In my role as a Senior Director of Product Management, I lead Moloco’s new product innovation efforts. Ideas are incubated, built and then scaled. Sometimes ideas are killed but the learnings are used to incubate new sets of ideas that have higher chances of success. It’s a pretty cool role to be able to test innovative ideas and turn them into something that companies will use to grow their business. So, how did I get here? 

I’ve always been motivated by solving complex problems and the beauty of data-informed decision making. My first job after grad school was being a strategy consultant helping high-tech businesses in defining their marketing and customer strategies. The role involved analyzing complex business situations and crunching various types of data to generate actionable insights for my clients to create new value. While this had all the elements of what I enjoyed doing, after many years, I grew a desire to implement and put the strategy to action as an operator.

So I joined LinkedIn shortly after its IPO as one of its early marketers to spearhead its monetization businesses. At that time LinkedIn was a 1,000-person company (vs. now a 25k-person company), and was looking for ways to grow its B2C and B2B businesses. It was an exceptional experience on using data to find pockets of opportunities for driving better customer outcomes, improving the product, and ultimately standing up new successful businesses for LinkedIn. After experiencing phenomenal hyper-growth I wanted to apply these learnings to a larger scale consumer product, which led me to Google.

This was a time where Google was going all-in on machine learning, leveraging its data to drive innovation at scale. As a product manager for Google Play App Store I got to apply the most advanced machine learning technologies to drive delightful and safe app store experiences for more than two billion users across the globe. 

This was also the time I got to know Ikkjin Ahn (we’re not related!) and learned about Moloco’s vision of making cutting-edge machine learning solutions available to other companies so that they can deliver exceptional value to their customers and thus grow their businesses, similar to how Google and other leading tech companies have leveraged machine learning to build magical experiences that power their scaled businesses. Upon hearing this I thought it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to apply all the relevant experiences in the domains of machine learning, mobile, and business management that I’ve accumulated throughout my career. I decided to make the hop on to the Moloco rocketship and get first-hand experience in realizing Moloco’s exciting vision. 

So far, the Moloco journey has not only met but far exceeded my expectations. It’s much more dynamic and fast paced than anywhere else I’ve worked. Everyone has a builder’s mindset and a big passion for tackling complex problems with planet-scale solutions. People are smart, fun, humble, willing to learn and adapt, and most importantly, hungry for impact. Simply put, there is a big joy in working at Moloco.

Outside of work, I’m an avid fan of cooking – in particular, grill and BBQ. I dry-age my own meat, and love to host friends over for dinner. I’ve always thought startup was almost always a grind with all work and no life, but Moloco has proven this to be wrong. Working hard and making time to pursue personal passions co-exist at Moloco, and I think this is one of many factors that make Moloco special as a startup and a great place to work.

Now you know my path to Moloco. What will your path look like?

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