Takaki Kobayashi: Focus on Competitors or Focus on Users?

2018/12/25

"Let's develop this feature to beat the competition!" "Let's provide users with this convenient feature!" It would be wonderful if we could achieve both, but reality is rarely that simple. You choose one and give up on the other. If that judgment is wrong, you could find yourself in an irreversible situation six months later. This is the world of the internet industry where Yahoo! JAPAN (hereafter Yahoo) operates.

There are global tech giants represented by GAFA (Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon), as well as China's ByteDance, which operates TikTok and is sweeping Japan. So, what will the long-established Yahoo do?

In 2018, I served as the product manager for the unit overseeing services such as the Yahoo top page, the Yahoo! JAPAN app, News, Sports, and Weather/Disasters. Every day, 50 million users visit. The responsibility is immense, and every day is a series of tensions. However, telling myself that maintaining the status quo is the first step toward regression, I challenge myself with new features and content almost every day.

Returning to the opening point, in the midst of all this, I am asked every day: "What does Yahoo value?" There are various "decision axes," such as wanting to beat the competition or wanting to provide convenience to users, but when I am in doubt, I vow to "look at the user." It could be family or friends. It's about whether the people close to me say, "This is convenient!" My son is four years old, and if he says to me when he's about ten, "Dad, Yahoo is really convenient," that's enough for me. If someone tells me to think about the company's P&L or beating the competition—of course, those are important too—but "when in doubt, the user." How about all of you? Are you exhausted by trivial turf wars or meaningless battles with competitors?

Currently, the place where internet utilization is most advanced in the world is actually Shenzhen. This request for a story reached me on my way back from inspecting Shenzhen, and I decided right then and there to tell you all this: If you are fighting within Japan, stop right now. We are only being left behind by the rest of the world. Think only of the users who use your service, and spend all your time thinking only about how to make things more convenient for them.

Ideals and reality. It's our job to face those ideals, isn't it?