Building for a Global Audience: Technology’s role in connecting customers!

Panel Discussion:

A product taking shape from 0 to 1 is a kind of experience that is marred with excitement, challenges and relentless pursuit to make it work.

Taking the product from 1 to 100 is a challenge in itself as 0 to 1 would provide amazing feedback and nuances from customers that shape the direction of the product roadmap.

Now imagine taking the product to a global audience.

This is an altogether another conundrum to be worked upon.

With so many questions in mind, we had the opportunity to connect with amazing Industry leaders

The esteemed :

Ted Dworkin — Chief Product Officer, Eventbrite

Vidhya Duthaluru — Managing Director, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Shirish Andhare — Former Head of Product at Uber & Twitter

Amazingly moderated by Maisha Gray-Diggs, VP of Eventbrite

With a combined corporate experience of close to a century, they brought a lot of insights to the fore.

A few include :

Ted — Be fearless and always say “not yet” in case your product is bulky

Vidya — Say yes to things that will make you uncomfortable.

She also emphasized on personal choices and their impact at different stages in one’s career

Shirish — Stay local but think global, be authentic and always stay close to the craft

My discussion notes with the panelists :

KPKR — How does a country that doesn’t guarantee RSVPed folks turn up to an event?

How does Eventbrite want to pitch in India?

Ted — I see amazing potential especially in India given the great following for events like movies and cricket (stressed!).

KPKR — How does Eventbrite put in place a governance mechanism to suit local policies and laws?

Ted — We have very good models in place that detect and prevent things that are against local governance systems. Having said that no system is foolproof so we keep working on the models and try to improve.

KPKR — With Fintech revolutionizing the Banking domains. How can a bank stay relevant to its end users apart from just keeping money for them?

Vidya — That’s a great question and every bank today is asking itself. Having said that we are also going to work with the FinTech ecosystem to make things easier for our customers. Moreover we as banks are investing so much in tech space that we want to make our customer’s digital experience seamless.

So we keep reinventing, win the trust of our customers and offer the best banking solutions.

KPKR — Uber had a great run in India, 10 years anniversary.

What does one as a product guy keep local users need in mind to be part of a global mechanism?

Shirish — Well Praveen no matter how you design your enterprise solutions local or global or any market in specific, remember the customer is the core of our functionality.

Use data and listen to it carefully. It will provide you the answers that will tell you if you want a generic platform feature or an exclusive feature to cater to a market.

A Common question across to the panelists:

AARRR journey is a very difficult one. From Acquisition to Revenue.

How does one go about convincing one’s leaders to believe in the product just like us the PMs?

Ted — We live in a world that needs quick answers. So have 3 3-month or 6-month plan and see if the North Star metrics (business metrics) are met. If yes pitch in and if not move on.

Shirish — 3 years roadmap, 5 years roadmap are old. These days we need results.

Have shorter cycles, look up for the results and believe in data. If it’s in your favor speak up and convince your leadership to invest based on anticipated potential.

If not follow an iterative model to incorporate feedback and check for data again.

If this process reaches the threshold, no point investing too much into it.

Shirish also took real-time examples of WhatsApp and Slack as to how they scale up their game and where they are today because of what they do on a daily basis.

It is indeed amazing to learn from industry leaders.

Thank you very much for your time and great value.

#Product #Leaders #EventBrite #ProductManagement #KPKR