Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Why Uber’s CPO delivers food himself

15 Jun 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:32

A short YouTube monologue (by or featuring Uber’s CPO) describing why the speaker personally delivers food in the Bay Area to experience their product in the wild. The speaker explains that features that look great in the office on a MacBook can fail in real-world conditions—e.g., the phone may be three feet away while driving at 45 mph—so hands-on field testing reveals visceral reactions and usability problems.

Chapters

I will set aside half a day or a day, and then I'll go out and I'll drive and deliver here in the Bay Area until I get behind the wheel. What I miss is the visceral reaction that you get when something happens. Think about it. I sit in my office, my team and I, we design these amazing features. They look so good on my MacBook. And then you get in the car and you have a phone which is sitting three feet away from you. You're driving at 45 miles per hour. The world just changes. This thing that was looking so great in an office setting now maybe makes no sense.