@brian-tolkin
Head of Product at Opendoor; scaled Uber as Head of Product for a major vertical.
Opendoor's edge over Zillow isn't just product — it's vertical integration. You have to be great at pricing, product, operations, risk, and capital markets simultaneously. That's in Opendoor's DNA from day one. You can't bolt it on.
The team closest to the problem has the deepest context. As a senior leader in a product review, your job is probing and asking questions — not mandating. They think about this 60 hours a week. You think about it 3.
The hardest part of product reviews isn't the template — it's cultural internalization. You can wedge any content into a template. The real work is people asking 'is this actually the job to be done?' before it hits the doc.
Surge pricing at Uber was manual for years. City GMs controlled when it turned on, what geographies surged, and the caps. The algorithm only optimized within parameters humans set. Full automation came much later.
Product reviews have two goals: accountability/informing the audience AND making the product better. The second is primary. If reviews feel like firing squads, you've optimized for the first and undermined the second.
On average in the US, people sell their home once every 7 years. That means at Opendoor, you can't just use your own intuition as a proxy for the customer — you have to be deliberate about building empathy.