Key Takeaways

• Dogfooding, or using your own product extensively, is crucial for understanding user pain points and driving product improvements, even at the executive level.
• A ‘ship, ship, ship’ mentality, focused on reducing cycle time from idea to user, is essential for impactful product development, not just for individual contributors but for the entire organization.
• While data is important, a deep understanding of user emotions and experiences, often gained through direct interaction and empathy, is vital for building truly great products.
• Developing strong product sense and judgment through repeated decision-making, especially in non-consumer products, is a key differentiator for successful product managers.
• Companies can foster a culture of dogfooding and rapid iteration through leadership modeling, organized initiatives, and by setting clear expectations and rewards for feedback and shipping.

Segments

The Visceral Reaction of Dogfooding (~00:24:00)

• Key Takeaway: Experiencing the product firsthand, especially in real-world conditions like driving at 45 mph, provides a visceral understanding of user emotions and inefficiencies that data alone cannot convey.
• Summary: Saatchin contrasts quantitative data with qualitative, experiential feedback, explaining that while data shows user behavior, direct experience reveals the emotional impact of product flaws. He emphasizes that feeling the frustration of inefficiencies as a driver is crucial for motivating product improvements.

Tips for Not Annoying Drivers and Delivery People (~00:33:00)

• Key Takeaway: Simple courtesies like asking permission before being on the phone and closing the car door gently can significantly improve the rider-driver experience and lead to better ratings.
• Summary: Saatchin shares practical advice for passengers, including asking drivers for permission to be on the phone and avoiding slamming the car door. He also advises delivery recipients to turn on their porch light at night to help couriers find their location easily.

Operationalizing Dogfooding and Empathy (~00:38:00)

• Key Takeaway: Uber fosters a culture of dogfooding through leadership modeling, organized company-wide driving/delivery weeks with competitions, and by setting OKRs to fix a specific number of user-reported issues.
• Summary: Saatchin outlines how Uber encourages dogfooding by making it a cultural norm, organizing events, and integrating feedback into performance goals. The company sets OKRs for teams to fix a set number of issues identified through dogfooding, ensuring that feedback leads to tangible product improvements.

Balancing Dogfooding with Growth Metrics (~00:45:00)

• Key Takeaway: Dogfooding initiatives, while not always directly tied to immediate metric gains, are balanced with growth and efficiency goals, receiving dedicated resources to ensure product quality and user experience.
• Summary: Saatchin explains that dogfooding ‘fix-its’ are treated as one of several key objectives (OKRs) alongside growth and cost-saving goals. This balanced approach ensures that user experience improvements are prioritized without sacrificing other critical business objectives.

Dogfooding Non-Consumer Products (~00:52:00)

• Key Takeaway: For non-consumer products, the key to effective dogfooding is to get as close as possible to the customer’s environment and experience, even if it requires creative methods.
• Summary: Saatchin advises product teams working on non-consumer products to spend time with their customers, observe their workflows, and even simulate their experiences. This could involve working alongside restaurant staff or setting up test accounts to mimic an IT admin’s usage.

The ‘Ship, Ship, Ship’ Philosophy (~00:58:00)

• Key Takeaway: The ‘ship, ship, ship’ motto emphasizes minimizing the cycle time between identifying a problem and delivering a solution to the end user, focusing on shipping code, not just documents or ideas.
• Summary: Saatchin explains that ‘shipping’ means delivering actual code and product improvements to users. He stresses the importance of reducing the time it takes to make decisions and implement changes, advocating for efficient processes like product reviews and clear decision-making frameworks.

Unblocking Teams and Accelerating Shipping (~01:04:00)

• Key Takeaway: Leaders can unblock teams and speed up shipping by stepping in when necessary, such as conducting daily stand-ups during critical periods or writing PRDs to provide clarity and direction.
• Summary: Saatchin shares examples of how he has personally intervened to accelerate product development, including running daily stand-ups to resolve issues quickly and writing PRDs over a weekend to unblock stalled teams. He views these actions as exceptions to the rule, used to remove ambiguity and drive progress.

The Value of Live Demos (~01:09:00)

• Key Takeaway: Insisting on live demos for product announcements, both internally and externally, creates a sense of rigor, ensures the product works, and helps tell a compelling story about user value.
• Summary: Saatchin believes live demos are crucial for external product announcements to tell a story and showcase user value, and internally, they drive rigor and create pride among the product and engineering teams by demonstrating their work in action.

Career Advice for Early Career PMs (~01:18:00)

• Key Takeaway: Early career product managers should prioritize jobs where they can ship multiple products quickly to build experience and develop product sense through thousands of micro-decisions.
• Summary: Saatchin advises new product managers to seek roles that allow for rapid product cycles, emphasizing that accumulating experience through shipping and iterating is more valuable than having a few big strategic ideas. He highlights that developing judgment comes from making numerous small decisions.

Constants in Product Management Amidst AI (~01:24:00)

• Key Takeaway: While AI will accelerate many aspects of product development, the fundamental need to deeply understand end-user wants and develop strong judgment remains constant and becomes even more critical.
• Summary: Saatchin notes that AI will significantly change how products are built, but the core challenge of understanding user needs and developing intuitive judgment will persist. He believes that AI will make it easier to gather information, but the ability to make sound decisions based on that information will be paramount.

What Saatchin Hates About Engineers (~01:29:00)

• Key Takeaway: Saatchin dislikes when engineers are blocked by a lack of detailed PRDs, advocating for a more collaborative, co-creative approach where engineers have an equal seat at the table.
• Summary: Saatchin expresses frustration when engineering teams are unable to proceed due to incomplete documentation, believing that the best engineers can co-create products with product managers and designers, rather than solely relying on detailed PRDs.

Uber’s Vision for Autonomous Vehicles (~01:33:00)

• Key Takeaway: Uber’s strategy for autonomous vehicles (AVs) is to build a hybrid network that integrates human drivers with AVs from various partners, leveraging its marketplace to optimize utilization and meet demand.
• Summary: Saatchin explains that Uber is pursuing a partner-oriented approach to AVs, integrating third-party autonomous vehicles into its network. This hybrid model aims to balance the utilization of expensive AV assets with the flexibility of human drivers to meet fluctuating demand.

The Shift to Profitability at Uber (~01:44:00)

• Key Takeaway: Uber’s transition to profitability was a challenging but rewarding process that involved taking inefficiency out of the system and reinvesting savings, fostering innovation and a stronger business foundation.
• Summary: Saatchin describes the shift to profitability as a positive experience that required significant effort to identify and remove inefficiencies across various aspects of Uber’s operations. This focus on efficiency has allowed the company to make new strategic bets and maintain a strong financial footing.

Balancing Core Efficiency with Growth Bets (~01:47:00)

• Key Takeaway: Maintaining a flawless and efficient core product provides the ’license’ to explore new growth opportunities, ensuring that innovation is built upon a stable and optimized foundation.
• Summary: Saatchin uses a concentric circle model to explain how Uber balances efficiency with growth. By obsessing over the core product’s efficiency and user experience, the company earns the right to invest in and explore new ventures like Uber Eats and grocery delivery.

Gut-Driven Decisions vs. Data (~01:51:00)

• Key Takeaway: Uber has made significant bets, such as integrating with taxis and launching services for teenagers, that were not initially supported by data but were driven by a strong understanding of user needs and gut feeling, ultimately proving successful.
• Summary: Saatchin shares examples of decisions made at Uber that went against the prevailing data, including focusing on safety sentiment, partnering with taxis, and launching services for teenagers. These decisions, driven by empathy and a deep understanding of user problems, have led to significant growth and revenue.

AI Tools for Product Management (~01:57:00)

• Key Takeaway: AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are invaluable for product managers, particularly for summarizing research documents and acting as a ‘deep research’ assistant to explore feature viability and user reception.
• Summary: Saatchin highlights how AI tools are being used at Uber to process large volumes of user research and to act as a research assistant, helping product teams quickly understand user sentiment and explore potential product features, thereby increasing productivity and effectiveness.

Learning from Failures: The Palm Story (~02:03:00)

• Key Takeaway: The failure of Palm to adapt quickly to the iPhone and Android era taught Saatchin the importance of speed, resilience, and a constant paranoia about competitors, especially those in lower positions who might innovate.
• Summary: Saatchin recounts his experience at Palm, where the company’s slow response to market shifts led to its decline. This taught him the critical importance of agility, resilience, and never underestimating competitors, lessons he carries into his current role.

The Non-Reciprocal Relationship with End Users (~02:08:00)

• Key Takeaway: Product managers should recognize that users’ lives are complex and not centered around their product; the goal is to make the limited interaction users have with the product exceptionally seamless and memorable.
• Summary: Saatchin emphasizes that users are focused on their own lives, and product teams only get a small window of opportunity to impress them. He advises against expecting users to center their lives around a product, but rather to make that brief interaction outstanding.

Recommended Books and Life Motto (~02:11:00)

• Key Takeaway: Key recommended books include ‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson, ‘Elon Musk’ by Ashlee Vance, and ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz, while the life motto is ‘focus on the inputs’.
• Summary: Saatchin shares his top book recommendations, focusing on understanding context, resilience, and leadership. His personal motto, ‘focus on the inputs,’ guides his approach to work and life, emphasizing control over actions rather than outcomes.

Favorite Recent Media and Product (~02:15:00)

• Key Takeaway: Saatchin’s favorite recent TV show is ‘Peaky Blinders,’ and his favorite product discovery is the ‘deep research’ feature in ChatGPT.
• Summary: Saatchin enjoys the storytelling in ‘Peaky Blinders’ and finds the ‘deep research’ capability of AI tools to be a game-changer for product research and ideation.