Uber Eats

Assume the Disruptor Is Right

During an existential threat, assume the disruptor is playing an optimal game and respond with overreaction

Concentric-Circles Portfolio (Earn the License to Expand)

Obsess over a flawless, efficient core; that attention earns you the license to make growth bets in the outer rings.

Entrepreneurship4 steps

Consumer Subscription Viability Test

Freemium-plus-paid-acquisition consumer subscriptions fail without ~60-70%+ retention or a network effect

Productivity4 steps

Cycle-Time Is the Enemy (Ship Ship Ship)

The gap between knowing something is good and users seeing it is your biggest enemy — attack the decision time, not the work time.

Communication4 steps

De-Risking the High-Stakes Meeting

Turn important meetings from big-reveal gambles into pre-worked, question-proof conversations.

Founder Intuition vs Team Expertise Handoff

Delegate to hires only once they consistently make better calls than you would — and signal in both directions

Growth Team as a Rigor Forcing Function

Hire a growth leader early — the second-order effect is that it exposes everything you haven't measured.

Gut-Over-Data Bets (When the Numbers Say No)

Make bets the data argues against when you intrinsically understand a real, unsolved end-user problem.

Leadership3 steps

Hire an Organism of Strengths

Interview for three universal traits and compose a team of complementary strengths over hiring the most optimal individual stars

Justifying Non-Sexy Product Investments

Fund performance, UX and velocity work by making the invisible measurable and the downside of neglect concrete.

Marketing4 steps

Kindle and Fire Growth Strategies

Non-scalable kindle hacks exist only to unlock the scalable fire strategy worth hiring for.

Network Effects vs Network Economies: The Materiality Test

Almost everything has some network effect; only ask whether it's large enough to change your margins.

Self-Mastery4 steps

Optimize for Learning: The Impedance-Match Career Test

Choose roles by where you'll learn most and whether the mission truly matches how humans are wired.

Innovation4 steps

Perceived Simplicity

Keep advanced power in the product but discoverable only to those who go looking — invisible to everyone else.

Self-Mastery4 steps

Reps-to-Judgment (Building Product Sense)

Product sense isn't taught — it's earned through thousands of shipped micro-decisions with the shortest possible cycle time.

Entrepreneurship4 steps

SaaS-Marketplace Transition Test

A SaaS business can add a marketplace only if it touches its customer's customer and those customers need multiple suppliers

Scenario-Based PM Interviewing

Interview PMs by making them do the real job under real constraints, not recite prepared stories

Productivity3 steps

Ship-to-Learn Research Allocation

Reserve scarce user research for high-uncertainty, high-leverage problems; ship to learn everywhere else

Startup Power Progression: Eliminate Three, Sequence Four

Cross off the three powers a startup can't have yet, then pursue the remaining four in sequence — counter-positioning first.

Mindset3 steps

Survival Before Thriving

Make asymmetrically positive bets and protect the enterprise — you must survive long enough for timing and insight to arrive

Systems-First Scaling (One to 100)

Once you have product-market fit, go slow to go fast: build the systems before you hyperscale.

The AI-Fit Accuracy Test

Deploy AI where the human baseline is low-accuracy — not where it's already near-perfect and you need the last 2%

Innovation4 steps

The AI Startup Moat: Data Flywheel + Crafted Workflow

Defensibility for AI apps comes from a proprietary data flywheel and a deeply crafted vertical workflow.

The Benefit-and-Barrier Power Test (To Be or Not to Be)

Only call it power if it delivers a cost/price benefit AND a barrier competitors can't erase.

The Castle-or-Shack Audit

Go capability by capability and separate the ones a rival can copy (shack) from the ones they truly can't (castle).

The End-User Feedback Spectrum

Deliberately gather user feedback across the full quantitative-to-qualitative range, not just the end you're comfortable with.

Innovation4 steps

The Extreme Dog-Fooding Loop

Use your own product at scale, document every flaw with screenshots, then personally drive the fixes to closure.

Leadership6 steps

The Five PM Archetypes

Hire and compose product teams by five distinct thinking styles, not one generic ideal PM.

The Fixit OKR

Put a hard number on fixing known-broken issues and fund it alongside growth, so quality work never gets zero resources.

Finance3 steps

The Gross-Margin Short-Circuit

Use high gross margin + healthy churn as a fast litmus test for whether a business is truly differentiated

Entrepreneurship3 steps

The Insight Test

Before founding anything, prove why YOU uniquely hold an insight others don't — and why you'll endure it for a decade

Leadership3 steps

The Painful-Mistake Growth-Mindset Interview

Screen only for growth mindset by asking for the most painful mistake and what changed because of it.

The Process Power Qualifier: Material and Opaque

Operational excellence is only power when it's both material AND impossible for rivals to copy.

The Product People Spectrum: Innovators to Executors

Great product careers get filtered at strategy — deliberately move executors toward the strategic middle.

Communication3 steps

The Say-Do-Said Loop

Say you'll do the thing, say you're doing it, say you did it — to align, adjust, and close the loop.

Leadership3 steps

The Six-Month Autonomy Razor

If you're still telling a hire what to do six months in, you hired the wrong person.

Communication4 steps

The Story Chapters Framework for Executive Communication

Find the last obvious point for your audience, then build from there — skip neither the setup nor the basics.

The Three Network Effects (and Why Social Products Must Evolve)

Classify defensibility as direct, cross-side, or data network effects — and know social products must add the latter two

Marketing4 steps

Triangulate the Customer's Truth

Don't take what customers say literally — reconstruct their economics and incentives independently, then find the urgent one

Innovation3 steps

Wide Aperture, Then Coalesce

Keep considering many ideas — including ones that look bad — and test cheap versions until the signals converge on one