Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nickels: Autonomous driving will become super cheap within 10 to 20 years
“Well, autonomy is like the given. I think most people would probably agree with that. And you know, we'll probably solve it with just cameras and we'll need LIDAR cause humans don't have LIDAR and you know, the cost of vehicles and sensors will come down, remo…”
Opinion
Nickels: Travis Kalanick was a great visionary product leader
“Travis was a very great visionary product leader and we started ATG and elevate and sort of these sort of future forward things.”
Insight
Nickels: Focusing on optics and decks stalled his promotions at Uber
“The more I focused on yeah, the, how I show up and optics and having a good deck and all this, the less I got promoted. And then the more I dropped focusing all that. Cause like for my first few years of Uber, I was like hanging out as a senior PM. And then I …”
Insight
Nickels: Executive resource allocation is largely driven by internal optics
“Cause at the end of the day, executive kind of resource allocation is largely based on the quote unquote optics layer.”
Opinion
JM Nickels: DoorDash culture sometimes leaned toward 'ready, fire, aim' execution
“DoorDash in my experience would do that sometimes where we used to actually even half joke there. Some of us leaders would be like, it's like, ready, fire, aim. And it was like, people would be like, I'm just going to run through a wall. I have no idea if that…”
Insight
Nickels: Uber is to Amazon as DoorDash is to Shopify
“So the analogy I use is like Uber is to Amazon as DoorDash is to Shopify, if that makes sense, right? Amazon has been more consumer focused. Shopify is obviously very merchant focused.”
Opinion
Nickels: Waymo has largely solved self-driving in complex environments like San Francisco
“I would say what's really interesting about Waymo is they've largely solved the self-driving piece, right? However they've done that. Right. And we, and in a complex environment like San Francisco, and they, you see them driving in fog and rain and puddles and…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nickels: Travis Kalanick closed Uber blinds fearing Lyft drone surveillance
“Reliably every time he'd come in, he would close the blinds of the windows. They're like, crap, what are we doing? Like, it's not because there was glare, like they were orthogonal to the screen. And then one time I was like, why are you doing that? He's like,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nickels: Shared rides and micromobility will remain essential in an autonomous future
“So, so then that from, for me, it's like, well, from first principles, shared rides is, is going to continue to be an important part of the future transportation and other modalities where, yeah, back to the three mile thing. It's like, well, it probably will …”
Insight
Nickels: Product vision must start with trends independent of your company
“I typically like to start with the former, which is just like, what will the world move towards absent me? Just trying to pick a, you know, kind of bird's eye view of what I think is the trajectories are and trends and what's gonna happen. And then, yeah, you …”
Insight
Nickels: Product leaders cannot craft long-term vision in 30-minute meeting gaps
“It's not like something you can just schedule 30 minutes for in the middle of your day of packed OKR reviews and run on ones and meetings... Like to me, it's still insane. Like how many product managers, leaders of all kinds, right. Just run the schedule of li…”
Insight
Nickels: Scaling AV fleets requires operational and marketplace skills beyond autonomy
“Building a self-driving car on a test track is a very different problem statement than scaling a fleet of thousands of cars. And how do you operate them, clean them, charge them, maintain them. And then how do you build a rideshare network? It's like, okay, we…”
Disclosure
Nickels: Uber's autonomous strategy is aggregating AV fleets onto its platform
“And right now, you know, our kind of stated you know, strategy is to be an aggregator, right? So it's like, we are partnering with Waymo, with Cruise, Motional, others in China, et cetera. And then, you know, the idea is to have every vehicle on the platform r…”
