The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 78 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Deng: Teams stay aligned by stating plans, progress, and completion
“So let me take a step back. So one, say what you're going to do. And then in that. Exercise. You're going to be able to calibrate with your manager, again, with anyone, right? What is it that we're going to do? And it's, I think the words are really important …”
Sachin Kansal has personally completed over 700 Uber driving and delivery trips
“I think from a driving and delivering perspective, it's in the seven to 800 range now.”
Kansal: Every NYC yellow cab is hailable on Uber
“In New York City, by the way, every single yellow cab is hailable through the Uber app.”
Uber refunds rides and deliveries completed by employees dogfooding the app
“So we have a policy that the money actually is not kept by us. We refund it back to the riders or to the to the eaters.”
Uber has eight million worldwide drivers, doubling its post-COVID count
“Now we are worldwide at about an eight million number, and we were probably close to half of that when we were just out of COVID.”
Kansal: Uber completes 33 million trips every single day
“We do thirty-three million trips every single day”
Kansal: Uber operates in roughly 15,000 cities across 75 countries
“We are in about 75 countries today. It's roughly about 15,000 cities”
Uber mandates teams fix 300 dogfooding issues every six months
“We have set an OKR that we're going to fix. 300 of these issues. Every team, actually, the driver team will fix 300 of those issues. The rider team will fix 300 of these issues and same for the Uber Eats team. Now, I don't really care whether it's 300 or 200 o…”
Kansal: Uber turned its on-campus barista into an Uber Eats merchant
“So we have a cafe here at Uber on campus. We also have a barista. So we enable the barista to be an Uber Eats restaurant. And they have an Uber Eats tablet, and I can actually order from that barista. So now you're dogfooding being an eater, you're dogfooding …”
Ten percent of Uber transactions failed over payment issues during Atawodi's tenure
“When I was at Uber, I had a headline, which was 10% of rides or eats or experiences on Uber fail because of a payment issue.”
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…”
Uber had 30 times Lyft's revenue and headcount around 2014
“Pretty early on at Lyft, this was 2014, 2015, maybe Uber was basically like 30 exercise. They had 30 times more revenue, more people, more liquidity, like everything you can think of, right?”
Tolkin: Early Uber concentrated engineering on dispatch and pricing
“Which is why most of the engineering effort for Uber was on the dispatching system and the pricing system. That's just where the leverage was at the time, given, given the scarcity of resources.”
UberX was named after a temporary placeholder in early financial models
“Uber, Uber X this product in the early days was going to be all hybrid and had a bunch of different potential names. I was not personally driving this. This was someone else on the operations team, but they dealt the model for What this product could be, and t…”
Infrequent user behaviors require rigid product frameworks to build empathy
“This on average in the U S is, is something people do once in seven years. You know, I'm sure the average had opened doors, something similar. And so it's a little bit harder to like be a customer. I took Uber every day, probably used Airbnb a number of times …”
Early UberBlack drivers had two-hour, individual, in-person onboarding sessions
“In the early days is at small scale actually back when it was the Uber black drivers, every driver was individually onboarded in like a 90 minute to a two hour in person in the office onboarding with deep setting of expectations.”
UberPool's company corridor matching failed because marketplace liquidity is everything
“We very quickly realized that back to sort of like what the kernel truth is here is like liquidity is the only thing that matters. And there just wasn't enough. There was never going to be enough to sort of do this, like company-based thing. That wasn't the st…”
Tolkin: Starting in operations is a strong foundation for product leaders
“Starting on the operation side gave a really deep understanding of like how the business actually works, right? You are truly operating it day in and day out. And the success of the city is, you know, in large part driven by The inputs that you are putting int…”
Larson: Uber operated under a strict no-cloud policy in 2014
“At Uber, we only used our own data centers. We didn't use the cloud, and this has changed since, since the era I was there, but in the, like, 2014 era, no cloud, and we had a strict no cloud policy”
Perri: Blake Samick established product operations at Uber, Stripe, and OpenAI
“The head of product operations at Uber and the person who started it, Blake Samick, is a case study in our book, and he also did it at Stripe, and he does it at OpenAI”
Johari: Early Uber subsidized drivers and distributed event coupons to bootstrap demand
“To take Uber as an example, right? They would walk into New City. And one thing that, that, you know, Uber was Kind of commonly known for doing this was back in the days when really Uber black was the only service is they just hand out coupons for free rides a…”
Yandell: Uber used a 'T3/B3' review system requiring 3 constructive critiques
“We had a system called T three B three, where during reviews or pulse check-ins, you'd have to say three, Positives about your manager and three constructive pieces of feedback for your manager.”
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.”
Orosz: Peak total compensation at Uber in Europe was $330,000
“In my best year at Uber, I made about like 320 or 330,000 dollars in total compensation. This was after Uber went public. So it's, it includes the stock, the base salary, the bonus, which was very, very good in Europe.”
Grenier: Uber's organizational structure had 500 city GMs managing local spend
“The structure of Uber was working, where every city had a GM, and I was like, the person they called when their spend was too high. And so, 500 GMs.”
Kansal: Asking Drivers Before Taking Calls Substantially Reduces Driver Annoyance
“Just ask them for permission to say, are you okay if I'm on the phone? They will always say yes, but it will just annoy them a lot less.”
Kansal: Closing Doors Softly Ensures Better Passenger Ratings on Uber
“The number two, on your way out, do not slam the door. It is their car. It is their final moment of interaction with you. Close the door and do it softly. That will ensure that you actually get good ratings from the driver.”
Uber's viral stunts like puppies on-demand originated from decentralized city teams
“That was, by the way a example of like fully distributed. The benefit of having those early petri dishes someone a local marketing manager is like, Hey, this would be fun. It would be really fun and the platform can support it. And those promotions were fantas…”
Atawodi: Uber's global cash top-up product took four years to build
“And we built that product. It did not exactly in that way, but we built that product. Sorry for another day, but like, or maybe later, but that's the story. It took four years to build it, but that image got people so excited about, oh, it's possible.”
Thrive Digital manages $500M in annual ad spend with 130 staff members
“What started off as this freelancer consultancy that I started running in a walk-in closet in my old apartment became A 130 people, and we manage about five hundred million dollars a year in ad spend for small and large companies, including Uber, Asana, Tempur…”