Guest: Keith Yandell - Leader at DoorDash. Keith has held multiple leadership roles at DoorDash, including leading the legal, HR, marketing, and customer support teams. Before DoorDash, he led litigation at Uber. Key Takeaways: Empathy in Leadership: Keith emphasizes the importance of understanding motivations and creating empathy among team members to facilitate decision-making and resolve conflicts. Scaling Culture: Keith created a "How to Work with Keith" document to communicate expectations and feedback mechanisms, which has been instrumental in scaling DoorDash's culture. Career Development: He actively helps his team members find their next roles, even if it means leaving DoorDash, fostering loyalty and transparency. Crisis Management: Tough times can strengthen a company by weeding out those not aligned with the mission and forcing operational discipline. Product and BD Synergy: Effective BD requires close collaboration with product teams, focusing on building scalable platforms and testing hypotheses operationally before committing resources. Topics Covered: Empathy in leadership, scaling company culture, career development, crisis management, product and business development collaboration, fundraising challenges.
“It only takes one yes. But you got to keep going.”
“If you're really a founder, you just have to find a way. You have to keep going.”
“Life's too short to work with people you don't really enjoy.”
