In a captivating chat, Vijaye Raji, CEO of Statsig and OpenAI’s CTO of Applications, shares his journey from Facebook to leading an AI-driven future. He discusses how Statsig transformed from a simple experimentation tool to a comprehensive decision-making platform. Raji highlights the importance of data-driven strategies in enterprise product management, explains why companies are shifting from homegrown tools, and explores the role of AI in enhancing product features and user engagement.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Early Facebook Taught Instrumented Product Building
Vijaye recounts joining Facebook early and seeing daily instrumentation and metrics drive product decisions.
That experience inspired him to build Statsig to bring the same tools and culture to other product teams.
insights INSIGHT
Focus On One Pain Before Building A Platform
Startups must solve one specific problem before expanding into a platform.
Statsig focused on experimentation first, then added adjacencies like feature flags and analytics.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Displace Homegrown Tools Gradually
Compete with homegrown tools by being best-in-class and focused.
Offer downtime-free, incremental adoption so teams can adopt gradually and evangelize internally.
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In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Vijaye Raji, Co-founder and CEO of Statsig, the fast-growing product experimentation platform recently valued at $1.1 billion following a $100M Series C round—and just acquired by OpenAI in a landmark $1.1B all-equity deal.
Before the acquisition, Vijaye spent over a decade at Facebook, where he served as VP and Head of Entertainment, launching creator tools, livestreaming features, and the earliest version of Reels. That experience inspired him to build Statsig, a platform that empowers product teams to experiment, iterate, and ship with confidence—used by leading companies like Microsoft and Notion.
Now, as OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer of Applications, Vijaye will oversee product engineering for ChatGPT and help accelerate the company’s enterprise roadmap. In this conversation, he shares the original vision behind Statsig, the tough lessons from going multi-product, and why AI-native experimentation is the future of product building.
What you’ll learn: - Vijaye’s journey from Facebook’s internal tools to OpenAI’s CTO of Applications. - How Statsig evolved from an experimentation engine into a full decision-making stack. - Why large enterprises are ditching homegrown tools for best-in-class platforms. - How AI is powering everything from feature flagging to self-healing products.
Key Takeaways 👇 - From Startup to OpenAI: Why StatSig’s platform and customer base made it one of OpenAI’s largest acquisitions yet. - AI as an Operating Layer: How Vijaye is thinking about AI-native observability, prompt evaluation, and synthetic user data. - Scaling with Product-Led Growth: Lessons in going enterprise while keeping experimentation at the core.
The Product Podcast