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Brian Tolkin is the Head of Product at Opendoor. Previously, he was one of the early employees at Uber, where he was instrumental in launching and growing UberPool, UberHop, and UberExpress and started one of the first product operations teams in tech. In our conversation, we dive into:

\u2022 How to enable product and ops to work well together

\u2022 How to run great product reviews

\u2022 How to make good decisions with limited data

\u2022 How he uses the jobs-to-be-done framework at Opendoor

\u2022 How to stay calm under pressure as a leader

\u2022 Wild stories from his time at Uber

\u2022 Challenges faced at Opendoor during the pandemic

\u2022 Much more

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Brought to you by:

\u2022 Pendo\u2014The only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application

\u2022 Explo\u2014Embed\xa0customer-facing\xa0analytics\xa0in your product

\u2022 Attio\u2014The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups

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Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/scaling-uber-and-opendoor-brian-tolkin

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Where to find Brian Tolkin:

\u2022 X: https://x.com/briantolkin

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briantolkin/

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Where to find Lenny:

\u2022 Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

\u2022 X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Brian\u2019s background

(02:14) Career beginnings at Uber

(02:49) Transitioning from product operations to product management

(06:47) Product and operations synergy

(10:00) Surge pricing at Uber

(12:18) Scaling challenges, and stories

(15:47) Opendoor and Covid adaptations

(25:38) Product reviews and Jobs to Be Done

(40:30) The challenges of A/B testing

(42:23) Increasing conviction in solutions

(44:33) Leveraging intuition in product decisions

(47:07) Partnering with Zillow

(52:55) Staying calm under pressure

(56:25) Finding the \u201ckernel of truth\u201d in product management

(01:00:21) Failure corner: Early days of Uber Pool

(01:06:11) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.