From early days to IPO: Scaling leadership, enterprise growth, product ownership, & outgrowing your failure modes w/ Jon Hyman @ Braze

Episode notes

Jon Hyman (Co-Founder and CTO @ Braze) shares the pivotal moments that shaped the company - from being the only person on call in the early years to identifying (and pivoting) product-market fit. Jon discusses how they navigated early-stage failure modes, carved out areas of product ownership, and made the shift to enterprise customers. Plus how leadership priorities evolve pre- vs. post-IPO and the next evolution of Jon’s leadership growth after almost 14 years at Braze. ABOUT JON HYMAN Jon Hyman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Braze, the customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, in-app, and more. He leads the charge for building the platform’s technical systems and infrastructure as well as overseeing the company’s technical operations and engineering team. Prior to Braze, Jon served as lead engineer for the Core Technology group at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. There, he managed a team that maintained 80+ software assets and was responsible for the security and stability of critical trading systems.

• Determining when to leave to start your own company, making strategic bets, and selling to enterprise customers w/ Anhang Zhu @ TierZero76 / 100
• How to know when your company needs to pivot and the signals/principles that will help guide you through pivoting w/ Pete Nichols, Lizzie Matusov, and Tony Dong71 / 100
• Determining bets, using customer insights to pivot, and gaining developer buy in & trust w/ Tomas Reimers @ Graphite75 / 100
• Applying Agentic AI to the Supply Chain, Building Systems to Withstand Chaos, and Leveraging your Curiosity w/ Pooja Brown @ Inventry.ai
• The Product Paradigm Shift: How LiveKit Navigated High Stakes Scaling Challenges to Build the Future of Voice-First AI Interfaces w/ Russ d’Sa