Brian Tolkin
Brian Tolkin is the Head of Product at Opendoor. Previously, he was one of the early employees at Uber, where he was instrumental in launching and growing UberPool, UberHop, and UberExpress and started one of the first product operations teams in tech.
2 skills 2 insights
Discovery & Research Skills
Building deep empathy requires removing the layers between product teams and users, often by leveraging the local field teams who witness customer context first-hand.
"Talking to customers every single day like one-on-one onboarding drivers responding to support tickets, there's no centralized support team, there was no closer to the customer, right? And so I think..."
Team & Organization Skills
A leader's projected stress is counterproductive; staying calm under pressure prevents team paralysis and leads to better execution during crises.
"I've slept on the floor in China before launching uberPOOL, and when you reflect the stress onto your teams, everybody tenses out. It counterintuitively doesn't produce better outcomes."