Nancy Wang, Venture Partner @ Felicis and Former GM @ AWS, joins us to discuss strategies & considerations for scaling costs, becoming enterprise ready on Day 1, maintaining business health, and more. We cover Nancy’s journey as a founding product manager at AWS and how those lessons have guided her throughout her career & how she coaches founders. We address why it’s paramount to prioritize scaling costs early on as a founder, how to make design decisions with cost considerations in mind, and what tools you can employ to identify the features that most benefit your customers. Finally, Nancy & Patrick talk about how to land on your V1 while being enterprise-ready from the get-go and trends / growth opportunities that founders should be aware of today.

ABOUT NANCY WANG

Nancy is a product & engineering executive, advisor, and investor who is passionate about creating seats at the table for women, especially within engineering and technical roles. Most recently, as General Manager of Data Protection at AWS Nancy scaled her engineering teams from 18 to 100+, all while averaging over 45% female and delivering triple-digit YoY growth businesses that delivered over $1B+ ARR including its integration into Amazon’s suite of AI products.

Previously, Nancy launched Rubrik’s (NYSE: RBRK) first Cloud SaaS business, growing their company valuation to over $4B in less than 2 years. Rubrik IPO’ed in Q22024, as one of the fastest-growing enterprise SaaS businesses. As Founder and Board Chair of the non-profit Advancing Women in Tech since 2016, Nancy helps prepare women and underrepresented minorities for leadership roles. She is currently a Venture Partner at Felicis, looking after their infrastructure and cybersecurity investments.

SHOW NOTES:

• Nancy’s journey as the founding product manager for AWS (2:57)
• Why AWS was launched & how it scaled (5:31)
• How to build a successful business within the confines of your org (7:41)
• Insights into the people side of scaling your business (10:25)
• Understanding the cost component of scaling / founding (13:12)
• Ensure your processes aid the overall health & mission of the company (15:43)
• Why founders need to prioritize scaling costs early (17:15)
• Breaking down different cost scenarios founders may face (20:08)
• Avoiding design decisions that create exponential cost but linear revenue (22:51)
• Considerations for being enterprise-ready from Day 1 (28:10)
• Think of hyperscalers like a T-rex (32:31)
• Nancy’s lessons learned on landing your V1 while being enterprise-ready (34:05)
• Questions founders can ask to help identify their market & where to start (39:24)
• Current trends / growth opportunities for founders to consider (40:59)
• Rapid fire questions (43:31)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• CEO Excellence - McKinsey & Company led a research effort to identify those CEOs whose companies grew demonstrably healthier during their tenures, looking across more than 20 years’ worth of data on 7,800 CEOs from 3,500 public companies across 70 countries and 24 industries to further identify those whose actions have led to breakaway success.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/