Kickstarting my PM career at Kargo as an ex-management consultant
In February 2020, I had the opportunity to begin my career as a Product Manager at Kargo Tech. Kargo Tech is an early-stage startup based in Jakarta that has received ~$40M in funding from investors such as Travis Kalanick (co-founder of Uber), and Sequoia Capital. Kargo’s mission is to become a freight logistics marketplace (think of an Uber for trucks) that can revolutionize Indonesia’s USD 250Bn logistics industry by driving efficiency, transparency and accountability.
My previous job was as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company’s Atlanta office. I had the best time at McKinsey, but after 2 years I was ready for a new challenge and set my sights on becoming a Product Manager. My interest in the Product Manager role came from the appeal of having a strategic role while also being directly involved in the process of building products.
Through the recommendation of a friend from university I applied to Alter, which is an early stage VC Fund. Alter also runs a Fellowship program that places former consultants at top emerging market startups. After being accepted as an Alter Fellow, I was able to choose which startup to join and Kargo was my clear top choice. When joining Kargo, there were a few objectives I had in mind:
#1 Break into tech, particularly Product Management
This was high-priority for me as I had no prior technical experience and I knew nothing about software engineering other than the bare basics
#2 Work with an amazingly talented team in a region of the world I have never been in before
One of the reasons why I was so drawn to tech was because startups tend to have a distinctly close-knit, collaborative culture. I also knew I would likely never have the opportunity to work in Southeast Asia again so I wanted to gain incredible life experiences by immersing myself in a new culture.
Originally, I expected my time at Kargo to be only 6 months long, as this was the standard length of the Alter Fellowship. I had planned to attend business school immediately after Kargo, so I had a clear plan for what I would do afterwards. However, I had such an incredible experience at Kargo that despite being accepted into my dream business school, I deferred for one year and decided to join Kargo as a full-time employee. My temporary 6-month Fellowship became a 1.5 year job, which is nearly half of my professional work experience so far.
After 1.5 years working at Kargo, here are a few incredible highlights that I think I could not have achieved anywhere else:
#1a Joined through a Product Fellowship and left as a Senior Product Manager after 1.5 years
The fact that talent can be promoted at such a fast speed is a testament to one of Kargo’s strengths, which is that Kargo recognizes high-performing talent. Your background doesn’t matter and if you are doing a great job, then you will be rewarded. This ensures that employees are constantly being challenged and developing their skills.
#1b Managed the first ever data science squad at Kargo
Kargo is continuously innovating to improve its products and operations. One of these initiatives included onboarding a data scientist and so I was assigned with setting the strategic vision, roadmap and research cadence for a data science squad at Kargo. Given that I don’t have a data science degree, this involved a steep learning curve as I had to become a thought partner to a trained data scientist. Ultimately, the Squad developed a recommendation engine and numerous pricing models to make an impact on our margins and user experience.
#1c Led the frontend and backend migration of a product that spanned 6 months and 4 different Squads
Due to an upgrade that we were undergoing with our product suite, we needed to migrate both the frontend and backend of an internal product used by our Operations team that we had invested 1.5 years of engineering effort into. To add to the technical complexity, this product was integrated with 3 other user-facing products that also needed to be migrated. As someone who had just recently learned how an API works and the difference between frontend and backend, coordinating this migration was incredibly challenging and daunting at times. I had to persuade the leadership that this initiative was worth our time at the expense of growth initiatives. Ultimately, it was an invaluable learning experience and the product was successfully launched with the support of my incredible fellow Product Managers.
#2a Found colleagues who felt more like friends and felt at home in a new country
I was very nervous when moving to Jakarta, as I had never been to Indonesia before and had little knowledge of Indonesian culture. Fortunately, it turns out my fears were totally unfounded. Immediately after joining Kargo, I was in awe of how much initiative my colleagues took to help each other. One session was a Knowledge Share session regarding best practices for Sprint Plannings and Groomings and another session was a Bahasa language session for all the expats who were at Kargo. Although I was unfortunately only able to stay in Jakarta for 1.5 months before I had to return home to Japan due to the pandemic, I had already managed to squeeze in a surfing trip to Lombak with my colleagues.
#2b Became an integral part of a top class Product culture
At Kargo, the Product Manager role is a holistic role that requires you to hone in your strategic product skills as well as your product execution and implementation skills. In this regard, the Product Manager role includes elements of being a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Product Manager. Each Product Manager sets the vision for their product by writing a PRFAQ, which is a document that includes a Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions section regarding a future product release. For the past year, I facilitated our weekly Bar Raiser sessions that allowed a Product Manager to share their PRFAQs to the rest of the Product team for feedback.
To wrap up, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of Kargo’s team and I could not imagine a better company to start the second phase of my career with.
