Sachin Kansal: Why Uber's CPO ships 300 fix-its every half

Kansal regularly spends half-days driving and delivering, takes extensive screenshots, writes long feedback docs, tags owners, and follows through until fixes ship—turning anecdotal experience into structured product improvements.

He expects not only PMs but senior leaders to dogfood, run driver/merchant roundtables, and physically sit with users (e.g., restaurant staff, IT admins) to internalize the emotional and practical realities of their work.

Once a problem is validated, the bottleneck is usually slow decisions and alignment—not building; he attacks this with tightly run product reviews, clear one-way vs two-way door decisions, and, when needed, hands-on unblocking (like writing PRDs or running daily standups).

Kansal urges early PMs to join environments where they can ship multiple products quickly; thousands of small calls (copy, button placement, rollout markets) compound into strong judgment and product sense.

He uses a spectrum from telemetry to surveys to focus groups to one-on-one conversations—and finally his own visceral experience behind the wheel—to detect issues that metrics alone would never surface or properly prioritize.