Product leaders from Delivery Hero, talabat, PedidosYa and Woowa Brothers share their personal views on building great products, the importance of global collaboration, and consistently focusing on customer experience.
- Jeroen Neijenhuis, Senior Director Product Strategy, Delivery hero – Jeroen is an experienced product leader with 10+ years of working experience.
- Leandro Malandrini, Chief Product Officer, PedidosYa – Leandro has extensive experience in the digital industry having worked for more than 18 years leading some of the best digital platforms in Latin America.
- Yi-Wei Ang, Chief Product Officer, talabat – Yi-Wei is on a mission to build product-led organizations, currently based in Dubai.
- Yong Kim, Chief Product Officer, Woowa Brothers – Yong Kim is the CPO at Woowa Brothers.
On your personal product philosophy
Jeroen Neijenhuis, Delivery Hero: A good product manager should have a strategic mindset. They should be able to set out a big vision, but break it down into meaningful steps. As a PM, you don’t have to have all the skills of a designer, or engineer, but you need to be able to understand how every individual works and how the team can effectively collaborate. Being able to get fast results while keeping a positive vibe in the team is a magic skill that product managers should have. Attention to detail, an entrepreneurial mindset, and the ability to zoom out and see the bigger picture all make a huge difference.
Leandro Malandrini, PedidosYa: Customer centricity and strategic vision are key. Product management really is at the center of everything in business – from the user-side to the technology-side. It’s important to have a holistic overview of what is happening, to be empathetic, and solve real problems. You need to be thinking about what the customer’s main pain point is and what value you can deliver while ensuring the product vision is aligned with the business’ overall mission.
Yi-Wei Ang, talabat: My personal philosophy and passion revolve around bringing the focus back to building a product that solves for real problems. Every iteration, detail, or new feature should make our customers’ lives 10 times better. Operationally, I’m always looking for these “10xers”. The ability to do this at scale at Delivery Hero distinguishes us from being an operational food delivery company to truly being a tech company that is shaping the future.
Yong Kim, Woowa Brothers: Baemin, the food delivery service from Woowa brothers, has been around now for 11 years. During this time, we have always kept the same “Baemin Philosophy”. This is a reference to our unique identity, brand and concept. These days, there are more and more delivery services with similar features and even design, but it has always been important to us to give people something completely different, a unique brand experience, that feels like “Baemin-ness”. We are not following product trends. Instead, we believe in our brand uniqueness for success.
On global collaboration
Jeroen Neijenhuis: At Delivery Hero, we collaborate with our global colleagues every day, exchanging knowledge, insights, and best practices to roll out new products and features across more than 50 markets. In the product team, we often launch a POC (proof of concept) in one market, before scaling it up to be a global value proposition. A good example of this is our recommendation section in the basket. For instance, if a customer wants to purchase a burger, our delivery platforms can recommend customers to add fries to their order. This feature was not previously available in all regions. This ability to collaborate globally is exciting for the product team. It means that every small local project has the potential to eventually be built on a global scale.
Leandro Malandrini: At PedidosYa, we are inspired on a daily basis by what the product teams at Delivery Hero’s other local brands, like talabat or foodpanda, are doing, and vice versa. We really believe that synergies create the best possible solutions for users all over the world. By collaborating and sharing knowledge, we also avoid doubling work i.e. we’re not all building the same thing multiple times. We can create semi-standardized solutions, with specific features and needs for different regions, markets, cities and even neighborhoods. It allows us to go a lot deeper and really ensure our products are customer-centric. That’s the magic of what we do at Delivery Hero – it’s both consolidation and customisation.
Yi-Wei Ang: From the outside, it may appear that Delivery Hero has a fragmented set up – with multiple brands and local teams all over the world. But I firmly believe this is our secret sauce. Our local teams on the ground are focused on delivering the best products and solutions to customers in their individual regions, as well as being able to cross-pollinate ideas – from Asia to the Middle East or Latin America. For deep and complex global problems, we have a strong team of hundreds of engineers building for solutions that power all of our entities.
Yong Kim: One of our concerns when we became part of the Delivery Hero group was that perhaps our concept would be “too Korean” and not work on a global scale. But we have seen the power of good collaboration by entering the Vietnamese market and I believe that we have a lot to teach each other, collaborating with the Delivery Hero group in Europe, Latin America or the Middle East. We all benefit by sharing our experience and seeing which services and features can be successful globally. Having these added perspectives makes the design and product ultimately better.
On putting the customer first
Jeroen Neijenhuis: At Delivery Hero, we try to figure out what the best customer experience is through experimentation, looking at market developments, and using our team of UX researchers. We centralize best practices to solve problems, which can then be adapted locally for our different brands. I see the role of the product department as balancing out all the interests, making sure that whatever changes we make to our platform do not reduce the overall user experience.
Leandro Malandrini: We care deeply about our customers, riders, partners – everyone we’re building products for. This goes beyond the Product or UX departments – it’s true across the entire organization. We always want to add real value and have a strong culture of experimentation, research and usability. Every time we create a new product feature or solution, we think about how we can cater to individual preferences – this is really ingrained in what we do.
Yi-Wei Ang: At the heart of it, we need to be close to the customer in order to be customer-obsessed. It’s impossible to be customer-centric without spending time with the people you are building for. So research, data, and customer visits are incredibly important to build empathy and understand what our customers are struggling with and how we can really solve their problems. When you talk to your customers, you understand their lives, story, and journey of decision making. With this information, you can put the pieces of the puzzle together and create an amazing product with a real person in mind.
Yong Kim: From a methodology perspective, it is very important to have a customer-centric mindset. We have to listen to the customer or user, because the environment is constantly changing. Whenever we want to make changes to our product, we always ask the customers first. We also try to regularly do surveys to gain qualitative and quantitative insights and see how we can improve. And when we do eventually implement changes, we A/B test everything to ensure our users are satisfied.
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