YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Aluwi

lines on the record: 62
first: 2023-03-26
most recent: 2023-03-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I am at Kalui Kalui on Twitter. That's also my email, Kalui at gmail.com. We'll always be happy to chat about Gojek or just generally anything technology related. Yeah, I'm not, I have nothing I'm working on at the moment. So I just would love to jam with cool people.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One relatively minor thing that I thought had a lot of impact with execution is being very clear that whoever is accountable for the result should also be the decider. I found that a lot of literature out there says that product teams should be this communal best ideas come from everywhere group, which I think is well intentioned and absolutely everyone should contribute ideas, but I think not having it be super clear who is accountable and who is deciding often slows down execution a lot. And I think when we switch to making it really clear that who was the decider for any kind of product development process, I think our execution definitely improved significantly.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two products, I think, right now that I found absolutely delightful. One is the art browser. I know that it's gaining a lot of traction out there, but I'm a very chronic tab hoarder. My Chrome tabs are just all over the place. And I love that they've figured out, I would say the best approach to kind of tab management. And there's just a ton of little delightful, like awesome design details in the app that I think is just really, really cool. And it's a browser. When's the last time there was like a really, really cool browser that came out? So I also love the ambition that the company has. Second product, Steam Deck. I'm a huge gamer and I think it is probably, I would say the best game platform to actually build on the vision of truly portable mobile gaming.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want somebody to basically almost pitch to me an obsession they have that makes it me interested in knowing more into that subject. And the more obscure, the better. And the more passionate they are about an obscure thing even better. And I think it shows people's capability to be really passionate about something and sell something and think about something in a very structured and detailed way.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do is who you are. I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures. So I think that's one. Another is classic marketing book. Again, we talked a lot about branding today. So there's this book called How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. I think it's, I don't agree necessarily with everything in it, but I do think that it's a great primer on how to think about branding and marketing.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figuring out what makes me happy and what kind of activities that I find rewarding, I don't know, maybe I'll start another company at some point. I think that's my default. But I think right now I'm just kind of taking things easy and trying to figure out what my another problem, I guess, that I could kind of be obsessed about.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm still kind of on this journey, honestly, of like how does it feel? I think that it is building Gojek is by far the most important professional experience. And frankly, one of the most important life experiences I've had, it's made me a way, way better person, actually. And now that I've stepped away am not as Bored or as aimless as people would expect after having such a kind of all consuming thing be part of my life experience. What's next? Honestly, Lenny, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a plan at this stage. I do some angel investing on the side. I work with other founders to be able to maybe just share some of these experiences that I shared today. And just kind of figuring out what are the, I guess.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a company doing like something like a quarter billion dollars in revenue, and it's profitable and it's basically a fish farmer, a closed loop ecosystem. And it's pretty wild that something like this exists, but it does speak to, I think, again, what I said earlier about the hunger that the population have for better solutions. And if you can find these better solutions, you can really build companies of very meaningful scale very, very quickly.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One company that's really, really interesting, for example, just to give a flavor of the type of off the wall, seemingly off the wall product or company being built in this part of the world, there's a company called eFishery. And what they do is basically create a closed-loop ecosystem for fish farmers. currently i think they're only operational indonesia or they're recently expanding beyond indonesia you know they help uh farmers uh feed their fish through this um uh this iot smart device uh that helps you know measure the amount of like fish feed that needs to go into uh the ponds but they also then help farmers do things like get financing and also sell their their produce out to local or even regional or global markets”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, our investors at the time, Sequoia is one of our investors at the time, told us that this was the craziest growth story that they've ever heard of in the world. And it's, I wouldn't say because of our necessarily because of our brilliance, it was a combination of how Indonesia and Southeast Asia, there are a lot of these things that are obviously broken and could be approved with better technology and better products, but also we also have in this region a very young population who are excited to try new things. And so if you find a solution that really resonates with a lot of these common day-to-day problems, the adoption curve is just absolutely insane. And I think it's one of the things that are definitely unique to developing regions like this one.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think specifically Indonesia, Indonesia, most people don't know that Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world, and that Southeast Asia holds almost 10% of the world's population. But beyond the macro picture, I think it's also we've experienced a pretty unique level of pace of adoption for products with great product market fit. So products with great product market fit grow tremendously fast in this. Every month for more than a year”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not very easy to brand a car and the drivers are inside the car. But all of our competitors at the time, when they first entered the motorcycle ride hailing space, didn't brand their drivers because they came from a car-centric view. And so again, understanding your unique market dynamics is also really, really important if you're building outside of these technology centers.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is don't just copy because Gojik was not like an Uber clone, even though that was kind of how some investors or analysts talk about us. We were focused on a solution that was uniquely an Indonesian phenomenon, the motorcycle taxi driver. And this led to both product and branding innovation. On the product side, we were an on-demand super app because we saw that a human being on a motorcycle could do a lot of things. And so we built a product around that idea. And hence, we ended up with a super app even before super apps were really a thing. And then that branding point that we talked about a little earlier about giving our drivers jackets and helmets so people could see them zip around town, which actually doesn't make sense if you're a car ride healing service because”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We build an engineering center in Bangalore in 2015, and this allowed us to compete a lot better with the global giants because we had access to a really deep talent market in India at the time. But we were really early in this whole remote work thing because it wasn't common for people in our region, but also globally to have so much talent concentration outside of headquarters. And I do believe that companies who want to compete against world-class competitors outside of these technology centers like Silicon Valley need to become good at remote work really fast because getting that talent probably means having offices that are individuals or outside of your home market or your headquarters. And probably the final, I would say tip here.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or outside of Silicon Valley, and maybe some of the other kind of technology centers in the world, like China and India. So some of my learnings are probably there that I would take going forward is, I think we talk a lot about being scrappy. In the beginning, we were a lot more ops heavy than tech heavy and doing the things that don't scale through other means. I think it's definitely something that is absolutely necessary if you're building outside of these main technology hubs. Another thing I would say is you need to get good at remote work really early. And I think today that's kind of become a lot more prevalent as more and more people have experience with remote work for us.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, it was super hard back then because it was particularly hard because Indonesia is such a valuable market. Indonesia, I would say, primarily Indonesia just because of its scale, but I think overall Southeast Asia was just, it's such a valuable market. And it was interesting for global companies to want to win it. So we competed with global and regional companies. But the local talent and funding ecosystems were really underdeveloped. So that challenge of like having to compete with the best in the world for customers in the market while also not having all of the resources available within the market to be able to build products and companies that can compete was, I would say, one of the most challenging parts of building probably in markets that are atypical.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was pretty low. People didn't think that real businesses and real valuable products could be built, especially be built locally. And so taking that bet was something that I think it really panned out for us to kind of be really, really early in the space, which today has become very, very vibrant to the scene in Southeast Asia has become, I think, one of the most exciting spaces in technology in the world to date. But at the time, it wasn't obvious. And being able to see that development, I think was something that was really, really important to me because it really shows you what's possible in a very, very, very short time. And I think it's something that probably people in technology in the US can relate to, the people who've been working in the space for like 20, 30 years. But being able to see those early days for me is was.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't feel like I was performing, and I kind of left that field, that field that I thought I had built my entire, I guess. You know, after I did that, I decided to take a bet in Indonesian technology because this was like when all this was happening was around 2010, 2011 and it was starting to see the development of the current technology giants in the US at the time. And I thought that it would be pretty cool if Indonesia ever had a technology industry to be part of it at the ground floor. And so I moved back in 2011. And it was super early. It was really, really early at the time where the level of talent, the level of funding, the level of product market fit, the number of people who transacted on the internet was also still super low. People still saw the internet as a place for chat apps and social media. And so the level of belief that people had in the space at that time was”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I am basically a failed finance professional. You know, I wanted to I didn't really know what I wanted to do in my life. And in 2005, which is when I entered college, the hot sexy thing to do was finance. And I guess that was what I wanted to do. And I went, studied finance. And then the crash of 2008 happened and I graduated 2009. So it's probably the worst time to be try and be a finance professional. And so I went through a really challenging time there, but eventually I got a job at a boutique investment banking firm. And that was, I thought like, okay, now I was set for life. I got the job that I wanted. I'm working in finance. But I then long story short, I was not very good. I was not very good. My bosses thought I was underperformed.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Experience personally, and it was something that I definitely was excited about as a set of product features and principles when it came to building our driver app.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Car, take this giant bag, you know, put it in my trunk, and then off we went. And in the middle of the drive, she's like, hey, I need to drop off and do my laundry on the way to the mall. And I just had to, okay, cool. Like we took a detour, you know, I lugged this giant bag out of our trunk and helped this lady do her laundry. And then we went to the mall. And I got very little money out of that experience. And it was an instant, but this is kind of eventually what led to, I think a lot of the support I gave to our driver teams when they were pushing for, hey, we need more waiting fees. We need to add multiple stocks in order to make sure that, hey, a lot of this extra work was actually compensated and was something that I obviously”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, drivers do a really challenging job. And I think I just wanted to understand what that role was like to kind of build a lot more empathy towards the job and make sure that our product was catered towards what those needs were. So when we first launched our car ride hailing services, I think I was the first actual driver on the app. I would every now and then would be a driver. And I remember in the early days when I actually picked up a customer, you know, it was this lady. And she put in her destination as a mall. And so I went to her, I went to this house, you know, and I knew that, okay, I needed to drive to this mall. But then this lady comes out with this giant bag. And so I had to like hop out.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be able to just say, like, oh, let's hire person X from organization Y with job description Z. And we know that they probably can deliver because, again, the talent availability was really low. And so a lot of times I needed to, I felt like I needed to understand, okay, what is this job? What exactly does it entail? And seeing how bad I am at it allowed me to understand what good looked like. And so I held a lot of those roles just because I wanted to understand every part of the business as best as I could in order to then find somebody who could do it orders of magnitude better than myself. I would say that is true for all of these roles, except for being a driver. I think being a driver, I wasn't trying to understand what excellence as a driver looked like.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yes, actually, you know, I did have a stint as an amateur performance marketer in the early days of Kojik. I would write copy, I would upload ads onto Facebook and Google and try and do my best in kind of optimizing our online marketing spend. But I think I did all of those things, not because I wanted to be scrappy necessarily, but I do think that as and this is probably most relevant for founders, less for executives. But I think as a founder, I do think it's really important to understand the work that needs to be done in order to see what excellence looks like. And for us, again, we came from an ecosystem where the availability of experienced talent was relatively low. And so for me, it was very hard.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that I think is kind of like probably one of the hallmarks of this region in general where I have no doubt that what we were building and what we are today is a technology company. But I do think that in the early days, you do have to be a lot more operations heavy. And then I think that lends to that scrappiness because there are a lot of things that to solve elegantly and technically will take a lot of time. And it just kind of overfocusing on those type of solutions, I think would be doing your customers a disservice because there are opportunities to make things a lot better just through probably more innovation in In operations to kind of kick start things until you have the more elegant, scalable technical or product solution.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A minority of situations were like that, but a lot of that was just like, hey, having an on-call service where they could just dial a number and somebody within a five, ten minute distance would actually show up. And so we would have these patrols.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Knew that, hey, we weren't just a platform that just kind of that didn't care. We actually cared about their safety. And that helped build that goodwill, even as competitors started coming in and paying more money. We still had a lot of loyalty within the driver community because of things like that.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But instead, we actually hired private security. So we actually work with private security companies to help these situations, to help our drivers in those situations, to help kind of like extract them out of these sticky situations. And so we actually ran a fairly big private security operation for a fairly long time until it became common to have Gojek drivers do all of these things across cities, we actually ran this very operation intensive thing just to make sure that our drivers could be as safe as possible. And it showed our commitment to the driver community. It showed our commitment that we cared. And again, going back to that earlier point around having that branding association drivers.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Areas that are essentially controlled through violence by specific area mafias. And when we start having drivers pick up orders and pick up passengers, these people would actually physically assault our drivers. We've had everything from like bricks thrown at our drivers to knives and machetes being brandished at them to just physical altercations like literally like mobs of people getting into these brawls. A lot of these kind of things that actually happen on the streets of Jakarta at the time. And I think it would have been easy for us to say like, hey, they're all contractors. They're third parties that let them kind of just sort it out.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So called moat that doesn't get talked about enough is the fact the fact that you're able to do hard things because hard things are hard. And just simply doing things that are hard, as long as they create value to your customers actually is a position that makes it harder for your competitors to be able to win over your customers because it's hard to do those things. Probably another example of doing something that sounds very difficult was that in the early days of Gojik, there was a lot of resistance to our services. And one of the forms of that resistance, one of the more common, most common form of that resistance in the early days was actually by motorcycle taxi mafias. So you would have like these.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really don't like the idea of moats. Again, one of the concepts that gets thrown out a lot by strategy type folks of having, what's the moat of your business or your product? And usually people are looking for an answer of like, oh, look at this capability or look at this feature or look at this distribution partner or all of those kind of things. And I don't believe that any modes are durable over time. Eventually with enough time, all modes can be crossed. And I think one.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we ended up making the decision of actually copying those features. So we actually saw all these like third party fraudulent apps. And instead of building a whole system to kind of prevent them from being built or preventing them from being worked, preventing them from working on the platform, we just said, hey, let's take their top two or three features and let's build them into our app. And that actually significantly reduce the number of users on these third-party apps just by kind of having this mentality of like, you know, if you can't beat them, then join them. And so I would say that wasn't a philosophical decision or a principle decision is actually a decision made out of necessity because we simply couldn't build all the capability to combat these apps at the time.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the time we didn't allow, so things like, you know, we wanted drivers to be conscious of what was happening on the app. And so we would actually ensure that drivers would push the accept order button. We made sure that that was the only way.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was at the time there was a lot of fake driver apps out there because we didn't have all of the security investments that we eventually made, things like code obfuscation and better API security that wouldn't allow for these fraudulent driver apps, these basically third-party driver apps to connect to our platform. So there were a lot of these drivers using these third-party driver apps that were doing things that, so they were kind of doing unsavory things like stealing driver details, getting some of them even as bad as financial details so that they can then at some point drain driver funds. And the way that they did it, the way that they convinced drivers to actually use these apps was that they actually added some features that”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like a boost with a vault with cash in it. And we had at the time already tens of thousands of drivers all across Indonesia. Another scrappy story that actually Crystal reminded me of recently that we did”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be able to take that money out for their earnings. And in the early days, we actually had cash booths. So we actually had physical spaces with like a vault and cash sitting in the vault where drivers can show up, you know, show that, oh, this is my driver ID. And this is the balance that I have with you. Please give me the cash. And so we would have these actual physical locations where there would be lines of drivers essentially taking cash. And we eventually figured this out of like, okay, we'll work with a bank and integrate with an ATM network and all of that. But in the early days, we just did it ourselves of being basically building essentially a mini ATM network, which is, I think, even that sounds too fancy of what it was. It was literally.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that we did in the early days that was absolutely crazy was that we were one of the pioneering companies, one of the pioneering technology companies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. And so we came into an environment where a lot of the things that maybe companies or people in more developed economies take for granted, for example, having electronic or digital payments. That was something that actually didn't really exist that much when we first started. And so we had a problem of actually trying to pay drivers because drivers, every day we would be paying out incentives or just having customers pay with their credit cards or their stored balance. And then we'd have a challenge in getting our drivers to actually”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are the opportunities that I would say people should look out for? They're rare. Admittedly, they're quite rare, which is why, in my opinion, the laziest kind of branding tends to be the most popular. Just put your name and your copy on a billboard or on a CPM or CPC campaign. There are these opportunities, I think, on being able to reinforce the value proposition of your business in a way that is beyond just kind of visual recall. And I think that I think was why that specific anecdote is something I like to talk about because it was really, really one of those special things that reminded people on why we're here.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Past me with this imagery on them. And immediately I get that association. Like, oh, I'm stuck in traffic, but I could be out there cutting through traffic on a motorcycle. Or you see them like carrying packages or delivering food and you immediately get like, oh, like these are guys who can deliver food or deliver packages for me. And so it was like this beautiful combination of one just having that imagery and having that visual everywhere as a reminder of the brand. But more importantly, it was also a physical kind of, it was a physical reminder of the service, of what we do and of how we can help you. And so looking for these opportunities where, again, customers can kind of make that connection between the logo and the colors and the name with actually what the service is.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the jackets and helmet piece, I think, is really, really important for two reasons. One, the more obvious reason, which is that because they were just all over the streets of a mini cities in Indonesia, people were familiar with the imagery and the name. But I think it's also really, really important that people saw what was happening. So, you know, if we just, if we were like, I don't know, an airline and we branded a bunch of people on the streets with our brand, it's, yeah, sure, you know, that might help with brand recall and people might know about the name. But what was really, really powerful was that when people would be seeing these drivers with their jackets and helmets, they would be seeing passengers on the back seat as they were stuck in traffic, right? So I'm stuck in traffic and I'm seeing these people whizz.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of what that culture is, I think was something that we did really, really well in the early days that allowed us to continue maintaining leadership in spite of the fact that our competitors had more money, which meant that they could offer more discounts, they could offer more incentives to drivers. But we really kind of leaned very hard into being not just a”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whole cultural phenomenon of sending GoFood for these people. And we kind of lean into it in our product feature where all of the other players in the market at the time basically only allowed you to deliver food to your home or your office. But we actually created a feature that allowed you to choose a delivery point that was far away from where you were. There was a lot of reasons why other companies didn't allow it at the time because it's like, oh, it might be used for fraud and stuff like that. But we leaned into it. We leaned into it and actually created features that allowed to put your pickup point far away from where your actual location was. And then we kind of just had fun with this whole idea of GoFu dating. And so, yes, it's kind of part of branding, but thinking about branding beyond just marketing communication, but actually being relatable and being part of the culture and being sensitive.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indonesia. And I think even going beyond the more aesthetic or communication oriented investments, we also leaned into cultural artifacts in our product features to kind of really build this brand that is part of day-to-day culture. One of my favorite cultural artifacts is that in Asia, it's fairly common to send food as gifts to your loved ones or maybe people you're interested in dating. So people would send over like food as gifts to their romantic interests. And so when we launch our food delivery service, a lot of people were actually using it for this. Like, you know, I'm going to send it to my boyfriend or my girlfriend or the person that I'm interested in dating. And so it became this.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Areas. And I think one specific area that I think is really, really important is that you create consistency across all customer touch points. And so branding is not just a cool logo, cool advertising, fun imagery. But it's really about the impression that a customer or a user has with your product and with your business. So having that consistency across all customer touch points is really important. So how you write copy and advertising and in the app, how you even design the app. But we were the first company of scale to kind of have ads that don't take ourselves too seriously. We make fun of ourselves. We make fun of our cultural observations of Indonesia. And again, to kind of just build this overall feel that like, hey, we get you. We are part of the overall culture of”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Loyalty towards the products of the company go beyond just like, hey, go beyond a relationship that can easily be swayed just through discounts or more features that other competitors might have. And so I'm a really, really firm believer of how important this is because you can see it if you step out of the tech bubble for a second, you can see that there are so many great companies out there that really rely on the strength of their brand to build these fantastic businesses and to create great experiences for their customers. And you ask, you know, what are kind of the things that one can do? I think for us, we invested a lot in our brand across multiple areas.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally, like more than a hundred times more capital than we have. So it's easier to kind of talk about what we built as this kind of giant business. But we came from a place where we were seriously underfunded. And I think a big reason why we survived was that we built a great brand for our consumers and for our drivers and for our merchants. And I think that great brands create associations in their customers' minds that transcend the typically transactional or utilitarian one that most people have with businesses. They become part of one's identity. I think some of the best in class examples of these are probably all the Apple fanboys and fangirls, Nike sneakerheads for these individuals, the brand becomes really part of a big part of their identity and in their”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we actually started as a very scrappy company where we were by far the underfunded player. And without brand, that we probably would have never gone to escape velocity beyond that scrappy stage. We've maintained our leadership in Indonesia. through a lot of the things that we actually did on the brand side to give you a sense of how scrappy we had to be in competition. For the first six months after launching our app, we had only raised about $2 million. And our regional competitor had already raised $250. So they had.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do agree with you that it is kind of the squishy thing that most people see as an afterthought may because it is kind of this squishy thing that it's hard to define. But I'm a very, very big believer that the two most important things in a consumer business are product and brand in that order. And I don't think I need to sell the idea, especially to your audience, that product is absolutely critical and probably the most important. But yeah, the brand is an afterthought is definitely one of the areas where I think there's a giant missed opportunity for consumer tech businesses. And I almost, you know, I get why we kind of opened the session by talking about the size of the business to give an appreciation of the scale for audience members who might be unfamiliar with us or with the region. But I wish I did have to start.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bit of investment that you have to actually put in in terms of advertising and customer education that increases those customer acquisition costs. And it also leads to design constraints because there's only so many ways you can display a whole bunch of different services that actually have little to do with each other, which is why when you see super apps a day, it's kind of like this giant menu or this giant grid, which does limit the design decisions that you can make, which is unfortunate because if you kind of actually, I think it's an unsolved problem at this point.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was insane, like, of course not. Our drivers are not trained masuses, but that was the question that people ask because they thought like, oh, this app is an app for these driver related services. So if there was a massage service, I'm assuming if that same man who's going to give me a massage. And so, you know, I think this kind of illustrates the importance of having these unifying concepts that are easy for customers to think about the multiple different services. It's not as simple as just saying like, oh, we have a lot of engagement. We have a lot of eyeballs at a service. And then you have a super app that makes sense for customers. And so that whole nirvana of like of lower CAC, higher retention that are on these great strategy decks often don't pan out because you kind of have to then resell this idea of like, oh, this is another service and you can use. And that's another.”
2023-03-26 · Lenny's Podcast · Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source