When we announced in September last year that we’re bringing #mtpcon to Singapore for the first time, it was in the knowledge that the technology and innovation scene across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is booming. We see this in reports from the tech and business press, but more specifically from the recent strong growth in our ProductTank meetups. There are now over 170 cities running ProductTanks globally, and with particularly strong growth across Asia-Pacific, the number of ProductTanks in the region has more than doubled in the last two years.
We’ve found that there’s huge interest in the Singapore market as we’ve moved through the planning stages of #mtpcon Singapore, both from people inside the country and from people across the region as a whole. So we’ve been speaking to a number of our key partners to learn more about what excites, or indeed, challenges them!
Why Singapore?
Mixpanel has been a long-time partner of #mtpcon events around the world and its Senior Event Specialist Devon Carlstrom explains the thinking behind the company’s focus on Singapore: “After seeing escalating demand for tools to better understand users and their interactions, not only from technology companies but across category leaders, Mixpanel decided to officially open an office in Singapore in October 2018. Our Singapore office is our APAC home base and is focused on providing strong localised support to new and existing customers. As a leading international city within Asia, Singapore unlocks for us a wealth of talent, diverse business opportunities, and easy connection to other major APAC business hubs.”
This connection to both APAC hubs and major international airports played a key part in our decision to bring the conference to the city.
A Line-up of Inspirational Speakers
The reputation of our conferences is founded on our ability to secure the world’s most inspirational speakers on product management. We were very clear that this tradition was something we had to uphold when hosting our first big event in the APAC region – so we’re delighted to announce the addition of Automattic’s Head of Computational Design and Inclusion John Maeda to the #mtpcon Singapore stage. He joins speakers such as coach and consultant Jeff Gothelf, who is also the author of Sense and Respond & Lean UX, Jen Dante, who is Head of Enterprise AR/VR Product at Google, and Ken Chin, who is CPO of Seek Asia.
We’re as careful about our choice of conference partners as we are about the speakers on the main stage. Conference partner Amplitude identifies the talk from Kaia Lai, Grab’s Head of Product Marketing, as a slot to watch – because, according to senior director Jean Lozano, “GRAB has an interesting challenge ahead of them and it will be interesting to hear how she is approaching product over the next year”. Amplitude has also chosen Singapore as its APAC HQ.
Coupang will be an unfamiliar name to many people outside the APAC region, but the company recently raised funding of $2 billion and is being hailed Korea’s answer to Amazon, so we fully expect this will change soon. We asked Coupang’s VP Product & Engineering – FC & Transportation System, Erik Rehn, about the speaker line-up: “We’re very excited to hear from Jeff Gothelf – Product and UX are very tightly linked, and as a startup, Coupang is very focused on quick iteration and what changes we can make now to make things better.”
Meeting the Challenges of the Region
No opportunity comes without challenges, and our conference sponsors are finding ways to meet the challenges that inevitably come with a booming market: “For Coupang it’s really around managing the huge growth in popularity of our application and making sure that we can keep improving the customer experience even as we scale,” says Erik Rehn. “Related to that, we are also very focused on hiring – particularly in Product Management. As we scale it’s critical to have people who can think through business problems and help us find innovative new solutions.”
We are very focused on hiring – particularly in Product Management. As we scale it’s critical to have people who can think through business problems and help us find innovative solutions.Erik Rehn, Coupang
Jean Lozano says Amplitude’s biggest challenge right now is “helping elevate the role of the product manager in companies that are laggards in their digital transformation. Product is the key to revenue growth.” Amplitude has also chosen Singapore as its APAC HQ.
Finally, Indus Khaitan, Chief of Growth at Chargebee, a specialist in subscription billing platforms and another of our long-term partners joining us for this inaugural Singapore #mtpcon, says: “A global boom in technology adoption and consumption has created opportunities everywhere, as a result, APAC is one of the fastest growing markets for SaaS. Coupled with technology is a large, hyper-aware, and social-savvy consumer market that is forcing companies to innovate and test their loyalties every single day. This is driving relationship building across multiple channels.”
Clearly, our speakers, our partners, our ProductTank organisers across APAC see huge excitement, opportunity, and a range of interesting challenges before them. We look forward to bringing together product people of all stripes to further the craft we all enjoy so very much on March 26.
Don’t miss out on tickets and see you in Singapore!
