hi i'm laura i'm a capsule pm and a former ibm pm and in this exponent expert answer video i'll be answering the pm interview question should google enter the ride sharing market so to answer this question because i don't have a whiteboard i'm going to be writing down my framework on this piece of paper in my notebook and i'll share it as i go along so the first thing that i want to start with is asking a couple of clarifying questions and the first one being how are we defining ride sharing ride sharing is the
sharing of journeys the sharing of car journeys and the thing i want to clarify is do we mean human drivers or autonomous vehicles for the purpose of this exercise i'm going to operate under the assumption that it's human drivers another question that i want to clarify is do we want to go into the market now or later again i'm going to assume the question is asking now and then the final thing that i want to clarify is geography is this global is this in north america and again i'm going to operate under the assumption that
um it's u.s only okay so now that we have our clarifying questions i'm just going to go through the the framework that i'm going to use to structure my thinking as i go through i will talk about things discuss pros and cons and then at the end i will make a decision so the first thing i want to start with are the company goals the mission of google then we'll go ahead and talk about google strengths as a company what products they have that could be helpful what technologies they have that could help them enter
the ride sharing market easily after that we'll talk about the state of the market we'll talk about competition potential barriers to entry what the landscape looks like in 2020 and then the last thing that i'll talk about is how this product fits within the google portfolio are there synergies with what they're trying to do now or in the near future and then i'll make my final decision okay so the first thing we're going to talk about is google as a company what are their goals what are their strengths google's mission is to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible and useful some of their strengths are their existing technologies so we all know google maps which is a navigation technology owned by google and used by millions of people i would also put waze in that category waze is under the google umbrella so they have really strong existing navigation technology which is currently leveraged in the ride sharing market by other companies so that's definitely an advantage the other thing is the the google suite the the ecosystem if you will we can talk about the android ecosystem which globally google or
android owns about 75 of the smartphone market again we're focusing on the us which is a bit of a different just distribution but a strength nonetheless and then finally google has a bunch of other complementary products or products that you could integrate in with a ride sharing application that could be very powerful i'm thinking about gmail or google calendar imagine if you have an event that you have to go to and google can automatically call you a driver knowing how long it's going to take to get there knowing what time the event starts if you
have the seamless integration across all of the suite of products that you used in the in the google ecosystem that could be very powerful and definitely differentiate google in this in the ride sharing market the last thing that i'm going to touch on i'm going to talk more about it later but they do own waymo which is an autonomous driving company um again that falls outside of our definition so we'll come back to it later okay so the next thing that i'm going to talk about is the market competition the current state of the market
so in terms of competition lyft and uber they together own about 90 of the ride sharing market which is a huge amount very powerful very sticky platforms and very well established because they're so well established it would probably be hard it would be hard for an outsider to come in even one of google's stature and so based on the competition based on the saturation of the market based on how hard it is to make money in the industry i would say that google entering the ride sharing market due to competition would be a con the
other thing to mention is that google actually owns a stake in both lyft and uber and so by entering the ride sharing market they are in some ways cannibalizing themselves it makes a lot more sense for them to focus on what they do best which is their navigation technology which is used by definitely by uber i'm not 100 sure by lyft but i would assume so and be able to leverage all of the data and insight that they get through those navigation technologies the other thing that i want to talk about is the current market
of 2020. um covet 19 obviously has changed the landscape of a lot of things and ride sharing is included in that as of march ride sharing things started shutting down across the country ride sharing definitely took a dip it's starting to pick back up a little bit but people are definitely shifting more towards owning their own vehicles renting cars doing things where there's not another human in the car um is are some of the trends that we've been seeing thus far so in terms of the current market and the opportunity people aren't really driving to
work they're not commuting to work these days um there's a lot of things that are still closed so in terms of the current landscape and and what's going on in the world today probably not a good time for anybody to be entering the ride sharing market including google the last thing that i want to talk about is how ride sharing potentially fits in with google's greater vision and and what they see for themselves as a company in the next decade or so i mentioned waymo earlier i'm going to come back to waymo because google is
definitely making a bet on self-driving cars and they are one of the companies who are the furthest along in this category self-driving cars are still in their nebulous stages but probably within the next decade we'll start to see more widespread adoption of the technology as the technology gets better and people get more comfortable with the idea as well it's going to be part of it because a decade seems like a long time it's not that long it's not a hundred years that would be a long way away but because it's just a decade for google
to invest in a ride sharing application or platform as well would potentially detract from what they're trying to do with self-driving cars it feels like they're two different paths and they have they have chosen the autonomous driving route and for them to pivot or make adjustments or try to make a play in the ride sharing market as it exists today with human drivers would just take away from what they're trying to do and and what their long-term vision and strategy is so i would see that as a departure from what they're trying to do and
another reason for them to not enter the market okay so i'm gonna sum up and and make a decision i will you probably can't see it but for just to follow along i'll talk through what all of this chicken scratches on this paper we started with trying to hone in on what we meant by ride sharing where and the timing of google potentially entering into the ride sharing market then we talked about google's goals missions and strengths as a company and if there were potential synergies which there definitely were then we talked about the market
competition the current landscape and in my opinion both of those were cons and reasons for google to not enter the market or enter into the ridesharing market and then finally we talked about how the product may potentially fit within the the company mission and because of waymo and their investments in self-driving cars that also seemed to be a con for them to also enter the ride sharing market so in sum due to the saturation of the market the change in the market that the pandemic has caused and due to google's long-term bet in autonomous vehicles
i would say that my recommendation would be that google not enter the ride sharing market thanks for watching now we'll reflect a bit on the interview and some tips so with this question this is a strategy question and one of the tips that i have regardless of the company that you're interviewing for is to do your homework do some research on the company make sure you know what the company mission or goals are and make sure you know some high level stats about the company for example in my interview answer i talked about the android
ecosystem which i said was about 75 of the smartphone market these types of stats are just super helpful to have in your back pocket they make you look really informed passionate about the company and they also help you craft more comprehensive answers you can make better choices on whether or not to pursue a strategy if you know your numbers when it comes to the market that would be my first tip in terms of how i structured my answer what i like to do in these situations is give myself a framework that i can follow and
then reason through pros and cons as i'm going along and this is helpful because one it makes sure that your answer is comprehensive and two if in the case that your brain turns off for a second which can happen to anybody in an interview it certainly happened to me you can take a pause refine your place and continue on and and not be kind of panicking to remember what you were trying to say um so yeah those are some of my tips and the reasoning behind why i structured my answer the way that i did
i the one thing that i would say about my answer is i didn't come back to the definition of ride sharing too much i could have spent more time talking about what ride sharing actually looks like obviously i know i i defined it but i didn't talk about the apps that uber and lyft use or the alternatives which would be something like a taxi so knowing those options and being able to speak to them in a bit more detail again to anchor your answer in google's potential strengths or reasoning why they would or would not
want to join the market um that would be another thing that you could do as well that i didn't do in my answer thanks for watching this exponent expert answer video and good luck on your upcoming interview
