Why Uber’s CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal

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Sachin Kansal is chief product officer at Uber, where he oversees the Rider, Driver, Delivery, Grocery, and New Verticals product lines used for 33 million daily trips worldwide. He’s been in product for over 25 years (at Google, Palm, Flywheel, and now Uber). He is known for his “extreme dogfooding” ethos—personally completing almost a thousand Uber driving and delivery trips to sharpen his product insight and user empathy—and his “ship, ship, ship” mantra, which drives rapid iteration across Uber’s global teams.

What you will learn:

1. Dogfooding at scale

2. “Ship, ship, ship” as a cultural mantra

3. Obsession with inputs over outputs

4. Uber’s hybrid marketplace vision for autonomy

5. How Uber changed its culture to focus on profitability

6. What to do when data says “no” but your gut says “yes”

7. Career advice: maximize cycles

8. AI as a research assistant, not an oracle

9. Uber rider etiquette tips

Some takeaways:

1. Dogfooding as a leadership practice: Sachin personally drives and delivers monthly (more than 700 trips total). He screenshots every friction point, writes 40-page reports, tags owners, and follows fixes to closure. This “show, don’t tell” approach scales because leaders model it, run companywide dogfooding weeks, and bake “300 fix-its” into OKRs.

2. “Ship, ship, ship” = cut decision latency: Daily stand-ups, rapid product reviews, and a strict two-way-door mindset slash cycle time. Sachin will even draft a 15-page PRD over a weekend if it unblocks a team—but insists that’s the exception, not the rule.

3. Inputs over outputs: Whether weight loss, grades, or retention metrics, focus on the controllable inputs; outputs follow. This motto is the one he drills into his kids too.

4. Hybrid marketplace vision for autonomy: Uber divested its in-house AV unit and now partners with over 15 AV companies. A “hybrid network” of human drivers plus robotaxis smooths supply and demand (humans fill peaks; AVs stay busy off-peak). A similar model is rolling out in delivery via sidewalk robots.

5. Profitability through ruthless efficiency: Covid forced Uber to drop unprofitable bets (AV, Elevate), batch deliveries, refine promo spend, and trim support and payment costs. Today, profitability funds new bets without sacrificing margin discipline.

6. Career advice for PMs: Optimize for shipping velocity early. Five product cycles in three years teach the thousands of micro-decisions that build judgment (product sense) faster than any course.

7. AI already boosting PM workflows: Sachin’s teams use ChatGPT and Gemini for mock drafts, research synthesis, deep research “thought partner” prompts, and long-doc summarization—freeing time for judgment calls.

8. Empathy beats ego: Users spend minutes, not their lives, inside your product. Your job is to dazzle them in that tiny window, not expect them to think about you all day.

9. Quick Uber etiquette tips. Riders: Ask before taking a call; don’t slam the door. Eats customers: Turn on your porch light so couriers can find you.

Where to find Sachin Kansal:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkansal/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Sachin’s background

(05:00) Dogfooding in practice

(11:24) Empathy and understanding drivers

(20:18) Balancing metrics and user experience

(22:04) Operationalizing dogfooding

(24:26) Challenges and solutions in dogfooding

(29:49) The motto: “ship, ship, ship”

(36:37) Product announcements and live demos

(40:49) Career advice for product managers

(43:51) The evolution of product management with AI

(46:55) Collaboration between engineers and product managers

(49:36) Uber’s vision for self-driving cars

(55:59) Uber’s path to profitability

(01:01:58) Balancing data and gut decisions

(01:07:21) AI tools in product management

(01:10:14) Failure corner

(01:13:48) Lightning round and final thoughts

Referenced:

• Uber: https://www.uber.com/

• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/

• Fivetran: https://go.fivetran.com/

• Uber for Business: https://www.uber.com/us/en/business

• McDonald’s: https://www.mcdonalds.com/

• Domino’s: https://www.dominos.com

• PalmPilot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot

• Praveen Neppalli Naga on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pneppalli/

• May Mobility: https://maymobility.com/

• Uber strikes deal with May Mobility to deploy ‘thousands’ of robotaxis: https://www.theverge.com/news/659563/uber-may-mobility-autonomous-ridehail-partnership

• Waymo: https://waymo.com/

• WeRide: https://www.weride.ai/

• Uber and Avride Announce Autonomous Delivery and Mobility Partnership: https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2024/Uber-and-Avride-Announce-Autonomous-Delivery-and-Mobility-Partnership/default.aspx

• Dara Khosrowshahi on X: https://x.com/dkhos

• Uber Elevate: https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/vision/

• Uber AV: https://www.uber.com/us/en/autonomous/

• Uber Reserve: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/reserve/

• Uber for teens: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/teens/

• Flywheel: https://www.flywheel.com/

• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app

• NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/

•Behind the product: NotebookLM | Raiza Martin (Senior Product Manager, AI @ Google Labs): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/googles-notebooklm-raiza-martin

• BlackBerry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry

• Peaky Blinders on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80002479

• Deep research: https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/

Recommended books:

• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419

• Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Sh-ebook/dp/B01GZ1TJBI

• Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537

• Elon Musk: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.