Slides for my guest speaker session at the HKU executive certificate in Internet Finance. Covering personal observations in startup markets and careers, Hong Kong vs Singapore, hiring trends and business models.

1. Your money or AND your life
Adventures in the digital revolution

2. Overview
❖ Introduction
❖ General Trends of the Digital Revolution
❖ Talent Acquisition in the Fintech era
❖ Group Exercise!
❖ Break
❖ Fintech + Tech best practices
❖ Group Exercise!
❖ Conclusion / Q&A

3. Introduction(s)

4. About K.T.
❖ Tech, Education, Public Policy background
➢ Head of Business Development, Tinkertanker
➢ Software Engineer, GoGoVan
➢ Head of GrabCar Thailand
➢ Instructor and education market advisor (SG)
➢ Special Projects, Ministry of Health Holdings
(equivalent of HKHA)
❖ Education
➢ B.A. Stanford University
➢ CELTA (TESOL) and ACTA (Singapore training
certification)
➢ General Assembly Web Development Bootcamp

5. Your turn

6. Some takeaways from work
● I can only work for companies whose names start
with G or T...

7. Some takeaways from work
● Teams matter
○ If you respect your team, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling
● Can skills be “hacked” / learned in a short time?
● A little technical understanding goes a long way
● It’s not about the idea, it’s about the funding levels
● A large, homogeneous market is the holy grail
● Different personnel at different stages
○ 10/100/1000

8. HK and SG tech markets...
High school economics explains spending mix and addressable industries?!

9. HK and SG tech markets...
Who’s your hinterland?
What is scalability?
Southeast Asia
is NOT a place
These rich
countries
are called
“island”
economies
for a reason
● Tech is not a
cure-all for a bad
business model
unless you have huge
backing
● O2O does not have
the margins of pure
software businesses

10. General Trends
of the digital revolution

11. Some trends of note

12. Some trends of note
Outsourcing
Jobs
Deep Tech
QE
Mobile
Automation
Adoption

13. Outsourcing

14. Automation
● The robots are coming
● Robo advisors
● AI
● High-skilled workers,
superstars and capitalists
● Unemployment and
inequality
● Universal Basic Income

15. Mobile
● Mobile first as a design principle
● Two-thirds of the world’s population are
connected by mobile devices
● 5 billion unique mobile subscribers globally
achieved in Q2 2017, and almost 75% of the
global population connected by mobile by 2020.
● Developing markets will account for the largest
share of new mobile subscription growth
● Affordability, content relevance, and digital
literacy are bigger inhibitors to mobile internet
adoption than a lack of network infrastructure

16. Mobile
But also see...

17. QE and growth in capital seeking returns
● Lower interest rates, more funds available, LPs
seeking higher returns
● Growth in seed and “angel investors”
● Growing number of Accelerators
● Series B funding gaps
● More concentration in “unicorn” investing

18. Deep Tech
● Past generation of outsize returns from Consumer
Internet companies
● Next wave lies in “deep” tech merging with industrial
processes:
○ Internet-of-things
○ Healthcare
○ Transportation
○ Agriculture
○ Strong research base
○ Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

19. S Curves and Adoption Curves

20. S Curves and Adoption Curves

21. S Curves and Adoption Curves
Different countries may well have different adoption curves and peaks
Extentofadoption
Time
Country A
Country B
Country C
Credit Cards
Smart Transport /
Payment Cards
Digital Wallets
“Stop at a level where it’s good enough”

22. Jobs
● More of the gig economy
● Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” (2005)
○ Key skills that are still beyond automation:
■ Design
■ Story
■ Symphony
■ Empathy
■ Play
■ Meaning

23. Jobs

24. Talent Acquisition
in the Fintech era

25. The mix of skills needed
TDepthofexpertise
Regulations
Breadth of knowledge
Management
MarketingTechnologyHR Financial Analysis

26. Generalists AND Specialists
Singapore’s National Electronic Health Record

27. Good things come in teams
The best data handler and the best interpreter are rarely the same person
Our clients are local office workers
who want some luxury…
We don’t have many tourists because
our people aren’t good at English…
Why don’t you get an intern to build
that...
“We don’t have any MixPanel data
on that product… no one uses it...
No but as I told you the way I
calculated it… oh wait… it’s [a
simple average weight of a parcel]”
A PhD data analyst describing a product
that had users and was a top business
priority
An assistant manager describing our
imagined target customer vs the reality
that boutique hotels and spas used us

28. A quick note on tech teams

29. A quick note on tech teams
● Used by some top global
tech firms to stay nimble
and ensure no part of
product or company gets
neglected
● Product Groups will:
○ Own & develop products
○ Seek inputs from company
and country reps
○ Check in with management

30. Organization Structure
The Principle of 10/100/1000: People you hire at each stage will differ
Eric Schmidt talked about this a lot at Google.
One of the things he said was, at every order
of magnitude (1, 10, 100, 1,000, etc) — expect
every process to break. You would need to
change the process each time at each level of
scale.
I saw this happen all of the time with all of
our processes: our hiring process, code
deployment, etc. We would go one step
further and everything would break.
Marissa Mayer
Stanford CS183C - Blitzscaling

31. ● Country A
○ Market Research
○ Product Requirements
○ Development
○ Testing
○ Deployment
■ Country B
● Market Research
● Product Requirements
● Development
● Testing
● Deployment
○ Country C
■ Market Research
■ Product Requirements
■ Development
■ Testing
■ Deployment
The Gantt chart waterfall (from hell)
So feedback!
Much chaos!

32. Trends in interviewing
Simulate a real
work situation
An assigned
task or project
Behavioural
interviews
Case Studies
Assessment
Centres
Trying to approximate reality...

33. Group Exercise!
;)

34. Background
● Your Executive Certificate in Internet Finance and stellar achievements
at work have borne fruit. You are up for promotion!*
● However, before you can start your new role, your boss insists you
hire your own replacement… hey, you know best what it takes!
● Create an interview assignment / task that tests for some of the
key skills required for your job.
*e.g. Team Lead, GM, VP, EVP, Grand Poobah

35. Sample Assignments
● Programmers
○ Create a Rails app that can read a coupon code and verify it is one of ours
○ Check that the app works, whether code is tangled up, whether there are tests used,
whether code fails with different kinds of coupons
● Product Managers
○ How would you improve the current feature that allows advertisers and designers to see
which orders are open?
○ Check for detailed requirements, metrics used to measure success, user flow
● Designers
○ How would you design an e-commerce checkout experience?
○ Check for screens / wireframes, simplicity of experience, handling different paths,
consistency with branding

36. Sample Assignments
● Marketers
○ What would be your go-to-market strategy for our new product?
○ Check for marketing sizing, market selection, marketing mix of price, product, promotion,
place, metrics for success
● HR
○ A team members wants to resign due to politics with a high flyer. What do you do?
○ Check for informational interviews, team feedback, past performance reviews
● Finance
○ Our company is about to construct and operate a new facility. How would you model this
for breakeven analysis?
○ Check for key revenue and cost inputs, labelling of assumptions, ability to handle different
scenarios

37. The Assignment
● Create an interview assignment / task that tests for some of
the key skills required for your job.
○ Include a description of the tasks
○ Include a simple checklist / rubric of criteria to show how well the candidate
has performed
● Bear in mind the company’s stage of development
○ Are you hiring for a 10/100/1000 level?
○ An organization may have product groups that are at very different stages of
development
● This is also a chance for you to share with your classmates on what
it takes to succeed at your current job

38. Break

39. Some best practices
for Fintech and Tech in general

40. Flavour of the month/year!

41. What is Fintech?
● Peer-to-peer lending
● Purely digital banks
● Traditional banks rolling out
digital services
● Investment services
● Robo advisors
● Fundraising / crowdfunding
● Remittances
● Digital Wallets
● Comparison sites
● Cryptocurrencies and ICOs
● Payment processors
● Support services (picks and
shovels)

42. Support Services

43. Some Fintech Business Models
1. Reinventing banking
industry mistakes
Fine segmenting through data,
lacking awareness of adverse
selection
Viability: 2/5
2. Thinking transactions
data is very valuable
Data not so valuable, usually
comes from a large existing
operation
Viability: 1/5
5. Assuming regulators
listen to your whining
more than incumbents’
Diseconomies from
regulating small upstarts.
ask for forgiveness, not
permission
Viability: 2/5
4. Using someone else’s
network and paying
marginal cost
Undercut incumbents for
payments services. Some
regulatory support.
Viability: 4/5
3. Hoping those who mistrust
each other will trust you
“Disrupting” the middleman. More
about trust & relationships than tech
Viability: 3/5
6. Worse service for
lower price
Attack bundling for
non-premium services,
e.g. overseas transfers
Viability: 5/5
7. Fixing an industry
standard
Some digital payments...
Viability: 5/5
A Cynic’s Guide to Fintech
Dan Davies 2015

44. What can the algos not see (yet)
● UK subprime lender
● Changed salesforce from
commissioned agents to fixed
earnings employees
● New IT system failed to capture
nuances and specific agent
knowledge
But the real issue was in the IT side of the change
which Provident made to support the new sales
forces and sales process. The commission-based
salesforce possessed a huge amount of know-how
and sector knowledge – much of which was very
locality-specific – which was never written down. It
existed only in the heads of the salespeople. Even
then, this wasn’t necessarily the sort of thing
you’d be able to capture in a scientific-standard
textbook. Let alone an algorithm or automated
credit decisioning matrix.
Naked Capitalism

45. Other things to look out for
KYC (know your customer) is not just for banks and compliance
Our VC’s Limited Partners are from a very
traditional, lucrative brick and mortar industry
and couldn’t wait that long for results.
We had to shut down after less than 6 months
even though we had a full class going.
Owner of an American coding school teaching a fintech and
analytics syllabus in an unnamed location I’ve worked in
Much term
mismatch?

46. A closer look at payments
● Stratechery: US, HK and TW vs other countries
○ The most interesting places to think about when it comes to new payment
systems are countries with low credit card penetration.
● Quartz India
○ From e-wallets to payment gateways
● MPesa - Kenya
○ Mobile money succeeded due to government support and consumer demand,
driven by need for secure cash transactions during political instability
● Cashless cannot be the face for Singapore smart nation
○ Most retailers, especially smaller ones, chose to transact with cash to avoid
paying hefty transaction fees imposed by credit card companies and banks.

47. A closer look at payments
Ben Thompson, Stratechery

48. Group Exercise!
;)

49. Background
● Your current or future (dream) employer has decided to enter
the Digital Wallet space
● The CEO has asked you to lead the team, oversee product
development, and decide on which countries you should launch
the wallet in
● In order to think about product features and countries, you
need to know more about your potential customers
● You decide to create Product Personas

50. Examples of Digital Wallets
● Google Wallet
● Apple Passbook
● Square Wallet
● Venmo
● PayPal
● WeChat Wallet
● Neat (HK)
● more
Make purchases
Link bank accounts
Link credit cardsCheck balanceMake purchases
Wireless
Peer transfers? Multiple currencies? Loyalty cards?
Cashless

51. What is a Product Persona?
What the product manager and designer need to do is first
identify the most important constituencies, and then try to
characterize them in considerable detail, so that you can use
these profiles to guide you in the design of the product. These
profiles are sometimes called “personas” and while they should be
fictitious, they should be as representative, realistic and
plausible as you can make them. The idea is to come up with an
archetype which captures the essence of this type of customer.
How to write a good PRD
Martin Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group (with inputs from Ben Horowitz)

52. Sample Persona
Leon the Power Seller is a 46 year old male that lives in Fresno and runs a small motorcycle parts
business. While he does maintain a small shop, almost all of his sales come from eBay, where he
sells on average 400 items per month. He sells a wide range of motorcycle related items, but his
most popular items are saddle bags for Harley Davidson’s. He owns two big Harley’s himself, and
he also drives a 1993 Toyota Pickup. Leon is married and has two teenage sons.
Leon bought his computer just so that he could use eBay, and seldom uses anything except eBay
and e-mail. Leon has been selling on eBay for three years now, and has learned what he needed
to in order to effectively sell. He has a feedback rating of over 5000, which he takes great pride in.
When eBay changes things on the site, especially the selling process, it can be very aggravating
for him to learn the differences and change his procedures.
Leon has well-established routines where he lists items to sell on Monday, and most of his
auctions end by Friday, and he tries to get the shipments out within a few hours of receiving the
payments.
from How to write a good PRD

53. Sample Persona
Tan Heng Soon
48
“Can you fit my mountain of requirements? If so, my boss’s boss
will consider your request at next year’s retreat”
VP Operations
Retail
Frequency and
order size
● Infrequent orders
● Huge shipments
Key Goals
● Keep my job
● No, seriously. That means no
surprises. If I choose any
new service, it must be
incredibly reliable
● We have complicated ERP
systems and a workflow that
has been cemented over the
years. We’re not changing
anything
● Can you integrate with our
system?
Use cases / Day in the
Life
● Most of my day is filled with
meetings. I have been at this
company for 15 years
● We have XX retail outlets,
with YY customers making
delivery requests per day
● We also need to transport
unique sale items from the
port to our warehouse
Preferred Platform
● I don’t know. My
staff will decide
Preferred Vehicle
● I don’t know. My
staff will decide

54. Persona Template (example)
Name
Age
“Quote that represents me”
Job
Industry
Frequency of
purchases
● xxx
Key Goals
● xxx
● yyy
● zzz
Use cases / Day in the
Life
● xxx
● yyy
● zzz
Size of average
purchase
● xxx
Preferred payment
methods
● xxx
Photo
(optional)

55. The Assignment
● Create at least 1 Product Persona that represent
typical customers for your digital wallet
● How do you think these personas will affect your
decisions on:
○ Product design
○ Which markets to enter

56. Conclusion

57. Assorted Final Tips
● Don’t just be a manager
○ Know something about the technical details and turn that into your
competitive advantage
● Building a team is different from building your career
○ No longer just managing up
○ Everyone needs to win, not just you
● Solving your own problem remains a good starting point
● Stay nimble, you and your business
● Ask who the sucker at the table is...

58. Q&A

59. Go forth and concur conquer
khoodose@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ktkhoo