APAC head Reno Wang talks workplace lessons from East and West
ONE of online travel’s fastest growing companies, Hopper, is expanding into Asia Pacific. We catch up with Reno Wang, vice president, APAC, to find out what led him to leave Alipay to join Hopper, how Hopper does things differently for its talent – from Unlimited Pay Time Off to Single Thread Ownership, and its plans for the region. This is an extract from his interview during “The Great Talent Crunch”, Episode 1 of The Bridge Series, by WiT and Phocuswright, in which he also covers lessons that bridge East and West.
Reno Wang: “We are remote, we don’t care where you are, long as you can deliver.”
Q: You joined Hopper as GM of APAC, nine months ago – tell us why you chose to join Hopper and a little bit about your background.
I started my career at Sabre as a developer, then switched to technical consulting. I was there for five years and then I moved back to China and joined Alibaba – Fliggy. Then I returned to the US and joined Alipay which gave me knowledge of fintech. This combination of travel and fintech made me a good match for Hopper. Hopper has been growing tremendously fast since it introduced fintech to the business. The other two of the biggest incentives to join Hopper are the vision of Hopper executive management and the company culture.
One, Both Hopper CEO (Fred) and CSO (Dakota) can clearly see the values of Asian ecommerce giants’ business models and playbooks and are determined to introduce the good features into our next generation of products. This is not common in Western companies and makes me think my experiences at Alibaba would be more worthwhile.
Two, Hopper adopts STO (Single Thread Ownership) as its organisational structure and team management style, which was popularised by Amazon in the tech industry and greatly motivates people like me, who want to prove our own entrepreneurship.
Q: How big is your APAC team now?
14 people in total – 3 in Singapore, the rest (business development, product, data science and engineering) widely distributed in the US and APAC.
Q: What are you looking to grow to?
We want to replicate Hopper’s success in the US market (in 2021 we are the most downloaded Travel App in the US, and tripled revenue YoY) in our targeted Tier 1 countries (i.e., AU, NZ, SG, IN)
Q: Can you run APAC from Dallas?
We are remote, we don’t care where you are, as long as you can deliver. For Hopper APAC, we have two priorities – B2C and B2B. For B2B, we are offering our Hopper Cloud services so our business development teams are driving that. The Trip.com partnership, that was signed by me. B2B is much easier, based on my networks and relationships.
B2C is harder, we cover 14 countries in APAC so we have set up tier-based strategies to expand the business. Tier 1 has four countries – Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and India. Their commonalities are English-speaking and credit card adoption is pretty good. Hopper grew out of the US – English and credit card dominance. Across the rest of APAC, credit card adoption is not that high, so we need to connect with Alternative Payment Methods – that’s our next step.
Q: Having worked with a multinational like Sabre, then Alibaba/Alipay, now Hopper, how would you compare the experiences?
Generally speaking, Chinese companies’ culture is so different from the West – Alibaba style is more intense than the West. Their pace is super fast. The big transition for me was Sabre to Alibaba – even I got a culture shock but luckily, I had been on the consulting team so I was more used to intense work schedules. I picked up a lot from the Alibaba ecosystem – ecommerce deals, B2C business – they are more advanced than in the West.
Alipay was a different story – I had to work all the time, across multiple time zones. Even though I oversaw partnerships, decisions were made out of Hangzhou. The challenge is how to help Chinese colleagues understand the Western market and get enough resources to get pipelines met and KPIs fulfilled.
But it gave me domain knowledge of fintech, and Alibaba gave me lessons in B2C and ecommerce business.
I really like the Single Thread Ownership (STO) model of Hopper, everyone wants to be a CEO of a business, and so there is no excuse for no success for your own STO.
Q: Other than this, how about financials – that must be attractive too for Hopper to hire someone like you?
My level at Alibaba was not low. Hopper is very competitive, we benchmark against Silicon Valley startups, but the biggest reason is the upside. Since I joined, the valuation has gone from $1.5b to $5b today. You see the performance, even during the pandemic.
So there’s the team culture, the stock options and equity. And we are not as big as our competitors in emerging markets. We just launched vacation rentals, so we have more to launch and more to grow.
Q: What lessons can companies like Hopper teach Chinese companies wanting to go global? You see Trip.com Group has just launched a hybrid work model?
Hybrid/remote is definitely Hopper’s culture. I can only speak for myself – if they want more international business, they need more international talent. Language is one of the biggest barriers. And localisation is important. Once you develop your business in emerging markets, you have to give the decision power to the local folks, who understand the local markets best. It’s one reason why Lazada, after acquisition by Alibaba, lost market share to Shopee, loss of localisation at the decision making level.
Q: How is Hopper localising in APAC?
Our employment is not based on race or nationality. We check for experience, rather than ethnicity. Culture fit is very important, every single hire must have strengths in their local markets. For example, Rajiv Kumar came from AirAsia, so he knows ASEAN markets and India. We want people who are culturally local, understand local consumer needs and market nuances.
Q: Remote/hybrid workplaces appear to be the future. How hard is it to build culture? What do you do to facilitate that?
It is not easy to build a culture and let all of your employees recognise it, especially those new hires from a different working culture.
First, you should be able to clearly state the culture. Hopper Tenets: 1. impact the real lives; 2. do not assume on behalf of your customer; 3. add values not fees; 4. lower the price; 5. do right by the customer; 6. create real partnerships with the suppliers.
Second, set up the disciplines for your team to follow. Third, set the appropriate but clear reward and penalty mechanism for the performance. Four, provide a bi-directional communication channel between frontline workers and yourself. Lastly, you are the best example for your team.
Q: Share a couple of benefits that are special to Hopper and are valued by employees.
We have Unlimited Time Pay Off – we don’t need quota of holidays. We have global WeWork access – every individual is unique, some prefer office, some prefer home. We have a stipend – carrot cash – loyalty points that can be redeemed for travel services on Hopper.
Q: Question you always ask a new hire:
• Do you clearly know what you want to and not to do? Especially the latter.
• Are you clear with what to do for your following three months?
• Do you see any problems with the team and our business today?
Q: Key lesson Western companies can learn from Chinese companies like Alibaba
In China, since around 2000, there have emerged great ecommerce companies, like Alibaba, JD, Ctrip in Travel and recently Pinduoduo. There is one commonality among them, which I do not see too much in Western companies. It is the agility to the market dynamics. This differentiation reflects in a lot of aspects such as organisational structure adjustment, business planning, and marketing and operations.
Today, everybody knows about Double 11 and the astronomical number of the Single Day’s GMVs. But behind the outstanding results, there were hundreds of thousands of Alibaba employees and merchant partners working hard day and night to make that happen. I have experienced three Double 11s myself. We literally worked overnight to ensure the best offers and purchasing experiences to the consumers across those rush hours of that day. So far I have not seen a western company have such an execution ability.
Q: Key lesson Chinese companies can learn from Western companies
A more sustainable and self-driven work schedule to allow employees to be productive at a physically and mentally healthy level. I am a big fan of WFH, and we still provide access to WeWork if you need to interact with people in person.
Q: What motivates you ?
I have the passion to improve people’s lives and make the world more united using my knowledge and capabilities. This is also why I am still passionate about travel business, simply because travel connects people from all over the world and allows us to have a better understanding of each other.
I also want to trade my hard work and competency for a better income, which would allow me to give my family a better life.
* Watch the full interview here.
