Google Maps Enterprise

Google Maps for transport & logistics companies, where I owned the Driver Experience product suite, including Google's Navigation SDK

Role

Lead Product Manager of Driver Experience

Industry

Transport & Logistics

Duration

1 year

While I enjoyed working on Files by Google, learning a lot about growing a product from 100 to 250M users and developing new product skills (eg building products for new internet users required strong attention to product & UI design), I wanted to find a "bigger problem area” to work on and started to gravitate toward both financial services and transport & logistics as important pillars for economic development. Searching around Google for new PM roles, I came upon the Maps team.

The Google Maps Enterprise team works on making Google Maps data and functionalities available to & improved for businesses. While most revenue comes from their self-serve, less-value-added APIs & SDKs (eg Places API, Maps SDK), I joined a new team that was packaging these and other valuable functionalities (eg point-to-point routing, turn-by-turn navigation) into “full solutions” for transport & logistics companies. After having success with on-demand rideshare (eg Uber) & delivery (eg Doordash) companies, they were focusing next on scheduled delivery companies (eg DHL, Mercado Livre) and I came onboard to own the driver experience across the product suite, including taking care of the Navigation SDK (that offered drivers turn-by-turn navigation).

1. Driver Problems Research & Roadmap

On-demand drivers are quite similar to consumers where they're just trying to get from A to B as fast as possible with a few unique requirements like where temporary parking is (so they can run in and grab the order) and if the drop off is on the right or left to avoid the passenger from having to cross the road, etc. Scheduled drivers on the other hand have many stops, often know their territory (so Map's navigation isn't necessary), and have unique vehicles (eg large UPS trucks) so Google Maps isn't exactly meeting their top needs. We did interviews with delivery drivers in developed markets (from UPS, DHL, and local player in Florida) and emerging markets (Mercado Livre, Grab, etc) and I developed an analysis on top needs, how Google could help, and a roadmap for the product area, that first started with Route Tracking.

1. Driver Problems Research & Roadmap

2. Route Tracking SDK Alpha with DHL

From the interviews, it seemed like many drivers desired a route visualization tool that could help them gut check if they were making the right ordering calls for their 50+ stops, see where they could grab a bathroom break or food, and more. In one DHL Canada hub, the manager had bought his drivers a subscription to Road Warrior for this purpose and in other hubs, some drivers would get there early and use the on-site computer. I felt we get have a quick win by easily visualizing the route for the driver, letting them change/set/etc the ordering as they wished, and then start giving them route order suggestions and optimization guidance from there. We built an initial alpha version that DHL was happy with and it was an important part of getting them to agree to an initial $10M annual contract for our solution. See Techcrunch article on our solution.

a ride along I orchestrate with baggage delivery driver

3. Navigation SDK

In addition to leading up the driver experience for scheduled deliveries, I also was the lead PM of our Navigation SDK that was used by all our on-demand delivery clients and the new scheduled ones. Here I got experience managing enterprise product release trains, understanding how to prioritize features & fixes, and making product calls that would make some customers happy and handling the relationships from those it wouldn't. I saw the challenges of building embedded enterprise software with our existing customers here (where to provide functionality & where not to and them build it fit for their purpose, where to provide customization & how, etc) and it helped me make better calls for the route tracking SDK I mentioned above. I also got to interface with the core navigation team and see how Google was thinking about next generation turn by turn navigation (spoiler alert: copy Apple Maps was a core part of the thesis haha) as well as how navigation manifests within car hardware (via Android Auto or Auto OS).

Sadly for this Google Enterprise team, it seemed like on-demand companies were bringing routing & navigation inhouse as a core competency (Lyft & Uber both went this way; Doordash I think now has as well) and the scheduled companies had adoption challenges (lots of entrenched ways, those that would need to adopt tools are resistant, etc) that made it a hard target for Google. While I enjoyed the experience a lot, I couldn't give up the opportunity to lead Google Pay Africa when it came along.

Other projects

Nova

Building a new, more efficient credit card payments network, leveraging open finance

ConnectMed

An African digital health startup that offered telehealth apps, kiosks, & chronic disease therapeutics - started in my MSc CompSci & ended in Merck KGaA asset sale

Google Pay API

Making online checkouts better, by me growing usage of Google Pay API & adding new forms of payment like BNPL & e-wallets

Google Pay Africa

A new Google consumer payments app, bringing trust to Sub-Saharan African commerce & relevance for Google, that I got 35 headcount & $10M to build

Files by Google

The leading Android file & storage manager that I led from 100M to 250M MAUs, including getting it preinstalled on Google Pixel & taking over DocumentsUI