Kevin Aluwi, co-founder and former CEO of Indonesian super app Gojek, critiques the popular VC and consultant thesis that bundling services into super apps reliably lowers CAC and improves retention.
“All of the things that are really, really appealing, they will talk about, you know, lower customer acquisition costs, you know, higher attach rates to different products. Talk about, you know, higher, you know, retention across different services the ease of, you know, cross selling and upselling, you know, all of these things sound great, but in reality, a lot of those benefits don't pan out.”
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More from Kevin Aluwi
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Aluwi: Gojek curtailed fraudulent driver apps by copying their top features
“And so we ended up making the decision of actually copying those features. So we actually saw all of these like third party fraudulent apps. And instead of like, you know, building a whole system to kind of prevent them from being built or preventing them from…”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 31:26Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Aluwi: Gojek's volume rivals Uber globally and exceeds Lyft
“In terms of, you know, volume, I would say that we're up there with Uber globally and definitely larger than Lyft. I don't remember how many drivers are in the US, but it's definitely, we definitely have more drivers in the region than all of the, all of Ameri…”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 8:17Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
Insight
Aluwi: Super Apps Require a Unifying Concept to Cross-Sell Successfully
“There kind of needs to be a unifying concept. Across all of your services within the app for your users to be able to think about your product in a sensible way, you know, and, for us, the way that our customers thought about us was that was they thought about…”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 12:34Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
Opinion
Aluwi: Billboard and digital ad campaigns are the laziest form of branding
“In my opinion,
It, the laziest kind of branding tends to be the most popular you know, just, you know, put your name and your, you know, copy on a billboard or on a CPM or CPC campaign.”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 25:54Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
AssertionSupported
Aluwi: Gojek Ran a Private Security Operation to Protect Drivers
“We actually hired private security. So we actually work with private security companies to help these situations, to help our drivers in those situations, you know, to help kind of like, you know, extract them out of these sticky situations. And so we actually…”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 36:16Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
Insight
Aluwi: Unclear deciders and consensus-driven product teams severely slow execution
“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 design, the decider. I found that a lot of literature out there says that product teams should be thi…”
Kevin AluwiMar 26, 2023▶ 1:00:53Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
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