[on Uber’s Early Organizational Structure] “Uber always thought about it as a twin turbine plane: maybe for a short period of time, you could operate on one engine. But if you want to operate at full efficiency, you need both engines working in tandem and working effectively together.”  Brian Tolkin, (@briantolkin) We’re super excited to be joined by Brian Tolkin, one of Uber’s first ~100 employees who built their “Product Ops” organization and then went on to lead Product Management for UberPOOL and all shared rides on the platform. We dive into the nitty gritty of how Uber built their “twin turbine” engine of decentralized real-world Ops and centralized Tech Product, and how the organization evolved as it scaled. We also cover Brian’s new role at OpenDoor, and the even tight ops + product coupling they’re building now in real estate.   Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Acquired.fm @AcquiredFM Let People Know You’re An LP on Twitter! Link to the Acquired LP show page Links from the Show: Stanford Venture Capital Club Ben Evans: The End of the Beginning (video) Lyft IPO (Acquired) Pre-Meeting Narrative Example OpenDoor.com   Show Bookmarks: [01:51] Brian’s backstory / “How I started at Uber” [03:42] Uber’s Operating Model in its Early Stages [06:29] Uber’s “Playbooking” aka Best Practice Sharing [09:10] Uber’s Early Thesis on Product Market Fit [13:30] Early Team Constructs and Focuses [17:50] The Start of the Product & Ops Team [21:10] “Platforms and Programs” [24:21] The Product & Ops Team Today [26:15] The Twin Turbine Plane [28:03] Taking Uber Global [31:37] UberPool [36:28] Brian’s Move to OpenDoor   People Worth Knowing: Ben Evans Brian Tolkin Jeff Holden Travis Kalanick   Companies Mentioned in Episode: Amazon Andreessen Horowitz Cabulous (RideGuru) DiDi (China) Grab (SE Asia) Groupon Hailo (London) Ola (India) Juno Lyft OpenDoor TaxiMagic Uber UberBlack UberCab UberPool UberX   Episode Specific Terms: Bi-Directional Communication Gap Centralized “Growth/Marketing/Funnel/Onboarding/Pricing” Teams Decentralized Teams Flywheel Funnel Optimization Highly Distributed (as an Operating Model) Knowledge Base Local and Viral Network Effects Local Operations vs Centralized EPD Onboarding Platforms and Programs Playbooking Scale Two-Pizza Teams Uber Launch Team “Launchers”   Ben and David’s Affiliations: Wave Capital, @WaveCapitalVC Pioneer Square Labs, @psl