Why Uber’s CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal

Uber CPO Sachin Kansal has completed 700-800 driver/delivery trips personally and argues extreme dogfooding — not data alone — drove Uber’s biggest product bets.

• Kansal has personally completed 700–800 Uber driving and delivery trips; earns money then refunds it to customers.
• Each team (driver, rider, Eats) has a biannual OKR to fix 300 dogfooding-discovered issues; targets hit every half for 2–3 years.
• Three major gut-over-data bets: integrating taxis (now every NYC yellow cab is hailable via Uber), Uber for Teens, and safety sentiment features in 2017.
• Uber runs 33 million trips daily; saving 1 cent per trip compounds massively — efficiency grind funded all new growth bets.
• Mobility dropped 80% overnight during COVID; Uber divested self-driving unit and Uber Elevate to survive, became profitable ~2 years ago.
• Uber’s AV strategy is a hybrid marketplace — partner with Waymo, WeRide, Avride, May Mobility rather than own the stack.
• Kansal uses ChatGPT Deep Research as a driver-feature brainstorm tool, not an oracle; treats AI output as a starting point, not a decision.

2025-06-01 · Watch on YouTube