The Exchanges

Q I do want to start there with some context, because we see the incredible company that is DoorDash today, but it's all going to start somewhere. So what was the founding moment for you at DoorDash, and what was that aha moment in a very succinct two to three minutes?

A I wish there was one aha moment that happened over 20 seconds or something, but I guess the If there was one, it really happened inside of a local macaroon store in Palo Alto where the founding team met a store manager who had to turn down hundreds of deliveries. She literally showed us a notebook with payment information of customers and how she had to turn all of those orders down because they happened to be delivery orders. She was a single store manager and she had no ability to fulfill those orders. And I think what it taught us was it showed us that there was this huge challenge, which is more and more orders were not happening inside of her store. But she didn't just have to do with delivery. She obviously had to do that, but she had to figure out everything from acquiring customers to maintaining those relationships to doing the deliveries to even fulfilling customer service if something were to go wrong. And that was what we realized was the big challenge impacting all physical businesses. We couldn't solve all of that with just a few of us out of my apartment. So we chose one problem to focus on and that was delivery. So that's really how we got started.

AI assessment note: “If there was one, it really happened inside of a local macaroon store”

Q I do want to start there with some context, because we see the incredible company that is DoorDash today, but it's all going to start somewhere. So what was the founding moment for you at DoorDash, and what was that aha moment in a very succinct two to three minutes?

A I wish there was one aha moment that happened over 20 seconds or something, but I guess the If there was one, it really happened inside of a local macaroon store in Palo Alto where the founding team met a store manager who had to turn down hundreds of deliveries. She literally showed us a notebook with payment information of customers and how she had to turn all of those orders down because they happened to be delivery orders. She was a single store manager and she had no ability to fulfill those orders. And I think what it taught us was it showed us that there was this huge challenge, which is more and more orders were not happening inside of her store. But she didn't just have to do with delivery. She obviously had to do that, but she had to figure out everything from acquiring customers to maintaining those relationships to doing the deliveries to even fulfilling customer service if something were to go wrong. And that was what we realized was the big challenge impacting all physical businesses. We couldn't solve all of that with just a few of us out of my apartment. So we chose one problem to focus on and that was delivery. So that's really how we got started.

AI assessment note: “If there was one, it really happened inside of a local macaroon store in Palo Alto”

Q dear macaroon maker a lot of thanks for that realization. I do want to ask that, you know, I've heard you speak before about your childhood and growing up, actually, and how instrumental seeing your parents' work ethic was. I want to touch on that. How did that impact your operating mentality and really kind of who you are, seeing your parents working at such a young age for you?

A Yeah, I think some of this is looking backwards on it, because, you know, as a child, I think I was just As happy as any other child, even though I probably started work at a very young age. But in growing up, I guess there were probably two effects as I look backwards, one of which was just the consistency and positive productivity that comes from relentless effort. You know, when I think about my parents' journey into this country, it kind of is that classic immigrant story where dad was getting his graduate degree, mom was putting food on the table because we had a couple hundred bucks in the bank, and so she worked Three jobs a day for 12 years to make things happen. All of those jobs happened to be inside local businesses, one of which was at a local Chinese restaurant where I got to, at times, moonlight as a dishwasher. So I think that industriousness and I think that just continuous sense of effort always led to better and better things for my family, and I think that's something that stuck with me. And then I think the other thing was really independence, you know, because my parents were always out of the house and they were always working. I was mostly left to my own devices, which I think had lots of positive effects, whether it be learning English or how to speak English by watching TV and playing basketball, how to make friends constantly because we're always movin…

AI assessment note: “two effects as I look backwards, one of which was just the consistency and positive productivity”

Q dear macaroon maker a lot of thanks for that realization. I do want to ask that, you know, I've heard you speak before about your childhood and growing up, actually, and how instrumental seeing your parents' work ethic was. I want to touch on that. How did that impact your operating mentality and really kind of who you are, seeing your parents working at such a young age for you?

A Yeah, I think some of this is looking backwards on it, because, you know, as a child, I think I was just As happy as any other child, even though I probably started work at a very young age. But in growing up, I guess there were probably two effects as I look backwards, one of which was just the consistency and positive productivity that comes from relentless effort. You know, when I think about my parents' journey into this country, it kind of is that classic immigrant story where dad was getting his graduate degree, mom was putting food on the table because we had a couple hundred bucks in the bank, and so she worked Three jobs a day for 12 years to make things happen. All of those jobs happened to be inside local businesses, one of which was at a local Chinese restaurant where I got to, at times, moonlight as a dishwasher. So I think that industriousness and I think that just continuous sense of effort always led to better and better things for my family, and I think that's something that stuck with me. And then I think the other thing was really independence, you know, because my parents were always out of the house and they were always working. I was mostly left to my own devices, which I think had lots of positive effects, whether it be learning English or how to speak English by watching TV and playing basketball, how to make friends constantly because we're always movin…

AI assessment note: “there were probably two effects as I look backwards, one of which was just the consistency”

Q Can I ask, on the children element, you know, when you compare your childhood and their childhood, naturally, it is a different kind of financial world that they're being brought up in, in terms of You know, the wealth that comes from DoorDash and your successes. How do you think about ensuring they have that same work ethic and ambition when brought up in very different circumstances?

A Yeah, this is something I'm definitely still processing, but with two kids under the age of two, I'm not sure they're quite there yet in terms of, I think, you know, trying to find ways to challenge them or help them be resourceful. But look, I think when I look back on trying to learn from Maybe success looking backwards as a kid growing up. I think a big part of it was my parents really enabled me to pick my own curiosities. Nothing was ever pushed on me. You know, I don't think they even ever saw my report card, maybe ever, actually all the way through college, graduate school, and then certainly not in my earlier years. And so I think allowing me to pick my own curiosities, which obviously means making my own mistakes and making sure that there were constraints so that I had to Earn, whether it was starting a lawn mowing business to buy Nintendo, and Duck Hunt, and Mario Brothers, and all the, you know, games that came with that console, or just making me earn, I think, the things that I had wanted. That's probably the general application of how I think about it for my own kids, but we'll see when we get there.

AI assessment note: “making sure that there were constraints so that I had to Earn”

Q In terms of, like, the hard times that one does go through, it was Thomas at CoToo who said, there were many ups and downs. He asked, how did you not give up? And when you think about your persistence, how do you think about

A Yeah, I don't know if there's a simple answer to this, you know, because when I think through the difficult moments that DoorDash has gone through, I don't think there was a singular motivation or motivating factor that got the team through it. I think there were a few things. I think one, we always had a sense based on what we saw from customers that we were onto the right thing, even though it was difficult. I think whenever you have something good, the question is like, why would you give that up? So it seems very counterintuitive that that might be an instinct. But I think, you know, more so than that, there's always been this desire at the company that we can do so much more, and that we're just at the beginning. And really, the measure of success is in some dollar sign or valuation target or, you know, score. Actually, if we're doing this right, business is really an infinite game, and it should keep going. The real successful Political organizations, they're generational because they have this enduring component about them, and it's really hard to do that because it's very against human nature, right? Human nature, we like it to have a start and a stop. We like there to be finite, even in competitions, you know, take sports. There's a beginning to the game, there's an end to the game, there's a way to keep score, and then somebody wins, but that's not business. Business,…

AI assessment note: “I don't think there was a singular motivation or motivating factor that got the team through it.”

Q Can I ask, one often challenge that I see is when there's a exec role within a company, and there's a lot of people internally who want it. How do you think about How to bring in an external leader without disincentivizing internal talent who maybe wanted that role?

A Yeah, it's a tough question. I don't think there are perfect answers. I think the only success criteria here I've seen is you have to hire someone excellent, where it's so obvious for the person on the inside that this person on the outside can really help their careers and really grow them. You know, because if you think about it, the person on the inside is going to help the external candidate By learning the organization, how the company works, how to get things done. Ideally, the person on the outside is, have seen one or two orders of magnitude of scale ahead of the person on the inside, such that they can turbocharge the careers of the people on the inside. I think when you can get that to work, I've seen it work really, really well. Otherwise, it can be a challenge.

AI assessment note: “you have to hire someone excellent, where it's so obvious for the person on the inside”

Q particular, when we look at the war for talent that we have today, many well-funded, big-bound competitors, no need to name them, but like, when you think about How and why you won some of the best talent that you did. How and why did you win them in your mind? When you, I'm sure you do postmortems. What do you think you did that allowed you to win them?

A I wish we did more postmortems on the success cases. I think we do lots of postmortems on the not so successful outcomes, but I guess in looking backwards, I think first is taking a investment into markets and people that maybe others aren't, where others aren't looking. And early on, when I think about the team at DoorDash, it was mostly people with more talent than experience. And because we were venturing into a new field where we're trying to create this type of company where you have to be both excellent at engineering and operations, and it's very hyper-local, where you kind of have to go city by city to compete, and there wasn't a super well-defined playbook. It was being written, you know, as we were creating the company. It was actually more important to really bet on You know, the general athlete we felt. As a result, the pool for talent there was, was actually quite big. You know, if we were all looking for the same machine learning or AI expert in the world, that's going to be a very, very competitive battle for talent. In our situation, we were actually looking for, I think, folks who were not scared about new types of problems, who can fit both business and product and engineering into the same conversation very seamlessly. And so, really, we were looking for attributes as opposed to experience. It took us a while. It probably took a year, year and a half before I…

AI assessment note: “taking a investment into markets and people that maybe others aren't, where others aren't looking.”

Q In terms of, like, the hard times that one does go through, it was Thomas at CoToo who said, there were many ups and downs. He asked, how did you not give up? And when you think about your persistence, how do you think about

A Yeah, I don't know if there's a simple answer to this, you know, because when I think through the difficult moments that DoorDash has gone through, I don't think there was a singular motivation or motivating factor that got the team through it. I think there were a few things. I think one, we always had a sense based on what we saw from customers that we were onto the right thing, even though it was difficult. I think whenever you have something good, the question is like, why would you give that up? So it seems very counterintuitive that that might be an instinct. But I think, you know, more so than that, there's always been this desire at the company that we can do so much more, and that we're just at the beginning. And really, the measure of success is in some dollar sign or valuation target or, you know, score. Actually, if we're doing this right, business is really an infinite game, and it should keep going. The real successful Political organizations, they're generational because they have this enduring component about them, and it's really hard to do that because it's very against human nature, right? Human nature, we like it to have a start and a stop. We like there to be finite, even in competitions, you know, take sports. There's a beginning to the game, there's an end to the game, there's a way to keep score, and then somebody wins, but that's not business. Business,…

AI assessment note: “I don't think there was a singular motivation or motivating factor that got the team through”

Q Can I ask, one often challenge that I see is when there's a exec role within a company, and there's a lot of people internally who want it. How do you think about How to bring in an external leader without disincentivizing internal talent who maybe wanted that role?

A Yeah, it's a tough question. I don't think there are perfect answers. I think the only success criteria here I've seen is you have to hire someone excellent, where it's so obvious for the person on the inside that this person on the outside can really help their careers and really grow them. You know, because if you think about it, the person on the inside is going to help the external candidate By learning the organization, how the company works, how to get things done. Ideally, the person on the outside is, have seen one or two orders of magnitude of scale ahead of the person on the inside, such that they can turbocharge the careers of the people on the inside. I think when you can get that to work, I've seen it work really, really well. Otherwise, it can be a challenge.

AI assessment note: “you have to hire someone excellent, where it's so obvious for the person on the inside”

Q Speaking of the relentless energy there, final one before the quickfire. Little birdie tells me that you work every Sunday. Talk to me about working every Sunday. Like, has it always been that way? Why? How do you think about the working every Sunday?

A It started because we just didn't have enough drivers, and so it was really, um, you know, part of Just making sure that we had enough drivers on the road and doing deliveries. But since it's morphed into, I guess, two areas. One is a reflection on my return on time. If I looked back at the week, did my week actually reflect the priorities for that week or the priorities for a slightly longer time horizon? If the answer is yes, then that probably was a pretty good week. But if the answer is no, I probably shouldn't wait. I should just change my upcoming week. Such that my priorities can align with where I'm spending time, and so I found Sundays to be useful for that. You know, the other thing I found useful for Sundays is, is candidly, just some thinking time, and how, how important and sometimes increasingly rare that can be, and so those are the times in which I've spent Sundays, but it's that balanced with family time, right, and that's kind of how the weekends are spent.

AI assessment note: “It started because we just didn't have enough drivers”

Q Can I ask, on the children element, you know, when you compare your childhood and their childhood, naturally, it is a different kind of financial world that they're being brought up in, in terms of You know, the wealth that comes from DoorDash and your successes. How do you think about ensuring they have that same work ethic and ambition when brought up in very different circumstances?

A Yeah, this is something I'm definitely still processing, but with two kids under the age of two, I'm not sure they're quite there yet in terms of, I think, you know, trying to find ways to challenge them or help them be resourceful. But look, I think when I look back on trying to learn from Maybe success looking backwards as a kid growing up. I think a big part of it was my parents really enabled me to pick my own curiosities. Nothing was ever pushed on me. You know, I don't think they even ever saw my report card, maybe ever, actually all the way through college, graduate school, and then certainly not in my earlier years. And so I think allowing me to pick my own curiosities, which obviously means making my own mistakes and making sure that there were constraints so that I had to Earn, whether it was starting a lawn mowing business to buy Nintendo, and Duck Hunt, and Mario Brothers, and all the, you know, games that came with that console, or just making me earn, I think, the things that I had wanted. That's probably the general application of how I think about it for my own kids, but we'll see when we get there.

AI assessment note: “That's probably the general application of how I think about it for my own kids”

Q of those meetings, some of those interview processes, were those attributes obvious, and how do you draw them out of people? Because I'm constantly asking myself as an interviewer, both for the show, but also, you know, with talent, it's like, Maybe they're brilliant, and I'm just fucking up the questions, but me, like, so I guess, like, how did they show itself to you, and was it incredibly obvious?

A Well, first, I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. I think one of my mentors told me, if you're the Michael Jordan of recruiting, you're probably going to be right, 65 to 70% of the time, and this is coming from someone who's hired tens of thousands of people, and, and maybe, you know, has managed out, you know, a similar number, and so I wouldn't be, you're so hard on yourself. It's, it's a good reminder at, at times when maybe things don't go well. But look, I think for every company, whatever those attributes are, you're going to figure out the questions that I think are most successful at teasing out those factors for you. You know, one of the earliest, well, it's still one of our attributes. We call it the bias for action. Someone who's willing to do things in addition to just thinking about things or analyzing things when there's uncertainty. And the best tell there was we would ask candidates to acquire a hundred new customers in eight hours with 20 dollars. And that was the entire interview. And they would have 20 minutes to ask me anything they wanted to in order to prepare for that. But we asked many questions to get to that one as probably the best predictor of success against that dimension. And so I think the learning algorithm here is you have to figure out what culture is going to be authentic to your organization, because that's the only one that you're going to be…

AI assessment note: “we would ask candidates to acquire a hundred new customers in eight hours with 20 dollars”

Q I spoke to, obviously, many friends of ours, but it was specifically Sarr and Pejman at Pear, who said that you're one of the greatest leaders in the valley, when they didn't say that lightly, so I guess my thought, and it's a very broad and unfair question, but what does great leadership mean to you, do you think, and how do you think your style has changed over time?

A This is something I'm constantly still learning about, but I think maybe the succinct way I've, when I've seen great leadership, I've noticed is there's great followership. And it's not about how many direct reports you have. It's about how many people want to follow you. In fact, when I think about even people at DoorDash, there are many leaders at the company that have zero direct reports, but have lots of followers because of their influence and because of how they show up and how they show their work. And so I think a lot of times it's Some of the things I've learned about leadership is that you kind of have to be the first to do things. You know, we at DoorDash like to say that's about leading from the front. It's why in the earliest days, even to this day, all of the leaders at the company try to do all of the jobs in the early days. And actually, even to this day, that means doing deliveries. That means taking customer service calls. That means making menus for merchants. That means talking to customers every day. And I'm not sure there's Quite a substitute for that experience, because it ultimately is what allows you to outline the problems for a larger organization to solve, and to hopefully have a point of view to be a thought partner in those discussions.

AI assessment note: “when I've seen great leadership, I've noticed is there's great followership.”

Q What were one or two of those mechanisms? And I ask you because I hear a lot of companies that say, oh, we instill diversity and inclusion as a core culture point. And it's like, great. How are you measuring that? Like, what does that actually mean? Like, what mechanisms did you put in place?

A Yeah. I mean, the first thing is you have to actually be able to measure these things. And for example, what's the first thing you can measure this can start small and say, what's the representation inside your teams? Does that match the representation inside the decision makers? You know, it's a, it's a very easy question. And then you can go team by team, that same question. And that one question, or I guess two types of data points to collect will probably take years to make improvements on. I mean, we're almost there where the representation at the company and the representation of the decision makers are even, but we're, I mean, 2015, 20, 20, 21, so six years out of our eight years, we've been working on it. 75% of our lifetime history, and we're still not there, and so it takes real work, and then it's just going through that funnel. You know, who are the people that you're recruiting? Why are the funnels the way they are? Because we're always going to hire those That look like us or sound like us or more in our circles and et cetera, et cetera. That's going to be the general bias. And so how do you enforce diversity in the funnels? How does that diversity carry through the funnel? And then how does that diversity then translate into someone's career at the company when it comes to things around promotions, assignments on key projects, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You…

AI assessment note: “what's the representation inside your teams? Does that match the representation inside the decision makers?”

Q I spoke to, obviously, many friends of ours, but it was specifically Sarr and Pejman at Pear, who said that you're one of the greatest leaders in the valley, when they didn't say that lightly, so I guess my thought, and it's a very broad and unfair question, but what does great leadership mean to you, do you think, and how do you think your style has changed over time?

A This is something I'm constantly still learning about, but I think maybe the succinct way I've, when I've seen great leadership, I've noticed is there's great followership. And it's not about how many direct reports you have. It's about how many people want to follow you. In fact, when I think about even people at DoorDash, there are many leaders at the company that have zero direct reports, but have lots of followers because of their influence and because of how they show up and how they show their work. And so I think a lot of times it's Some of the things I've learned about leadership is that you kind of have to be the first to do things. You know, we at DoorDash like to say that's about leading from the front. It's why in the earliest days, even to this day, all of the leaders at the company try to do all of the jobs in the early days. And actually, even to this day, that means doing deliveries. That means taking customer service calls. That means making menus for merchants. That means talking to customers every day. And I'm not sure there's Quite a substitute for that experience, because it ultimately is what allows you to outline the problems for a larger organization to solve, and to hopefully have a point of view to be a thought partner in those discussions.

AI assessment note: “when I've seen great leadership, I've noticed is there's great followership.”

Q kind of the good times and the hard times, and in both times, actually, decision-making and making the right decision is obviously Front and center. When you think about your decision making today, I've heard you say a brilliant thing, which is, you know, reduce the scope, especially kind of with problems with high variance. What did you mean by this, and how do you think through tough decisions today?

A Well, I think on the first point, when problems are very high complexity, one of the most important things to do in the beginning is to understand what the problem you're trying to solve is, and I think that, you know, you take any very difficult problem, you know, whether it be a complicated math proof, Autonomous technology. Cancer research. Some of the things that, you know, where I've seen very complicated problems. I found that one of the reasons is because we don't actually understand the scope of the problem. So what I mean by reducing the scope, it's almost formulating or manufacturing a set of milestones of, you know, where true north should look like, but you're taking a guess as to what each of the mile markers should be as you get to true north. And then If you can do that, what you're really doing is you're just trying to take a very big problem and break it down into several smaller problems. The hard part is you may not be right in defining the problem at each stage or in between each mile marker, and so when you reduce the scope, you're actually reducing the complexity and the variance of outcomes, and that way, hopefully, you have a better chance at defining a well-defined statement so that you can actually work with your team to go and execute.

AI assessment note: “So what I mean by reducing the scope, it's almost formulating or manufacturing”

Q reducing the scope there. In terms of culture that you mentioned earlier, when you think about the scaling culture that you've had at DoorDash, the company did scale and has scaled so fast, was there ever a moment when you were like, ah, culture's not where it ought to be, or where I'd like it to be? What was that moment, and what did you do to turn it around?

A Yeah, this is a constant question, right, where you're always evolving. I mean, just like your product, you know, I think an organization would be embarrassed if their product looked the same a year later versus today. Why is that not true for your culture? You know, maybe it changes more slowly because, you know, you're talking about people, ultimately, when you talk about culture as opposed to, you know, software or other types of products, but it ideally is always improving. When I think about, you know, some of our operating principles, Maybe it wasn't that our culture went south. I think those instances are maybe when we didn't recruit the right people, or we promoted the wrong behavior, and those were fewer and far between actually fairly easy to correct if you hold yourself accountable. I think the harder parts of improving culture are trying to actually change and add to the culture. You know, for example, in 2015, maybe between 2015, 20 16, so year two and three of our company's life, we realized that the early team was not very diverse. So very early on, we added this value. Actually, we added in 20 17 about making room at the table as one of our operating principles and thinking outside the room because we started becoming more and more decentralized where we had, you know, general managers physically located inside different cities, and so we weren't always in the s…

AI assessment note: “we realized that the early team was not very diverse. So very early on, we added”

Q a great job, and so can I ask, like, for you personally, do you ever, Like, sit down and just go, wow, we did something great here, and I'm not going to look at the next quarter and the next quarter. I'm going to appreciate that we had a great quarter, and the team did awesomely, and I did awesomely. Do you ever sit back and appreciate what you've done?

A Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I think you're spot on in saying that when, and it's why it is, business is so tough, because it's, it's very against human nature to think that long term, and to have that infinite horizon in your, in your mind, and the real challenge is, we like to celebrate. I think that's human nature too, and we should celebrate. And I think it's one of the things that, you know, candidly, I, I'm trying to work on to get better at, but do we look at the milestones? Sure. I think that, you know, the company has come a long way in our eight years thus far, and it's about celebrating when we do see those big accomplishments, and I think at the same time, also remembering that we're just getting started.

AI assessment note: “candidly, I, I'm trying to work on to get better at”

Q Which leader do you most look up to, and why?

A I'll have to think on that one. Most, you know, I think people who have done big things for the first time, that tends to be the type of leader I really respect, because there probably are four more things they had to overcome in order to get to where they are. One of those leaders that comes immediately to mind was Barack Obama. That's a, you want to talk about a tough job, that is a job where I'm not sure what the definition of winning is, but, you know, I think His personal ascendance into that job, and probably circumstances I'm not even aware of that he had to have overcome are, uh, are historic, to say the least.

AI assessment note: “One of those leaders that comes immediately to mind was Barack Obama.”

Q I think it's one of the bigger challenges. When you bring in those amazing people, there's the element of delegation and the ability to delegate. I'd love to hear, how do you think about Your decision-making process around what to delegate versus what remains in your purview. How do you think about that?

A I don't know if I've thought about the zero to one. I've more thought about, I guess, the degree of delegation, you know, how much of something. And I guess, you know, we can dream big, but start small, right? If the ultimate goal, you have to have a point of view, and hopefully this is well articulated as you're, you know, starting your recruiting process, what you ultimately like this person to grow into. And it doesn't have to be like super detailed, but, but you have to have some general sense to both, I think, be honest with yourself as well as with the candidate. But I think when the person is in the door, in order to set them up for success, you probably want to start small because of the information asymmetry of how your organization works versus how they may think your organization works is very, very large. It's almost impossible to estimate. And as a result, I think you're probably better served if you start by giving a small scope Something that seems embarrassingly small, but then to grow that quickly as they start garnering success, because the number one thing you're trying to do for the executive coming in is to optimize for success quickly. That way they can garner the trust of, you know, those that they've inherited as well as the peers, as well as others in the organization. And that's really how you set them up on a journey to, I think, achieve that North st…

AI assessment note: “I don't know if I've thought about the zero to one. I've more thought about”

Q a great job, and so can I ask, like, for you personally, do you ever, Like, sit down and just go, wow, we did something great here, and I'm not going to look at the next quarter and the next quarter. I'm going to appreciate that we had a great quarter, and the team did awesomely, and I did awesomely. Do you ever sit back and appreciate what you've done?

A Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I think you're spot on in saying that when, and it's why it is, business is so tough, because it's, it's very against human nature to think that long term, and to have that infinite horizon in your, in your mind, and the real challenge is, we like to celebrate. I think that's human nature too, and we should celebrate. And I think it's one of the things that, you know, candidly, I, I'm trying to work on to get better at, but do we look at the milestones? Sure. I think that, you know, the company has come a long way in our eight years thus far, and it's about celebrating when we do see those big accomplishments, and I think at the same time, also remembering that we're just getting started.

AI assessment note: “candidly, I, I'm trying to work on to get better at”

Q tough one? It's a question related to kind of decision making around talent. When you hire someone, and it's a stretch VP, and then it dawns on you that it might be a stretch too far. How long do you give them to prove out whether it is a stretch too far? Or actually, you were right, and it is a stretch too far. How long do you give them?

A That is something I'm still learning, I would say. And I guess if I were to document some of the things I've observed, I think one of the things that's going to matter is how important is this role? If this role is a role in which you believe you have more time in which you can give, and then that certainly would influence, I think, the answer to what you're considering. You know, something else I would think through is what is the potential of this person? Because perhaps you've actually fit them to the wrong problem. One of the beliefs we have at DoorDash is to try to manage people to their superpowers. But especially with folks who have maybe more talent or hustle than experience, you may not know what that superpower is. They may not know what that superpower is. And so you may have to trial a couple of different assignments before you can kind of lock on the target. And what a shame it would be if you gave up too soon before you locked onto something where they can 10 X, a hundred X in that area. Those are some of the observations I've made. So I think the answer is going to be different by the individual. I think with leaders, you probably can get information a lot faster, but especially with folks who have maybe more Potential than they do years of experience. I think there is when you may want to give it a bit more time.

AI assessment note: “So I think the answer is going to be different by the individual.”

Q tough one? It's a question related to kind of decision making around talent. When you hire someone, and it's a stretch VP, and then it dawns on you that it might be a stretch too far. How long do you give them to prove out whether it is a stretch too far? Or actually, you were right, and it is a stretch too far. How long do you give them?

A That is something I'm still learning, I would say. And I guess if I were to document some of the things I've observed, I think one of the things that's going to matter is how important is this role? If this role is a role in which you believe you have more time in which you can give, and then that certainly would influence, I think, the answer to what you're considering. You know, something else I would think through is what is the potential of this person? Because perhaps you've actually fit them to the wrong problem. One of the beliefs we have at DoorDash is to try to manage people to their superpowers. But especially with folks who have maybe more talent or hustle than experience, you may not know what that superpower is. They may not know what that superpower is. And so you may have to trial a couple of different assignments before you can kind of lock on the target. And what a shame it would be if you gave up too soon before you locked onto something where they can 10 X, a hundred X in that area. Those are some of the observations I've made. So I think the answer is going to be different by the individual. I think with leaders, you probably can get information a lot faster, but especially with folks who have maybe more Potential than they do years of experience. I think there is when you may want to give it a bit more time.

AI assessment note: “the answer is going to be different by the individual”

Q How do you think about understanding the interplay between the different variants?

A Yeah, there's no secret sauce here. I mean, this is a dynamic approach where you have to start somewhere, and you have to put it in writing ideally a perspective of how you think you can go from where you are to where the target is. As you climb each hill, as you, you know, progress from each mile, you're stitching together really whether or not you collected the right inputs. To lead to the outcome. And the sooner you can write down that transfer function of how the inputs leads into the outcomes, I think the greater your return on investment will be. But it's this dynamic iterative learning process that starts with having a perspective of how do you move from where you are to where the target is, what the different mile markers in between are, reducing the scope of each one of those so you can actually make progress and then keep updating your learning algorithm.

AI assessment note: “write down that transfer function of how the inputs leads into the outcomes”

Q How do you think about understanding the interplay between the different variants?

A Yeah, there's no secret sauce here. I mean, this is a dynamic approach where you have to start somewhere, and you have to put it in writing ideally a perspective of how you think you can go from where you are to where the target is. As you climb each hill, as you, you know, progress from each mile, you're stitching together really whether or not you collected the right inputs. To lead to the outcome. And the sooner you can write down that transfer function of how the inputs leads into the outcomes, I think the greater your return on investment will be. But it's this dynamic iterative learning process that starts with having a perspective of how do you move from where you are to where the target is, what the different mile markers in between are, reducing the scope of each one of those so you can actually make progress and then keep updating your learning algorithm.

AI assessment note: “this is a dynamic approach where you have to start somewhere”