My quick bites to TIA PDC 2023 as a product designer

Thanks https://pdc.techinasia.com/

Four years ago, before the pandemic, I wrote like this one. I walked so many things until I arrived in this city again, Jakarta, not as a visitor but as a resident.

Finally, it’s offline. I can’t let this event go that easily. If you ask me why, I think it’s a good chance to sense the trend and recall what I learned so long ago that may be helpful now.

The atmosphere is still the same as before. It was so crowded, and hard to find a seat. Now, I think many talk about product management and AI as the world prioritizes them.

I follow my foot to what interests me and here are my quick bites of those stages. Hopefully, it’ll be helpful instead of me keeping it alone. It’s your choice to jump to the sections you are interested in first or read them from top to bottom.

Update Dec 8, 2024: I appended the part 2 from “Choosing the right growth strategy: Product-led vs Sales-led” section until the end of this article. Hope you enjoy them.

In conversation with Philipp Kandal, CPO of Grab

Exploring the innovative strategy behind Grab’s products and features.

Roles of product leaders

The core skill is creating as many values that excite people around whether stakeholders or customers. That’s why the skillsets of those two roles are similar from small to big companies with adjustment. Whether you are a founder or product leader, you are an entrepreneur who creates something in your area. But, before that, you need to believe that we can make it happen and make people around you believe it too. Listen to valuable input from them and what they need as we grow stronger together.

A product leader isn’t advancing your career journey but making people around you successful. It’s quite a journey. Make them enjoy success, and convince them to be happy to work with us. Scale as a leader and be better at letting go. Empower them to make better decisions because they make the decision and not you.

As a CPO of Grab, I have a big vision for digitalizing South East Asia (SEA). I want to increase the number of users along with people who benefit from Grab. That’s why we create opportunities for our partners whether they are merchants or drivers to increase their incomes too. Listening to them is also the key to a successful product that can enter different regions. For example, we know many people use motorcycles in SEA so that’s why we build GrabMaps.

Talk about GrabMaps

GrabMaps is the core foundation of whatever we do. We believe in making it happen, and so do the people around us. We involve them as a crowdsourced mapping. We challenge hyperlocal problems as opportunities for success. One of them is mapping narrow streets in cities like Jakarta and Hanoi. Drivers usually go through them and they are not mapped in the conventional map. We equip drivers with economical cameras as creative technology to help with the imaginary mapping as they move the position through them. Further, drivers also can share feedback (by capturing) and verify with others about the street conditions, e.g., floods, traffic jams, and else. In the end, drivers can find the customer’s location faster. It’s one of the ways we measure this crowdsourced mapping success.

What’s next?

We want our services more accessible and affordable for more people which influences profitability. If we can save 10 seconds, it’ll be a lot of time to save. For example, preparing the food first before the driver comes. Also, we will keep experimenting to get evidence that our initiatives are working, especially for the bosses. Like the old days when we wondered who wanted to get in a car with a stranger until we tested it and it worked.

Implement your North Star metrics effectively

Discover the pitfalls of over-reliance on North Star metric and how to use it to your advantage.

When we use North Star metrics

People use North Star metrics (NSM) to measure how customers get value from their products. It’s not just about revenue or getting money, but if it’s increased, the revenue will follow. In Tiket.com, we measure the number of sold seats as our NSM. It can explain many things, especially customer trust and loyalty. PMs should ensure the customers love the product because it solves their problems. If they don’t use it, it may be not suitable and it can’t push the business forward. It’s not a balance that we want.

NSM is a principle of growth that we can’t contribute directly but we can see our organization grow with it. NSM should be a parent and have children that we usually call OKRs, which we can contribute. One organization usually only has one NSM if the product baseline is the same across the department. Let’s say Spotify for example has different departments but the baseline product which is the music player is still the same. But, a big organization may have more than one NSM. Imagine let’s say the governance not only has the number of public transports as the NSM but we are sure they have more than it.

Align with the NSM and move it

People use the NSM to make a decision that aligns with the stakeholders across the company. To reach the NSM, we should combine it with the OKRs and then down it to the product initiatives as the strategy. The problem is when we are obsessed with it because it’s not every initiative will impact it directly. It’s just limiting ourselves in solving the user problems. We should experience as users to understand their behavior, and then be open to experimenting and doing a painful process. It’s not that instant to move the NSM.

It’s the PM’s job to align the NSM with everyone around to get the same understanding. We should ensure everyone is on the same page on the vision and goal. Then, we should break it down into the product initiatives. We should solve misunderstandings on a day-to-day basis by connecting the initiatives to the goal. Over-communication is needed to refresh why we need the initiatives and why the team should help. Those habits need to be built.

Before the initiatives go to the market, we should convince everyone that they are relevant. Let everyone know the pain and gain of users as the bottom line. Do the testing, get a lot of insights, and use the data to get buy-in of the initiatives that align with the NSM.

Decide and update the NSM

To decide on the NSM, we should understand what the most loyal users benefit from us. Come up with metrics as the candidates and check the correlation and relevancy along the time. Understanding why they are up and down at a time to understand what the users value from us. A great PM will try to understand what’s and why’s happening.

After we set it up, we should check it to ensure it’s still relevant or needs to change. Usually, we tend to focus on setting it up and forget it after it. Does it still measure how the users get value from our products? Use the answer as a concrete reason why we need to keep or update it. Then, milestones of the company also affect the NSM change. For example, at the initial state, the company uses the number of new users as NSM, then evolves into the number of purchases along with the company state. Leadership will make the decision as long as they are aligned in one soul. It’s great if we can challenge it with a transparent culture.

Including financial aspects or revenue

We may use the financial metrics as the NSM as long as we think it measures how our users get value from our products. If it’s not, we may use it as a business target or OKR. NSM is not about revenue but if we increase it we can get more numbers. We can generate a business model from loyal users who already get value from us. Let’s say Spotify uses the number of streams as NSM and can generate a business model from it to increase revenue.

It’s the beauty of PM to convert product metrics into revenue. We need to be creative and under pressure. One way to get the revenue from the product is increasing the conversion. Another way is to increase the margin per purchase. But we need to be aware of the elasticity of pricing and not make the customer run away. We need to experiment or validate any factors and ideas to drive revenue to increase the confidence level. There are many approaches to get insights like AB tests, interviews, etc. There is no silver bullet because different areas may need different approaches.

Design process to create effective designs

Learn the effective approach to ensure successful design outcomes that fulfill user requirements.

As a product design manager, Patricia, Head of Design, Bukalapak, tells us some problems that affect the design process and how to solve them. According to her, the design process is part of the product development process that is heavily on the discovery and development process. For this section, we’ll focus on the discovery phase when we formulate the problem-solving.

But, not everybody wants the problems. Many people tend to think about the solution first. It’s okay as long as after that you also think about the problems and outcomes. What is wrong so we need that solution? What will we get from it? It makes a strong foundation for designing a product. It should solve user problems and have an impact on the business. Patricia shared with us her framework or design process to handle it. It should benefit the team that adopts it in terms of timeline, cost, internal problem-solving, or else.

Patricia’s framework: Problem → Outcome → Solution

Problem

Sometimes, we only discover the symptoms behind the real problems. The impact is insignificant and it’s still hurting if we only solve the symptoms and not the real problems. We can say the symptoms as the business problems that are root of the user’s problems. We need to find the user problems to balance them with the business problems. Unless it’ll be hard to sell the solution. To figure out the real problems, we can do root-cause analysis by asking why five times usually called 5-whys. Then, we can get the answer by data, heuristic or competitive analysis, and in-depth interviews or surveys.

Tips: We should list what we know and don’t know to see how confident we solve the problem and achieve the outcome. It’s okay to put assumptions. We drive the process from those to find the things out.

Outcome

We should align with the team’s goal and the product’s objectives to define the outcome by solving the problem. There is a framework called an intense statement to define the outcome. It’s WHO + WHAT + WOW.

• WHO: Who is the target market?
• WHAT: What do you want to enable them?
• WOW: What is the differentiator?

A good intense statement should be measurable and no solution involved. Here is an example from the BukaReksa case.

BukaReksa’s intent statement

Solution

Crafting the solution is a process to bridge the problem with the outcome. So it’s easy when we get them first. Then, we do the ideation process to get a list of proposed solutions or ideas as the bridge.

To get an early signal if the ideas work, we should validate them using these methods but not limited to. We should choose the method based on the data type we want, our timeline, resources, and confidence.

• Concept testing: We use it when we want to get qualitative results like the user’s impression, understanding, and concerns toward the idea.
• Fake door testing: We use it when we want to get quantitative data like the number of users who demand or are interested in the idea.
• MVP: We cut the scope, ship the most important parts to the users, and track the performance.

After that, we should design the blueprint of the solution whether it’s a product or feature. We can design the flow with the details to minimize the missing parts first. Then, we can design the hi-fi prototype.

New Product Manager? How to excel on your first day and beyond

A guide for making a strong impact as a new product manager.

Reflecting on his journey as a product manager (PM) from zero until building the team from zero, Praz, CPO of Moladin, shares what the meaning of and constitutes a great PM.

Objectives to prepare

There are four areas of PM’s objectives we need to understand.

1. Product execution: It’s the first phase. One of the common mistakes here is PMs have an idea but they don’t know whether they can execute it. We can get an early signal for that through customer insight. After we know we can execute it, we can do the rest.
2. Customer insight: We analyze the product health metrics here, e.g., through the analytics. Then, we share the findings with the team. After that, we look back to the product execution.
3. Product strategy: Business performance is the most important factor here. First, we should understand the customers to build features that solve their pains and achieve their goals. Further, those useful features will drive the performance because the customers use or buy them.
4. Building influence on the related people.

Contexts for the first 90 days

It’s a common trap while planning the first 90 days that we don’t focus on gaining context first. To avoid it, we need to be curious or hungry to know more. There are some contexts that we need to gather first.

• Team member: What do they appreciate? What motivates them?
• Manager: Who are they? Let’s create a plan with them.
• Customer: Who is the target audience? What is the segment? What is the pain point? It explains why the product is built in the first place. Further, it’s usually impactful if we use 80% of our time to understand the problems, and then use the rest 20% to build the solutions.
• Product: What are the features? What is the roadmap?
• Market and competitor: How is the competitive landscape? What are our pros and cons? What is the future of this sector?
• PM process: Whether there is a design kick-off, stand-up, or delivery cycle, let’s find and analyze the gap to make the process effective and efficient.

Obj 1. Product execution

• Feature specs: Let’s explain it in a very structured format, using a story, and in a simple manner. Explain what to build, why, and what we are trying to achieve. Then, present it while motivating the team to achieve it.
• Product delivery: Let’s develop the product based on the feature specs. Unblock the blockers along the way.
• Quality assurance: Quality doesn’t impact directly the business but it shows how we care for our users when use our products. For example, where was the last time we approached a problem on a product like Spotify? If we don’t deliver a high-quality product, the strategy is useless.

Obj 2. Customer insight

• Data fluency: One of PM’s jobs is to get actionable insights. For example, if there is a traffic drop-off, why does this issue happen? After we observe the users, we learn the user behavior as the answer. Then, we reframe it as an actionable insight to solve the issue.
• Voice of the customer: Ideally we talk with the customers. If it takes a long process, we can talk to proxy users like stakeholders or customer services.
• UX design: Let’s build a great relationship with designers. It’s not only writing PRD and handing it over to them. We need to get constructive feedback and give them too, involve them along the PM process, support what they need, unblock the blockers, and guide them to solve user problems.

Obj 3. Product strategy

• Business outcome ownership: Everything we build is to achieve the NSM. Everyone should understand that number. So we know it matters or not if it’s connected with it.
• Product vision and road mapping
• Strategic impact

Obj 4. Building influence

It’s the combination of stakeholder management, team leadership, and managing up. We can start small by helping our team members understand the business context from the leadership. We don’t serve the leadership but the leadership should serve us to achieve business needs. Ask them to get a clarification of the business plan and company. Then, let’s think about how our domain can help to achieve the objectives. A great PM can pick pictures from various points to align them with the product strategy and roadmap, and then communicate with the team members.

Tips & tricks to follow through

• PM is messy and chaotic: We need to be comfortable in this situation. For example, we jump into a jungle without a map, but we can navigate our way to the goal and help align the differences.
• Exhibit an underdog mentality: Have you ever not followed the discussion and had no ideas? So never underestimate the problems and solve them with curiosity.
• Our journey is a marathon: Always hungry for our phase to achieve sustainable growth.
• Be hungry and curious: Go make mistakes every day and reflect on the experience.
• We should make our luck by focusing on what we really can control, i.e., preparation.

You found PMF — What’s next for your product teams

Understanding how to maximize PMF (product-market fit) and take your product to the next level.

As a VP of product, ShopBack, Isaac Timothy tells the PMF-ed start-ups about distances and gaps, how to fill and bridge them and influence others to do so.

Gaps and distances

After survival, those start-ups will grow along four dimensions: age, size, markets, and business units. There will be distance increases between new offices and HQ, new employees, and the founding team, and today and early days. It’s important to consider those distances because one of the product team’s roles is to make decisions. Our decision qualities depend on the available information. However, much information can be lost because of the communication gap, mainly when we use different languages. Besides that, we’ll grow older, which makes the distance between young and old. They say different things, e.g., one wants to deliver soon, and one wants more time for testing.

Each member has their own story to be on the team, which makes them see the same data differently. We need humility, e.g., reminding the senior person we hire to keep giving feedback to the team members. Also, we shouldn’t challenge the product instead we challenge the identity and ego of others because they are linked to the work they have done. It relates to Chesterton’s Fence, which is a heuristic that states “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.” Then, it’ll be worse when someone gives a project a cool name, but it’ll confuse the new members.

Fill and bridge them

Being Agile doesn’t mean we have no artifacts because we focus on speed and not documenting. We still need to document what was done, how, and what the impact to fill the gaps, especially when we working remotely. If people in the future don’t understand why we make decisions, they’ll reverse it and repeat the mistake. To fight the gaps and distances, we need these sets of information.

• The glossary of common terms: We should maintain it constantly.
• The directory of key decision-makers: Memos — To provide context for Chesterton’s Fence.
• The ledger of past decisions
• The map of current knowledge

For that, we need these extra roles in our product organization.

• Archaeologist
• Archivist
• Librarian

To transcend time and space, we can consider doing these things.

• Create videos
• Write, read, and re-write: If people understand our knowledge, we can grow to make cool things. It’ll motivate people to write and share the document because everyone wants to grow. To measure the success, we can ask “Will we understand what was written if we read it again in three months?”

Also, we need to consider the types of information we often forget.

• Fears and motivations
• Values and principles: It’s hard to convince stakeholders if we don’t know.

Nurturing

Once we have found PMF, the distance will increase and we start to realize the importance of filling the gap. These are going to be skills we need to thrive beyond writing the requirements.

• Influence
• Evangelism
• Negotiation
• Conflict resolution: Try to understand where is the person coming from. Ask questions to know how they move themselves. We don’t need to win every battle. Sometimes, we should involve people so they understand the decision.

One tip to do so is to have a meal with a different person each day to understand the team members and stakeholders. Try to initiate micro conversations and ask them questions to understand their values, fears, and motivations. Also, try to understand how they solve problems and why. In the end, we need proximity and engagement to influence others so we can make a high-quality decision together.

Update Dec 8, 2024: Sections on this point onward are the part 2. Hope you enjoy them.

Choosing the right growth strategy: Product-led vs Sales-led

Understand the different driving forces of a Product-led and Sales-led growth approach and how to know if it is time to adopt a hybrid Product and Sales-led strategy.

There are two CPOs, Aviandri Hidayat Rivai of Mekari and Rangga Wiseno of Dana, moderated by Nacitta Kanyandara, ex-CPO of Sayurbox, that talk about the product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG) strategy. Here are summaries of their conversation.

Approaches

Regarding the PLG, it ensures the value is delivered first before commercializing. It is usually applied to companies with a B2C model. They create a free trial plan first in order to move their users up through the funnel. After the users experience the value, they will usually convert to the premium plan. If not yet, the sales team will approach them. It’s more scalable, has low power to control, and is experimental.

On another side, the SLG puts out the commercial effort first to make more users get the value. It is usually applied to companies with a B2B model. The sales team will work hard to approach those companies. It’s usually hard to scale but it can.

Use cases

To start, it’ll be easier to use the default standard. The PLG is more effective on the B2C model, whereas the SLG is more effective on the B2B model. After that, you can advance it as Figma does. In Figma, they start with the users until they experience the value. Then, the sales team will approach and help them to raise it to their leadership as the buyer.

As extra use cases, let’s see how Mekari and Dana use both growth strategies. In Mekari, they apply the PLG and SLG depending on the product. In general, they are not just pushing to sales, they are trying to push the users to use the product until get the AHA moments. In Talenta, one of their products, they help the users until their first payroll as the AHA moment. With this approach, it matters to calculate the CAC as the metric to figure out how long the money is back. On another side, Dana balances the metrics by putting the same objectives between the product and sales team.

Challenges

Both strategies have their own challenges for companies that apply them. In Mekari, the complexity of their SaaS is one of the challenges for their users. Because of that, they use the hi-touch engagement to approach the users who tend to not activate. The sales team who do that needs to deliver value to them, which is another challenge. Dana, use the hybrid and customer-informed approach to face that challenge.

The uphill battle to make magical products

Figma’s Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita shares practical tips and tricks he’s learned through his experiences.

If you are a designer who uses Figma like me, you won’t skip the man behind the product, Yuhki Yamashita, who talks about how-to and how to know we build magical products. According to him, different areas have different perspectives but have the same opportunity to build magical products. We just need to consider the customers’ experience by simply shipping the product and getting their reaction. Yet, we also should align the value to be a meaningful growth lever for the company. It’s the uphill battle to that experience in the middle of typical discouraging development phrases.

Making magic requires the unnatural even on the strategy level. We should define the right goal put at the product objectives measured by the right business metrics or OKRs. The OKRs should justify the great experiences that are first signaled by the happy users. Then, it leads to user retention and product engagement, and finally to the metrics. For instance, one of the Figma team’s OKRs is increasing the % of editors inserting Design System components. To complete the OKRs, we also need headlines that say what we want the users to say at the end of the quarter or year to understand we are shipping in the right direction.

In terms of company growth, great experiences become magical ones when users get others by spreading the experiences. They snapshot the experience and share it. It builds other levers. It’s the magical moment we should design. It is measured first by love, then by utility, and finally by value. Yet, we can’t measure love precisely. We should go out of the tyranny of metrics. Instead, according to Yuhki, there are three ingredients to design the magical moment.

An irrational passion

It’s when everyone is excited and wants to build a magical moment to show off. We should be surrounded by people like that first. Before that, we should get the team members to see and feel the magic and make them responsible for it. In the end, instead of being a rational designer who said “There are only two possible solutions; let’s choose the better of two evils,” we want them to be irrationally passionate designers who say “There must be a better solution; I’ll keep exploring.” Yet, we still need to balance it with rationality on its bottom line to shield it.

We should understand the stakeholders and align with their thinking. What story do they want to accomplish? Why should they work every day? It motivates people even the skeptical or pessimistic ones. We should reframe and present our thoughts to align with their motivations.

A relentless insistence on better

It means to keep critiquing the design until it’s better but in a good way. Our critiques don’t need to be harsh. Instead of saying to your design, let’s refer to this design as not good enough. Reframe it and reflect on the story. Perhaps it isn’t a bad design, but the required constraints behind it are wrong. Instead of critiquing the design, let’s take a step back to critique the constraints that led to it.

Love your craft that fulfills people’s needs. Before that, figure them out. Don’t need to be business. Be detailed to make an impact.

An escape from regular routines

We may break and escape from the normal day-to-day routine since it may not work in this context. If you want to conduct a FigJam FunJam Sprint to make it more fun, please do so. Even with the priority, we can make problems seem to be exciting on a daily. It’ll level up the product conviction in no time.

MVP → MLP

Limited time and money are the reason we know the most viable product (MVP) in lean startup. It starts when we realize even a brilliant idea can be used by no one and should be tested first with MVP. We deliver smaller things to know whether it’s needed or not. It’s the basics of the product that users can use, feel, get benefits, and give feedback. It’s focused on the user’s needs. For example, they need to transport them from one to another point. Instead of a car, we may invest in a bicycle first.

This approach is preferable when we don’t know the customer needs so we build the core ideas first to move people. For example, AWS started from only the web to sell books. Then, they evolved their product when they realized people wanted to sell something online. Besides that, we also can use MVP to test those ideas before investing much money. One of the ways is to build it into the product and track its performance. Remember that MVP can be failed but the cost is worth the learning.

To summarize, there are four MVP benefits.

1. Deliver value to customers as fast as possible, then get feedback.
2. Quickly prove or disprove your idea.
3. Avoid investing in something nobody wants.
4. Quickly decide the next step of development.

Perhaps the MVP is not enough if the competitor already did the same better. Our MVP won’t work if in that way. We need differentiation among the competitors. That’s why we should build the most lovable product (MLP) instead of mere MVP. Here are the differences between MVP and MLP.

1. Primary goal: Collecting feedback v.s. Aiming to win over early adopters.
2. Time and financial cost: MLP needs more time and effort.
3. UI and UX: More attention on UI/UX on MLP to have emotional engagement.
4. Relationships with users: MLP must hook and interest the users.

Revolutionizing CX: Lessons Learned from Bank Jago

The fact that we rarely or even don’t go to the bank branch anymore signify the way we interact with the bank has changed in the past two years. It’s thanks to digital banking, which gradually is increasing nowadays, and one of them is Bank Jago. In this section, I’d like to share with you a story from Irene Santoso, Head of Customer Value Management at Bank Jago, about how they empower their users, considering their financial literacy, to fit with their modern lifestyle through a unique digital banking solution.

The journey starts with defining who Bank Jago is including how they can help their users and who they want to be. They conducted research to understand their users and discover their problems as opportunities. However, they scoped down the problems because they knew they couldn’t solve all of them. Then, they explore the ideas, create a sacrificial concept, revamp based on the feedback, and test the almost-real product. This process goes through three rounds of research.

1. They try to understand their users through 29 people including their leadership and target audience. They even visit their home to really understand their lifestyle related to money and how they can position themselves. At this stage, they know that they can be their users’ partners who want to help their users achieve their financial goals. So, the approach is more like a household collaboration.
2. Then, they test the concept by discussing it in a lo-fi design or a wireframe with 10 people. They want to know whether the ideas behind it are relevant to them. From their feedback, they improve the concept.
3. Last, they test the key concept in the form of a prototype with 19 people. They didn’t only test the concept, but also how they should interact with their different types of users. They collected feedback to ensure the desirability of their design.

Finally, informed by the research, they launch their three main unique features resonating with their users’ day-to-day financial lives.

1. The first one is pocket. Basically, a pocket is a bank account and one pocket represents one bank account. However, they believe pockets are more useful and meaningful because they put purpose to them. They learned from the research that people open a bank account because they want to save money for particular purposes such as vacation, education, and else. It’s manifested through the name that users can give it. Further, to make users excited to achieve their purposes, they invite users to set the target and show how close they are to it every time they save their money.
2. The second one is enabling financial activities with their loved ones. They learned from the research that people love to achieve financial purpose together with their loved ones. So, they enable users to share their pockets with their partners, friends, or family. It’s related to the household collaboration approach mentioned before.
3. The third one is the automation tool and insights. Bank Jago can handle the scheduled payment for the users so they can focus on anything else that matters. They also have an AI to categorize the transactions and show them as insights to help the users make better decisions regarding their finances in the future.

They said those features are not coming from them but from their users or customers. It’s the customer-centricity that they foster starting from their leadership. Their leaders invite the team to ask what else they can help their customers. They even think of their employees who use Bank Jago as customers too. They believe they aren’t here now without their customers. So, they try to engage and connect with their users continuously. They have many channels to listen and help them and be always in customer shoes such as FGD, social media listening, 24/7 customer services, and even a community gathering platform to help each other named #KumpulJagoan.

In the end, Bank Jago is not alone in achieving that. They are collaborating and innovating with their partner to embed themselves in broader digital ecosystems so they can help fulfill the needs of customers from different segments. They believe it’s their way forward.

Growing in a competitive market: Lessons learned from Vidio

In this session, Dhiku Hadikusuma Wahab, CPO at Vidio, shares the lessons learned from his perspective in growing a local video streaming service in the middle of big players out there. To compete in such of market, a product needs to be different from the existing players. Vidio know this well so they innovate their product and also their channel.

Innovation

For their product, they focus their innovation on the video quality. They have a system to score and define the optimal quality that can be played in a particular case. This innovation ensures their videos can be played in all circumstances.

Besides the product, they also innovate their distribution and payment channels through various partnerships to acquire more users. For instance, they work with telecommunication companies to bundle the Vidio subscription with the services they offer. They also work with the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to install Vidio on their TVs’ operating systems.

Regarding TV, Vidio conduct an innovation strategy called the product-led OEM partnership. It starts by disrupting connected TVs (CTV) in the Indonesian market due to internet growth, digital payment penetration, and affordable CTV prices. Vidio utilize this momentum to leap so every CTV provides content from them. Everyone can watch the content even for free for a month. After that, they can pay directly from their CTV. The more they watch, the more personalized recommendations they get curated by the system. Even further, Vidio provide premium content and there is a promotion for that when purchasing CTVs from their OEM partners. It becomes a value proposition for them.

Process

Behind innovative results, there are innovative processes and that’s why Vidio can achieve that because they know and do this so well. They adopt the Agile Extreme Programming (XP) culture and embrace the growth mindset. For the Agile XP culture, it means they emphasize speed, simplicity, and quality for their software development. They code, automate the testing, and implement continuous delivery. For the growth mindset, they have innovated in 5+ types in the last two years. Ultimately, by aligning it with the Agile XP culture, they can lead the hyper-growth in four aspects.

• Increase standards: We should think big and raise the bar. To make our team members better persons every day, feedback should be continuously delivered and received through a 1:1 or retrospective session facilitated by demanding leaders.
• Sharpen focus: We can’t do all things, so we should prioritize. Vidio prioritizes their works based on the content that will be happening. They start with the simple thing to get feedback earlier before going complex.
• Align people: To align their team members, Vidio uses OKRs and a roadmap. They plan their OKRs quarterly at the company level. Then, they plan the roadmap weekly that aligns with the OKRs. On this weekly basis, they embrace changes if needed that can even affect the OKRs.
• Pick up the pace: Vidio always thinks of how to be faster than before. They think of the ideal platform architecture. They think of the efficiency of the software development. If they can design one for two: app and web, they do that. The impact is not for users but for internal. They also encourage their team members to raise issues that can block the team and make a decision independently as long as it aligns with the objectives.