Taxi mafias, cash vaults, and 100% MoM growth: The story behind Southeast Asia’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brought to you by Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Rows—The spreadsheet where data comes to life | Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs.

—

Kevin Aluwi is the co-founder and former CEO of Gojek. With over 2.7 million drivers and over 3 billion orders completed, Gojek is the biggest startup in Indonesia and all of Southeast Asia. In today’s podcast, Kevin shares the story of how Gojek overcame endless obstacles—including being underfunded, being unable to send drivers payment, and the local motorcycle mafia coming after their drivers. We cover the importance of brand, the value of doing the hard things, how to be super-scrappy, and helpful tips on building a tech company outside of Silicon Valley.

Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/taxi-mafias-cash-vaults-and-100-mom-growth-the-story-behind-southeast-asias-biggest-startup-kevin-aluwi-gojek/#transcript

Where to find Kevin Aluwi:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kaluwi

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaluwi/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• Gojek: https://www.gojek.com/en-id/

• WeChat: https://www.wechat.com/

• Sequoia: https://www.sequoiacap.com/

• eFishery: https://efishery.com/en/

• What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture: https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Do-Who-Are/dp/0062871331

• How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know: https://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560/

• The Menu on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/movies/the-menu

• Cyberpunk Edgerunners on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81054853

• Arc: https://arc.net/

• Steam Deck: https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Kevin’s background

(05:00) How Gojek got started and the current scale

(08:35) Some of the services that Gojek currently offers or has offered

(09:37) Kevin’s thoughts on super-apps

(15:36) The importance of brand

(23:08) How to create branding with consistency across copy and design

(26:53) Challenges Gojek had in the early days that required scrappiness

(33:03) Why Kevin doesn’t believe in moats as a durable solution, and the value of doing hard things

(37:30) How Gojek hired private security to keep their drivers safe

(39:38) The value of founders doing and understanding multiple roles within the company

(44:12) How Kevin’s failed finance career led him to take a bet on building tech in Indonesia

(47:30) Tips on building a tech company outside of Silicon Valley

(52:09) What the market is like in Indonesia

(55:42) What’s next for Kevin

(57:41) Lightning round

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In the early days of Gojek, there was a lot of resistance to our services.
0:04.8	The most common form of that resistance in the early days was actually by motorcycle taxi
0:10.9	mafias. So you would have like these areas that are essentially controlled
0:16.2	through violence by specific, you know, area mafias and when we start having drivers pick up orders and pick up passengers these people
0:27.3	Would actually physically assault our drivers. You know we've had everything from like bricks thrown at our drivers to you know knives
0:37.3	and machetes being brandished at them and I think it would have been easy for us to say like, hey, you know, you know, they're all contractors,
0:47.2	they're third parties, you know, let them kind of just sort it out.
0:50.5	But instead, we actually hired private security.
0:55.0	So we actually work with private security companies
0:58.0	to help our drivers in those situations,
1:00.0	you know, to help to help kind of like,
1:02.0	you know, extract them out of these these
1:04.7	sticky situations and so we actually ran a fairly big private security
1:09.7	operation for a fairly long time.
1:13.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's
1:23.3	most successful products.
1:25.1	Today my guest is Kevin Aloui.
1:27.3	Kevin is the co-founder and former CEO of a company called GoJek, which I've always
1:32.3	been fascinated by it. You may recall a former guest
1:35.4	Crystal Waggia who was head of growth at Gojek and I've always wanted to get more of the
1:40.2	story. Gojek is infamous for their scrapiness, their unique approach to
1:44.4	ops and growth, and as being one of the first and most successful super apps in the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.