Scale WeChat to 1B users with Stephen Wang, User Growth & Engagement Director

What has contributed to WeChat’s massive growth all over the world? What features make WeChat so instrumental for people’s life?  Our guest today is Stephen Wang, who co-founded Rotten Tomatoes, a leading entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news, and most recently led the user growth and engagement at WeChat in the past 6 years until 2019. At WeChat, he managed a team of product managers and engineers to help scale WeChat from 300M to 1B users in China and around the world.  In todays’s episode, Stephen will give us a deep dive into WeChat as a product and the mobile-only mentality behind it. As a product head in a product-centric company, Stephen shares the metric he cares the most. We will also take a look at the major shift of product management philosophy in China by using Bytedance as an example.Show Notes:2:15 Welcome Stephen Wang2:50 How different WeChat is as a product from the western perspective5:37 What makes WeChat instrumental for people’s life12:42 Innovation inspired by Tencent team culture16:10 Product design in China (Examples: Douban, Weibo and Xiaomi)21:50 What makes China a special ecosystem for digital product development25:30 WeChat’s killer features: WeChat payment, Red Packets, Mini program32:35 Balance privacy protection and user growth39:20 Skills needed for talents in Tencent43:35 Are Chinese companies hiring more international talents49:10 The major shift of product management philosophy in ChinaMany thanks to our guest Stephen Wang; host Oscar Ramos; producers Eva Shi and Sagar Chaudhary; editor David; organizer Chinaccelerator; and sponsor People Squared. Be sure to check out our website www.chinaccelerator.comShare, subscribe, review, enjoy!Follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/the-china-startup-pulse/Email us: [email protected]