Crystal Widjaja

Chief Product Officer at Kumu / Former Gojek

CPO at Kumu; previously built and led the growth team at Gojek, the largest super app in Southeast Asia, through its early hypergrowth years; founder of Generation Girl nonprofit helping young women get into STEM.

The Growth Scientist The Growth Architect

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 60%

Execution & Craft 70%

Data & Experimentation 80%

Growth & Distribution 80%

Team & Leadership 60%

User Empathy & Research 60%

Key Themes

growth at massive scale Southeast Asian super app growth growth model building analytics failure patterns growth team structure scrappy scaling tactics

Episode Summary

Crystal Widjaja, who built Gojek's growth team during the super app's explosive rise to become the largest in Southeast Asia (more rides than Lyft, more deliveries than GrubHub/UberEats/DoorDash combined), shares growth lessons from scaling in emerging markets. She covers what growth investments actually pay off, why most analytics efforts fail, how to build and structure growth teams, and the scrappy operational tactics like renting stadiums to hire 60,000 drivers that enabled Gojek's hypergrowth.

Leadership Principles

→ Sometimes the scrappiest solutions drive the biggest growth — renting a stadium to hire 60,000 drivers in weeks is valid strategy
→ Most analytics efforts fail because companies over-invest in tooling and under-invest in asking the right questions
→ Growth investments that pay off are usually about removing friction, not adding features

Notable Quotes

"I felt like it was a problem that was very solvable. We ended up renting a stadium to just hire 60,000 drivers in a couple of weeks. When I got there it was in a house and I realized I've probably made a huge mistake, but we were growing very quickly already, even at that small scale of 4,000 orders per day."
— On the scrappy approach to scaling Gojek's driver supply

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