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

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

June 1, 2025

Duration

1h 21m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Sachin Kansal is chief product officer at Uber, where he oversees the Rider, Driver, Delivery, Grocery, and New Verticals product lines used for 33 million daily trips worldwide. He’s been in product for over 25 years (at Google, Palm, Flywheel, and now Uber). He is known for his “extreme dogfooding” ethos—personally completing almost a thousand Uber driving and delivery trips to sharpen his product insight and user empathy—and his “ship, ship, ship” mantra, which drives rapid iteration across Uber’s global teams. *What you will learn:*

1. Dogfooding at scale
2. “Ship, ship, ship” as a cultural mantra
3. Obsession with inputs over outputs
4. Uber’s hybrid marketplace vision for autonomy
5. How Uber changed its culture to focus on profitability
6. What to do when data says “no” but your gut says “yes”
7. Career advice: maximize cycles
8. AI as a research assistant, not an oracle
9. Uber rider etiquette tips

*Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-ubers-cpo-delivers-food-on-weekends-sachin-kansal *Brought to you by:* Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want: https://www.useparagon.com/lenny Stripe—Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue: https://stripe.com/ Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace: https://coda.io/lenny *Where to find Sachin Kansal:*

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkansal/ *Where to find Lenny:*

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

*In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Sachin’s background (05:00) Dogfooding in practice (11:24) Empathy and understanding drivers (20:18) Balancing metrics and user experience (22:04) Operationalizing dogfooding (24:26) Challenges and solutions in dogfooding (29:49) The motto: “ship, ship, ship” (36:37) Product announcements and live demos (40:49) Career advice for product managers (43:51) The evolution of product management with AI (46:55) Collaboration between engineers and product managers (49:36) Uber’s vision for self-driving cars (55:59) Uber’s path to profitability (01:01:58) Balancing data and gut decisions (01:07:21) AI tools in product management (01:10:14) Failure corner (01:13:48) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:*

• Uber: https://www.uber.com/
• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/
• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/
• Fivetran: https://go.fivetran.com/
• Uber for Business: https://www.uber.com/us/en/business
• McDonald’s: https://www.mcdonalds.com/
• Domino’s: https://www.dominos.com
• PalmPilot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot
• Praveen Neppalli Naga on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pneppalli/
• May Mobility: https://maymobility.com/
• Uber strikes deal with May Mobility to deploy ‘thousands’ of robotaxis: https://www.theverge.com/news/659563/uber-may-mobility-autonomous-ridehail-partnership
• Waymo: https://waymo.com/
• WeRide: https://www.weride.ai/
• Uber and Avride Announce Autonomous Delivery and Mobility Partnership: https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2024/Uber-and-Avride-Announce-Autonomous-Delivery-and-Mobility-Partnership/default.aspx
• Dara Khosrowshahi on X: https://x.com/dkhos
• Uber Elevate: https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/vision/
• Uber AV: https://www.uber.com/us/en/autonomous/
• Uber Reserve: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/reserve/
• Uber for teens: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/teens/
• Flywheel: https://www.flywheel.com/
• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/
• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app
• NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/
• Behind the product: NotebookLM | Raiza Martin (Senior Product Manager, AI @ Google Labs): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/googles-notebooklm-raiza-martin
• BlackBerry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry
• Peaky Blinders on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80002479
• Deep research: https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/

*Recommended books:*

• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419
• Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Sh-ebook/dp/B01GZ1TJBI
• Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537
• Elon Musk: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

_Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

• Sachin Kansal

  guest

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Sachin Kansal, Sachin Kansal: Why Uber's CPO ships 300 fix-its every half explores uber’s CPO on extreme dogfooding, speed, and product judgment Uber CPO Sachin Kansal describes how he personally completes hundreds of Uber rides and Uber Eats deliveries to deeply ‘dogfood’ the product, turning real-world pain points into prioritized fixes and cultural norms. He explains his “ship, ship, ship” philosophy: once you understand a problem, the only thing that matters is how fast you can get real code into customers’ hands. Kansal shares career advice for PMs (optimize for reps and micro-decisions), his view that end-user understanding and judgment will matter even more in an AI world, and how Uber balances qualitative dogfooding with hard metrics, OKRs, and profitability. The conversation also covers Uber’s hybrid strategy for autonomous vehicles, the company’s shift to efficiency, and practical tips for being a better Uber rider and Eats customer.

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