Brian Tolkin

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

Source 0452024-08-0413,103 words

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Opening
Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00): You've worked at two businesses that have done incredibly well combining product in ops. Brian Tolkin (00:00:03): Uber always has this mentality and Opendoor does two of the product operations, twin turbine jet plane where you can 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. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:17): What has having been in ops done to make you a better product leader?...

The segment is an original transcript moment first. The interpretation should stay attached to what the language actually does.

Low-ego framing
Brian Tolkin (00:00:03): Uber always has this mentality and Opendoor does two of the...

Uses we/us, uncertainty, or learner framing instead of performing authority.

Accept praise cleanly
Brian Tolkin (00:02:00): Thank you, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Lenny Rachitsky (00:02:02): First of all, just a huge thank you to Kayvon...

Accepts praise without shrinking from it or turning it into a performance.

Ask with curiosity
with food delivery? How do you start thinking about higher capacity vehicles? How do you think about better feedback loop for those manual surge pricing toggles that we talked about? So I generally agree it just...

Turns a moment that could become critique into a question about the guest's thinking.

Carry memory
this toolkit instead of tools. Is there anything else there that you come back to that ends up being helpful? You mentioned this mantra of it's never as bad as people think it is, it is never great as...

Returns to something said earlier, proving the conversation has memory.

Accept praise cleanly
Brian Tolkin (01:13:29): Yes. Lenny Rachitsky (01:13:30): Amazing. Brian, thank you so much for being here. We went through everything that I was hoping to get through. Two final questions. Where can...

Accepts praise without shrinking from it or turning it into a performance.