The Albion Society is a regular breakfast event hosted by ad agency Albion. They pull together the cream of the crop from the start up and entrepreneur world in the heart of tech city (Shoreditch for the non-tech heads out there) for a morning of good nosh and new learnings.
The story of the super-successful taxi app Hailo was the topic of the latest Albion Society (held in their gorgeous offices in the Tea Building – picture the scene, a burning log fire (albeit on a screen) with a couple of chesterfield arm chairs…cosy) In one chair, Glyn Britton, Head of Strategy & Innovation for Albion and in the other George Berkowski, Hailo’s Head of Product . George told the story of how they grew from one city and five employees to the global phenomenon we know today, and explained to the audience what’s crucial for a product-centric business to succeed:
Testing, testing, testing.
George put the secret of their success down to their devotion to testing. From day one they focused on making sure they were in dialogue with customers, holding weekly breakfast sessions with Taxi drivers as they concepted, built and released the app, and clocking up hours of journeys and feedback from ‘Chelsea Housewives’ on the beta consumer app (5+ journeys a day with immediate feedback).
While they always had the ambition to go global, Hailo understood the necessity to focus on getting the product right first. They developed the driver app first for very sensible reasons – building a passenger app is all well and good, but without a solid supply of good drivers the service falls flat on its face.
“We really understood the user who we were designing for. Critical to our success is having drivers’ DNA in everything that we do. Our slogan is ‘Drivers’ First’”.
Testing, listening and responding to their audience has allowed Hailo to be true to this and build a product that makes drivers’ experience slick, smooth and hassle free. Alongside the practicality of making fare finding simple, Hailo built in a social and functional aspect; Cabbies can message each other; get live traffic updates; live directions to their destination.
Each and every aspect of Hailo’s functionality has been work-shopped and tested with users, which George says is the only way to guarantee an idea really does work. Hailo use a number of ways of testing, utilising face to face, paper and electronic prototypes to quickly get into AB testing. It’s this that allows them to discover very quickly what works, what doesn’t, and what will propel them to even higher reaches.
A Connected Experience
Hailo is a prime example of a business delivering a connected customer experience, with product, brand and communications all working together to deliver for the customer.
“A good product is good branding, is good design and is good communications all wrapped together”.
In order to build such synchronicity, he advocates a top-down approach to product and product design: businesses must become a “product centric company” where “everyone from the CEO all the way down” has a really clear vision of what the product and the experience are and should be. “It’s reaching that level of understanding…once its infused from the top down, everyone starts singing it”
George explained how good product-centric companies are characteristic in integrating how their disciplines work together, so PR, Marketing, Development, and so on are in line, and their comms are speaking the same language as their app. This method can only succeed well if the CEO and senior team truly get behind the idea.
“You have the Zuckerbergs, the Steve Jobses who cared that much” George told the audience, however, it’s not an approach that comes easily or naturally to larger companies due to their complex ecosystem. Through subdivisions or sub-brands a revived way of working can be established outside of the parent company – a corporate start up. “Companies that actively go cannibalise their own business distil and refine what they’re going to do”; like Microsoft and Amazon with Xbox and Kindle respectively, they create small teams with a product person to lead.
Get your experience right and it will reward you over and over again. George illustrated this with an account of Hailo’s recent Japanese launch: despite not speaking Japanese, he found watching the drivers interact with the app priceless – the design is so slick that the experience for both UK and Japanese drivers is seamless.
Creating product people
‘Product people’ are absolutely key to product-centric companies’ successes. George explained how businesses are focussing more and more on data, as it drives testing, provides validation and the details for the next evolution of the product. Product people thrive on this. For companies to grow in this direction it’s imperative they look at how product people can thrive in their business. “A really good product manager is one who is constantly trying to figure out the vision for their product”, George explained, meaning there is little difference between product guys and entrepreneurs. These are the people that will help any business evolve and new companies start.
For existing companies George explained how true product people will integrate through departments, listening to everyone in the organisation and trying to resolve disconnect. This is most key, George told us, in the marketing department. Instead of focusing on the veneer, Marketers with full product understanding will truly understand what they are selling.
“There is very little difference between product, product marketing and marketing.”
To be great, marketers and product people need to work collaboratively, and “the truly great people will really understand [these three] in great depth”. That’s how they work at Hailo, and it shows.
How to build a billion dollar app
George leaves Hailo soon, and his next venture is the release of his first book, “How to build a billion dollar app”, with Skype’s Head of Mobile taking the reins of Hailo’s product development.
Building on George’s experience with start-ups and interest in the ecosystem, the book will show through example that it is possible to grow very quickly; like “Snapchat who in two years grew to an $800 million valuation”.
For his book George went out and spoke to the people behind these success stories – Instagram, SuperCell, Uber to name a few – and synthesises all “the grimy details of these company experiences”. Full of “conversations with all these guys who have done it”, the book looks at a range of companies, from games to fintech, dating to travel. It’s a melting pot of experience, pitfalls and inspiration for businesses.
“If [the book] can inspire more UK and European businesses to go after this [billion], it’s a success”
The Albion Society is a quarterly breakfast event – to sign up for future events, head over to www.albionsociety.com
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