Thuan Pham, Ex-CTO of Uber

Fearlessness embraced

This week we hosted the ex-CTO of Uber and Coupang - Thuan Pham. Thuan joined Uber after it raised series B and was responsible for the hypergrowth of the startup.

Even though most of the conversation was off-script, here are takeaways that we found inspirational and publicly available.

·   Know when to walk away. Know where you are on that S curve. When you're not growing anymore, look for the next growth area. Put yourself in an uncomfortable space. Learn to distrust that comfort. Thuan did that after 6 years at VMware and after Uber (they joined Coupang).

·        During a complicated decision between two options, ask yourself which one you will regret the most if you don't do it. That's the right one. That was Uber vs. [] company for Thuan.

·        At the start, you shouldn't overengineer because you’re figuring out product-market fit. For example, Uber was breaking things, and post-PMF, Thuan managed to set up a propel scaling engineering system. “You have to survive first, then think about what systems to build and improve so they won’t break in the future.”

·        The late stage might not be an excellent time to join for equity, as private markets rarely reflect public market comps, and then it ends up being a bad deal for such employees.

·        When the company is successful, it's easy to enforce, but if it's stagnant, it's hard to implement as the early people have the startup mentality. So the way to keep great people around is to keep growing.

·        Don't have biases about what you want to do – take your skillset and apply it to the problem you’re solving. This is a startup mentality.

·        Investing early on to dominate the market might be the right approach, subject to your market. With the 0 interest market – it made much sense. Then, it will be profitable and sustainable. Thuan was an early employee at NetGravity — target ads in 1994. But no one heard of them because the philosophy was to be profitable before you grow. But that was the wrong call. Double-click put ads everywhere and won the market. Now that the competition is moderated, Uber makes the economics work. But you have to survive and then get there.

·        Professionally, he and Travis work well together. His unreasonable expectations drive them to be better. After the milestone at the startup, the beauty of being at a startup is feeling that you did something unreal. And that’s what they were doing at Uber.

·        Create an environment where people can take risks and be bold. People can burn a billion dollars, cause global outages, and still be okay. The philosophy at Uber is the DNA of fearlessness. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. The culture was about learning.