Vijay Iyengar
Head of Product at Mixpanel
Vijay Iyengar is Head of Product at Mixpanel, who made the unusual transition from engineering manager to director of product. He navigated Mixpanel's journey from multi-product complexity back to focused core analytics.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Vijay Iyengar shares lessons from Mixpanel's journey of expanding to multiple products and then making the hard decision to refocus on core analytics. His key insight: invest profits, not people, in new ventures — taking people from your core product leaves you open to disruption. He also discusses the unusual transition from engineering manager to product leader and unlearning the engineer's default 'no.'
Leadership Principles
- → Don't take people away from your core product for new ventures — invest profits, not people
- → If you're the leader in a core product, out-invest everyone else in that core
- → The trap is leaving yourself open to disruption while chasing new things
Notable Quotes
"Don't take people away from the core to go to these other things because then you end up distracted. Invest profits, not people, into the next venture."
— On the key lesson from Mixpanel's journey of expanding then refocusing
"As an engineer, you build up scar tissue and an immune response to say no to new ideas. I had to unlearn that moving into product because ideas are fragile."
— On the biggest mindset shift from engineering leader to product leader
Want to know how you compare?
Take the Assessment