Episode 25: Scaling a Product Team in a High Growth Startup with Jared Chan
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core. Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year.

Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest, who is working in UX design. Today we have a special guest, Gerald, our very first for 2023. Can you believe we've been doing this throughout COVID and now we are in 2023 and everything has opened up.

So Jared is an experienced product leader with over 15 years of experience in product management, as well as digital innovation across various industries. He's a design thinking practitioner who

And Joy is creating products that empower people. During his tenure leading the product and design team at Karo, he found passion in coaching and mentorship as well as helping others in their growth, which is one of the reasons of how we met and caught up quite recently.

And in his personal life, he is a proud fur dad of four rescue dogs. Wow, that is amazing. Like four. Some people got enough when they have two or one. Four rescue dogs. Okay. And this shows that this man has a very big heart. So let's put our hands together and welcome...

Jared to the show. Hey, hi. Thanks for having me, man. Okay, so Jared, today we are going to speak about scaling a product and UX design team. We're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to speak a bit about strategy and how UX strategy plays a role in growing your team, as well as a bit about Karo, which is growing really fast at the moment. And what...

leaders should know in their first and second year in their job. So if you're a design manager, this is also something you should hear. So let's start with the first topic, which is mostly about Caro. Tell us a little bit about what you did at Caro and how did it start and where did it end off when you

when you left the company i was with caro for four years when i first started right what i wanted to get into the adrenaline rush of you know how to work at speed and also scale a team so when i first joined it was very lean we had like two product managers one designer and i think it was very very hands-on and each year we had different strategies of how to apply

approach it along the way and grow the team and the organization alongside everyone else, right? So four years in, we have skilled our team quite a bit and into stabilization. And I felt that what we have, we were at series,

and then, you know, now we are the first unicorn. I mean, Karo is the first Southeast Asia unicorn at the moment, automotive unicorn at the moment. So yeah, great stuff there. The product team grow quite a bit in six countries and the design team as well.

Yeah that's really great to hear that entire story. I love Caro's growth story because I saw how Caro started off as just a Singapore-based startup and after that I saw them raising money from venture capital and after that I saw them like doing acquisitions and I saw the product grew and grew and

including how it actually competes with some of the bigger boys in the market, one of them being SG CarMart, which is a very established marketplace. So we know SG CarMart, for those of you who are in Singapore, the primary colour scheme is actually red colour. I was wondering, you're part of the early team at Karo, did you have... and Karo is orange, right? Did you input, did you consciously say, "We want... let's go orange."

No, actually not because when I joined the company was already three years old. We already had Orange, but I know the backstory of it is that, you know, we wanted to be a very energetic and young company, very relatable. I think that was where it was coming from in the early days, but no, I was not part of that. We stick to it because many of us love that as well. Although from a design perspective, it is quite a difficult color to play with.

Tell us a little bit more about that. Why is orange a difficult colour to work with? Because orange pops up, right? Like pops up in the face. Using too much of it is too much in the face. It's like, wow, what's going on there? But too little of it, you need a very good secondary colour to play, to match it with, to give that kind of feeling of freshness as well. So over the years, there were many play of different colours to match.

match with that so it can be a little bit tricky well thank you for explaining that and I was just wondering from a visual language perspective were there other other things that you had to tweak or do in order to make Karo a brand that's a little bit more distinctive

than the rest of the brands yeah you know for the brand identity we work a lot with the marketing team you know the ux team don't the first line of determining how we're going to approach that right um is usually working very closely with the marketing team but what the ux team would do is that utilizing these assets that we have and introducing some minute like small little

other colors that we can play in our digital platforms like our app and all that to speak a bit more to our users based on the product as well. Having said that, we also have our B2B products which may not be using the brand colors. We are using colors that speaks to our clients and our partners more in that sense.

So thanks for talking about colours, what about from a type perspective or from a grid perspective, is there any other or even from icons kind of like perspective or visual imagery, is there anything else that you did with the team in order to make Karo more distinctive? So I think the early days we were using a lot of line kind of iconography because

Then we were thinking of simplistic, minimalist, very simple. But I think over time we wanted to speak more to the customers. We want our customers to be able to relate the storytelling of things. So we started to use illustrations. We did have an illustrator that helped us with our customized illustrations.

And essentially, right, what we want is that using visuals as part of our whole customer journey storytelling. How does it relate to you? Can we speak to using this design language to speak to the users in our business?

design in terms of like fonts and how language wise, you know, what kind of microcopy do we use? What kind of font do we use? This goes back to, you know, the customers as well, like which is the persona and group that we want to talk to.

And then how do we want to relate to them? So that sometimes there is trial and error, right? And, you know, we put it out there. Then we're like, oh, okay, it doesn't sound very right. And we just need to amend it. And sometimes we will find that, hey, you know, people don't understand what we mean or they are interacting differently as others.

what we want to. So we will tweak all those and we will consciously look at micro copy as well. - That's really good to know that I can also see it from the design of Caro's website that it tries to be a little bit more friendly. It tries to be a bit more like approachable in terms of from a brand perspective. And I think you all done a good job, like just some minor tweaks to the logo and the copy, making it more mass market and more accessible.

That's also part of the user experience in this case. To be honest, I do know your competitors, right? Personally, SG Karma is actually one of our clients and I do know some of the management team members at Motorist and they're using primarily red colors, right? And it's quite a different type of visual language. Was there any, like when you were running the product and the design team,

Were you like conscious about what your competitors were doing?

Yes, we do. I mean, obviously we have to, but I think that we take a lot more reference from across board, not just one competitor. So we will be looking at maybe competitors who is more of an ecosystem like ourselves. We are also looking at other industry, even like property or whatnot, those marketplaces to take reference and finance company, take referencing from. I think what we were saying just now about

the language of speaking to customers, it is really, you know, how do we, how do we speak to the customer? Like as if you are in a sales showroom, for example. So I think those are the references that we take. And also in terms of competitor, who are the ones that are more innovative and upfront in the forefront of design, right? And we would learn from that.

So I think sometimes you would notice that all the competitors, we are learning from each other. It's like, oh, okay, today we did this first and then they do it better. And then the next day, okay, we will up that game, you know? So it happens. We know that we are all crossing reference with each other because we observe the features that are being delivered and things like that. So it's quite fun in a sense sometimes. Yeah.

I love that because ultimately who wins is the customer, right? Because you get a better product, you get a better service from using such platforms. And I think you're right to say there's a lot to learn from property platforms like Property Guru. They have just done quite a fair bit of innovation and there's just so much to learn. And it seems like they're in a more mature stage as well as they are. As far as I'm aware, they're using product

to drive their sales and drive their growth as a company. I understand you handle two portfolios. How's the journey? I understand you have a growing team. So first of all, you started with maybe a few people and then you grow and then you are given two portfolios to handle, which is product and design. How was the experience like?

I must say it's crazy. I think sometimes it's pretty crazy to juggle between the product team and the design team. So the good thing is that our team works so cohesively, right? It doesn't feel like two different departments. But myself, it can be quite a challenge because here you have a product mind and you're trying to push things through. And then sometimes you have empathy with the designers that, oh, do they have

enough time, right? So there is this conflict sometimes and in times like this, right, I would just, you know, you guys try to sort it out first and see where the gaps are, you know? So there will be challenges like that. And I know when you're leading a product team, you have to maybe wear the business hat a little bit more.

more. Was that something you already knew before you joined Karo or like you had to really up your game on that side? Absolutely. So I come from a design background myself. I was a designer in my earlier days, right? So I came in knowing that I have to first take up a design team as well. And I like the thing is I did that because I have passion in that, right? I love doing that and I love product management too. But that is like, you know, it's like your home.

You know what I mean? It is something that is in your DNA. I always tell people, oh, design is my DNA. I may not be the best designer, but it's still something in my bloodline, it seems. And so that is why I came into this role and very happy to pick up this. But of course, there's always pros and cons of

handling these two. So the good thing is that you have a lot of visibility of what's going on, right? You can speed things up very fast. You know where the gap exactly is. But you know, the cons is that maybe there's too much on the plate or maybe there will be not enough conflict probably. Sometimes conflict is healthy. Okay, I think that's a really good point and I would love to

elaborate on that because a lot of startups are under resource constraint right so sometimes they will tell the designer hey designer why don't you also play the product manager role and do product so so like I want to understand like you know I'm sure that was also part of your journey how did you

How do you justify to management? Hey, management, I need to hire for this role. I need to hire a specialist. And I know eventually you hired a specialized UX strategist, which later we can elaborate more. I think it goes down to how much we are covering. I don't think that we can ever justify that, okay, this person is doing too much PM or too much design. I think we have to use the other angle, right? What are we doing? What value are we bringing to the company now?

Can I run on parallel tracks? How many parallel tracks can I run? If I continue to have this one person, I will always have this one single track and things will get backlogged. And I think having the backlog, understanding what value we are bringing, understanding what is the output we want at what speed,

do we want? I think this would be some of these elements that we can use to justify, hey, we do need one more person. And if we get one person to double head for a long time, I'm okay with people double heading for a short time, right? But you need to have a long term goal that, hey, this is just temporary. After this project, you're not going to do that.

Otherwise, what we will be risking is that talent will go away. You want to retain this talent, you need to have very clear goals of this person. I am hired in here. Am I learning product management or am I doing product designer? If this person says, oh, I want to learn both, if that is his desire or her desire, I think that's fine. We can give the opportunity to do so. Otherwise, retention is something that at the back of our mind, we need to be aware of. I think that's really great that you mentioned that and

I think a lot of especially SME business owners

have this mindset like, oh, okay, let's just get one person to do more things. But actually, we're splitting their focus and attention and that may end up being actually other parts of the business might actually suffer, right? They can't actually do a good job in all the areas. I wanted to ask, when did you bring in specialists? When I say specialists, I mean UX researchers or UX strategists. How big was your team

that you decided to bring in specialists.

So, like I said, we started with one designer and we had one or two designers for a long time. Probably the first two years that I was building the team. It's only in the third, fourth year, we knew that we were going to go into new markets. We got Malaysia in and then we were going to head off to our next series. And there were a lot of innovation things and we built a data science team. We knew that the roadmap is

is where we know where we were going to go. So at that point, right, two designers, you cannot sustain, right? And we have B2C, we have B2B, we have our own internal platform as well. So in that sense, right, that is the point that we say, hey, we need more designers. But we do need in the third year or so, I felt that, you know, we need

to either hire a design lead or we meet a strategist. So I got into strategist first because I happened to work with this person and felt that he is the right person

person on the job. So the strategist came in to actually help me do a lot of things that I couldn't do at that point of time. And I felt that the team needed it. We needed to strategize, you know, what are the methodologies that we are using? How are we running our design sprint? You know, what kind of technique do we want to use? How do we apply B2C? How we approach it? What is the strategy for B2C product? What is the strategy for B2B products?

And then because we run a centralized design team and supporting like so multiple countries, we kind of need

some form of standardization, yet some form of localization. So the strategists will come in to be the thinker to put all these things in place and then also work with the designers to put together cleaning up the design system and whatnot. So that was what we wanted to do. Yeah, thanks for explaining that, Jared. It sounds a bit of a combination between a design operations manager plus a little bit more like doing strategic research as well.

I think it's quite an interesting choice that you decided to hire a UX strategist first versus say hiring a UX researcher, which is a more common approach for many teams or even a design lead or a product lead so that you can split up the work effectively. Did you find that it was beneficial? Like now looking back, it's been two years since you've done that. Did you feel like you made the right decision?

Yeah, I did because I feel that when I look for a strategist, it was very specific. This person is very strong in strategy thinking, right? While knowing all the design technical skills, right? And this person is now the design lead as well. So why I chose that, it was also because the UX strategist also come in play working with the other stakeholder, the stakeholder management piece of things, the business side of

things as well. So it becomes the gel to put all these things together, not just solely operations, but putting

all these different pieces together and potentially this person is the design lead instead of the other way around. But I don't think if I hire a design lead, I think maybe the outcome could be quite similar. But what the strategist would think would be able to do now, right, is to pass on this strategy thinking knowledge to the rest of the team so that they all can work in an independent, like a pods kind of manner.

I like how you approach it because if I were to put myself in your position, it's like, okay, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And what's best for my team, right? Instead of saying, oh, what's everyone else doing? You just decided to go with your team and you didn't follow, say, the playbook or what everyone else is doing.

And I was wondering, did you all eventually hire more specialists into the team? So this strategist person seems pretty specialized. Do you all hire specialized UX researchers or specialized designers or PMs, for example?

For designers, still generalists. The team is still very lean in that sense. Why not specialists? It's because of the speed that we wanted to. First, we want to train all of them to be good researchers and good designers, right? But the truth of the matter is that we...

At that point of time, we didn't spend enough research time as I would wish to, right? Because of the speed that we wanted to achieve. So there is always a trade off. I always say, you know, design trade off is always there. We never get the luxury of, you know, having how many weeks of research before you get the things delivered. So there are a lot of things that we take a very pragmatic approach at that point of time. What do we really need and who has the

strength can we leverage on that strength and right now everyone is a generalist but you will be able to identify you know who which team members have what strength and if we have we need this skill set this specialized skill set can we leverage on them that's how we use the centralized design team

Yeah, thank you for sharing. And I think it's quite unique to the team that you grew at Carole because it's still like sort of a hybrid team because it has the product function, it has the design function inside. Now that you've done your whole tour of duty as a design manager, I'm wondering, do you have any advice or do you have any things you want to pass on to future design managers who are leading, who are in the first or second year of their job?

Yeah, absolutely. I think quite a few things. First of all, I think you really need to understand the business goals as well. Aligning with the business goal, aligning with the product goals, that's very important. Design teams should not work in silo at all. I think in many organizations that I've been with, sometimes we get so obsessed, people are telling you, you know, be user-centric and all that. And sometimes we get so obsessed with the users, we forgot our own business.

Right. So I think that that still need to always be in sync and be very aware as a design manager, you represent your design team. So you have to make sure that you work very closely with the rest of the department. Second is to always have very clear communication with your team members, understand what are their motivation and what are their weaknesses. How can you hire

people that compliment each other. You cannot hire all the same type of people. Be very conscious that, you know, I need this type, but I, yet I also need the other type. That will form a very cohesive team that comes together. You cannot pick one skill set over another. So that's something very helpful. Third is that there will be a lot of mess that you'll be dealing with. Always prioritize what are your small wins? What are your quick wins? Have a balance of your big and small wins.

These are some of the things for a design manager at your first one, two years, very quick to have. I like the last one especially because if you don't demonstrate value as a design team and especially your quick wins are those where you can show and tell and talk about the impact and all that.

especially in such a recessionary kind of environment, very, very difficult to keep your job up. So, yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, recently we have been talking a lot about is to learn very good storytelling as well. You know, everybody,

Work in a company is bringing value, but you need to be able to story tell what is it that you're really doing. And a design manager represents your whole team, right? So their rice bowl is kind of like in your hand. So come on. That feels like very heavy responsibility, but I'm sure anyone who's listening out there, up your game and storytelling and make sure you talk about impact.

about the work and make it visible within the organization as much as possible.

Just to understand, when you started at Car-Ro, you had two designers and yourself. When you left, how big was the team? We had 12, but we had more product managers. Designer is still very lean. Okay, that's quite understood. And when you hire product managers, do you actually hire them from who are more design-based or more business or more like engineering type of product managers? Yes.

Yeah, it will be a combination from various backgrounds. Literally all my product managers have different backgrounds. So it really depends. Before I hire, I kind of have a vision first. I know my roadmap, you know,

I know where I need to place people, where the gaps are. So depending on what product I would place this person or I possibly would place this person, I will be looking out for certain background and attributes as well. So they do come from multiple backgrounds. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And I think one of the interesting things I observe about Karo is that it has a very specialized data team led by a very senior scientist, right? I'm wondering how...

How did you work with this, say, like data analytics or data science team here?

So they would have their vision of what they want to do, right? So we cross, we actually collaborate with them if they come up with an idea or a model that they want and we will help to productize it. So if that is the North Star of the company, if that is the goal, and then we will work with them and say, okay, how do we use this? Let's say if it's an algorithm, how do we use this?

Which market do we go first? Which users do we apply to first? So we work very closely with them and we will do the development and the management for using their model. So we work very closely with them in that sense. Am I right to say they are the ones who actually propose to you, "Hey, you know, there's a very interesting algorithm that we've developed. Let's discuss how we can productize it or use it as an advantage for the team." That's quite interesting because usually I understand from

other teams like in the tech companies in the US for example, usually it's the product managers who will give them the ideas. It's actually two ways. Yeah, for us it's two ways. So it can be the other way as well. We have also done the other way where, hey, you know, I want part of my journey, I need this. Can you guys build this? Do you have the capability to do this?

While the other way, I mean, they will not also be sitting down and waiting for the product team to innovate. So they will be innovating as well. So it goes two ways. Generally, the way that we work is very collaborative in that sense, right? That it's not like everything is one way. Only you can talk to this person or that way. It's just...

very pragmatic like you know okay we all have this idea can we do this how can we do go about doing this who is going to be leading this who is going to be involved in this and when are we going to do this I like that because it's very very fluid and

And I think that's definitely a good way to build, right? It's not like it's always led by product or it's always led by engineering or anything like that. That's really great. So now you're going into a new role. I don't think we can share it publicly at the moment. Now that you're sort of like in transition, what are some of the things you're looking forward to do before you start this new role of yours? And maybe this is also a good chance to talk about your dog.

Yeah, so I took a break and during my break, I did quite a few things. You know, I started mentoring people, which I enjoy, you know, just talking and just sharing my experience or learning from others as well. Like, you know, how people see the product and tech industry in that sense. I have done a few, you know, sharing session as well out there. And I think that during my gap now, that will be what I'll be doing quite a bit just

sharing stories and looking out for people. And yes, taking care of my four dogs. They are all old dogs, so they have a lot of work. Is it a conscious choice that you say, I want four dogs? No. No.

I wanted one. I wanted one. Yeah. And then I started to volunteer with them. And then when you become a volunteer, you take a picture of one and then it's like, okay, two, three months down the road, nobody adopt yet. Okay. I'm going to bring her home, you know? And then the third one, fourth one that just came about, I wanted to start at one and I wanted to stop at two. And then I decided, okay, two and three,

kind of same, not much difference. You know, you take two minutes feeding the two dogs and the same, just another second to feed the third dog. So, okay lah. But I mean, I had five actually, but one passed away in July. Yeah, so it was five. Sorry to hear about that. But I mean, I wanted to make a joke because I'm sure that's how parents think about it.

that's it i want to stop at one kid but then wait hang on i have all this baby clothes and and stuff and i can just reuse it and oh the feeding time is the same isn't it i think kids are a lot a lot more work i'm i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure

And now that you mentioned you're mentoring people, you're helping people to grow in their careers, you're helping people to get into the industry. What are you noticing from your mentoring experience and sessions recently?

I think people are having difficulties. I think the market is a bit competitive in that sense. Generally, I think if you're talking about UX industry, I think it's tough, but it's not impossible. I feel that while you need to focus a lot on your portfolio and things, but don't ever forget about your character as well, because the character

you some most of the time sells you faster than what your portfolio is as well after talking and to a lot of people i feel that just don't forget who you are yeah

I'm sure you interview a lot of profiles and you interview PMs, you interview product designers and UXers. What are some of the common mistakes or what are some of the things that turns you off as a manager or a hiring manager? Me? Character, for sure. Because I think it's very easy for me to teach someone a new skill, to guide someone a new skill. It's very hard to change an attitude.

So that is one thing I always rave about, right? Is that, you know, just make sure you have good attitude, then have a decent portfolio. Of course, you cannot be hard to teach. But what I'm saying is that attitude is something that I don't want to, for me, I don't want to waste my time handling that attitude because that's going to waste my time. But I don't mind spending time to teach you your skill, to up your skills because you will only get better.

I'm going to ask you to elaborate. What are some of the people you've talked to in the past where you can immediately sense that they have a bad attitude or whatever they wrote in their CV?

So for designers, especially, I like to give feedback to their designs. I will give critical feedback. Of course, I won't, not with the intention of putting someone down. I want to know if you are able to receive constructive feedback. And I think the comeback

is what you will kind of sense. What kind of person is this? Are you being too defensive? Are you being too yes man? So that feedback, you will be able to kind of tell. Of course, we will never get it right. I mean, it's a one hour conversation. It's a very quick impression, but that's a starting point of how I would be able to assess whether how this attitude is.

I think that's an excellent hiring tip, just giving someone constructive feedback or critical feedback just to see how they respond and react to your feedback. And who are the people you really like? Since we talk about the other side, who are the people whom you feel are very outstanding when you're interviewing them? What do they demonstrate then?

I think one is learnability or teachability, right? Willing to learn, willing to share, very sensitive to perspectives because as a designer, the thing is we cannot be bound by our own perspective of what you think

A good design is or a good journey is you will always be having to listen to people. So a good listener, these are the attributes. Technical skills, I think, you know, it really depends on what the organization needs at that point. So what I assess today may not be how I will assess in the future in terms of technical skills, I feel. So that's why a lot of what you can assess and you can bring this along wherever you go is to assess that person's character. Typically in UX design, people end up in three categories.

types of places they either end up with a startup or the bigger company right or an agency right so I've seen you've been in both a startup and a bigger company can you maybe explain to us especially for people who are choosing their careers right now when should they work for a bigger company or when should they work for a startup you know like what's the difference I think in this is only my personal opinion I may not be right right but I think in

My experience that I feel if you are young and you're starting out as a designer, go to a small company as you can because you will be able to touch everything. You have a lot more autonomy to try, experiment and to find out what your motivation is, what your strengths are. And then when you want more specialization, you can go to a bigger company and execute that kind of skill set.

If you like to do many, many different things, agency is best, touch and go. And, you know, you can have a lot of exposure of different kinds of experiences. So I think, yeah, that would how I would speed up the journey of career choices. That's really good advice. And for those of us who are listening to this and maybe we're finding it a little bit difficult to get into the industry and work,

Especially during such a recessionary environment where there's a lot of tech layoffs. Any words of wisdom or any words of encouragement?

I guess, I mean, as cliche as it is, right, just don't stop believing that you will get there. I always believe that it's a numbers game. The more you do it, you know, you just need to get that number of fails to get your success. So you have to just say, okay, this is one down, one more down, another one down, and I'm going to get the next one. As designers also, I also want to highlight, right, I've seen so many portfolios and so many

design challenges. One thing is that there are a lot of examples out there. Question yourself, how do I stand out? There are so many formats out there that people copy and reference other people's portfolio, how I put case study together. But always come back to ask yourself, how do I stand out?

What is the story that I want to tell? How can I make it simple? Because hiring managers, honestly, if I'm hiring, we don't have a lot of time to go through all the details of your case study. What is the message you want to get there? What do you want him to remember in the first one minute?

I think that is really excellent advice. And it just makes me think about the time when I was doing sales as a holiday job. Like every, they always say, right? Every no gets you closer to a yes. So in this case, this is a very, very, very true. I'm also trying to, since there are no questions from the audience, I was trying to think like, is there anything else you would like to share or speak about in the next five to 10 minutes before we close off? Well, I think that in the product,

and design industry right now is kind of hype. There are a lot of competition, but I believe that this is going to last for a long time. You know, all companies will need this kind of skill sets. Just make sure that don't lose touch if you are in between job, if you are in between looking out and

you know, being jobless or what, continue to take short courses. Take short courses, go upgrade yourself, just learn a little bit more, just learn a little bit more because whatever you learn a little bit more, that will stack up to your knowledge. I really like that and I want you to talk a little bit more about it, not about the courses part, but more on

because I know you used to work for StarHub, you used to work for Great Eastern, right? So StarHub is a telco in Singapore, Great Eastern is an insurance company. These are big companies, right? And you did product over there and you saw how they use this knowledge and technical experience. So tell us a little bit more, elaborate. Why do you believe that this skill, whether it's UX or whether it's product thing,

Firstly, it's very close to tech, right? In the world that we are in today, every business is surrounded by digital solutions, digital products, digital platforms. And who built all these things? It's the tech team and then the product team will be the thinker. And then the design team is the one that gives a bit more direction of how do we speak to the customers and all that.

And I feel regardless of what industry, next time your hawker centers are already doing digital payment and all that, they are using products and the markets as well. There are so many industries that would need to build products.

And that is why anyone would require some form of this kind of skill set in their organization or in their businesses as well. So when we look at innovation, I mean, these are all surrounding this whole industry. Our skill set would be needed. However, we still need to make sure that we upgrade ourselves and

and continue to follow with the market trends, you know, technology trends, what's out there, how do we follow up, AI and things like that. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. And I know you were actually part of the early team at StarHub who did the product and the innovation side of things. Like, was that something...

that you had to convince management constantly that you were to justify your existence or did someone like decide this should happen and let's just do it? Well, in a way, yes, right? I mean, being in, you know, digital innovation, digital transformation, that kind of department. Okay, let's talk about innovation department first, right? We were doing innovation. We were actually the pathfinder for product

opportunities for the next three to five years, not even now. So three to five years, the tough thing is that you need to be up to date with technology trends and where are the market possibility. You want to do business justification, say, "Okay, what's your ROI? Seriously, it's going to be in the future. I don't even know." That is always the challenge that, "Okay, we want to do this. We want this telecom.

tally whatever whatever how can i envision how many users do i have how do i envision what is the profit it's not like your break motor where you can do a forecast you know innovation products sometimes very difficult you literally sometimes just try to pick a number right and and that is the challenge but it's quite fun because you get to learn what are the

I guess over time it gets easier to justify because it suddenly just becomes this brick that hits everyone's head and just like COVID, right? COVID is like this big thing that suddenly hits everyone. Oh no, we suddenly need to do digital right now. Yeah, I think when it comes to fruitation or when it comes to more relatable sense, then people can see it better. When you talk too far away, it's also very difficult.

Yeah, that's a really good point. So we got a question from the audience finally. Eliza asks, "Curious in getting exposure, at what point should professional like myself specialise

And if I specialize first and then decide to gain exposure or should I specialize first and decide to gain exposure after? I think it's probably this person is probably early in her career. So she's just trying to understand when should I tell people I'm like a specialist. I think usually self-discovery, right? You know...

If you're already aware and know where your strengths are, for example, if let's just say I'm just hypothetically speaking, right? Like myself, I started as a designer, but I'm actually not a very good, good

hands-on designer but I was very good in my research I was good in strategy thinking and all those things so I knew in the first five years I said okay I'm going to stop doing hands-on after five years and then I will move on to something that is less of a hands-on design work so for people you you kind of need to go and find what your strengths are if you are clearly already know that

you cannot do this for 20 years, 10, 20 years, then maybe you want to say, okay, maybe I go niche and find a specialization. Then the next question you need to ask is that,

My specialization, there are a lot of opportunities, right? Is this so niche that you are fighting with so many other people? Like what is your competition there? I think those things will give you some answers. I don't think it's a time answer. It's more like, where are you at, at that point of time? Do you find it attractive, a candidate more attractive if they say they are like a specialist or it doesn't matter, you will still have to meet and talk to them? It depends. Again,

Again, what am I hiring for? If I'm in an organization that I do need a specialist. So we have had in my previous company, we need UX researchers, basically really specialize in research only. In that case, then of course, I would look for people who have experience in market research, maybe, right? A bit of UX design, facilitating a workshop, perhaps, you know, having that conversation. So there will be, it really depends

the hiring manager at that point of time of the organization, what is their need?

We hope we answered your question, Eliza. So all in all, I think it's been a really great 15 minutes talking to you, Gerald, and learning from your experience and all of those things. I wish you the very best in the next part of your career. Any last tips that you might want to communicate could be related to today's topic, could be slightly unrelated that you want to share with our audience here?

I think lastly, just stay positive in every challenge that you are in. There will always be the light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm sure, I mean, I take your statement seriously because I'm sure in a startup, you've seen things

things happen and then it feels like there is no hope right i'm sure you've been in those moments and then after that oh wow really there's there is a light in the tunnel is that true or no i i think i'm coming from in today's day we are always thrown with challenges and all that right and people would always amplify you know we we human we tend to amplify a lot on our challenges and then we forget to stay positive and i think staying positive is something that

really would help us in the next decision that we make. Because if you are not positive, the decision you make next is not going to help you. Like in anything at all, right? So that's why I always like to spread that positivity to people and remember that, you know, what is going to help you in the end of the day. I love that. So we should stay positive, everyone.

And I also like it because I don't like to operate from a place of fear, right? And we are often thrown a lot of messages about fear and all that. And when we operate from a place of fear, we don't actually make good decisions. So I take your point on that. So with that, let's end the podcast.

webinar and podcast session over here. Thank you everyone for staying tuned and listening to this evening. We hope you learned something just as I did, had many, many takeaways as well. And Gerald, wish you all the best in the next part of your career. And if someone wants to reach out to you, where's the best place to do that? Can people still reach out to you for mentoring sessions?

Absolutely. I am on LinkedIn. I'm also on ADP List. That's great. So if you'd like to reach out for Gerald, I think there's probably a couple more weeks you can catch him. Then after that, he's going to get busy again. So please do so. And with that, thank you for attending. And next month, we'll have another guest.

just as usual. So if you're listening and if you enjoy the content today, please feel free to like and subscribe as well as share with your friends. We will be bringing you more content this year about career transitions, about technical content with regards to UX and product management. And with that, thank you for listening in. My name is Dalen and I'm the founder and general manager at Curious Call. So good night and good luck to you. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com. I would love to hear from you. Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at curiouscore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.