The Physics & Levers Growth Model
by Crystal Widjaja • Chief Product Officer at Kumu / Former SVP of Growth at Gojek at Kumu / Gojek (GoTo)
Crystal Widjaja is a product and growth executive who built the data, fraud, and growth teams from scratch at Gojek, helping scale it into Southeast Asia's largest super app. She is currently the CPO at Kumu and a Section 4 instructor on data strategies.
🎙️ Episode Context
Crystal Widjaja shares her playbook for scaling Southeast Asia's biggest startups, focusing on the transition from intuition to rigorous data science. She details how to execute 'Wizard of Oz' experiments to validate features without code, establishes concrete benchmarks for retention, and explains why most analytics implementations fail to generate actual insights.
Problem It Solves
Helps founders and PMs identify legitimate growth opportunities without wasting resources fighting immutable market forces.
Framework Overview
A strategic framework that separates the immutable constraints of the business environment (Physics) from the variables you can control and optimize (Levers). Growth comes from fitting levers into the existing physics, not trying to change physics.
🧠 Framework Structure
Define the Physics. Audit the immutab...
Identify Existing Assets. Look for un...
Design the Lever. Create a mechanism ...
Layer Constraints. Only change one va...
When to Use
When brainstorming new growth channels or when a startup feels 'stuck' despite having a working product.
Common Mistakes
Trying to 'change the physics' (e.g., forcing a behavior that doesn't exist) rather than leveraging existing behaviors (e.g., traffic jams).
Real World Example
Gojek wanted to grow GoPay. The 'Physics' involved traffic jams where users were stuck in cars with drivers. The 'Lever' was incentivizing drivers to act as sales agents during the ride, asking customers to top-up their wallets for cash. This drove 60% of acquisition.
We are not wizards. It's very hard to move the physics of a universe... Start with what currently works and exists.
— Crystal Widjaja