Keith Yandell
Chief Business Officer, DoorDash · 1 appearance on the record.
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executiveoperator
Keith Yandell oversees business development and strategic partnerships as Chief Business Officer at DoorDash, where he joined in 2016 as General Counsel. Prior to DoorDash, he served as Director of Litigation at Uber and was an equity partner at Allen Matkins.
29statements → 14claims → 5claims resolved → 80%fully supported → 3.9/5average certainty → 1.83/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓
4 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 9 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
14 assertions · 14 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 9 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Keith argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Yandell: Tony Xu cut DoorDash restaurant commissions by $100M before IPO
“Tony made a decision and I admit I was on the wrong side of history. I was arguing that this seemed extreme just to cut commissions by basically a hundred million bucks for restaurants to help them stay in business. And I'm like, hold on, we're trying to go pu…”
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Keith Yandell on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Keith Yandell said on Lenny's Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Yandell: Domain experts are unlikely to deliver 10x breakthrough outcomes
“If you want to achieve a 10 X outcome, hiring someone that's an expert in the field It's maybe unlikely you're gonna achieve that 10 X outcome because they're likely to do things the way things have always been done. So you might achieve incremental benefits, …”
Yandell: Mandatory dogfooding filters out engineering candidates who lack humility
“It's a great way to weed out people that maybe we wouldn't want to work with, right? Because not everyone wants to, every software engineer wants to hop in their Tesla and go out and deliver McDonald's to some kids. Right. It takes a certain level of humility,…”
Yandell: Kalanick and Xu mastered the law to challenge conservative lawyers
“I've had the pleasure of working with two founders who are very product driven, product first folks in Travis and Tony. And I found that the way they engage on the legal side is with a curiosity I referenced earlier, which is they're both hyper curious and the…”
Yandell: Helping reports find their next job prevents unexpected departures
“When you're opening in this, how to work with keep document, I say, I will help you find your next job. And what that means is number one, people are gonna be transparent with you or more transparent if they're looking for something else, or if they're not hap…”
Yandell forwarded General Counsel recruiter pitches to his own deputy
“If I get pinged for a GC job or when I would get pinged by a recruiter for a GC job, I would forward that to Tia Sheringham, who's now our general counsel, but was basically head of legal for years before she got the general counsel title. And I'd say, Hey Tia…”
Yandell: DoorDash internal surveys showed employees actually prefer operating during crises
“One thing that I found surprising is from our surveys internally, people actually like crises at DoorDash. And I dug into that recently. I was trying to figure out if people like these crises. And it's because there's singularity of focus.”
Yandell: Tony Xu cut DoorDash restaurant commissions by $100M before IPO
“Tony made a decision and I admit I was on the wrong side of history. I was arguing that this seemed extreme just to cut commissions by basically a hundred million bucks for restaurants to help them stay in business. And I'm like, hold on, we're trying to go pu…”
Yandell: Hitting conservative forecasts is worth trading equity dilution for investor trust
“We wanted to make sure that we put forth numbers that we knew we were going to hit. And that cost us some dilution upfront in the form of lower valuations, I think. And there's a trust that builds from that where when we tell people we're going to do something…”
Yandell: Giving post-interview direct feedback tests candidate interpersonal fit and coachability
“Giving them tough feedback after the interview, if there's an area of concern, but you otherwise like them can be a really great way to see how they would interact with you personally, as well as how they take feedback.”
Yandell: DoorDash almost went out of business before Series D
“When we raised our series D funding, which was a really tough fundraise for us. We had very little runway left. We almost went out of business and it was a huge relief when we had finally gotten the funding secured.”
Yandell: Written work product scales organizational culture exceptionally well
“And one thing that Tony taught me is one thing that scales really well is written work product.”
Yandell: Requiring upward feedback makes giving constructive feedback easier
“If you're, if you Create a space where you require constructive feedback. It's a lot easier to give feedback. One of the top things I hear from managers, especially new managers, they don't like giving constructive feedback. They want to be positive. They want…”
Yandell: Pulse surveys demotivate employees unless leadership shares concrete actions
“That's one thing I've found that can be really demotivating for folks, whether it's a lot of these companies have these pulse surveys, or they talk about what the company can do better and they put the results on the screen and we're going to work on it. And t…”
Yandell: Accelerating product roadmaps by one week compounds into lapping competitors
“He understands that by pushing a roadmap up, even by a week, if you can continuously push up what you ship by a week, you're going to end up lapping competitors who are just one week behind, because you're going to start the next thing a week sooner, and you'r…”
Yandell: DoorDash post-Series D rounds were led by previous pass investors
“After we raised the D almost every round, or I think every round ended up being led by someone who had passed in a previous round.”
Yandell: Scalable BD platforms beat building bespoke engineering for partnership deals
“Another thing that Rajat's taught me is the importance of building platforms. And whenever you can. So what we used to do is I'd go out and negotiate a deal. We had a lot of deals around DashPass, which is our subscription product. And I'd asked the product te…”
Yandell: Test partnership theses operationally before expending product engineering resources
“Dream big, start small, use operations to test a thesis around a deal before you actually expend the product resources, I think has been super helpful.”
Yandell: Consumer product teams must understand regulations to push constraints
“When you're on the product team, especially if you're in a consumer-facing business, it may not be as pronounced for SaaS businesses, but if you're in a consumer-facing business, working on a consumer-facing product, you would better have at least a general un…”
Yandell: DoorDash requires all employees to make deliveries quarterly
“We have a program called WeDash where four times a year, all employees are required to go do deliveries.”
Yandell: DoorDash was in fourth place when he joined as Uber surged
“When I joined DoorDash, we were getting our tails kicked. We were in fourth, fourth place in the space. Uber had just launched food. And rocket to market share leadership.”
DoorDash 2x to 3x'd headcount yearly for most of Yandell's tenure
“We were two or three X-ing the company from a headcount perspective for the vast majority of my time every year.”
Yandell: Forcing leaders to argue the opposing case resolves executive deadlocks
“One thing I found super effective in those contexts is I try to ask the other side. So let's take the profitability side. I asked them to make the growth case. I said, tell me the three best reasons why we should actually focus on growth here. That generates i…”
The other half of the tape: Keith Yandell's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Lenny's Podcast. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jessica Lachs 1
Statements about Keith Yandell, by other people (1)
Lachs: DoorDash employees must do deliveries or support four times yearly
“We have a program, a WeDash program, and Keith Yandel, who's our chief business officer, did your podcast last year, and he talked about this but four times a year, all the employees go out and go dashing or do customer support”
Every mention by year
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Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Leading with empathy | Keith Yandell (DoorDash, Uber) | Feb 9, 2023 | 36m |