#22 - Kevin Wang (Chief Product Officer, Braze) - Scaling from Employee 5 to Public Company Exec, 0 to 1 Anecdotes and Advice for Early Stage Startups, Product Advice from early to scale

This episode is useful for all founders, startup employees, and investors who are interested in early stage startup advice, enterprise product tips, and learning how employees can scale from Day 0 to public markets.

Kevin Wang is Chief Product Officer at Braze. He started at Braze ~12 years ago as employee #5 going from software engineer, to PM, and eventually to CPO. In this episode, we cover learnings from Kevin’s incredible journey and how he as well as the company scaled from Day 0 to a public company. He shares stories, anecdotes and advice for other startups about the earliest days of building product for enterprises, acquiring customers, hiring, and much more. Kevin also talks about how Braze’s products delivers an end to end platform for enterprise customers across various orgs and use cases. This episode is packed with tactical insights and stories.

Where to Find Kevin:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-wang-96131916/

Where to Find Shomik:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/shomikghosh21

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shomik-ghosh-a5a71319/

* Software Snack Bites Newsletter: https://www.shomik.substack.com

* Software Snack Bites Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google.

In this episode, we cover:

(00:54) - Joining Braze as Employee #5 and Transitioning from Eng to Product

(04:23) - Braze’s Starting Strategy from Day 0 to Build a Successful Company

(08:56) - Stories of Losses that Felt Big at the Time but had Minimal Impact

(11:30) - Doing Things That Don’t Scale

(16:43) - Acquiring Earliest Customers

(18:08) - Product Market Fit Moment

(20:40) - Building for Enterprise Customers from the Beginning

(23:40) - Advice for Navigating $10 to $10M ARR Valley

(27:46) - How Kevin Scaled from Employee 5 to CPO

(33:26) - When to Dive Deep Directly vs Stay Higher Level

(36:42) - Enabling the Product to Spread Across the Org and Use Cases

(38:55) - Broadening the Ecosystem Around Braze Through Data Integrations

(40:22) - How Products Can “Land & Expand”

(44:07) - Focusing on Depth vs Breadth in Product

(45:51) - How to Remove Features

(47:43) - What Kevin Loves About the Braze Platform

How to Subscribe:

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google.