完整逐字版|Yu 親自校對的完整稿,忠實保留笑聲、咳嗽、口誤與註記。Amber=藍、懷宇=粉。
開場寒暄與流程說明
Amber哈囉。
懷宇哈囉。
Amber欸,Hi,Amber.
懷宇Hi. 啊,怎麼稱呼你,懷宇。
Amber喔,懷宇,對對對。那我大概那個… (笑) 一個月前我有送那個 LinkedIn 邀請給你,所以很高興。
Amber對對對,我記得你有一點面熟。
懷宇對對對。
AmberOkay, nice to meet you.
懷宇Okay, nice to meet you.
AmberOkay. Uh, so, um, so, 懷宇, I I guess James was the one talking to you, is that right?
懷宇Yes. Yeah.
AmberUm, okay. So, 我先稍微說明一下,就是 uh, the hiring manager for this role is uh, someone called uh, Mike. He's actually the GM uh, in the moment, and (咳嗽) I previously was in this role.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberAnd so, I was supporting the GM to do the first, uh, what was the the the kind of the second screening.
懷宇Mmh.
Amber所以我今天的跟你的討論,I will, I'm going to focus quite heavily on uh, anything related to the actual operations of the role. 然後,Uh, Uh, 我目前的 assessment,我自己有一個 uh, like a a kind of set of methodologies. So, what I'm gonna do is I do have a set structure that I'm going to go through.
懷宇Okay.
AmberTo help me assess the specific criteria for each of the operation.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberUh, pillars. So, um, in total I have, I think six or five questions.
懷宇Okay.
AmberYeah, five questions that we'll go through, and I actually do this with every single candidate.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberSo, uh, before I go into those five questions, um, I would like to, if you can do a quick three minutes intro of yourself, uh, just based on anything you you think that I should know about you. I have already seen your CV.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberAnd I also have look at your LinkedIn profile as well. So, I know the context of your career history. So, you don't need to go through everything again, but you can spend three minutes telling me anything you want to tell me.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberAnd then after that, uh, you can ask me uh, any like one question that you're really dying to know.
懷宇Mmh.
AmberUm, anything related to the company or the role or my experience working at Uber. And then, once we've done that, I want to dive into those five questions. I want to make sure you have enough time to answer all those five questions.
懷宇Okay.
AmberI ask each candidate. And then, we can see any time that we got left for anything else. Um, does that sound good?
懷宇Yeah, okay.
AmberOkay, great. So, tell me a little bit of yourself, and then before you ask me a question. Yeah.
自介(3 分鐘)
懷宇Okay, so, um, glad to see you, Amber. Uh, so let me introduce myself. I am a consumer growth and platform uh, leader for 11 years. So, there are three major decision that shaped me. So, first is join Dcard as employee number four. So, I join Dcard before it was founded and stayed there for nine years. I led a team about 40 people and own consumer growth for the whole market. So, I build Dcard from the college students forum to the biggest forum in Taiwan. Um, after that, we still increase the daily active user 30% year over year for two consecutive years. So, that's what I learn uh, to build a social community from scratch. And the second decision that shape me is that uh, I took the oversea markets including Japan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, and successfully help Hong Kong double the daily new members, and also help Malaysia from zero to one by solving cold start campus by campus problem. And Japan told me the lesson that global and local, I mean some successful concept in Taiwan cannot be just transferred to another country, that's Japan told me. And the third decision is join Momo. Momo is the one of the largest e-commerce in Taiwan, so now at Momo I lead four managers and 20 people. I built the marketplace product and traffic product including a free shipping program that need to consider of both merchant side and consumer side, and influence hundreds of millions NT dollar range. So, Dcard told me build consumer growth, and the oversea chapter told me own PML in unfamiliar market, and Momo told me the subsidy economics and marketplace execution at scale. So, this role, I mean the Uber head of consumer strategy and operation, just combine them together, and it's a three-sided market and global company. Also need to consider of the P&L, which match the position that I am pursuing right now.
AmberExcellent. Mm, I just curious when did you start to manage the Japan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia market for Dcard?
懷宇Uh, it's around 2022.
AmberGot it, okay. Thank you so much. So, uh, 懷宇, any questions for me?
Yu 反問段
懷宇Ah, yes, so, let me, oh, I have an question is that, um, so first, con- congratulations for being promoted to the APAC, I I think.
AmberOh, it was not a promotion.
懷宇Ah, it's not promotion?
Amber(笑) It was lateral.
懷宇Ah, okay, it's lateral.
AmberAh, so, just to clarify, APAC, uh, like the local market head of consumer ops, they do not report to me. So, I'm more like a strategic partner.
懷宇Oh, okay.
AmberWorking with the APAC uh, area. So, to me, it's fun, it's a very...
懷宇Interesting role.
AmberDifferent role, and working more closely with the global team, and also supporting the local team to grow.
懷宇Ah, okay. So my question is um, (笑) so in your perspective, how do you think we can cooperate, if I have the opportunity to work in your previous position, how would you like us to working together? Is there any challenge that you have faced before when you are in the previous role to cooperate with the APAC role?
AmberOh, yeah. Okay. So my current role is actually a new role. So there wasn't a role like this one before. Uh, but there was a couple of team members they are working on consumer initiatives in a regional role. But anyhow, in the past, I didn't really encounter any like issues in terms of working with the regional team. Instead, at that time, it was more of a regional team was supporting any of the global to regional product rollouts, as well as global to regional strategic initiatives. So they would like local team to adapt and start to operationalize things. So however, I do see a massive opportunity going forward. At the moment, because I'm carrying the local operations experience, and when I shift to the regional role, one of the most interesting perspective is I'm actually looking at how the other markets run their market, run their consumer strategy. So I think one of the most critical support I can give to the local team is to continue to allow local team to have that kind of perspective of how the other markets are actually operating in the world, so that when local team got into a situation you feel like you are stuck, or you feel like the product doesn't offer you the right usability, we'll be able to scale it and also leverage the other markets' experience, and then we can channel through the experience to the other markets as well, to make sure global strategy is actually much closerly knitted with the local needs. So that's kind of how my role and the local head of consumer ops can continue to work together going forward.
懷宇Mmh. May I ask second question? (笑) Just one minute, so before you move on to this new role, I think maybe you have something that you still want to achieve in your previous role, the head of consumer strategy in Taiwan. May I know is there anything that you still want to achieve for that position?
AmberMm, yeah, of course. So I think what one thing is really interesting at Uber is every year or every six months, we have a very different market dynamic, and kind of challenges we are trying to tackle. So one of the key challenges or opportunities for this year, there are two, and they are actually publicly aware kind of information. Number one is the actual online delivery act, the regulation is coming into play within Taiwan. And the second one is Foodpanda had announced that they're going to acquire, um, Foodpanda, (註:Amber 講錯,應為 Grab 擬併購 Foodpanda) So even though this deal hasn't been officially approved by TFTC, but I do see that Grab being a really strong competitor in the Asia-Pacific markets. So I feel like that's a fantastic opportunity to be competing with someone that's a platform that's really strong. They are very good at two-wheelers. They have a lot of two-wheeler experience in the other market. They are very strong in like consumer loyalty programs. And they are also very good at partnership and financial products. So I think that is the part they're gonna make this role super exciting. So even though I'm moving on to the APAC, I'm like wow, there would have been a lot of fun to be in this role.
懷宇Oh, okay. Thank you for your sharing. Um, and I think we can move on to the next stage, yeah.
Q1Grab 進場前後(12 月為界)的成長策略與投資取捨
AmberOkay, thank you. All right. So the first question, and I will suggest that let's aim for five minutes when you answer the question, just so that we have sufficient time for all the five questions to be answered. Okay. The first question is, oh, we just talked about Grab, so in this role, one of your critical mission is you need to continue to benchmark against competitors, while maintaining our margin leadership. Uh, so with using Grab's potential entry to Taiwan as an example, right now their shareholder report says they are targeting the entry in December. So as a head of consumer, how would you pivot the consumer growth strategy for the period of time before December? Let's say from now to December, what would be your growth strategy? And what would be your growth strategy from December onwards? So the six months before their entry and the six months after. What would be your strategy, and particularly on your investment trade-offs? You can take a minute to think about this if you want.
懷宇Okay, so let me structure my thought. So I think the most important thing, because we are facing the new competitor Grab, so we need to discuss what's the difference between Grab and Foodpanda. I think the difference is that Grab maybe they would make their taxi service enter Taiwan together, so like Uber has Uber Eats and Uber itself. So that's the difference compared to Foodpanda only. And another thing is that, for Grab, when they enter Taiwanese market, I think they would give some discount or some promotion campaign to users. And the third thing is that I'm not sure if they would want users who used Foodpanda to change their App to Grab App. But if they ask for that, because transfer would lose some users, I think that make there has a space for Uber to enter to get those users. So before Grab enter Taiwanese market, I think the one thing we can do is to combine our two different Apps together to make more users who use Uber to use Uber Eats. In my research, just roughly research, I find that maybe there's still like 30% who use Uber but didn't use Uber Eats. So we can convert them to use Uber Eats right now. And why I choose this target audience, that's because we can already reach them. They are not churn user, and they are not heavy user because heavy user you don't need to give any promotion, and new user you need to spend more. But with those who has already been our audience but haven't used Uber Eats, we can use very little discount or promotion to transfer them from Uber to Uber Eats. So that's the main target audience before Grab entering Taiwanese market. And after they enter Taiwanese market, the next six months, because I think they must give some discount, and I don't think at that time we should put the same number as the discount as Grab. But we can lose some orders, but we can't lose our loyal customer. So the most important thing after six months, I guess in Uber we call MPAC, Monthly Platform Active Consumer. So their frequency can drop, but we can't lose them, especially for those loyal customer. But for those light users, who would be attractive by the discount, we don't need to be worry about that, because it's very similar situation as Momo compete with Coupang last year. So Coupang give a huge discount, huge compensation to those users. But for us, the most important thing is not to lose our loyalty user. So in Momo, we call MoPro user, who subscribe our subscription project. And in Uber, that's Uber One user. So the most important thing is to make sure those Uber One user still spend their money and order their meal on Uber, and I would focus on their frequency. So if I can only give some discount to some users, I will focus on those Uber One or those heavy and loyalty users after six months.
AmberThank you. Now let's go to the next question. You can take a breath.
Q2會員制二選一 / 過去解過的 lifecycle 問題
Amber(笑) So you mentioned about Uber One. A core responsibility for this role is indeed to be leading our loyalty program. One of your team will be managing that. So for this question, you can choose from two topics. The first topic is if you are familiar with Uber One and Panda Pro, you can tell me what you think of the two membership strategies are. Second, if you are not familiar with those two membership, you can describe a user life cycle or subscription problem that you had tackled in the past. And you can tell me how you diagnosed the problem, the root cause of the problem, and how did you build a framework or a solution to solve the problem.
懷宇Okay, so I would like to pick the second one, and I think that I can share two experience. The first is what I have done in Dcard, but it's not like subscription problem, but very similar, so it's a funnel and the lifecycle itself. So in Dcard, the North Star metrics for us is the daily active user. So like I mentioned before, the way I increase our daily active user 30% year over year is that I made that by short-term and long-term strategy, and I can share the short-term strategy that's mostly focused on the funnel and the lifecycle itself. So at that time, for user who would be daily active user, we can focus on acquisition or retention. And when we are the largest forum in Taiwan to increase the daily active user, retention would be more important. So we found the daily active user can be decomposed as indirect and direct user. And those direct user you don't need to recall them, they would open the App by themself. So those indirect user, how do we recall them? The first is that you can use paid media or free channel. So the free channel the most useful would be push notification. So let's break the user how can they get push notification. First they need to turn on the push notification switch. And then they need to have some information to be informed, so they get push notification. And then the push notification they should be interested, so they would click. And after they click, they become the daily active user. So to diagnosis this, first I do some data analysis about how many user they turn on their push notification, and how many users they turn on but they don't receive push notification, and each push notification category, which one has the highest click-through rate. And then I found two things. The first is that the coverage rate is very low, because at that time we only send push to those who follow a board. But if you don't follow any board, you won't get any push notification. So how do we make more people follow board, or even we don't need you to follow board, we can still send you a push notification that related to a post you may interested. So that's what I do in the first. I make sure everyone who turn on push notification can get one push every day. And this push will come from the board he interacted the most. So that's how I increase the coverage rate. And the second is how do I increase the click-through rate? So I analysis different board to see which board has the highest click-through rate. And then I found that school board has the highest click-through rate. And that's because, my hypothesis is because that represent your identity. So people are more interested in their identity. But not every school has interesting content every day. So how do I use this concept to increase the click-through rate? The approach I use is that originally the push title would be NTU school has a content you may be interested, sent to NTU students. But not every school has this content, so I convert it into different kind. So although not every school has content, but every school must have one student who posted a content in different board, and that's interesting. So I send the push notification as NTU student who posted a content at funny board that you may interested. And that help us to increase our click-through rate about two to three times. So that's what I did to decompose the funnel and increase the daily active user for the short-term. And long-term we must still increase the content itself, so to cultivate a new board make it grow and to be mature. And also to consider user life cycle, if we put my learning from Dcard to Uber, we can consider in Uber, let's put the rider aside, just consider merchant and consumer as a two-sided platform. So how do we make those consumer, because it's like a flywheel, so how do we make consumer get what they want and the shop can get orders? For those new consumer who joined Uber, because we don't know their interested at that time, they haven't subscribed anything, so they are very fresh. And when he order one or two or three, then we understand his interested more. So for those new users, we should give them the most popular shop merchant, because we haven't know what they interested. So we should put the most popular, most star rating the highest to them. And also to give them some discount to make them have the first order. And when they have first order, they had already given us his credit card number and he know how to use our platform, and we can give them discount, understand his interest to make he order the second meal. So that's for new user. And for second users, the most important thing is to make the repeat purchase. Once a user can have second order, they would have much higher retention than only one order. And then if he is already the loyalty user, heavy user, then we should give them two things, one is to make them feel they are being valued on Uber Eats. Because like me, I order a lot on Uber, I don't care the money much. But if I feel that Uber take cheap of me, like someone say that who order Uber One but get higher price, that would make me lose my confidence to Uber. So we can't allow such thing happen, we need to put some different thing to those Uber One user, maybe faster delivery service, or better refund service to make sure they keep staying on our platform. And also we can use them to make new merchant get order. Because for some people like me, I order a lot on Uber, and most shop I had already ordered, so I need some fresh shop to find more diversity, or I would feel Uber Eats don't have much store. So we can use this concept to first make me feel Uber Eats has lots of diverse shop, and also make those new shop has their first or second order. So that's how I decompose the user lifecycle on Uber Eats. And another lesson that I learned from Coupang...
Amber懷宇, just checking, sorry for interrupting, we still have three questions. So you can choose if you want to, cause I'm worried that you might not be able to get through all of them. So can we carry on, or your example is very important, you want to go through it?
懷宇Um, so one sentence, like 30 seconds. So from MoPro, Momo's subscription service, and Coupang WOW, I find one thing that maybe I'm not sure do we have done that on Uber One, but we can make users subscribe Uber One with like $1 or even free. So once they get used to a service, it's more difficult for them to reject that service. So that's one way that I think we can use on Uber One. Because Coupang just did that way, you only need to put $1, you can get three months subscription, and most people would forget to cancel. And another is when you cancel they use lots of method to keep you stay. So most people would stay in the process when they want to cancel. So that's what I think we can do on Uber One.
Q3Local × Global:推動 product 改善與 alignment
AmberThank you, okay. Question number three. You will also act as a primary bridge between local Taiwan team and regional and global product teams. So can you tell me about a time that you drove a product improvement to support growth? And how do you drive alignment? Let's say if you are in the position for Taiwan, so you will be competing with all the other Uber Eats markets, cause all the Uber Eats market will be submitting product requests. So how do you think that you representing Taiwan, you would drive that alignment for initiatives that's for Taiwan, and probably not particularly relevant to the other market, what would you do to try to get that product ask prioritized?
懷宇Uh, okay. So I want to earn some product resource for Taiwanese market. So first, I think that we need to consider how global think. So for global team, if Taiwanese market is important, then they would invest in Taiwanese market. That's one thing. And the second thing is that, if the method used in Taiwanese market can be reusable or transferable to other market, then they would like to invest that product in Taiwanese market as an experiment market. So I would go from these two method to earn the resources. So the first is that if I can found some value in Taiwan is market, so maybe I can prove that when you invest the product to us, I can have much incremental gross booking, or incremental margin, that's much higher than other market, that's one way I would do. And the second way is that I would decompose the product that can be applied to Taiwan. I would find some similar country that has the same condition as Taiwan, maybe the market maturity, maybe the penetration rate, maybe the demand and supply itself. So if I can find some country or maybe the language speaking, and I make the global team believe that it's transferable from Taiwan to other countries, and Taiwan would be a great experiment market to validate their idea, then I think it's one approach that I can persuade the global team.
Q4合作行銷(co-marketing)如何確保平台整體增長
AmberAll right, thank you. Now let's go to the next question. So let's say there are actually a lot of co-marketing campaigns that you can see in our platform. For example, a lot of the offers that we work with certain restaurants like percentage off or buy one get one free. So let's say if you are leading a co-marketing growth with restaurant partners, can you think of an example of how you would design a partner-led growth initiative, potentially similar in Momo, with your partners? How would you ensure the investment from your partner, and potentially from your platform, regardless it's discount or visibility resources, how can you make sure that investment doesn't just drive the growth for your partner, it also help you drive the growth for your platform? So for example, you want to make sure when you work with Pizza Brand A, it's not just grabbing the business from Pizza Brand B. You make sure that campaign actually help your entire platform grow. And how do you measure it? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, it's a complex question, so you can just chat through it, but make sure you understand the question first.
懷宇Um, yeah, so you means that when we has a partnership with some merchant and we pay for them for like the buy one get one free, and they would get more orders, but how can we make sure that also has some corresponding benefit for us? Is that correct?
AmberIt's, so the investment discount can be from you or it can be from the merchant, doesn't matter, most of the time is from both side. So how can you make sure you are not just making this merchant grow by consumers shifting their orders from other merchants? You want to grow the platform.
懷宇Okay, I got you. So it's not the same category cannibalization, something like that. Okay. So the first, let me give it a beat, so the first is that how to validate is it helpful for us? I would solve this the first. So basically we need to has the same cohort with two group, one control group, one holdout group, one experiment group. And these two group, one we give them the promotion the discount, and another we didn't give them. And we can observe in this period and after this period, is there such kind of audience we give them promotion the discount has left some incremental margin, or incremental gross booking? That's the way we can validate is it helpful. And another thing is that how do we increase the successful rate of such kind of cooperation? So the important thing is that we need to focus on those customer who are not such kind of target audience before this promotion, or we can do it with some experiment. So we don't do such kind of promotion immediately for every user on our platform, but we randomized choose one and randomized with another control group, we can compare them by their maybe life cycle, maybe by their occasions usually order a meal, or by the price range they order a meal, to see which kind of user group has lived, which kind maintain, then when we enlarge the promotion, we can focus on those increase their incremental margin and incremental gross booking. But for others, if they won't be changed by such kind of promotion, they just take advantage of the promotion, then when we enlarge this kind of promotion, we won't cover such kind of users. That's what I would did in this kind of promotion.
Q5高績效團隊:aggressive 目標與 morale
AmberI think that makes sense, and that's definitely one way we can do it. So thanks for your answer. Final question. (笑) Take a couple of minutes to answer. So you will be leading a high-performing team. In your experience, what is the right approach to achieve aggressive business goals while maintaining team morale? And make sure there is no burnout. Especially it's already a very fast-paced, high-pressure environment. So your team, it's already a high-performing team. What would you do? What would be your leadership style?
懷宇So do you mean that with such kind of high-performance team, we still want to increase their performance? Or maintain...
AmberThe performance is not necessarily tougher. It's just there's always aggressive business goals. And you know your team is already a high-performing team.
懷宇Okay, so first, I think the most important thing, the best way is everyone has the same goal. So if the company goal, the business unit goal, and everyone's goal can be aligned together, that would be the best thing. So when you achieve the company goal, you can also achieve your personal goal, then you would invest and you would get the sense of achievement in such kind of topic. But not everyone can be aligned to the company goal. So second approach is that I would do one-on-one to understand each member, what they care the most. Some of them may care of the achievement, some of them may care like the salary, or some of them may care about learning things. And I would help them to get what they want by finish the task, the challenge we have to face, we have to overcome. So that's what I would do. And for my personal leadership style, I think that vary depends on which kind of culture the company is. But most of time, I would be more like context over control, so I would make everyone understand why we do this and how I would do this, but maybe the approach you can try by yourself, if that's a way that can finish the task. But sometimes, if it's an emergency situation, or for someone who has no enough ability, then I would tell them how and what they should do to overcome such challenge and get achievement.
AmberAll right. Well done, you've finished all five questions.
懷宇Okay, thank you. (笑)
收尾 — 開牌加速
Amber(笑) Yeah, so now, sorry for putting you through pressure, but I think you did well, you gave me a lot of very comprehensive answers. So, 懷宇, thank you so much for today.
懷宇Uh, okay. And Amber, may I ask another question, is that currently I have another offer is in progress, and I think they may give me the offer just like this two or three days, and it would be very tight for the time. But I am very interested in this role, so if we can move on to next stage, I wonder if we can speed up a little bit, yeah.
AmberUm, I think, yeah, understand that. Um, 我會跟那個 James,我待會就先跟 James 說,然後我會 make sure he can get back to you as soon as possible. 然後,到時候你再看有什麼方法或者是你有什麼決定需要做這樣子。那我待會就先跟 James 說,他就會先知道這件事。
懷宇好,好,好。那我因為我有他的 Line,所以我也可以傳個訊息跟他講一下這樣子。Okay,好,那感謝 Amber 你的時間。
AmberNo problem. Thank you so much. Nice chatting with you. Okay, see you.
懷宇See you.