I am sure you have heard the phrase Web3 countless times. It instantly makes an article or a video buzz-worthy. Some question whether it is one of those hot trends that will soon fizzle. Some wonder whether it is truly revolutionary. Should we care about it at all at this stage?

But hold up. What is Web3 exactly? We have heard things like blockchain technology, cryptography, interoperability, and tokenization thrown around when people talk about Web3. To be honest, those big words make very little sense to me.

In my quest to look for a guide for dummies to understand Web3, I realize I need to first understand one key concept: decentralization.

Decentralization: returning control over online assets from central authorities to the masses

Avoiding data security risks

A few years ago, I received an email from someone claiming that they allegedly obtained evidence of me watching inappropriate content, and threatening to release that if I did not pay a ransom. The interesting thing is that the email addressed me by the username I once used on Redmart (a Singapore-based grocery shopping platform).

Not long before that, I received an email from Redmart saying that my email address and username were leaked in a data breach. I later found out that I was among the 1.1 million Redmart users whose information was stolen and sold online.

And that is how I experienced first-hand a consequence of a data breach in a centralized system. Even though the hackers did not gain access to my Redmart account, they gained access to a legitimate email address I own and took advantage of that for extortion.

This is not a standalone incident.

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend of data breaches where hackers broke into such systems to steal our information which could be sold and abused.

Well-known breaches include:

1. LinkedIn (2021): 700 million users’ information, which includes email addresses, names, locations, work experience, and gender information, was put up for sale on the Dark Web.
2. CAM4 (2020): 10.88 billion records of names, addresses, chat transcripts, sexual orientation, and IP addresses were exposed
3. Facebook (2019): 533,000,000 Facebook records containing comments, likes, reactions, and account names were leaked for free
4. Equifax (2017): the personally identifiable information of 143 million consumers, including names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and in some cases, driver’s license numbers and credit card information was illegally obtained.
5. Yahoo (2013-2014): 3 billion of its user accounts were compromised in a hack that took place in 2013-2014. The stolen data included names, email addresses, dates of birth, and phone numbers.

The current system of collecting and processing data centrally (or Web 2.0) means a single point of failure exists. With so much valuable information accumulated in one central location, there are incentives for malicious agents to exploit. Beyond ransom and extortion, stolen data can be used for identity theft.

In the United States, there were reports of laid-off workers who were unable to claim their pandemic unemployment payout because someone else had claimed it using their personal information.

Gaining control over one’s own data

When we post that story on Instagram, we send data to the Instagram system.

The system records our data in its databases and then processes them. In this case, the system checks that we intend to show this story to our followers; and it fulfills precisely that. In a blink of an eye, our followers can see that story, and give us likes and comments.

But at the same time, the system does other processing that we might not know about (even though we most likely have given consent when we accepted the terms and conditions). It extracts information to construct a virtual identity that represents who we are: our preferences, beliefs, location, socioeconomic background, income level, and network.

We do not have explicit control over this virtual identity. Companies can use it to serve us better product experience; think Netflix’s personalized recommendations. They can use it to serve us more targeted advertisements; think Instagram ads, which always seem to know what we want before we even know it.

Collecting large volumes of data to extract patterns for better decision-making is not inherently good or evil. The problem is that corporates and governments have absolute control over that knowledge. And they have the ability to use that knowledge against us by censoring opposing views, shaping narratives in their favor, and manipulating people’s opinions on a subconscious level. Think how Facebook ad campaigns were used to shape the US Presidental election results in 2016.

And web3 is a landscape of technology that aims to make decentralization a reality. Things like blockchain, tokenization, and cryptography are concepts that very smart people came up with to construct a world where decentralization can really happen.

Next time we meet, we can dive into some of these key concepts. Meanwhile, there you have it: the one key thing you need to know about Web3.

Before diving into it, it is essential to understand how expectations for product managers change with seniority.

Expectations of junior vs senior product managers vs VP of Products

Junior product managers

Usually, a junior product manager is expected to be able to execute, with guidance from senior team members. Given a specific pain point, they should be able to expand it into product requirements, and work with designers, engineers, and data analysts to have them developed, launched, and iterated. The key point is to experience the product development cycle.

When you go for your next job interview, it is important to have concrete examples of how you have gone through the product development cycle to deliver specific features and their impact on the business. Strong junior product managers are those who can execute well with little guidance.

Becoming a senior

As the product managers become more senior, the expectation goes beyond execution. They are expected to take ownership of a product area and are able to direct the team’s efforts in solving the right problems.

For instance, a senior product manager in a video streaming platform like Viki might own the content discovery journey. They need to identify areas of investment that move the needle for the business, lead the team in coming up with the right tactics, and define what success looks like for the team.

As you can imagine, the more senior a product manager is, the bigger the ownership area. The expectation is to have the right vision and rally people behind it. They should be able to answer the team’s question of which direction we are heading in, and why. At the same time, they also need to guide junior team members in their execution.

When product managers choose to become people managers, a.k.a team leads (still the more common career path in the Southeast Asian product scene in my opinion), it is about building a team. Product manager leads need to have a vision of how they will structure their team, what skillsets are required, how to hire the right talents, and how to help their team members grow.

VP of Products

At the level of a Chief Product Officer or VP of Products, the principle remains. But the scope is the entire product organization. Fundamentally, they need to set the product vision and lead the organization in the right direction. But they are also concerned with having the right organizational structure, building a product culture, acquiring and retaining talents, as well as succession planning.

Back to Basics: 3 Skillsets Product Managers must build in their foundational years

Skill set 1: The ability to articulate problem statements clearly

This skill set has 2 layers. Firstly, product managers need to be clear in their own thoughts when they think about (1) what problems they are solving and (2) what quantitative and qualitative evidence they have to demonstrate that the problems are painful.

It is a skill set that is relevant in every job. But it is the bread and butter of being a product manager. Though it sounds like common sense, it is not the case. It requires conscious efforts and lots of cognitive power to consistently achieve clarity of thoughts in face of ambiguity and overwhelming information.

My recommendation is to write. When you attempt to organize your thoughts around problem statements, writing down your explanation as if there would be someone reading it forces you to be clear with your thoughts.

Usually, a product requirement document template should already help guide you put down your ideas in writing. But if your team prefers things to be communicated mainly through PowerPoint presentations, it is still helpful to write down your thoughts in proper sentences.

This has the additional benefits of being turned into reading materials that stakeholders can read before a discussion. It also retains all the necessary context and information in case you need to revisit the topic after a long time.

Secondly, after you achieve clarity of thoughts, the second layer of the skill set is to be able to express them to an audience convincingly and fluently.

Fret not if the idea of presenting in front of an audience scares you. The most important aspect of a successful product requirement document or presentation is whether people can understand your ideas.

If you have achieved clarity of thoughts on a particular topic, you will also have a logical organization of the ideas. How to keep a reading or listening audience engaged, and even in awe, is the icing on the cake, which are additional skill sets that require deliberate practice.

A Unique Challenge in Southeast Asia

Language proficiency is no doubt part of the equation. I have observed a unique problem in Southeast Asia where product managers might have to use languages in which they do not necessarily have professional working proficiency. This is due to the prevalence of cross-border teams cutting across different language regions.

For fellow product managers who are in this boat, but who wish to continue developing their career in the same language, it is worthwhile to invest your time learning the language. Yes, you heard me right. There is no escaping it. At the end of the day, if you want to write or speak convincingly, you need to attain a high level of language proficiency.

Skill set 2: Get sufficiently technical

When it comes to the topic of technical knowledge, a frequently asked question is “Do I need to know how to code?”.

The answer is no. But there are nuances.

A product manager does not have to write codes. But they need to have a conceptual understanding of how different components of the product works.

Again, there are two layers to this. When it comes to software products, there is a pool of general knowledge of how applications work, which is common to all products. And there is domain-specific knowledge.

For instance, a mobile payment app like GooglePay and a video streaming app like Netflix are both applications that are hosted on the cloud. The concepts of backend and frontend service connected through API calls or how databases work are the same. But a mobile payment app will have key areas of knowledge related to flows of funds whereas a video streaming app’s key domain knowledge can be how to stream videos on demand over the internet.

For most junior product managers, getting a conceptual understanding of how applications work in general is critical.

While knowing how to code is not a must, I personally think it makes your life much easier if you do. The better informed you are, the higher the quality of the questions you can ask the engineering and data team. A good foundation also helps you flatten the learning curve when you change to a new domain later on.

My recommendation is to learn a programming language in the context of building a cloud application and learn how to use SQL to summarize data. There are plenty of good online materials out there with no prerequisites required. Below are some online courses for your reference.

Udemy: Building modern web applications with Go (learning how to build a web application from scratch and deploy it to the cloud)

Udemy: Learn how to write SQL queries and understand relational databases

Skill set 3: The ability to manage trade-offs

For product managers, there are always competing priorities from different stakeholders with a multitude of constraints imposed by different teams. There is never going to be an optimal solution that satisfies all. It is always a balance of trade-offs, a.k.a. prioritization. By choosing to do certain things, there will be other things you say no to. As a result, there will be stakeholders who might not be happy.

The next step is how to engage stakeholders who also have a say in your prioritization. Many times, this is an area where guidance from senior team members is important.

My suggestion is, to actively run through your thinking process with the senior product managers in the team. They can help call out considerations you might miss, as well as give you feedback on your trade-off weighing process. Ask them specifically how they would approach certain stakeholders. Over time, you will develop a sense of how to best manage your stakeholders in different situations.

Level up: Acquire an investor mindset

As explained at the beginning of the post, the more senior the product managers, the more strategic thinking is required. To be able to know which areas of investment the business should focus on requires perspectives. It could be a perspective on the value proposition of the business, its competitive advantage over other players, and the industry’s technology landscape.

From a personal career progression standpoint, these perspectives matter because product managers have to decide whether to develop expertise in this domain. That depends on whether there is a promising future in that industry. Also, which company is the most successful in the domain? That can help inform future career decisions.

I guess you can see where this line of thought is going. It is pretty much the mindset of an investor.

If you are to invest, would you invest in this industry? Why? And if you have to choose one company, which one will give you the most return on investment? What would your company have to do to survive/ do well in the industry?

How to acquire an investor mindset

There is no easy way to acquire an investor mindset. To form a perspective, you need to process lots of peripheral information from books, blogs, videos, etc. Some of my personal favorite YouTube channels that help me keep my peripheral information up to date are CNBC, The Fifth Person, John Oliver Last Week Tonight, Jonny Harris, etc.

Closing Thoughts

There you have it: my recommendation on the 3 skillsets a product manager should focus on building in their foundational years. Before you go, check out my 4 revealing interview questions to ask interviewers or how I validated a product idea with less than 50 bucks.

A little bit about myself

I spent my foundational years diving headfirst into product incubation. My focus was to identify use cases and run proof-of-concept projects for in-house technology, mostly in the field of video and conversational Artificial Intelligence.

After having a taste of product incubation in the B2B space, I decided to work on a consumer product I could identify with. That is how I ended up working on the user experience of a mobile payment app.

After mobile payment, I was the first data product manager in the financial services arm of my company. I was tasked with establishing the data ingestion service and building data marts in order to answer the organization’s need for standardized reporting metrics and targeted marketing.

At the time of writing, I am with Viki, an Asian drama and movie streaming platform, with a focus on users’ watching experience.

On the side, I worked on a start-up whose business was an event venue marketplace on a part-time basis. (If you are curious about whether working part-time on a start-up can work, let me know in the comment section).

What would I do differently if I were to start over?

I spent the first few years trying a wide range of product management: from B2B to B2C, from product incubation to building fast-growing products, from external facing to internal products, in a start-up of 5 people as well as big established companies.

My experience helped me appreciate how drastically different product management in different fields and at different product stages could be. This helped me discover what I truly want.

But is it the most efficient way to progress in the product management career? Probably not. If I could meet my younger self, here are 2 things I would tell her.

Start with the kind of products you are familiar with

Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, coined the famous idea of investing within your circle of competence, i.e. invest in businesses you understand and are familiar with.

This piece of wisdom is very apt for product management as well. For someone who is new to the field, working on an existing product they are familiar with makes it easier to empathize with the users.

Many abstract concepts like the product’s value proposition, business models, and users’ pain points will become intuitive.

As a result, consumer products would be a good starting point for new product managers. Shop online all the time? Working on an e-commerce platform will be a good option. Are you an Asian drama fan? Why don’t you consider a video streaming platform (like Viki for example)?

Despite that, take note that a familiar product is not necessarily a consumer product. If you are a seasoned part-timer in restaurants or retail shops, you might find Point-of-sale or order management products within your circle of familiarity. In other words, what is familiar and relatable to you depends on your life and professional experience.

Why is it important?

A high degree of complexity and ambiguity are the two main stumbling blocks new product managers will encounter. Working on products you can understand the value of and problems you can resonate with will give you the anchor point required to navigate this journey.

That being said, whether an early-stage product team/start-up or an established product team is more suitable for new product managers depends on your learning objective.

It can be extremely frustrating and stressful to work on a new product that the founders are still experimenting with if you prefer clarity in direction or an established product framework to follow.

But if the thought of conquering the unknown gives you immense joy, then an early-stage team is suitable for you. For more insights into this topic, check out my post to find out more.

Find a team that can help you learn a proper product framework

I struggled for several years wondering how and where I can learn a proper framework for developing products. I have read The Lean Startup, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, and was in awe by how people elsewhere do products. But I found it hard to apply any of that to my work. As a junior product manager, I realized I was constrained by how my product organizations operated.

For example, I worked in product teams that were only expected to execute. It was often decided by the management what products, even features, to build, for which markets, revenue models, as well as go-to-market plans.

In that context, it was not common for product managers to pursue the question of “what problem are we solving?”. What was important is to expand that management’s direction into detailed product requirements and design, and have engineering teams deliver them, often with gigantic scope. As a result, the measure of impact was also unclear.

When I wanted to try something like The Lean Startup’s fail-fast principle, it was not in the organization’s DNA to support such a concept.

It took me a few years to be able to tell whether a product team will help me learn the right things.

For instance, I was delighted to learn the North Star framework at Viki, where product teams were driven by a North Star metric that captures the value proposition of the business. While it is still trial and error for the team at Viki to learn how to apply this framework effectively, I can participate in that learning process with the rest of my team. And it is finally something much closer to what I read in those books years ago.

How do you then find a team that can teach you a good product development framework?

This is a really hard question. After thinking about it long and hard, I decided to borrow Warren Buffett’s tenets of value investing as my guiding principles because why not. After all, choosing the right business to invest your money in for the long term is akin to choosing the right company to invest your time and energy in.

Is the product simple and understandable to you?

This question echoes the first section of this post. Choose a product whose value you can understand, and pain points you can relate to. If after extensive research and discussions with hiring managers, you cannot seem to understand what problems a product is trying to solve, it is probably better to avoid it.

Does this product team have a track record of creating products that are being used by users?

If this team has products under their belts that have a growing user base, or even better, an increasing pool of buyers, they have figured something out. The larger the base, the clearer the value proposition, and the more they have something valuable to teach you.

If the answer is no, and if you are a new product manager, my recommendation is to avoid it with one exception: you are absolutely passionate about the product vision that the founders have and would like to go through thick and thin with them to see it being realized.

Do note that in many tech companies, the product team focuses on a specific component of the product. In that case, you should adapt the above question to the product sub-system the team you are considering is working on.

For products that are internal tools used within the company, a growing user base might not be a relevant criterion. Instead, it is crucial to understand the track record in terms of operational efficiency improvement or cost-saving that this product team has delivered.

Does the company/product team have a good reputation?

Glassdoor is your best friend. Look the company up to get a sense of its reputation. Reach out to the people who work in the company or at least in the same field to find out more about the way they work.

Can they explain how they make product decisions to you in a logical manner?

What you are looking for is to understand how the team stays in touch with users and customers in order to constantly discover their pain points, business targets they carry, as well as how they iterate their products or features.

What if you don’t have the luxury to choose?

I get it. The economy is not always in the best shape. The product manager market is competitive. And sometimes we have to say yes to a job opportunity even though it does not tick all the boxes.

I would like to assure you that it is alright to take that opportunity and become a product manager anyway. If you are about to start a new product manager job, check out my guide to the first 90 days in a new product manager role.

Closing words

There you have it. What would I do differently if I could do product management all over again?

In the next post, I will continue with this topic and zoom into specific skillsets new product managers should focus on.

Why is it so hard for me to bring my reusable tumbler to get coffee?

A quest to psychoanalyze myself makes me realize I am not the only one with this problem. Despite the fact that many of us are environmentally woke, “bring your own cup” has not got as much adoption as it should. Plenty of research done on the topic confirms what we intuitively know to be deterrents in establishing the habit of bringing your own cup.

We are environmentally “woke” until it inconveniences us

In the United States alone, it is estimated that 50 billion one-time paper cups are used a year, most of which are not recyclable due to a thin layer of plastic coating applied to the inside of the cup to prevent leaking. This means they most likely end up in a landfill.

Many of us know that single-use containers are bad for the environment, but have yet to feel the impact of the problem on our daily lives. In other words, the problem is not painful enough for us to act.

Therefore, if we have to go out of our way to use a reusable cup, we will be more likely to resist it.

Any perceived inconvenience such as not owning a reusable container, carrying it around, washing and drying it after use, etc is enough to make consumers opt for the easier option.

The missing reward in the habit-forming equation

Encouraging consumers to establish a new habit requires 3 elements: trigger, routine, and reward. When they would like to buy a cup of coffee for takeaway (trigger), the desired habit is to bring their own container along. What is missing in many cases is that the reward is not strong enough for the brain to favorably remember the routine.

There are 3 main motivations for people to bring their own cup: awareness of environmental issues, financial incentives, and social validation.

Awareness of environmental issues

Consumers who act out their desire to protect the environment have an intrinsic reward, which is the sense of fulfillment when their action helps reduce unnecessary waste. Because this is a problem of which a direct impact we do not feel on a daily basis, we will need a constant reminder.

Financial incentives

Those who bring their cups to enjoy a discount or avoid additional costs seek financial reward for their behavior. In different “bring your own” programs around the world, there is one interesting observation emerging. People might not find a $0.5 dollar discount incentivizing, but a $0.5 extra charge for a one-time container is enough a deterrent. This is the loss aversion mentality.

Social validation

Last but not least, those who bring their own cups because they see other people do so are motivated by the pressure to fit in. They seek social validation.

When I was working in Metro Manila, seeing how it was the norm for everyone around me to bring their own tumbler for beverages and pack their own lunchboxes, I was inclined to do the same. The existing culture made it much easier for an individual to adopt a new habit.

Challenges in promoting the right reward for consumers

My hypothesis is that most people require at least 2 motivations working together to prompt them to bring their own cups regularly.

The challenge is that it requires different stakeholders in the ecosystem (consumers, F&B businesses, and the government) to promote different types of motivations.

The promoter of environmental pollution awareness

Private businesses may be a promoter of “going green” campaigns as long as it helps with their branding. Beyond that, businesses’ primary function is to make a profit, and not to protect the environment. As a result, spreading awareness of environmental issues to the public such that people are intrinsically motivated to act is an activity likely to be championed by government agencies.

A well-known example of how governments remind consumers of the negative consequences of their buying behavior is health warnings on cigarette packaging. Those visual reminders of a destroyed lung surely make people think twice about buying cigarettes. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, in a survey conducted between 2001 and 2003, 44% of smokers in Canada revealed that visual health warnings had increased their motivation to quit. In Brazil, 67% of smokers surveyed said that warnings had prompted them to quit.

Imagine every disposable cup has an image like the sample cup in this article (source: Photo by Olena Motrych on dreamstime).

Leave your thoughts in the comment section on why you think regulations on environmental damage warnings on disposable packaging do not exist.

The promoter of financial incentives

So far, this has been the most straightforward option, and it is also the reason why it has been more widely practiced.

I mean if I get a 30% off by bringing my own cup, I will gladly bring mine, every single time. But realistically, who can offer that much discount?

The discounts for reusable cups need to be paid for by someone. The discounts would eat into businesses’ margin unless there is a government subsidy of some sort.

Charging additional fees for one-time-use containers and carriers is an alternative that works on consumers’ loss aversion mindset and avoids margin erosion for businesses at the same time. But this practice can hurt the less well-to-do segment of the public.

In February 2022, Vancouver mandated a single-use cup fee of 25 cents but had to roll the bylaw back for revision soon after, due to multiple complaints on how the bylaw affected vulnerable consumers and restaurant deliveries. Vancouver made changes to the bylaw in March 2022 such that free drinks (for example in donation programs) are not subjected to the surcharge.

But as we can see, when it comes to financial incentives, government intervention is still required to effect a large-scale change.

The promoter of social validation

Once there are enough people around you and me who do it, we have enough peer pressure to do the same. But that is a chicken and egg problem. If there isn’t enough adoption, to begin with, the network effect is not strong enough to pull in new adopters.

However, in this case, I can see a clear business interest to promote this network for businesses that sell sustainability products and services such as reusable cup sellers and rental services.

This is probably the space with the most creative problem-solving potential for private entities.

One notable name is stojo, a provider of reusable, collapsible, leak-proof containers which are hassle-free to carry around. And very importantly, they look nice. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of aesthetics in making users feel proud of carrying that product around in public. I think they have figured out the right value proposition to offer.

When it comes to rental service, Muuse (which to my pleasant surprise also operates in Singapore, in addition to Toronto, Hongkong) strikes me with a creative idea. Muuse partners with F&B chains to offer reusable containers in-store. Customers, while buying a beverage, can choose to rent a Muuse container on the spot by scanning a QR code. They have up to 30 days to return the container to any participating outlet) before a late return penalty is imposed. The outlets will take care of cleaning as well.

The idea is to remove as many barriers to using reusable containers as possible. Customers do not have to alter their existing behaviors to do this.

The biggest problem with this idea is how to monetize it. Muuse offers a paid tier called Muuse pro which offers food delivery in reusable containers, deals with partner merchants, and access to the cup counter feature, to measure impact.

I have doubts about its ability to monetize. But as someone who cares enough about the environmental impact of single-use containers, I am more than happy to try out their service.

A feel-good feature such as cup counters should not be a paid feature. It should be something that is available for free so that users always feel good about themselves for saving the environment every time they use the service or product. Even better, there should be an ability to boast about these impacts to their network.

The Nike Run Club app is a good example of this tactic. With every step of the run, runners receive constant positive validation that they are doing a good job. They also can look back at their past achievements (how many kilometers were run, how many milestones were unlocked, etc) and share those on social media. The whole point is to make users feel good about themselves and keep returning to seek it out.

Final words

Changing consumers’ behavior to a more sustainable habit is not easy. There are many stakeholders at play with different incentives to promote different types of consumers’ motivations. However, I believe the landscape also offers a high opportunity for creative problem-solving.

And I am supportive of entrepreneurs who are working hard to take a crack at this problem to save us all from the calamity of our own actions.

Writing this piece alone strengthens my awareness of the environmental harm single-use containers bring. That is a powerful reminder for me to bring my own tumbler to work tomorrow.

What about you?

What do you think can motivate you to regularly bring your own containers to take away food and beverages?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section down below.

In a previous post, I wrote about Preply, an online learning platform that matches students with teachers worldwide from a product manager’s perspective. In this post, I would like to get personal and tell a story of the people I met on the platform.

As a student on Preply, I came to the platform wanting to learn a new language. Little did I know that I would receive more than language lessons.

What I discovered in the process is inspirational real-life stories of ordinary people, which made up my personal edition of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”.

Story 1: Dare. Dream. Do

My first teacher on Preply, from Chongqing, China, was in her early 30s when we met. She had been a college lecturer before she decided to become a full-time freelance teacher on Preply.

Her parents were not thrilled by her decision to quit. After all, she had a pretty stable 9-to-5 job; and at that point, she was a team lead. But she wanted to be her own boss, who does not have to answer to anyone but herself. With many years of teaching experience under her belt, she figured that would give her a leg up in the freelance tutoring market.

Her assessment was quite accurate. Yet, it was not an overnight success. It took her six months to build a pool of regular students on various online platforms. Once her income from online teaching was on par with her college job, she made the switch to being a full-time freelance tutor.

I once asked her which part of being an online teacher was the most remarkable. She replied that it was the connections that she established with students from all over the world. Our lives are all so different that if it had not been for the online teaching platform, our paths would never have crossed.

In one hour of the lesson, she taught the language; and I learned it. But we also got to learn about the person on the other side of the video call: our hometowns, family, favorite dramas, and perspectives on life. We could even discuss a multitude of social issues in our weekly lessons.

I later discovered that despite teaching full-time, she still managed to run a YouTube channel providing free content for Chinese learners with her husband. Switching from a salaried employee to a freelancer was just a stepping stone.

What she ultimately wanted to do was to generate passive income through content creation. Financial freedom is what she sought after. And she is still on her way to working toward her dream.

Whenever the writing gets hard, I think of how my first Chinese teacher on Preply is probably out there, daring to do what she dares to dream; that gives me the strength to carry on.

Story 2: Don’t take a leap of faith, take a series of calculated steps

From time to time, when I am in the mood for some mental stimulation, I go back to watch Christopher Nolan’s Inception. One of my favorite lines in the movie was what Saito said to Cobb to convince him to take on the job.

Don’t you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!

Inception (2010)

It is the idea that once you are old, you will be filled with regret if you don’t take chances when you are younger to pursue what you want. Every time I hear that line, I think of another teacher I met on Preply.

When we first started having lessons together, she was a college lecturer in Beijing. That was her full-time job. At the same time, she taught private students on Preply and other platforms outside of working hours. Her day started as early as 5 am to cater to students from different time zones. And she worked late into the night, sometimes replying to students’ messages at midnight.

One time, I dialed into our weekly Saturday morning lesson; to my surprise, I saw that the sky was all dark on her end. It was nighttime for her, which was odd. Since she was based in Beijing, we were supposed to be in the same time zone.

That was when she announced that she had moved to Canada by herself, while her family was still in China. I did not see that coming.

It turned out that she was in Canada to pursue a potential career opportunity. Her plan was to stay there for a couple of months to see what living there was like. If everything worked out fine, she would leave her job in Beijing and relocate to Canada the following year.

Because it was a temporary arrangement, she still worked Beijing hours, while keeping all her online teaching commitments. That meant pulling late nights almost every day.

“Is it worth it?”, I asked.

“My life-long dream is to travel and experience the world. This is me finally pursuing my dream after having lived most of my life in the same country I was born and raised in.”, she replied.

“Was your family supportive of your decision?”, I asked.

She laughed, “They did not think it was a good idea for a 50-year-old to quit her stable job and move to a foreign country on her own.”

My teacher was not taking a leap of faith. She was taking a series of calculated steps to get to where she wanted to be.

At 50 years old, she had accumulated enough savings for an emergency fund. Her daughter was also an independent adult. 50 years old was not too old. It was in fact the right time for her to pursue her life-long dream with relatively low risks.

Whenever the writing gets hard, I think of my teacher, who was bold and courageous; and I am reminded that it is part of the process. And I want to reply to Saito in Inception that “no, I don’t want to take a leap of faith. I am just gonna take one step at a time. I will get there, only if I keep going.”

Have you ever watched a series or a movie and thought the leads have such great chemistry on and off screen that they must be dating? Think Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s off-the-chart chemistry in A Star is Born that sparked dating rumors for months after the movie was released.

Or if you are a K-drama fan, you would have probably heard of the BinJin shippers (the name of the fandom who wishes actor Hyun Bin and actress Son Ye Jin to be together after being very taken with their characters’ love story in hit Korean drama, Crash Landing on You).

The Shipping Culture

The BinJin shippers is an example of a fandom where followers think two or more celebrities are very compatible and desire that they would be in a romantic relationship. This desire is called shipping (originated from the word relationship). Such a fandom is called a ship, and its followers are called shippers. As a result, the culture is called the Shipping Culture.

I am fascinated by the Shipping Culture, by the amount of passion and devotion shippers have in expressing their viewpoints and connecting with like-minded individuals.

Celebrity shipping can become an unhealthy obsession, and fandoms can become toxic. But that is not the topic of today’s post (let me know in the comment section if you are interested in hearing my thoughts on that).

As a content creator myself, I cannot help but observe that the Shipping Culture involves a great deal of passion (from shippers) and can be extremely controversial, which is the perfect condition for user-generated content related to this topic to thrive on social media.

How social media fuel the Shipping Culture

Because the Shipping Culture is relatively niche, chances of finding fellow shippers in real life are low. There is a natural tendency for shippers to look for online communities where they can connect with like-minded individuals and safely express their thoughts and feelings.

In these self-organized communities, there are usually two types of members: active contributors and passive consumers.

Be it Facebook groups, Reddit threads, forums, TikTok, or YouTube, active contributors are those who do the heavy lifting: looking for information related to the ship (such as analyzing the celebrities’ interactions) and compiling them into posts and videos.

On the other hand, passive consumers mainly consume and sometimes react to that information by writing comments.

Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, managed to leverage the Shipping Culture to keep its users engaged.

On Weibo, there are special discussion groups for couples ( CP 超话) that are publicly available. Anyone can search for and participate in them.

There is a wide variety of user-generated content there, from fans analyzing the couple’s interactions, coincidences in their schedules, their social media activities, their clothes, accessories, their horoscopes, and even fan fiction.

Members of the group are advised to adhere to the rules set out by the group moderators. Examples of the rules include “do not engage in fan wars with other fandoms” and “be respectful to other actors who are co-stars of the celebrities being shipped“.

For the popular ships, the discussion groups can be extremely active with members constantly publishing posts and interacting with them.

In instances where dating rumors about a pair of celebrities surge among the general public, there would be so much interest in the community that the discussion groups can show up on Weibo’s hot search.

The Shipping Culture is creating a new kind of demand

Shippers‘ primary motivation is to have their desire validated. They would like to see evidence that their ship could be real. That leads to much speculation and micro-analyzing of everything celebrities do and do not do. However, whether or not they are dating, only the celebrities themselves know.

Without access to the celebrities’ inner thoughts, some fans resort to tarot cards or energy reading to have their questions answered.

As a result, there have been a number of YouTube channels responding to this demand.

The cartomancers on YouTube can do celebrity couple readings based on their subscribers’ requests (sometimes paid) on camera, and upload them as videos on YouTube. (And yes, people are willing to purchase readings for celebrity couples of their choice.)

It is clear from the comments section that the viewers want to see if their beliefs can be validated. They rejoice when the reading implies that their favorite couple is the one true pairing, and could get upset if the reading says otherwise.

It is a pretty clever form of content marketing for the cartomancer YouTuber to advertise their service. Those who watch the videos because they are interested in a celebrity reading might end up paying for private reading for themselves.

Final Words

The Shipping Culture is a niche culture that stems from fans’ fantasy of seeing their favorite famous personalities getting romantically involved. Because it is highly contentious and sentimental by nature, members of the culture are highly invested in it.

In the age of social media, the Shipping Culture gives rise to an explosion of user-generated content on this topic. Platforms like Weibo have capitalized on the Shipping Culture to keep users engaged.

Other content creators including tarot cards and energy readers with an online presence also respond to the shippers’ need to feel validated by creating content that confirms a ship.

24-year-old American Youtuber, Jimmy Donaldson, best known on Youtube as MrBeast, is one of the highest-earning Youtube creators in the world, estimated to have a net worth of US$25 million. He has given away a couple of US$100,000 to random people if they quit their jobs, started his own chocolate brand, and built a chocolate factory to recreate “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, just to name a few of the insane video ideas he had. Recently, he has spent US$3.5 million to orchestrate Squid Game in real life, amassing over 276 million views to date.

This guy is clearly on a roll.

But I am not here to tell you the story of another school dropout self-starter who has wealthy parents. Neither am I going to dwell on the fact that Mr. Beast is another example of Gen-Zers breaking all norms and totally crushing it at a young age.

His journey to become one of the biggest Youtubers in the world is not a walk in the park. In his own words in an interview with Joe Roegan, he has been zealously working on his craft as a content creator on YouTube for more than 10 years. Looking at his journey, there are three lessons we can learn from him.

Be obsessed with getting so good at what you are doing that people can’t ignore you

Mr. Beast started making videos when he was a teenager with no money, no equipment, and not much knowledge about videos.

What drove him forward was not to one day become a millionaire or celebrity. It was an obsessive drive to make the best videos possible that empowered him. He was obsessed with learning everything there was to learn about videos: how to use a camera, video pacing, coloring, editing, what makes a video viral, how to look for trending ideas, etc.

He approached the domain with a single-track mind, to the extent that he hardly had friends because all he could talk about was YouTube, back in the days when being a YouTuber was not a thing.

In other words, he has always focused more on honing his crafts than trying to monetize them as early as possible. And this mindset has paid off.

This mindset is echoed in Carl Newport’s revolutionizing book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. Once you attain enough “career capitals”, aka gain an expert skill level in a domain, you will have the power to control how much you earn and how flexibly you work.

Unless we aim to be the best in the world, it is not necessary to be as zealous as Mr. Beast. However, the essence of the principle still applies: pursue excellence, and success will follow, pants down.

It might take years of deliberate practice to be excellent

Mr. Beast did not just make videos for 6 months or a year before he became big. It took him 5 years of religiously making videos day in and day out before one video went viral. He also did not just blindly make videos. He studied what constituted a good video, practiced emulating it, reflected upon his mistakes, and did it differently next time.

For instance, he and his friends looked at 1,000 thumbnail images and checked if there was a correlation between their brightness and the number of views.

This is what Angela Duckworth, author of the groundbreaking book “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance”, calls deliberate practice. Be it learning how to play an instrument, a sport, or make YouTube videos, practitioners need to know what the next level of proficiency looks like, and deliberately practice their weak areas to get there.

This process is by nature uncomfortable and tiring. And it requires grit for practitioners to pull through. The reward is that once you attain an expert skill level, you will experience a flow state of execution where it feels effortless to do something. For example, by now, it is probably second nature to Mr. Beast to make an impactful 40-second intro that hooks viewers.

My takeaway from Mr. Beast’s experience is to have a more realistic gauge of how much effort it will take me to be an excellent product manager or an excellent writer. I, first, need to know what the next level of skill looks like, then deliberately practice what is missing. And that probably will not happen in a month or two.

Be surrounded by “lunatics” who want to pursue the same thing

Mr. Beast’s YouTube journey was accelerated after he met four other friends who were also crazy about YouTube. They talked every day for 1,000 days micro-analyzing viral videos to extract patterns they could apply. There were days when Mr. Beast got on a call with his friends at 7 am and only got off at 10 pm. They all started with 10,000-20,000 subscribers and by the time they no longer had frequent calls, everyone had millions of subscribers.

Indeed, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

This is a powerful testament to that wisdom. Sticking to a vision of excellence and putting in hours of deliberate practice by yourself can be a lonely journey. Nothing beats a community that can support your growth.

Because of that, I would like to shout out to all product managers and writers out there who would like to connect with like-minded individuals about their journey to be better at their crafts. Feel free to connect with me at https://calendly.com/eveyle/booking.

When it comes to online learning platforms, Coursera, Udemy, and SkillShare are household names. What they have in common is a library of pre-recorded online courses, which students can access via subscription plans or ala carte purchases.

But what platforms like Preply tackle are an access problem.

Value Proposition: Solving an access problem

How Preply appeals to students is access to highly qualified teachers (especially native speakers in the case of language learning) at a reasonable price.

How it appeals to teachers is access to a big addressable market of students. Teachers are no longer bound to the city or country they are physically located in. They can teach anyone from anywhere in the comfort of their home.

If and when the platform executes the value proposition well, it is a win-win situation for both teachers and students.

Take me as an example. In 2019, I wanted to look for a tutor who can work with me to improve my Chinese. I figured I would benefit greatly from having a real teacher with whom I can connect and who can hold me accountable. Thanks to Preply, I have had the chance to work with two excellent Chinese teachers based in China over the past one and a half years.

(Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)

Online learning platform as a network product

Preply functions like a marketplace matching students with teachers depending on their learning needs. It is a classic example of a network product where teachers are the creators of the value on the platform and students are the consumers of the value created.

The platform is valuable to the teachers when there are a lot of students. On the other hand, the platform’s value is realized for the students when they can find teachers that meet their criteria: high teaching quality, reasonable price, and schedule/timezone compatibility.

For a new network, creators constitute the hard side of the network. They represent a small group of users who need to put in lots of work to create the value that is enjoyed by the rest of the users. Preply reported that it had 30,000 to 40,000 teachers while the number of students was in hundreds of thousands in 2022. In this case, each teacher’s investment in preparing lesson materials and teaching classes creates value for multiple students.

As a result, it makes sense for a network to first invest in building the creator side of the network.

Acquiring with the hard side of the network: creators

Based on the value proposition, my guess is that the success moment of a creator/ teacher on a platform like Preply is when they have more than a minimum threshold of regular students. The product’s mission will be to get as many teachers to achieve that success moment as possible. It is because that is when they realize the value of the platform and stick around.

Preply does that by employing 2 tactics.

Low barrier to entry for teachers

Almost anyone can become a teacher on Preply. The barrier to entry is extremely low. I, myself, have successfully applied to be a teacher of the Vietnamese language on Preply (just for the fun of it). All I had to do is to create a teacher’s profile that contains my teaching experience and a self-introduction video.

Once the platform approved my profile, I was searchable by students who were interested in learning Vietnamese. I had some teaching experience, but not related to teaching Vietnamese. The reason why my profile was approved was most likely because I am a native speaker of the language I want to teach, and I speak good English, which is the language of instructions.

Making students buy lessons in bulk

After the first trial lesson, if a student wants to continue studying with a teacher, they need to purchase lesson time with that teacher in bulk. Preply offers 4 packages for students: 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 and 40 hours. The more hours purchased, the more discount they get.

This has two benefits. It ensures that those who make a purchase are really committed. To a teacher, that means a regular student from the second hour of lessons onwards.

Moreover, bulk lesson purchase also increases the predictability of the teachers’ income, which is important to many freelance teachers on the platform.

With these 2 tactics, Preply has been very successful in attracting teachers to the platform. It makes onboarding easy by lowering the barrier to becoming a teacher. It also creates a mechanism for students to provide teachers with regular income just after one hour of trial.

Online learning platform as a network product case study

While it is important for a new network to attract teachers first, there is a fine balance to maintain. When there are significantly more teachers than students, i.e. supply outweighs demands, it drives down the price point for every teacher for the same subject, making it less desirable for them to remain there.

On the contrary, when there are not enough teachers for a particular subject, prices go up for students. Also, when there are simply no teachers for a subject, the students will look for another platform.

A look at Preply’s lesson prices can give us a pretty good guess on where the scale is tilted.

Preply’s new Chinese teachers are willing to go as low as USD2/ hour in order to attract new students. This price point is insanely low.

As a point of reference, the average living cost for a single person in a tier-one city like Beijing in China is about USD 1,900 per month. Assuming these teachers live there, they will need to work 190 to 950 hours a month to cover the cost.

It is safe to say that they have really acquired a lot more teachers than students. The competition for students is fierce, which often boils down to how cheap the teachers can go. This can have an anti-network effect on the ecosystem.

The tipping point: when a network might decline

When there are too many new teachers joining the platform with very low entry requirements, it is harder to enforce a high-quality standard for all teachers. It only takes students one or two negative encounters to churn from the platform.

Moreover, when supply is way much more than demand, there is a downward pressure on prices for existing teachers as well. Coupled with a high commission rate by the platform, there will be more incentive for teachers to switch to another platform that offers more competitive rates.

What a platform like Preply can do is closely monitor its network’s breaking point (when supply outgrows demand and vice versa). Each subject taught on the platform has its own network of teachers and students, and these networks can have different tipping points.

In my opinion, one way to monitor the tipping points is to monitor the number of users achieving their success moments as a success metric. For instance, on the creators’ side, it can be the number of teachers who have more than the minimum thresholds of regular students. On the consumers’ side, it can be the number of students who have shown up to class for more than a minimum threshold of hours. When these metrics show a significant decline, the network is reaching a tipping point, which requires an intervention.

And there you have it: how Preply cracked the Cold Start Problem to build a successful network. I would love to hear your thoughts on how their tipping points can be defined and monitored. Leave them in the comment section below.

That is how Coach Bennett, the global head coach of the Nike Run Club, often guides me through a run.

He does not know me. But he has coached me through over 80 runs, from my first ever run which I jogged around my block for 20 minutes to my 5km run around my neighborhood, all while listening to him talk about how crossing the starting line in itself is a success worth celebrating.

These guided runs are part of an extensive guided run library on the Nike Run Club app, available for free to all users. Each guided run contains a podcast-like audio recording where coaches and world-renounced athletes guide runners through a run program while sharing insights and stories around running, mindfulness, inclusiveness in sports, and even climate change.

There is a guided run for every occasion. There is a “don’t want to run” run, meant for days when it is unthinkable to put on those running shoes. There is “fear less 5km” (not fearless, but fear less) which helps runners complete a 5km run while listening to Coach Bennet discuss managing fears. And there is “run with Eliud”, the world’s greatest marathoner, who takes runners through a 60-minute run while sharing about his running journey.

With more than 10 million downloads on Google Play Store and App Store, the number really speaks for the success of the Nike Run Club app as a product. It is more than just a running app. People return to the app because they get hooked. And they get hooked because the app has mastered Nir Eyal’s model of habit building by introducing elements of trigger, action, reward, and investment into the user experience.

The need for beginner runners to feel accepted and supported

Everyone knows running is hard. It is tiring. It is intimidating. Just the thought of going for a run can knock all the wind out of your lungs. But Nike Run Club app’s motto has always been that running is not supposed to be difficult. Most runs are meant to help you recover, either from a hard day at work, at school, or dealing with life in general.

It is not about how far or how fast you run. It is about celebrating small successes: simply showing up is a success, being able to slow down when your body needs to is also a success, and crossing the finishing line is definitely a success.

This overarching theme in all guided runs allows casual runners to access the world of running that seemingly only belongs to the athletes.

You do not have to pull off 100 meters in 9.58 seconds to be considered a runner. Nor do you have to run every day to call yourself a runner. Since you show up for a run, you are a runner.

Users who are new to running might not have built enough internal motivation to keep running. They need a lot of encouragement from a coach, a teammate, and a community to be able to keep trying. The Nike Run Club’s audio guides aim to address just that at scale.

Reward: it is all about making runners feel good about themselves

Very much similar to how we watch lifestyle content on YouTube, or feel-good movies on Netflix, the reward of the app pretty much centers around making runners feel good. But it goes one level higher and makes sure runners feel good about themselves.

The audio content is wholesome and overflowing with positivity. It is impossible not to feel fulfilled after completing each guided run.

However, it is worth noting audio guides are completely optional. Those who find having someone else’s voice in their head while running annoying can choose to run without. And as a running tracking app, it still works like a charm because of the following.

Badges & Leader board

With every running challenge completed, runners get a badge. The badges have no monetary value. But they carry bragging rights. You can share them on social media or simply have them accumulated in your personal activity log, for your own viewing pleasure.

You can also invite your friends to join the app so that you can track one another’s progress via the leader board if you have a competitive spirit.

The design of the app very much focuses on what you have achieved, instead of what you have missed. I personally think this is why Nike Run Club works for me while Headspace (a meditation app) did not. Headspace adopts a similar concept of beginner-friendly audio guides that help users build the habit of meditating. However, the fact that users have to do at least one meditation a day to maintain a streak means that if the streak is ever broken, it could backfire psychologically and make users stop using the app altogether.

While I understand Headspace’s intention is to give users the urgency to return to the app daily, the focus on the fear of breaking a perfect streak is not a positive reward. Nike Run Club got it right: people like to feel good about themselves.

Just like that, coupled with a notification center feature that reminds people to go for a run based on their previous running habit, the app has a system of reward-trigger-action in place.

Investment: make runners invest in the next action

After every run, runners are asked to rate their runs by giving a thumbs-up or down as long as selecting phrases that best describe their experience. Positive descriptors like “Good Coaching”, “Would Run Again”, and “Would Recommend” help users label the positive emotions they have after a run. Labeling positive emotions is believed to intensify the positiveness of the emotions; hence, allowing users to internalize the app’s reward on a deeper level.

However, there is definitely room for improvement.

The app has introduced a running plan feature that contains different training programs designed for different running goals. Each program has a suggested multi-week training schedule with recommended guided runs.

In my opinion, this is an excellent feature that helps a casual user transits into an engaged user because it requires a higher amount of investment from them to commit to a training plan. Those who use it are more likely to stick around.

Therefore, I would prefer that after each run, there is a call to action that takes users to explore a training program. That would make the investment element in The Hook Model a lot more impactful.

Conclusion

The Nike Run Club app is a good example of Nir Eyal’s The Hook Model at play. With a very clear value proposition and a well-designed system of trigger, action, reward, and investment, it is no wonder that its users can build a meaningful running habit.

What do you think they can do better? Are there other fitness apps that make use of The Hook Model successfully? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

In discussions on how to improve team communication, there is a hidden assumption that everyone at least speaks the same language proficiently.

Never had I imagined how a product team would operate if this assumption was challenged until I worked in a multi-national team with members speaking different languages.

Most of us could speak two languages. And the one language in common was English; but the proficiency level varied widely. I was concerned that we would not be able to get things done due to miscommunication.

Yet, precisely because of this language barrier, we had a unique opportunity to rethink team communication.

Requirements were broken down into smaller chunks

Previously, the product development approach was more waterfall-based. Business teams collected market requirements, then formalised them into request documents.

Product management reviewed the requests, and created corresponding product requirements, which would be reviewed by the engineering team.

However, a language barrier would make this workflow a recipe for a loss of context, missing information, and poorly phrased requirements.

As a result, we moved away from a one-directional approach to a more iterative one where requirements were handled in smaller chunks, with a shorter feedback loop.

We made less assumptions

There were a few occasions where our assumptions resulted in costly mistakes. For example, one side thought the requirement only covered this much scope while the other side thought otherwise. And we only realised this after development had already been well under way.

Combined with the approach of breaking requirements down into smaller chunks, we had become more mindful of the assumption trap.

Double clarification and regular check-ins with one another were ways to make sure we were on the same page.

Low fidelity mock-ups were frequently used

We drew mock-ups, diagrams, and had loads of screenshots in order to aid our verbal explanation. Initially, this was more of a necessity than a choice because everyone’s command of English was different.

But unknowingly, they became low fidelity prototypes that helped us gather feedback.

Want to build a promotion center where users can discover all the promotions offered? Find it difficult to explain the idea in English? Draw it out! Let other people see it.

Want to ask for comments on the user experience of a new feature, but cannot describe everything in words? Make a clickable prototype, and let other people experience it.

In fact, making visual mock-ups was no longer exclusive to the designers. Everyone was empowered to do it.

We saw strength in our differences

Having diverse cultural backgrounds gave us a golden opportunity to relook at what we thought was intuitive to us.

For instance, teammates from China who were accustomed with a more crowded app interface could suggest a visual design that was similar to what they were used to.

Teammates from Southeast Asia could offer a different perspective on how certain markets tend to favour a cleaner interface with big visual elements.

Another example is in the adoption of payment via QR code. Because QR code scanning was common in China, while it was relatively new in Southeast Asia, there were plenty of learning points in product design we could pick up from the apps in China.

Instead of being confined to one way of thinking, we had a richer collection of market references and perspectives.

Conversations were open

Given a different environment, I would have kept quiet and nodded along if I did not catch all the points being made in a meeting.

But in an environment where it was easy to have miscommunication, saying “I don’t understand this part”, “can you repeat”, “could you explain again?” or “is my understanding of so and so correct?” was welcome and encouraged.

It was unavoidable that team members would not want to speak up in a more formal meeting setup because they were afraid of making language mistakes.

This led to more frequent conversations within smaller cross-function groups where we shared our roadblocks, clarified on requirements, and chatted about new ideas. It allowed us to be more open and to get in sync with one another faster.

Last but not least, there was hardly room for politics

It was challenging enough to be understood in our work. Simple and clear English sentences were used to minimise mistakes (and also to make it easier to Google Translate).

Even if you wanted to be “extra”, to “throw shades”, or to be provocative in your words, other people might not catch on.

If anyone ever came across as rude, we always gave the person the benefit of the doubt that it was the language problem. The fact that we would not take offense easily made politics almost non-existent.

Final thoughts

My pessimism about a team breaking down over language barriers was proven wrong. That does not mean there were no missteps along the way. There was still room for miscommunication, frustration when one felt not understood, and inefficiency when things had to be repeated and confirmed multiple times.

But this experience had taught me that language was an important factor, but not the determining factor, in building a cohesive team.

If there were a desire to connect to another person, we would surely find ways to understand and be understood.