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JOINING THE GO TROOPS: MY FUTURE MEMOIRS

Writer's picture: Evan WilliamsEvan Williams

I am officially one of the Go-Troops at Go-Jek. I wanted to write down down exactly why I joined in the first place. For my family (please don't panic! It will be fine!). For me. For my colleagues. For my new team. For my friends who have asked and I never really answered. For those that just need to read this because you are bored or curious.

This, in some way, represents both how I felt about my experiences from Uber and my forward expectations not only for my new role, but also my career, and life.

So I wrote a future version of memoirs (or at least the narrative that will mature in the future as I reflect back on today...)


When I was at GO-JEK...I was in the center of something remarkably HYPERLOCAL; on a MASSIVE SCALE; in a way I had never seen before.

The Go-Troops number in the thousands, mostly Indonesian, and bring the intuition and national pride into their office that I never saw at Uber. The commitment to Indonesia (and the rest of the Southeast Asia region) is undeniable. It all starts with the concept of improving daily life through the use of technology--a way to earn, improved transportation choices, access to financial instruments huge populations never had access to, and so on. I feel like I really made a difference to the growing middle classes and beyond of a big, emerging market. Yes, I helped sell a lot of Oreos in Indonesia years ago, but this was different...


We gave consumers what they deserve. A choice.

The sale of the Uber business to Grab in mid-2018 created a rideshare monopoly that reduced choice in the market. It could be argued that it wasn't really a "monopoly", because people could just switch to non-app transport modes, but the facts are it left people without jobs, created a disruption for drivers trying to earn, and had a negative effect on consumers by creating an environment ripe for higher price and slower service. In other words, it took away choice from people and had the potential to truncate innovation. I am happy that in my time at Go-Jek, I supported giving people choice. It was hard. It was, frankly, a grind but through grit and teamwork, we achieved it. We proved that on a long enough time horizon, the consumer ALWAYS wins.


I got to really explore who I am as a leader.

The Go-Troop Researchers were a young, eager-to-learn, unselfish group. Honestly it is probably the youngest group I have led, the biggest group I have led, and the one that because of this, had the highest upward trajectory. I've always tried to mimic the leadership qualities of my favourite mentors (shout out to Greg Michaels and Jeffrey Hunter...you guys are my idols). They are two of the most intelligent, kind-hearted, and somewhat professorial type of leaders that I have personally known. They are educators disguised as business professionals, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have had the environment or confidence to grow. I hope I did that for my team at Go-Jek. I hope I listened. I hope I educated. I hope they got better each day. Being a good leader is not just about leading troops to victory, it is also about being a positive force for people that carries them forward after you are gone.


I got really, really close to the Product in a way that was truly customer-centric.

It's a known fact that Uber's product comes from Silicon Valley. That isn't a bad thing...the tech was really amazing (internally and externally)...written by coders that anyone would love to have on their staff. However, it wasn't local. The lack of product reseachers and designers in the Southeast Asia region (not to dismiss the two UX researchers that gave their all across all these markets) meant the main emphasis of design was for the U.S. market. This wasn't bad if you were in the US...not so great if you were in Asia. It just isn't as exciting when you are inheriting a product not designed for your customer. At Go-Jek, I played an instrumental role in devising innovation that really made a difference to everyday people. For that, I can say I made a difference.

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