Ken’s career started in consulting and took a quick turn when he joined Uber in 2014, where he stayed for 4 years. He managed to wear many hats there, which gave him a ton of super valuable experience being part of one of the biggest rocket ships of our generation.
In this episode, Eric is joined by Ken Babcock - Co-Founder and CEO of Tango.
Tango takes the pain out of documenting processes by automatically generating how-to guides while you work.
Ken’s career started in consulting and took a quick turn when he joined Uber in 2014, where he stayed for 4 years. He managed to wear many hats there, which gave him a ton of super valuable experience being part of one of the biggest rocket ships of our generation.
Now, he’s leading a team of 40 at Tango with over 400 active users.
At Uber, Ken quickly learned how to ramp up new markets and gain a ton of velocity when scaling, which ultimately led him to discover the product market fit for Tango.
One piece of advice that changed Ken’s business trajectory was to take a manual process that helped scale Uber, and create a tool that helps automating or enabling it.
Ken’s approach to product strategy is to set your non-negotiables early, and to keep to the principle of having a generous pre-product. Drive product-led growth through the value that your product brings, and start charging based on usage when the time comes.
When it comes to user testing, Ken believes being reactive is not the best course of action. Instead, you need to stay in your lane and stand by your principles. After all, what works for customers today becomes their baseline expectation, but they’ll still expect more as time goes on.
Tango’s first product is all about knowledge capture - enabling the user to document their processes in a simple manner is a game changer for successful onboarding and delegation.
Their second product enables their users to have intuitive, feedback-based walkthroughs of new processes, and help identify missing links in pre-built processes while enabling constant improvements.
Check out the full episode to learn how to successfully delegate through excellent documentation!
HIGHLIGHTS
00:00 The Beginnings of Ken’s Career
03:18 How Tango Came to Be
04:37 Ken’s Learnings From Scaling Uber
07:28 Economies at Scale & Launching Uber in Miami
09:26 The Challenges of Scaling
12:04 What Product Strategy Really Means
16:41 Ken’s Process to Developing Core Principles
21:35 Don’t Compromise on UX and Data
24:08 First Use Cases of Tango
26:59 What Tango Does Differently
30:18 The Recurring Challenges of Delegation
33:28 Eric’s Approach to Delegation
34:55 Stories of Tango’s Client-Facing Day to Day
37:25 Ken’s Leadership Principles
40:51 Eric’s Experience With Overbearing Leadership
43:30 Scaling With Transparency
Connect With Ken - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock/
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To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com