20Product: Product Secrets Behind Uber and Opendoor | How AI Changes the Role of the PM & The Product Development Process | How to Hire the Best Product Teams & What No One Does That Everyone Should Do with Brian Tolkin
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Tolkin is the Head of Product @ Opendoor where he has spent the last 6 years and is responsible for product strategy and product and design teams. Before Opendoor, Brian spent an incredible 5 years at Uber through their wildest growth periods.
In Today's Episode with Brian Tolkin:
03:53 Brian's Journey at Uber: Launching China Pool
05:07 Product Lessons from Uber's China Launch
08:22 The Role of a PM in a Pre vs. Post AI World
10:16 Product Development Process in an AI World
17:43 The Importance of Simplification in Product Management
19:21 OKRs and Prioritization in Product Management
23:12 The Importance of Feedback Loops in Product Development
23:38 Evaluating Product Changes: User Adaptation vs. Bad Decisions
25:00 Balancing Gut Instinct and Data in Product Leadership
25:38 The Role of Simplicity in Product Design
27:02 Consensus vs. Dictatorial Product Leadership
27:54 Hiring for the Best Product Teams
31:33 How to do Effective Sprint Management
38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Advice
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Product is the show where we sit down with the best |
| 0:04.9 | product leaders in the world to deep dive on product strategy, growing product teams and hiring |
| 0:10.3 | amazing product people. Now, joining us in the hot seat is Brian Tolkien. Brian is the head of product |
| 0:15.9 | at Open Door, where he spent an incredible six years and is responsible for product strategy and managing the |
| 0:22.3 | product and design team. Before Open Door, Brian spent an amazing five years at Uber through their |
| 0:28.2 | wildest growth periods and shares some pretty incredible product stories and lessons from the Uber |
| 0:33.3 | days. But before we dive into the show today, are you struggling to beat model benchmarks or |
| 0:38.6 | implement Gen AI in your product? If so, you need Turing. Turing is an AGI infrastructure company |
| 0:45.3 | backed by incredible investors like Foundation Capital and Westbridge Capital. And they do two |
| 0:50.2 | things. Number one, they help leading companies in AI labs, like Salesforce, Anthropic and |
| 0:56.1 | meta, enhance their LLMs with advanced reasoning, coding, multilinguality, multi-modality, and more. |
| 1:03.3 | Number two, they combine human and artificial intelligence expertise to deploy cutting-edge |
| 1:08.7 | AI systems for awesome companies like Rivian and Reddit. |
| 1:12.8 | Right now, Turing offers a free, five-minute self-assessment to help you pinpoint your place |
| 1:18.3 | in the Gen AI journey, get tailored next steps to optimize your model strategy, and then finally |
| 1:24.1 | learn how Turing can refine and implement your models for better performance. |
| 1:28.5 | Take the guesswork out of Gen A.I, visit Turing.com forward slash 20VC to start your free assessment today. |
| 1:36.7 | And talking about scaling seamlessly, let me tell you about WorkOS. |
| 1:40.6 | So WorkOS is the modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, helping startups move upmarket with ease. |
| 1:47.0 | Selling to enterprises means honestly really complex security requirements, like SAML, like single sign-on, like SCIM, provisioning, audit logs. |
| 1:56.0 | Honestly, a ton of stuff that is just a nightmare to do. |
| 1:59.0 | Features that take months to build and maintain. |
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