Another year has passed since my last blog post: Early Startup Journey: My first year at Statsig. I can hardly believe it, but today, May 19, 2023, I have officially hit my two-year mark at Statsig.

Looking back on my previous blog post while scrambling through my photos for this blog, I realized just how quickly time has flown by. I’m grateful for all the experiences, challenges, and accomplishments that have shaped me into the person I am today.

As always, I wanted to document this journey and share it with everyone following Statsig’s journey and mine.

Up until now, I’ve been pouring my heart and soul into making Statsig a success, and I hope that my story inspires you to do the same toward your own goals.

Thank you (in advance) for reading, and here's to many more years of growth and achievement at Statsig!

Statsig's first-ever interns

If you read my last blog, you’ll know that we moved into a bigger, newer office located in Bellevue in May of 2022.

We quickly outgrew the old Kirkland office where Statsig first began. Shortly after moving into the new office, we hosted our first-ever Software Engineering and Product Design Interns for the Summer of 2022. There were a total of four people who came to Statsig to work on impactful areas of the product and infrastructure for three months.

It was a hot Summer and we had several fun activities planned out for our interns to attend.

For the full-day intern offsite, the interns and intern managers went trampolining and go-karting, followed by a delicious sushi meal. We also had exclusive intern swag (that I designed 🤓) which we handed out.

More designers at Statsig!

For over a year, I was the only designer at Statsig, doing everything from product design and marketing to social media and web design—and many other things in between. For that reason, I was thrilled to finally have Daniel and Andy as our newest product designers.

It was exciting to have more people to bounce ideas off, and divide and conquer the work that we needed to do.

Looking at our team today, I can confidently say that the product design team is one heck of a strong team, making significant contributions to the product. I'm looking forward to what we can achieve together in the future and seeing how each designer grows.

Work hard, play hard

At Statsig, we all work really hard, but we also know how to have a good time.

When the weather is nice, Tore and Daniel often fire up the grill on our deck with delicious steak, KBBQ, and burgers.

We’ve also been playing League of Legends quite regularly, and it has always been a treat when we had enough players for a 5vs5 in-house match-up.

In the internal Gaming Workplace chat, people who’d be interested in playing will ask a simple question, “League?” which has become a popular meme at the office.

Despite (or perhaps, because) all the fun and games, we managed to ship many features and functionalities in our product and elsewhere.

During that process, there was also a mix of creative and fun features that we shipped. The Musical Charts Easter Egg that Alex and Pierre worked on is a great example: The customers could enable this feature to listen to music notes based on how the charts and graphs looked. Super creative!

We also shipped my personal favorite, the console dark mode for people who prefer a darker UI. Last but not least, the room-booking software that Alex installed at our office, so people could reserve certain rooms without awkwardly peeking in to see if the meetings are over.

To this day, we continue with our daily 2 pm standup where we discuss ongoing work and some of the most important topics at a company level. All in all, it has been a great balance of hard work and fun, and it made Statsig a really special place to be.

Statsig summer picnic #2

In June, the weather started to get warm and it was time to hold our second annual Summer picnic.

All of the employees gathered together, along with their family members, to hang out, eat and have fun. The weather was absolutely beautiful, with plenty of sunshine and a gentle breeze. It was a great bonding opportunity for everyone, and our remote employees flying in was a special treat. It really felt like we were all part of a big family.

The employee count has exploded since last year, making it glaringly obvious how quickly we were growing.

I'm grateful for events like this that remind us of the importance of coming together as a team and celebrating our successes along the way. (Special thanks to our office admin, Laura for planning and organizing all this!)

Forming a brand design org

As our company grew, I realized more and more the importance of having a strong brand.

I started looking for a brand designer to join my team who then will start partnering with the Marketing team—which was also growing quickly. I was thrilled when Audrey came on board as our first brand designer and so far. Fortunately for all of us, she adjusted extremely well to the fast-paced Statsig environment.

With four full-time designers in total across product design and brand design, we now have our own little design corner at the office.

I enjoyed our creative design offsite with pottery painting and revolving sushi lunch as well. After being the only designer for over a year, it felt good to have a team of designers to work with and start thinking about building an awesome team.

Continuing to grow quickly

Summer 2022 was busy for all of us here.

We all felt the strong momentum of our company's growth, with many new hires joining us across different functions. The office space that we just moved into was starting to fill up. People often had to hold meetings outside of the meeting rooms we had.

Business-wise, we were also growing. We landed some awesome logos as customers such as Figma, Microsoft, and many more, which continues to boost morale across the board. Seeing our hard work pay off moment by moment, customer by customer, is truly motivating.

Statsig Halloween costume day

In October, we organized a Halloween costume day where employees wore costumes to work

It was a lot of fun, and I was thrilled to see so many people participating in the event. We even had a contest for the best and funniest costumes, and each of the winners got prizes.

For my costume, I decided to dress up as Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas movie (my sons were totally into that movie at the time, for some reason).

Honestly, it was a great costume, but it made working extremely difficult. I had to constantly adjust it to make sure it didn't get in the way, but the reactions were worth it.

More events!

With the addition of several new members to the marketing team, we began to expand our reach and get our company name out there in the world.

One of the strategies has been to double down on our efforts to promote the company through various online and offline events. Planning these events takes a lot of effort, and I have to give kudos to the entire marketing team for their hard work, especially Morgan who always knocks it out of the park.

Additionally, Audrey has always played a crucial role in executing all of the physical and digital design assets. It’s great to see the team come together and work so well to achieve our goals, and I'm excited about our upcoming events. (Dr. Tim is becoming more and more famous as well!)

Hackathon #1

As the Summer was winding down, we organized our first-ever company-wide hackathon.

Employees gathered together to form small teams and came up with ideas to hack into different projects. Vijaye even ordered fancy trophies to give out to the winning teams which surprisingly captivated people's interest and made teams more eager to win. Daniel and others, who organized the event, did an awesome job overall on planning this event with fun events and games as well as providing us with delicious steak and late-night Mexican food.

It was awesome.

The people

I enjoy coming to work every morning because I get to work with so many wonderful people.

It's the people at Statsig that make coming to work such a fulfilling and enjoyable experience. These Instagram snapshots only scratch the surface of the connections and friendships I've made with my colleagues.

We bond over coffee runs and casual conversations about work and life in general, and I value the emotional support and honest feedback that I receive from my friends. Thanks, Tore and Daniel, for the random early morning Mercury’s Coffee drive. Special shoutout to Pierre for always buying me tasty Chocolate Cream Cold Brew from Starbucks.

The design team goes on bi-weekly coffee runs to discuss our concerns, wish lists, and areas for growth and changes.

Creating this open space for conversation was intentional because I wanted to have honest conversations with everyone on my team about their hardships, ambitions, and more.

Last but not least, I can't forget about the "Console Tri-force" with Margaret-Ann, Pierre, and me forming the mini PM, Design, and Engineering team. 99% of the time, we’re aligned—with the 1% reserved for some heated debates. Also, look at Pierre’s boots.

Company quarterly all-hands

As we wrapped up Q4, we had our real, organized, official quarterly company all-hands meeting.

As someone who has been with Statsig for a while now, I now look forward to this meeting very much. It's a great opportunity to hear about what's been going on across all the different functions of the company and get a sense of the bigger picture.

Each of the Leads across product, engineering, marketing, sales, enterprise engineering, and design shared the highs and lows of the quarter, as well as what we were excited about going into 2023.

It was clear that we'd all been working hard and making progress, and there were a lot of exciting plans for the future. At the end, Vijaye wrapped up the presentation with an inspirational speech about the future of the company and our vision.

He also presented a really “cool” and “inspiring” video that he made which I won’t link to this time but it was the highlight of the meeting for sure! 😏

Statsig’s 2-year anniversary

In February of 2023, we celebrated Statsig’s 2nd birthday. 🎁

If you read my previous blog, you’ll see how upscaled this year’s experience was compared to the last one with a fancy course menu meal, a cocktail bar, and several activity areas. Laura, Audrey, and Morgan did an incredible job at organizing everything and everyone had a blast!

The event was held in a big space in Bellevue, and it was really cool to see our logo displayed on the street as we drove into the parking lot (if you’re at a small company, you learn to appreciate these little things that you don’t really think about when you’re at a big tech company).

My whole family came with me, including my two kids, and we had a fantastic time until late evening.

The food was great, the speech was inspiring, and the karaoke got easily out of control with silly dances and voices being out of tune. There was a kids’ play zone with some creative activities so that the kids could also have some fun.

In addition, the photo booth area was a great add-on as a bunch of us took both silly and cool friendship photos. During the event, my second boy, Aiden, suddenly disappeared which freaked me out but I found him hanging out with Sami.

One of the highlights from digging out photos from the event was seeing Jiakan’s happiest face when he was holding Aiden (maybe it’s time for you to have a kid, Jiakan…)

Throughout the evening, I tried grabbing as many people as I could for the photoshoot because I wanted to remember this moment. I personally have been documenting my Statsig journey on my Instagram Stories Highlights which I look back from time to time, and these are the types of photos I love putting on there. The company really feels like home for me, as I’ve been a part of the journey almost since the beginning.

Gradual upgrades to Statsig’s brand

Out of the various events that unfolded since the beginning of 2023, one endeavor that occupied a significant portion of my time was the revamp of our website.

The previous design, (also crafted by me some time ago 😏), had become outdated and needed more attention. Collaborating with numerous team members across different orgs, this undertaking became a collaborative effort. The timing could have been more optimal, as we were simultaneously in the process of evolving our brand guidelines and visual identity.

Nonetheless, we couldn't afford to wait for those changes to take place, as every day presented a fresh opportunity for top-of-funnel growth and interest.

Personally, I take great pride in how the website design has evolved, but I also eagerly await another transformation in the near future after (what I envision to be) a quick brand refresh.

It embodies the beauty of our culture—iterative, scrappy, and always embracing change. With Cat joining as our second brand designer who has been adding so much value already to the team, I’m excited to see how the Brand design team takes our brand further (no pressure!)

Moving to a bigger office, AGAIN!

In May of 2023, we moved into an even bigger office space. We just keep growing.

It's remarkable how, every year of my Statsig journey, I find myself in a new office—as this marks the third one for me. However, this time it's truly different: The vastness of the space and the abundance of meeting rooms are truly awesome.

On sunny days, the large windows offer breathtaking views of the City of Bellevue and the majestic mountains surrounding us.

Moreover, it's incredible to think that we have the entire floor to ourselves, considering we currently have 60ish, but this space can accommodate 150 to 200 people. The brand design team is filled with enthusiasm as they brainstorm ideas to decorate the space, and many of us have been actively discussing various space hacks.

Personally, I’m excited to witness how quickly we will outgrow this office as our company continues to grow throughout the years to come.

Hackathon #2

With the recent move into our new office, the anticipation for our second company-wide hackathon was at an all-time high(?).

This year, the event was even bigger, with a larger number of participants and an abundance of exciting projects proposed. Just like last year, Vijaye made sure to order trophies that surpassed the previous ones, adding a touch of prestige to the occasion, while Daniel planned out the entire event like a boss.

Skye, our creative genius (and an extremely smart and reliable individual all around), organized a range of enjoyable activities for us to engage in during the hackathon, including a thrilling chair race, paper airplane contest, League of Legends, and more.

Unfortunately, I had to miss out on the fun due to a vacation, but I eagerly followed the updates in our internal Workplace chat, where countless photos and videos showcased Statsig’s creativity and passion throughout the multi-day event.

Tim and Craig demonstrated their craftsmanship by creating a magnificent, long wooden table called the "Error Bar”, inviting everyone to leave a signature on it before it was lacquered. The highlight of the hackathon demo hour was when Pierre, Wonjae, Brent, and Craig took the stage to play the music in front of the entire company as a result of their space hack.

They allege to have never rehearsed the song together. Surprisingly, it sounded great!

Closing

The year passed by quickly, and revisiting all the photos that I took and other people took was an awesome experience.

Working at a startup is a lot of fun and requires a lot of motivation, grit, and responsibility. There are so many things that I've learned in the past year that were different at many levels compared to the year before

I’m excited to imagine what type of things I’ll be documenting in my next annual blog post, and I’m even excited about the challenges this coming year will bring. I’m ready for them.