
Yeah.
Awesome.
Okay.
Going a completely different direction.
I hear you're very good at product reviews.
Okay. A few people a few people told me this.
I'm curious how you set up a product review and any things you've learned, any tips.
For how to run an effective product review.
That's very kind of of whoever mentioned that. Um but
But yes, uh big big fan of of doing them. Actually in particular to maybe bridge the conversations.
In
Companies that have ops driven cadences because or are or start out uh very ops driven because the cadences can sometimes be different.
Right. And so um the operational cadences that you might have something like
And
WBR, a weekly business review.
may not be conducive to always picking your hat up and saying like, Hey, where's the product going on
a slightly longer time frame. And so
I think product reviews in general for all companies are probably really helpful, but actually in particular for for some of the up uh
product and operations led led companies.
In terms of of things I've I've learned.
Think being really intentional about what the the the goals are. I think it's okay to say that there are
Two goals, a goal of sort of like
Accountability and inform to an audience.
But also most importantly, I think this is the the the primary goal.
is to help make the product better.
Right.
To help the team think through a problem.
And to have that again back to our
our earliest conversation the
A very intellectual.
uh conversation about the work and how to make the product better.
And not super scary.
Like product reviews hopefully are not feeling like firing squads.
That's it. That's it.
A scary environment to be in and not necessarily one that's conducive to
How do we make the product better? Obviously sometimes the conversations have to get a little
Um in times, but
But in general, that's what we're shooting for, is something that
helps the team go back and think through how to make the
Tiger.
So the two goals you try to communicate for your product review is accountability.
Slash
Informing people what's happening.
But also just like we are here to make the product better and setting that context. Yep.
Is there anything you do specifically to make it not feel like a firing squad, like you're coming in here to be attacked and criticized? Is there do you set context at the beginning of the meeting? Is this just a part of the culture?
Yeah, I think um de definitely part of the culture, but also
Mm.
I I'm a firm believer in general that the people closest to the problems also have the best
context to solve that that problem and so
as a uh more senior voice in the room, often the job is.
Probing, asking questions, throwing out ideas in a way that says, like, hey, this is an idea. This is not a mandate, right? This is a a thought.
Right.
And if there's
context missing that would inform the product direction, then providing that context in
Not a question asking.
Sounds but but a
Hey, this is contacts that that you might not be aware of.
Um and so I think it's it's all in how you show up as a leader.
And what that looks like in terms of
probing and pushing the team.
on dimensions that they not may that they may not be thinking about. And then understanding that the team
is bringing a perspective that you don't have, which is
They think about this problem.
forty, fifty, sixty hours a week. And you might think about this problem.
Three hours a week, right? So you bring them
A Brat.
The team brings the depth.
En gaan die marry that.
I don't know if you heard of Darmash Shaw's uh episode or his thing on flash tags. Have you seen this? I have not, no. Okay.
It has a whole system. So you talked about how as a leader you want people to not
Take everything you tell them.
As feedback as I need to do this.
Yeah.
uh hashtags that communicate how important this is to him from
Hashtag FYI to
Uh
It's a suggestion.
to uh plea.
Yes. Pleading you. Yeah. This was actually explained to me. I don't I don't think I've seen the original source, uh, so I'll go back and and and watch it, but it this was explained to me as this I'm actually a big fan. I think that's I think that's great.
Yeah. So I get everyone on the same page.
Okay, maybe one last question here.
Who do you who do you try to invite to product reviews? Do you have any frameworks and ways of thinking of who to invite, who not to invite?
Yeah, good good question. Uh we I would say have uh oscillated over time, but in general.
um big subscribers of the the the best conversations happen when they're relatively small. So try and keep it under under ten.
Um
Could be wide distribution, uh, the document.
Right. The the artifacts created are actually really powerful and they're they're powerful for the whole team.
To understand and and sort of secret power is they're very powerful for new people who are onboarding to be got here. Here are the last 20 product reviews.
You'll get a pretty good idea of what's going on.
Right?
But generally the conversation itself trendy relative.
I'm trying to keep it.
And these artifacts you mean the recordings of the meeting that people can watch or Yeah, or or just the document. Um depends on what the company culture is, whether you want to record it or or just have the document. Got it. Either way.
And then is there some kind of specific cadence you operate on? Is it like a weekly product of you that people can sign up for?
Does every team have how do you how do you like to set this up to cadence? Yeah, obviously it's scales are with the
size of the company for us right now what's working well is uh yeah sign up kittens we have two two slots a week that um anyone can
can turn up or as their product area needs it.
And then if there's something that um
We would love to see that we haven't seen them yet. We do have a little bit of uh volunteering.
To to to make sure that the work is generally cycling cycling through on a quarterly basis.
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A Jason topic. Uh I hear you're a big fan of jobs to be done.
Which is
Okay. So it's a it's a it's a fun recurring topic on this podcast. We've had many people that love it.
Many people that hate it.
I love seeing both sides of it. Uh I love that you find it helpful and you implement it at
Open door.
I'd love to hear just how you actually apply it at Open Door, what you've learned about how to
apply jobs to be done effectively.
Yeah. I think like all frameworks, um, the right answer is to to pick your set of frameworks, have more tools in your toolbox, and then actually understand when and and and how to apply them. So
We try to avoid um
Be being a hammer and everything's a nail.
Uh, we try to, you know, for force the framework if if it's not working. But I think what we what I really like about it is
it forces you to put yourself in the customer shoes, I think in a slightly deeper way.
Um and and be a little bit more empathetic. Um when I think about building at open door versus say building at Uber or when you're building at Airbnb.
Is
Uh we are not
Most people at OpenDur.
Or not. Um
We don't have homes to sell every week or every month.
Uh nor do we buy homes every week or every month.
Right. This is on average in the US is is something people do once every seven years.
Yeah, I'm sure the average had opened or something similar.
And so
It's a little bit more.
harder to like be a customer. I took Uber every day.
Proper used Airbnb.
a number of times a year.
And so
You know, in some in some senses for some of those companies you can build for yourself. You
You would into it the job to be done because you're just
kinda doing it for yourself.
We don't necessarily have that context and so
A framework that forces us to be really thought and intentional.
Amount.
No.
How?
A customer might perceive.
Our product is really
The other thing that I like about it.
Is sort of the canonical version of it.
encourages you to think about
the context in which the user's operating or the other things outside of your product.
um that they m that they might be going through. And uh in our case
The buying home buying or selling journey often is a
Certainly multi week, if not multi month or multi
quarter journey with a lot of complexity and a lot of conversations outside of our product. You may be talking to an agent, you may be talking to a friend, you may be driving around a city trying to find a house.
And the the framework is very flexible and encouraging.
of saying what is actually the job to be done of this user when they're thinking about our product and what is the context in which they're operating.
I'd love to go one level deeper to talk about how you actually implement it. Do you have like templates of like you have a startup project, there's like
As a blank I blank blank blank. How do you
So we we we do have I would say we're um
Medium.
uh rigorous on sort of template standardization or adherence. Um so we do have a template, the standard product review.
Template um talk talks about
um jobs to be done sort of has a section for like what is the problem statement and and what are the jobs to be done. And this is a doc that when you're coming to a product review, the person running it and coming is like filling out this document.
Correct. Pre pre filling it up.
Uh sorry, pre-filling it out.
And uh
You know, I th again, I think we are not sticklers about always using that template, but uh you know, I think the beauty of a template is yes, it sets expectations of what
what you expect, but it's also just easier often for people to be able to work off something. And so um
Yeah, it's part of our product review template and then part of our planning process as well.
uh because we've used it for for a while, I think there's there's been an internalization of the culture where people also just start commenting about it or writing about it and saying, like, hey, what is the what is the job to be done here? Or like what is the user trying to do, which is
an another colloquial phrase in it. And so
Um yeah, I think there's a cultural uh seeding that has happened.
From memory just like what is in this template? So like what's the phrasing that you try to use for
Setting up a problem.
Yeah, yeah. I mean the sp I the specific framing, uh I would have to go remind myself of
Uh but generally it looks like, you know, context problem.
Potential solution, uh risks.
Risk slash pre mortal.
And you know meas measurement of success.
Um, and then we also try to
um sort of bucket or product reviews by um
Stage.
So you could be in the ideation stage, which might look very different.
Then uh
Yeah.
the very end of the process. Like hey we're getting we're getting ready to ship, you know, speak speak now for
Well those two
Artifaction. Well.
Okay, so it's not like I as a blank like the f
Standard jobs to be done.
language. It's not exactly how you implement it. It's more just make sure we're thinking of it, what is the problem for the customer? What is the context of their problem?
Correct. Yeah, yeah. We're not we're not um.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, awesome. Uh
Any other tips or lessons about just working well with this concept of jobs to be done?
Maybe like when you come into open door and like, Hey, everyone, we're gonna be thinking this way. Is there anything
there that would be useful to people if they're trying to
Operate this way.
Uh recognizing that um
uh correctly implementing a framework. Any framework but jobs to be done in particular we can talk about. Um
takes a little bit of of time and getting used to and understanding and so
You know?
I I don't think you can just like, okay, we're gonna make the template and then that makes the content better. That just takes people's content and they wedge it into the template.
It's actually the like cultural internalization of like
Hey, this might be phrased as the job to be done, but like is this actually the job to be done? Like let's talk about why the customer might.
Um be in that situation or not be in that situation.
Or I think the job to be done might actually be something else. Hey, the job to be done
Is
You know.
Yeah.
uh maybe an early day version would be like the job to be done is to get an offer from open door and it's like
Kind of.
But like the broader job to be done might be like price discovery for the customer.
Right. So you can have a rich conversation.
Where it's like well, one might be like a little bit influenced by our business schools.
Right. I don't think you just run around and and people are like
Yeah, I'm gonna sell my house. My job my like my goal is to get an offer for mobile.
It's like well, like you know, and so that's like okay, the template might be the same.
But like
It's actually the content that takes a little bit of culture instantiation.
Got it. And it sounds like people talk from what is the job to be done. That feels like a core part of the way you think about it. What is the job to be done.
Yep. The just that language alone feels really powerful.
Is there a resource or a book that you point people to to help your team learn about the way

Kind of thing you
Find useful. Not about jobs to be done. We have uh I I point people I do a lot more pointing people towards like internal examples of where I saw other GMs maybe do this well.
Or blogs and stuff, but um
Your your blog is a common one to pass around.
Um not about jobs to be done, but just about about many many topics. So
I'm flattered.
Thank you.
Yeah. I really appreciate that.
Uh, I was also thinking as you were talking your friends with Kavon and
Jobs to be done on Twitter was uh quite quite the journey for them.
Yeah.
traumatic for a lot of people, I think. It went very far to the extreme of the
Yeah, I think they're more dogmatic about it.
Very dogmatic.
And so I guess it's a lesson here.
Don't d maybe don't take it that far.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think it probably uh the I and I don't know if Kayvon would agree with this. I imagine he would.
the generalized version of like uh
You pick the right framework for the right job and if you say
Uh yeah, there's one framework to rule them all and this is the only framework that works and of course everyone's into it then.
Yeah.
I the way I think about jobs to be done is exactly the way you're describing it, where it's just just think from the lens of the job to be done.
for customers this. So for my newsletter, like what is the job to be done of my newsletter? It's to help
You become better at your job.
As a product person building product.
So and that actually ends up being really helpful.
And if
Feels like that's kinda the way you guys think about it at opening. Yeah, absolutely. And you're crashing it, by the way.
Okay.
Thank you. So are you.

You talked about I'm gonna go in into another question to deflect your compliment.

You mentioned that Uber, there's a million transactions happening every second, it's massive scale.
Open door is completely different. You have like
Very few very large transactions.
Yeah. Uh I'm curious how you do experiments if you do experiments. Do you do A B tests?
What have you learned about just how to think through
uh low sample sizes.
Plus A B testing.
Yeah.
Um very hot topic of conversation.
We
Do A B test. Um it is obviously the gold gold standard, and so we do as much as we we can.
A B testing there are parts of our funnel and flow that have more volume than others.
So
Yeah.
Than down funnels.
Um
A B testing, uh
Sure Lee product. Um
Uh uh.
features it's easier than A B testing processes, operational processes.
But uh but you're totally right.
Um, we
are not doing hundreds of millions of transactions a year.
Um and so experimentation
can can be
uh more challenging. And so I think one one way to think about it.
Is A.
knowledge the problem.
Right. Which is to say
Doped.
And we we've made this mistake uh many, many times.
But don't
just force yourself into A B testing without running the power analysis and say like, hey, are we going to get results?
What is the the size that will attack?
And
Uh what is the runtime of that experiment? And is that and be honest, like is that
Acceptable.
For there are certain so uh a a second lesson here is there are certain
Experiments that are important enough.
And it's hard to triangulate signal in any other way.
That you may say six month runtime is an acceptable outcome.
And we were gonna start it in
Jum?
And we will be smarter for it for twenty twenty five planning.
And we're gonna set it and forget it, and we're grateful we did.
Right. And that that's okay.
We w the the only mistake here is like
Thinking you'll get an answer in a month.
when you won't and then pretending you do and then waking up a month later and being like
Well, it was insignificant and this and that and
We could have known that.
Right. And so and then the third thing is like
Experimentation.
Is
All about increasing your conviction.
Yeah.
the the the problem or the solution.
And so the generalized version of the statement is
if there are parts of your funnel or flow that are low end and you can't run a canonical A B test.
How might you otherwise increase your conviction?
In the
In the solution that you're building. And there are
Turns out there.
A decent number of other ways to do that.
The first best, most obvious is talk to more customers.
But
you know, there are other sort of statistical techniques that again aren't as rigorous or good, but
But maybe
possible.

I mean, maybe able to look at sister cities or or twin cities.
maybe to to segment by GL.
you may be able to reduce your power and say, hey, we're going to run at eighty percent confidence for all of our experiments instead of the traditional ninety five percent.
Because that's a worthy trade off and if we're
wrong one more time out of ten, that's okay.
you can do a long term hold out to to to match your intuition. And so there's a lot of other techniques to home your intuition.
Um there's a lot of
other techniques to build conviction and confidence.
And so we're we try to be very creative on doing that.
And then the last last bit I would say is if you're not gonna get significance
There's no other s t uh techniques.
at your disposal then
Sometimes he just got
Trust your intuition. We ship it.
And if that's where if that's what you believe then that's what what you believe in.
Um you shouldn't spend time trying to get false precision.
I wanna spend more time on the last point, but real quick, the power analysis you talked about, there's
People don't know there's calculators out there that you could just plug in.
Here's how much traffic I'm getting.
Here's how much of a impact.
difference I want to see.
Here's how long it'll take.
To
Cm.
Find out.
Yep, exactly. Totally. Um, and uh uh some of the calculators are great where you can also plug in the traffic.
and your acceptable runtime and it will tell you the minimum impact, and then you can gut check your own intuition. So you can you can play around with it.
Awesome. We'll try to link to one of those in the show notes.
So um on the intuition piece.
Is there anything more there of just like how you think about
When you you know, you run the product team.
Just how you
recommend people
leverage intuition versus not,'cause
Some companies are like we're we're just gonna trust the data. I don't really trust your opinion. You don't know.
Like I I like you don't know you don't know this customer exact like he's talked about opener. I'm not buying
Houses.
Myself, so I don't know how much I can trust my intuition.
Just with your
General advice to your product team of how to think about
their intuition and when to rely on it versus not.
So at open door, for example, I'd say on on the relative spectrum, we're quite
data driven and then it's when we come into this challenge.
Right, where we say, Okay, like let's
That is another technique or tool in the toolbox. I think the generalized version
of that is uh customers products
People.
can surprise you, right? And so uh this happens all the time for
for for people who build both products. I'm sure you've got great stories from Airbnb where you saw something put it out there.
All the time. All the time.
Right. And so I think there there's definitely a humility to say
You know.
If you can, if it's relatively easy.
to test your assumptions or test your hypotheses. That is that is always better to gut check yourself. And yeah, that takes a little bit of humility to say that, but like
We've all been wrong plenty of times.
But
If that's just like not on the table, I think the reality is you can't pretend it is, and sometimes you gotta use taste and judgment and then you say.
Okay.
What is my conviction level?
And
Do I have
Yeah, just medium, low, or high conviction.
And if I have anything low or medium conviction and it's a decision of consequence.
I should yeah, talk to more customers, got check it with
Another person and see if their intuition matches
Something that gets me personally to the high high bucket category.
And then I think the the the last part
Which is some part of experimentation is
If you just ship something because you're it it's your intuition or to where you want to see the product.
Go.
Do you have a reasonable feedback loop to understand whether or not you are
Correct.
Right. So that could be
Customer support or ticket volume or
future adoption, whatever the case is.
It may not be an output metric in the traditional A B test, but like some more rigorous system.
That says, Hey, I had this hypothesis. We just shipped it for XYZ constraint reason.
Right.
I think that's awesome advice. I agree with everything you're saying.
You mentioned this word humility.
Something I want to talk about, which is Zillow.
Okay.
One of the most interesting things that's happened in your space is Zillow basically decided, hey, we're just gonna do what open door is doing.
They launched it.
You're basically frenemies.
For a while and then they're like no we
We're not we're we're
It's not working.
Now you partner. And say now you work with Zillow.
On
On the stuff. So
Are you able to share what went down there with the story of what happened, how it went?
And now.
Yeah, uh I mean we we do partner with Zillow. Um Zillow's been a fantastic partner. Uh
For us and we've really enjoyed
um sort of a working relationship.
Uh with them, I think
When you think about it, they have um tremendous amount of
Reach and and
And
And all beach of the thing.
Online.
Platforms.
Um
have tremendous reach or an audience.
And we happen to have a fairly selling solution. And so
Um, there's s there's sort of a nice uh not to use a business school word, but there's a nice synergy, so to speak.
Between um
Yeah. A high intent.
Yeah.
was doing a lot of browsing and and and and searching and and discovery and starting there.
Process of one of these online platforms.
And
what we offer, which is, you know, transaction services that allow people.
Actually.
uh move particularly on the seller side.
And so there's there's there's just a a pretty nice symbiont relationship there.
There's also and the red change of the hold and so both of those companies have been been great.
Show us.
What do you think Zillow maybe underestimated or
didn't get about the space that made it harder than they anticipated.'Cause it's it seems obvious. Let's go down funnel, let's just do it all.
And they're like, Oh shit, not working.
Uh what do you think they didn't get or what do you think they missed?
Um, I guess continuing on the humility point, I I won't necessarily pretend to to to to be in their shoes, but I will say like
The business
is challenging and it's complex from a number of different dimensions, right? It's not
a traditional software only product.
But you have to be really good at pressing. You have to be really good at
product. You have to be really good at at the operations.
You have to be really disciplined at risk.
You have to be really good in the capital markets.
Right. And so you have to put all of these functions together to build a vertically integrated

Uh that's the reality. And so that that is something that's been in open door's DNA for from day one because we started with a vertically integrated product and so
And we can't deliver.
And you have all of those things.
Right. And so I think that that's something that
uh continues to help us to the to this day is that vertical integration um requires all of those pieces coming together.
That makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a good
reminder of there are adjacent markets and businesses that
Always feel like oh we could expand to that someday.
Such a big opportunity. This business could be so much bigger.
And then you realize your business is completely not set up to operate this way.
Zillow's very software driven, right? Like
Mm-hmm.
Just the way like I'm not gonna simplify what they do, but it's like a website.
Very
Yeah. Software. Yeah.
And obviously as we talked about Open Door is a huge operational component and then
As you said, the pricing piece and the the debt stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think it's a really good reminder that just like when you're taking on something completely different.
Uh you may
It it may not fit into the way your company operates.
And partnering makes sense.
Anything else there that's interesting to share around the Zillow thing? I guess one is maybe it was just like I imagine it was very stressful. Z Zillow's getting into it. Oh shit, what are we gonna do? They got all the traffic.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it it's it's certainly stressful. Um, I think
In general, we we try to live by Wells or anybody else.
Um being um
competition aware, but not necessarily competition focused and and
The reality is
vast, fast, vast in our space. And vast majority of people still
Move the traditional way. And so this isn't something
Like
Yeah.
The the size of the prize.
isn't particularly large enough or or anything like that.
Yeah.

S
Largest asset class and mean by the stakes and if we just stay super focused on like
Hey, who are the customers that we serve really well that we talk to every day?
There's a there's a little bit of confidence that comes from being able to stay focused on that.
Yeah, because
It's not like
The market is fully tricky.
This is the same thing back in in mid Uber days as well.
Transportation is
Almost infinitely large.
You know, and so yes, there's the feels like there's heated competition.
Between Rad.
But the reality is there's plenty of traps.
That happens and people need to get around the city in plenty of different ways. That's neither Uber nor Vish.
And staying focused on on how you can go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or
For your customer. Um
Focus.
There's a a a podcast that will come come out before this episode with uh Jeff Weinstein from Stripe, who's
Building stripe atlas.
They had a similar experience with Angelist launched direct competitor.
to Angel to Atlas, and then they realized Atlas is so much better. Forget it. We're just gonna send everyone to Atlas.
Really? Yes.
And I think it's the same exact lesson that if you just stay focused on jobs to be done, let's say of what is the job to be done and do the best possible job.
And knowing that the market is
much bigger that you're not really competing with.
Someone else another company, it's like
It's the default behavior in your case. It's like people are just buying their house the old fashioned way.
That's the actual competition. Exactly. Yep.
Yeah.
No.
Okay.
So kind of along these lines, something else I've heard that you're very good at is staying very calm under pressure.
Mm-hmm. And staying very level headed when things are really
Crazy.
This is something that a lot of people
uh are not good at, especially leaders. They stress everyone out, things go crazy.
They don't create a good vibe and then two, something people want to get better at.
Leaders and non leaders alike.
Any lessons, anything you've learned about just how to develop this skill?
You know, I th I think um part part of this may have been um

sharpened in the early days of Uber where everything felt like a fire drill all the time and so the the only way to
To operate. But you know, I I I think
You almost hit the nail on the head um in the question.
Uh, which is like a little bit of an intellectual answer of
When you reflect the stress onto your teams, everybody tenses up and tightens up, right? And so it doesn't
It counterintuitively doesn't produce better outcomes.
And so I think
the other reality to to to sort of remind ourselves. And these are a bunch of like mantras that just like are helpful in these moments is
You're never as good as you think you are. You're never as bad as you think you are. And so
sort of that that more even tealed demeanor, I think, allows you to have a clear head when you're operating under the
Uh
the pressure.
And to you.
think think more clearly. I think we want to be like
Maybe least
helpful answers, but and unfortunately is sort of a reality is
You kinda got be in some stressful situations to also have the perspective.
That the cycles pass, the things pass.
And
And that remaining calm is is is is what matters. And so
maybe the the advice there is uh
reflecting on when these situations happen.
Um exposing yourself to them, not running from them.
And then learning from them so that the next time we
It comes around you can.
You can say, Hey, I've you know, I've been here before. You know, I've I've
Slept on the floor in China before launching, you know.
Uber pool and thinking we're gonna miss a launch deadline.
And like what were the tools in my toolbox and my toolkit that worked for me?
Um in trend um
Getting it done.
Uh.
Or not and what we're
Love that. So part of it is just go through this experience many times and you'll start to realize okay, it's not actually gonna be as bad as
People may think.
Uh
You mentioned this toolkit instead of tools. Like it's not never as bad as
people think it is never great as people think it is. Yeah, I mean I th I think um exposing yourself to other people's stories, um or however you you may learn, um is is really, really helpful. So
Yeah, again, like um whether it's your podcasts or books or or biographies or
Uh one of the podcasts that I I love.
Founders podcast.
Uh talks about historical
Famous entrepreneurs. And and obviously these are elevating like very famous people already.
But there's a lot to learn from a lot of these stories as well, and understanding that the journey in the path is is nonlinear. It never is for anybody.
Right. And so I think
being able to expose yourself to other stories that even may if you don't have those personal experiences.
And then understanding how others navigate.
Kind of. So just hearing of other people's crazy experiences and kind of building on this muscle of like, okay.
They've gone through crazy stuff.
Things work out.
Yeah, totally. We'll make it we'll make it through.
Okay. I have this note here that
I think either someone mentioned about you or may have you may may may have mentioned that
Product is
Finding the kernel of truth in a sea of ambiguity and signals. Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think um
In most organizations
And to do the job effectively, you're gonna get
signals from any everywhere, right? And good ideas come from everywhere. It may be
your C S team or CX team, it may be a customer directly. It may be a conversation you had. It may be a
YouTube video you watched that sparked an idea and maybe feedback from
An executive. It may be
Whatever you went out and did a field visit, like you are going to get a lot of inputs around what people think about your product or people think you should do next.
And I think that
Th.
core job is to understand
What really matters.
Right. Like what is noise? What is a good idea? What is a suggestion? What is
Uh and what is uh
you know, back to the jobs to be done for like what is really gonna move the customer forward.
And unfortunately that means, you know, saying no to maybe what sounds like some good ideas, you know, along the way.
But if you can really figure out like this is really what matters, that that's the core part of the child. And it it it dovetails even back to our earlier conversation.
Yeah, if you don't
In the early days of building.
Yeah.
Tech and ops companies.
is where's the tech leverage? Like a same question, right? Where's the kernel of what really matters that tech can uniquely solve?
And must go do that and be comfortable.
With other fires maybe burning.
That's what really
Really matters. Um
I love that. Uh
If there's not an example that's totally fine, but when you talk about this finding this kernel where tech could be
highly leveraged. Is there any example that comes to mind of
that working out really well.
I mean I think back back in the in the in the Uber days I think it was like
Hey, we're not going to build
sophisticated tooling infrastructure. We're not going to build
Centralized growth team.
We're not gonna build any of that because like
If you think about the
The early Uber network from the the simplest form. You've got
A rider and a driver and you need to connect them.
Price the transaction.
And issue some receipts, probably. You know, collect payment.
No thank.
Okay, do we do that really well? And until we do that really well, like
All the other stuff is noise, right? It's actually it's it it's immaterial how efficiently we answer support tickets.
Like that's not
Tickle.
Right. And so
Now it's super critical, right? But like in the early days it's not that critical.
And like even later like customer acquisition costs may not be like super critical.
Because you in in this case.
Scraw.
All the things and so
Yeah.
pouring fuel on the fire may may not be super efficient there. So I think that's like a good a very good generalized example.
Um one other tip.
Yeah.
That maybe is helpful here. Uh
That's
Um I free frankly constantly work on and try to get better at.
Is all these ideas and feedback that comes from everywhere.
Make sure it's written down for a number of reasons. One, you can then go reference it.
But two, part of the the job is making sure the people who present those ideas
are heard and respected and know that it's it's at least somewhere where it was considered.
Right. And then you can look at it all and say like okay, but what actually really
Really matters. Yeah.
And uh
Yeah.
That's a another tip.
When you say written down, is it is there like tools you find really helpful here? Is it just like put it in a big doc that we're keeping? Is there anything you find to actually operationalize that? I've I've seen different companies do it.
Do it differently, but wherever you tend to try and keep a backlog, whether that's yeah, a Google sheet or your actual backlog.
Mm.
But at least it feels like okay, the context was captured.
And the idea.
Awesome.
Okay, I'm gonna take us to uh a recurring segment on this podcast called Failure Corner.
Yeah.
Is there a story you can share of a time you
failed in your career, had a big failure.
And how that experience
Made you better.
We can talk about like the very early days of Uberpool.
And and kinda be like
first launch, if you will, um
in in San Francisco. So
Carpooling product, uh multiple riders in in in the same car.
And we had this idea that it would be effective to
Um
Uh for commuters.
Uh this is very, very early days.
And so
Part of part of the launch was okay, we're gonna
beta it with
Just some um
popular search meeting.
corridors with specific companies. So you know, maybe
Uh the marina to
To Google.
Right, and and try and match people according to
you know, with their companies and
That's liquidity.
And it um
We very quickly realized that, uh, back to sort of like what the kernel truth is here, is like
Liquidity is the only thing that matters.
Oh.
And there just wasn't enough.
Um, there's never going to be enough.
to use or do this like company based thing. That wasn't the strategy that was going towards from us. And so
You know, I the reason I I don't know if it's like a full failure is like
Maybe this is true. All failures is you learn from it, you pit it, and you go on to the next thing and
And obviously we we we did that and um then spent a lot of our time and effort trying to say Okay, what are the bounds of
liquidity and driving liquidity.
that we can do to understand what the the
Most important.
or what the sort of limits of the product are. So as an example
We launched and and maybe people in San Francisco. Remember this, sort of uh five dollars anywhere in San Francisco.
Warpool.
promotion, which is obviously a great deal. Obviously costs a lot of money.
But the whole idea here is like, oh, okay, if liquidity is what really matters.
If we were to juice that and really drive liquidity, how how high can our metrics get and then we can go chase, you know, more sustainable ways to do that.
But it was a a sort of a interesting
fail case from from from launching and learning to say, Hey, this initial strategy just
Isn't gonna work. We we gotta go
Gotta go and then part of it was a hedging strategy where we're with a small audience and there'll be a big population. It's like well
This one you just gotta go.
I think a lesson there is also don't overthink it, don't try to get too cute.
Just like
This is uh yeah, the
We're uh we're trying to make a perfect
Beta test versus Lake. Realizing okay, we just need a lot more people in it.
Yeah.
Uh
Also, your uh five dollar promotion made me think of uh the early promotions of like the ice cream and the bunnies delivery and all that stuff.
Yeah. That was by the way, uh a example of like
Fully distributed.
the the benefit of having those early petri dishes. Um someone
a a local marketing manager.
Like hey, this would be fun.
Yeah. It would be really fun. The platform can support it and
Those promotions were fantastic.
Right. And uh
And it started out I can't remember if the first one was ice cream or puppies. I think it was ice cream.
But yeah, and bran branched into all sorts of stuff. Boats.
Ice cream, puppies, kittens, I think.
And uh yeah, the all all credit goes to sort of like local ideas of inspiration just being focused on trying to to to grow them within.
I love that we've circled back to the beginning of our conversation.
Product and ops working together, the benefits of both.
Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Any last
nuggets of wisdom that you think might be useful to people when they're trying to build product.
Companies teams.
Um this was great. We covered we covered uh uh quite a bit of ground. I think the
The only um I don't know if this is a generalized wisdom, but something I've been thinking about. Um
as as my career has progressed a little bit, uh, especially building out the
Yeah probably.
Proper notations.
Especially as uh more tools come online. It's very clear that there's different um
Types.
TMs and we spent a lot of time talking about ones we can operate in the physical and the digital or the product and and and operations world.
But even within that there's um uh
more, you know, OPMC dropping than it.
Engineering.
Discipline there are people who came from ops and
There are people who came from from design and grew up in in turn more user experience background.
And uh one thing that I've been been on as he as he built out um the team is thinking
Similar to a to a product roadmap is like it's not really about like is this person
Good or bad.
Or whatever.
If this person's skill set in contact match to the problem that is is is really needed. Um and so back to that conversation on hey, where do we get
tech language. It's like, hey, is this person
Who has this unique skill set as a PM.
Well suited for this problem type.
I don't know if that's that's helpful, but it's something I've been
spending a lot of time thinking about especially this view.
Job posting HP.
Product manager.
That's actually like well, like how can we be a little bit more thoughtful about
What what the actual skill set needs up.

Awesome. It's kind of like a person
Product fit.
There you go.
I think it's'cause a lot of companies hire generalists and they're just like, We'll hire someone smart, ambitious, and with experience and general experience and then we'll
Put them on different things. So I think
These are two different philosophies. And it probably
Makes a lot of sense for an open door with like very unique
type of business with very specific skills that are necessary to be really good there.
Okay.
Amazing.
Brian, with this we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Let's do it. Can't wait.
Let's do it. First question.
What are two or three books that you've recommended most?
to other people.
Shoe dog?
Mm.
Black Swan.
Um, design of everyday things.
And
For a fun one, Chantaron.
Amazing. Four books.
Four books for the price of two to three.
I love it. Apologies. I'll stick to the rules.
No no. There's no rules. There are no rules. There you go. Next next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?
I like the sports
Sort of documents on Netflix. So full swing, drive to survive.
Breakpoints, tennis, golf.
That's why I'm all of them.
And wasn't there that Nike documentary recently with Ben Affleck?
There is, which I have not seen, so uh if it's good. I don't know if that's a recommendation or just an acknowledgement.
It's worth watching. If you like shoe dog, I feel like you'd enjoy it.
It was entertaining, Michael Jordan.
Uh things like that.
Next question. Do you have a favorite product that you have recently discovered that you really love?
So we just gotta
Happy.
And uh we are about to have our first uh child. And so all of my purchases recently are puppies and
And and children focus. Uh we've been
Uh my buddy gifted us the the five collar for for our dog and so we
I've been really uh
Really enjoying that.
Um another one uh as I'm getting busier. Sure.
For news and stuff is uh particle.
Which uh is great. News news aggravation tool. AI news.
So
Okay, Vaughn's wife's
business. Uh we've
I am a huge fan, actually. The I think it just came out of beta and now it's like a full app that anyone can download.
Uh I've been I just actually installed it yesterday again and
I love it.
Uh I get these pushes every every few time. Like I don't know, it's like a couple of times a day of just like here's what's happening then you
Uh also congratulations, I should have said, on your pending child.
Thank you.
Lucky for you, I have a
newsletter post with all the products you should buy. It's called
Uh new pair of gift guys for
Product managers.
Love it.
I will um
Definitely probably buy all of them.
If you don't already have them all, I know everyone's probably sending their spreadsheet of all their favorite stuff.
Exactly.
Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you
Often come back to you, share with people, either in work or in life.
Well, mostly it's just stay curious.
Stay curious.
I love it.
Two more questions.
Who has most influenced you?
In the course of your career.
One of the people who uh inspired me very early on in my product journey. Th I've I've been fortunate to have a a number of very um good good mentors and obviously
We talked about early about founders of ducks or whatever. So need a lot from from other people's journey, but one one person who was personally important to me early in my product journey, very supportive.
Um of this guy named named Jeff Jeff Holden, who is the chief product officer at

Back in the day.
And as sort of like a
Young PM chantering into product.
Really?
You know, took took me under his wing and I think
I'm forever grateful for for that. Um, for for guests for helping.
Um grow my career, but also uh
Kind of pay it forward a little bit in terms of people who are true.
And that's what I mean.
Last question. I hear that your interview at Uber was pretty wild.
Can you tell that story? Yeah, I can. So um
Long story short, I was uh
Starting a company my senior spring, um, before graduation and I had to go our separate way. So I hadn't done you know, traditional recruiting ever.
And uh my buddy called me up and was like, Hey, we're looking for smart hardworking people at this this Uber thing.
Are you interested and uh
Quick aside note.
I had actually done some
Well very early diligence work.
on uh these taxi apps back in two thousand eleven.
looking at um at the time was uber cab and
Vocabulous and tax management probably something like that. Maybe.
Nothing these days. And uh
So I knew what what what what Uber was.
Um and say I said, Yeah, sure, let's you know.
I would love to.
Um and so had the first round of interview.
Went well and they said great and then that stage is is come off site sort of the the the full enchilada.
One works and this was in post graduation.
I was helping out some companies but didn't have um full time
Jobs and hey.
I'm pretty flexible. How about next Tuesday?

So we scheduled that.
And then on uh Friday or Saturday or the weekend, uh at what oh Tuesday's July fourth.
My I scheduled my interview for July fourth.
And so I called my buddy
I'm like hey.
I I'm so sorry, I don't want to make people come in on July fourth.
Should I cancel? Should I reach out? Like everyone's sort of accepted.
Yeah. Whatever you do.
Do not cancel your interview.
Yeah.
Okay. It'll be there on July fourth.
And so I went in uh to to the office on July fourth.
And there was a very small handful of people there.
It was actually launching that day, was launching Uber's uh second ever product type, which was Uber SEV.
And I sort of have this.
I think that was probably five hour.
Gauntlet interview.
on July fourth from from noon to five and
Missed my July fourth barbecue and
It was it was quite the experience, but I think maybe maybe set the stage for for her
Some of the the early days, uh
Chaos. I'm very very glad I didn't cancel my ear.
And was Travis involved in that interview, or is it just the Travis Travis was was involved in the interview. She was one of the I think there were four or five people.
Uh the two who are who are generally guiding my interview process and Travis and and one other person.
Starting that day.
And part of the gauntlet interview was
Sort of a simulation of the job, if you will.
Um, and so a some of that was
building some models on on on the computer some it was
sort of writing potential emails to to to drivers and actually had the driver come in and you did child. So I was in this room sort of by myself.
Typing away on the first part, which are we'll build in the model.
And uh I hear a knock on the door.
And um
Charles comes in and yeah, we have a
He just sits down and says, Yeah, I am I'm trying this.
But I'm Brian and uh
Yeah, we we have a forty five minute chat, uh or maybe it's been been about half hour, forty five minutes and
Clearly, I'm not like producing the work that I'm supposed to of the interview. I'm supposed to be building this model. I'm supposed to email it back to the person who sent it to me.
Clearly have done nothing.
Chat chat with the CEO and uh
You know, knock on the door and the the the door opens and
person see that I'm trying to Well continue, continue. And uh
Uh it was very good. Uh also pretty intense conversation with with Travis. That um definitely set the expectations of uh what can
And clearly worked out and
Travis was happy.
Is my
I hope so. Imagine.
Yes.
Amazing. Brian, uh
Thank you so much for being here. We went through everything that I was hoping to get through.
Two final questions.
Where can folks find you online? And is there anything you want them to check out that you might be up to?
And how can listeners be useful to you?
Super kind. Uh, they can find me online on Twitter or LinkedIn, um both just Brian Talk in
Ah, my name.
In terms of being useful, if you have uh a home to sell, feel free to go on to open door. More more importantly, if you have feedback on the product, we'd would love to hear it. Otherwise, uh any fe feedback on what people liked or would we love to to learn more about from
What we chatted about would be be super great. So I'd love to love to hear from you.
Brian, thank you so much for being here.
Money, really appreciate it. This is great.
Bye everyone.
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