Julian is a Product Manager specializing in international expansion and localization with more than 7 years of experience. He is one of the earliest employees and was the first-ever Product Manager hired for Airbnb, WeWork, and GOAT in Asia. Currently, Julian is the Country Director for China at GOAT, where he is responsible for their market entry into China. Prior to his current role, Julian was a Senior Product Manager at WeWork, with a focus on Growth, Billing and Payments. Julian first gained Product Management experience working at Airbnb, having worked on improving and localizing Airbnb’s web and mobile products for the Mainland Chinese audience, and was also responsible for managing translation and localization across 10 languages.

1. JULIAN LEUNG | 2020-10-09
Lessons of Glocalization
from Airbnb and
WeWork

5. Lessons of Glocalization from Airbnb and WeWork
Agenda
● Key Considerations of Going International
● Challenges of Translation and Content Localization
● Good and Bad Examples of Localization
● 8 Personal Dilemmas of Product Localization

6. What is “Glocalization”?

7. “Glocalization” is globalization +
localization.

8. “Glocalization” is the practice of
expanding the target audience of a
domestically or regionally focused
product or service to other
overseas markets.

9. The purpose of “Glocalization” is to
achieve similar or higher level of
success in the overseas markets as
it does with the domestic market.

10. What kind of products or services
should NOT go international?

11. Do you have product-market fit?

12. Is the problem and its solution(s)
universal?

13. What kind of products or services
should go international?

14. (1) Companies go international
when their growth domestically or
regionally has slowed or become
stagnant.

15. (2) Companies go international
because their technology is
world-leading and unrivaled.

16. (3) Companies go international
because they want to be the
first-mover in the space.

17. (4) Companies go international
because their users are going
international.

18. (5) Companies go international
because they already have users
internationally.

19. (6) Companies go international
because they need to sell their
“growth story”.

20. Why did Airbnb and WeWork
go international?

21. Global Platform as Vision

22. Millennials as the primary
target audience

23. Local Investors as Partners

25. IF …
Similar products are already popular
Your competitive advantages are not transferable
You don’t have local partners
You don’t have extensive capital

28. The Challenges of Localization
(and how to do it well)

29. Translation is a key aspect of
localization.

34. What makes translation at Airbnb
difficult (back in the day)?

35. The Challenges of Translation
2012 - 2016
● The sheer volume and diversity of content to be translated
● Prioritization of what needs to be translated first
● Helping freelance translators understand the proper context
● Direct translations are often odd-sounding and unnatural
● Proper quality assurance is very time consuming
● Requires much collaboration with Product and Engineering
● Balancing Speed vs. Quality and Consistency

47. What does bad localization
look like?

56. Translation Beyond Just Texts
Examples
● Font Size, Line Breaks and UI Fit
● Context, Relevance, and Tone of Voice
● Date and Number Formats
● Currency
● Phone Numbers and Email Addresses
● Screenshots, Icons, Logos, Illustrations, Videos
● Local Laws and Regulations

57. What does better localization
look like?

80. 8 Dilemmas of
Feature Localization

81. (1) How do you learn about the
needs of international users?

96. (2) How do you prioritize the list of
planned improvements?

98. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

102. (3) How do you select the right
product touch points to optimize?

103. GapsandDifferences
The Marketing Funnel

111. (4) How do you ensure stable
development of the localized
features?

114. (5) How do you use
experimentation to make
decisions?

119. Challenges and Limitations of Experimentation
Specific considerations when it comes to localization
● Lower Sample Quality
● Smaller Sample Size
● Have to rely more on Proxy Metrics
● More Assumptions Made

120. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

121. Inconclusive and
Rolled Back*

122. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

123. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

124. Inconclusive and
Rolled Back

125. Successful!
3% Lift in Bookers

126. Map CDN
Successful!
7% Lift in Nights Booked

127. Success!
20% Lift in Sign-Ups

128. Successful!
90% Lift in Shares

129. 165% lift in Users Visiting Help Center Contact Page
30% lift in Users Creating Inbound Tickets
10% of users in the experiment group clicked on the link

130. Success!
80k Incremental Nights
Increase Referral Bonus
from $25 to $40

131. 20% more bookings and 4.5% lift in searches for the group
that received both the engagement message and coupon;
for the group that only received the engagement message,
the booking number is neutral but we saw a 5% lift in
searches and a 2% lift in searchers.
A: Do Nothing
B: Push/Text
C: Push/Text + Coupon

132. (6) How do you decide the scale of
the changes made?

133. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

134. Inconclusive but
Rolled Out

137. (7) How do you handle requests
coming from regional operation
and marketing teams?

148. (8) How do you choose between
manual and scalable solutions?

154. “Lessons of Glocalization from Airbnb and WeWork
Key Takeaways
● It takes a lot of resources and commitment to go global
● Translation is a very complex and tedious process
● Good Localization is all about attention to detail
● Start with the most fundamental and essentials features
● Lean on your intuition to make product decisions
● Unscalable solutions could bring better user experience