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课代表立正的官方Podcast
深度访谈，有用干货，亲身验证的「真本事」
Superlinear Academy创始人，Maven Top AI Instructor
前Statsig布道师（OpenAI收购），腾讯副总监，Meta，Amazon；康奈尔经济学博士
社区：Superlinear.Academy
课程：ai-builders.com
个人：lizheng.ai
hi folks welcome back to my channel
today is a special episode
i have the honor of interviewing ray j
at his newly found startup
statsig vijay and i both worked at
facebook but
i was here and he was there before
leaving facebook
vijay was the vp and the head of
entertainment so he was in charge of
facebook gaming facebook video and
other sorts of entertainments which is
special
because he has he has this high position
and a successful
career in a big tech company and then he
left
to start his own startup but more than
that i'm a special fan
of which is work because vijay actually
started
a lot of successful product at facebook
which is actually rare
in big companies like in big companies
people usually do one work
well and uh they do it and they go to a
high position
but the vj actually did five and they're
all successful
uh such kind of track record is also
rare in big companies
so he did audience network he did neko
which is the
mobile app as he also started uh
he also started a marketplace so i had a
job at facebook thanks to vj i work on a
marketplace he also started facebook
gaming and
facebook video all these five products
are super successful
and we just started them from scratch uh
if you
especially like if you consider how many
successful products
facebook launched over the past few
years this is
actually very phenomenal and within
facebook
vijay is viewed as this godfather figure
to the engineers he gives very
transparent advice
for engineers and he can inspire people
about his vision also the five teams
vijay started share a very common trait
scrappy the meaning and the importance
of being scrappy
in product development is worth its own
episode
so i won't go there today but i do think
that is a big part of why
vijay's team are so successful and also
i have high hopes for his startup
in today's episode i want to show you
how working at a very early startup look
like
uh widget is very transparent i actually
filmed their standard meeting
so in the standard meeting their talk
actual business
actual problem so this is the most
insider view you can get
into a startup i also interviewed vijay
uh to ask about his life stories what
made him decide to do startup
and also his uh and also his
recommendations
for common folks like you and i
especially junior folks who work at a
tech company
how to optimize for curve how to
optimize our career
for the things we want to grow all right
so without further ado let's start the
interview
hi vijay hey good job good to have you
thank you and uh yeah thank you for
inviting me here yeah a very cool place
it's always good to have visitors
yeah so uh let's get to it uh like you
left facebook from a very high position
there's a lot of successful track
records and
uh so like your future facebook is
bright
but uh then you started this company
with probably a lot of
uncertainties paris yeah so i guess
what is our story so my story is this i
started at microsoft and spent 10 years
at microsoft building various different
products i was an engineer there
and then after 10 years i decided i want
to
do something different for the next
decade and so i went and joined facebook
as an engineer
in 2011. when i joined facebook it was a
very small company
uh we had they still called a startup we
had only like 600 engineers
and then i built various products um
and then went up in career ladder uh and
i spent 10 years at facebook so that was
my second decade
and when i left um i was the head of the
engineering i'm sorry head of
entertainment taking care of engineering
and product teams
that included video gaming music sports
and so on um so that was my second
decade
so when it came close to the decade i
kind of like thought
what should my third decade look like
and so uh
lots of opportunities in the world but
there's one that is always special which
is
if you start your own company and how
would that look like
and what a startup journey would look
like was always
a curiosity something that i really
wanted to do
and so the timing was right for my third
decade
to come and start a company so that's
what happened with statsig
i already have so many questions yeah
because there's sense of philosophy
in how you count in decades yep and
uh two when you join facebook it is it
was a startup
funny that i never thought about it that
way right
like i think like you left a big company
joining another big company but actually
like a big company and joining a startup
yeah so let's start with the first one
what is the philosophy
like you said the timing is right
because this is uh right around the
decade
why yeah i think um a lot of it is
basically
personal it's uh you know for me i came
to the us in 2001
uh and that was for microsoft and then i
happened to leave microsoft in 2011
and join facebook in 2011 and so
naturally for me
you know 2021 was a
natural kind of moment to reflect on
like what should my next
decade be so that's how it ended up for
me it may not be the same for everyone
and a decade is not necessarily the the
time period you want to think about
but it just so happened for me that way
um
and the interesting thing is like you
know the opportunities are also there
uh when you start looking for them it'll
appear
but uh does it mean like i guess my
question is
during a decade at facebook yeah was
there a time you were thinking about
your career reflecting or did you just
wait until you know
yeah you um i always think about my
career
one thing i always do is to like what do
i want to do in the next five years
and then once i understand what i want
to do in five years
then i make sure that whatever i'm doing
today leads me to that five years
so i'll give you an example um five
years into facebook
i was pretty certain that i want to go
do my own company build my own company
so then the question was okay what uh
what experiences or expertise do i have
to gather
in order to go do my own company and am
i gathering
that now so that made me make some
decisions so one of the
important decisions i made was i was the
uh
the head of engineering for marketplace
facebook marketplace
i decided to leave the head of
engineering for a facebook marketplace
and then go start a new
uh product unit called gaming and became
the
product group lead for gaming so what
that made me is like getting
experience on managing product managers
designers
working with designers working with
researchers working with content
strategy
and data scientists and a lot of other
exposure that i wouldn't have gotten if
i was just an engineering leader
so that was important because i know
that if you're going to go
do a startup you have to hire a designer
hire a researcher hire a marketing lead
and so you need to be able to like know
what the
role entails and so to me leading up to
the
you know building a startup was all
about like gaining those experiences
mary actually told me this you give this
advice to engineers you'd ask them like
what do you optimize for
and uh if you want to build a startup
you shouldn't um
go for middle management yeah you want
to start a new product
yeah exactly but was that possible like
how did you make the change
like did facebook allow it or did you
make a strategy
i think so for me it was going from like
a head of engineering to when i had
about
a hundred people reporting in my org
to taking on 12 uh engineers
so it was a lot of people think of that
as a step down
but for me it felt like it's more
a different experiences so it actually
like stretched me
in other ways than the size of the org
so for me the size of the org didn't
matter
and so those kinds of changes are always
possible um
but very rare that people actually take
it so but i recommend that
yeah like i had a video about your
growth method but
uh like you are not only like growing in
terms of care you are
actually growing your skills yes and but
you must have very
strong conviction of that you want to
start your own company
but like was it because you see an
opportunity and you want to do something
or do you just want to you know
try startup and being the founder of
something
like what's the mission or motivation
behind doing our own
um when you want to go do a startup or
actually even join an early early
startup
there's a huge element of craziness
so there's a huge element of uncertainty
uh and combined with like you know some
irrational fate in
where the startup is going what the
people are going to do and so on
so every single startup has
those elements and if if everybody was
making rational decisions about like you
know what is the
expected outcome and then multiply that
with like the value
you will nobody will ever go start a
startup but nobody will ever go
join an early early stage startup
because the
the odds will always work against you so
to me it's more of like do you have the
conviction
that this will be a good idea to invest
in
do you have the right people to take
that idea
execute on the idea and take it further
do you
have the time um and then there's also
like you know
there are times in your life where uh
it's more
um easy i think it's easier to go to a
startup
um the there's elements of financial
security comes into play
uh where you know for me i have like two
kids
what stages my kids are in and that
comes into play
uh am i is my wife supportive of this
those are
there's a lot of factors that go into
going into like you know leaving behind
a very
nice uh comfortable
and a more dependable job to come and
like you know start a startup which is
yes lots of risks that's actually i
think partially answers the question
i wanted to ask because as an economist
i think about opportunity cost
and as a facebook vp the opportunity
cost is
high but
[Music]
maybe you like because you're optimized
for different things
uh you don't view that as opportunity to
view that as a foundation or
yeah yeah i think there's a you know
there's two sides right so
the opportunity cost of going and
starting a startup
which could become big um and then
continuing on
in a the the side of like a vp
at facebook uh you know you you you get
good pay
you have a stable job um but the
but the upsides are capped like there's
there's like you know there's
the stuff that you keep doing and in the
large company in a large org
which is very very different from like
you know what i'm doing now
uh in a startup as a ceo so uh
the opportunity cost of like not
experiencing
a startup ceo role is the downside of
being
an exact so did it turn out to be what
you
expected i don't know it's too early
it's only three and a half months but
i'm having a blast we're having a lot of
fun
this is one of the best teams that i
could have gathered and so
these are folks that are very very good
and
i think i have set all the environment
factors
to go and increase the odds of us
becoming successful
but it we have to wait and see where it
actually goes
uh how far we can take the startup how
patient we are and there's a lot of
factors here so it's hard to say
anything at this point
yeah yeah but uh like
regardless of the success yep it's going
to be a risky decision
yeah but uh there must be one thing
right that
uh you know you want like for you is it
the experience or
i want to make this product work i i
want to
create this uh company and this product
i think it's a
an element of both so number one i
really want to make the startup
successful i want to make the company
successful
uh by making the product and the people
that use the product successful
so to me it's very very important that
we provide the right product
and make the uh the people the customers
that use our product very very
successful
so there's a huge huge drive from there
there's also an element of like
this startup uh this journey that i'm on
i will never forget in my life this is
like i'm creating
uh a milestone and the uh memories
of like you know building startup it's a
it's an experience that can never be
uh acquired unless you actually go
through it yeah and so
uh to me you know hey if uh if
if i run really really hard really fast
for the next two three years
uh and even if the startup fails i would
always remember this
moment uh till the till the end of my
life so
in a way we're creating these memories
all right
actually that's uh kind of my last
question yeah uh
like would it fail and uh
like how would success failure look to
you
how does success failure look like to
you and uh
if it fails are you prepared to fail
yeah absolutely i mean if you're going
to go to startup be prepared to fail but
the other thing is i would say that's
the plan b but never optimize for plan b
plan a is always about success so
believe
in making your startup into a success
that's what i believe
i am i believe if anyone asked me are
you going to be successful absolutely
we're going to be successful uh but are
you prepared to fail
yes if you're not prepared to fail don't
jump
i think that's the that's the takeaway
from here
but look i'm this is the thing about
like you know startups like
there's there's an element of irrational
uh
behavior where you leap
without a parachute and but you expect
to land
safely and that's all what startups do
and
you make it happen along the way with
the right team with the right execution
with the right people
and a lot of look you will land safely
and that's all we're all hoping for
they like started vlogging today when
you go to the veterans page you just
like see
basically nothing so i'm like maybe so
you see like the hourly view
and if there's like so right now we show
like the events count per day
i'm going to have it be if you don't
have any events for today we'd show
events
per hour otherwise you show events
account and the last i'll have a
creative gates
when you go to the console default you
to the veteran's space oh yeah yeah
only you're only pulling the redness
yeah because we only pull the last like
100 events actively yeah you have to
stream all the events to all regions
yeah