OpenAI CTO of Application on Product Experimentation with AI and $1.1B Statsig Acquisition | Vijaye Raji | E273

In just four years more or less, you guys just announced as soon as you see around $100,000,000 at a $1,100,000,000 valuation. I'm always of the belief that we have to keep building. The day we stop building is the day we die. Product intuition is always going to be your first step. Data and experimentation are just iterations or optimizations on your first step. It's only a matter of time until these agents that are helping you build these products could also optimize those products. It's only a matter of time until you get like self healing, self optimizing products. It's gonna empower product managers. A lot of people sound like, okay, well, is a product manager role dead because of all of that stuff? Because I believe like, no, no, it's actually like making the product managers more powerful. You cannot hit global maxima by just data or iteration. You need those leaps of product intuition to get you to the next level where you can continue to like iterate and get better. Hey, everyone. This is Carlos. I am the CEO at Product School, and today I'm here with another CEO. His name is Vijay Raji, CEO at Statsig. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Carlos. Vijay, I've been following your your company, your product for quite some time. It's pretty impressive. In just four years, more or less. Right? You you guys just announced the CTC round, a $100,000,000 at a $1,100,000,000 valuation? Yeah. Yeah. We just did, announce it. Yeah. We started about four and a half years ago. Actually, like, four years and a few months, right in the middle of the pandemic. So I mean, not that I think depends on how you can do it. But it's never a good time, but it's also always a good time to start something. But, like, what was kind of the the rationale for you to start a company right after the pandemic? Oh, I I think the pandemic just happened to happen during the time we decided to go start the company. And, the idea of starting my own company has been germinating for a few years before I left my previous company, which was Facebook, and then started Statsig. It just so happened that the pandemic was happening at that time, and that didn't stop us. In fact, like, it actually got us together a little bit more, because it I remember we were meeting in the parks because it has to be outside the parks. And then when we decided we're going to like start a company, we said like, oh, we need to get in together in office. How are we going to like circumvent the CDC kind of like requirements of like not having people indoors? So those are kinda, like, the initial set of problems we had to solve in order to get this company going. But it was fun. So you spent ten years at Facebook. …