Keith Yandell, DoorDash executive, describes DoorDash's competitive underdog status early in his tenure against Uber Eats.
Insight
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, …”
Insight
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,…”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Disclosure
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”