Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:27:40 · Fiona Fung
[00:27:40] S1: But that was probably where my love came from. I'm like, oh wow, this little small business created this wonderful sense of community. And I've been really fortunate to become friends with all of the small businesses that I love. So that's kind of like where the passion comes from. And then how it happened was I was using Cowork for my own business expensing travel. I don't know what it is. I really don't like doing business expensing. And when I was using Cowork, it was magic. I'm like, "All these things that I don't like to do, like Cowork is doing for me." And I'm like, "Wait a minute, all my friends," and honestly, small business owners, they really bust their butt. They work incredibly hard and sometimes might be operating on really small margins. And so I thought if Claude Cowork is so good at helping me do my little business travel expense, this would be huge for it. Because I see my friends sometimes sitting at the bar with stacks of bills and all they're doing is invoicing and expensing and I think nobody actually really likes to do it. So that's kind of where it came from. And then so yeah, I remembered helping a couple of them onboard and it was also very humbling to see them go through our onboarding flow. Actually, they found some really good bugs. So it was really like a win-win, but it was also delightful for me because they also use Cowork in ways that I wouldn't have thought about because I was all fixated on, look at how it is amazing with PDFs and invoice. And then one of my friends who runs two restaurants, she's like, "Oh my gosh, this folder I have is like a junk drawer of, like it's basically our documents folder. It just becomes this junk drawer of every, or downloads, just like the kitchen junk drawer." And she's like, "I know I have a few menus in here and I can't find it." And I'm like, "Well, let's ask Cowork." So we gave Cowork access to directory, found the menus. And then she use in a really unique way. She goes, "I want to make sure I keep my prices reasonable for locals and tourists." So she goes, "Hey, Claude, look across my style of cuisine in this area. Is it comparable?" And it came back with really cool, almost like market analysis. And she goes, "Hey, I actually just went to that restaurant in Seattle and that was pretty good." So I learned something every time.
00:29:45 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
And yeah, they've been giving me great feedback as well. [00:29:48] S0: So the question then is just like, how do we spread this to everybody? Because a lot of people are just like, "I don't have time for this" or "I hate AI." It's just like, I want to ignore it. Is it like talking, is it just talking about these, sharing examples? What do you think? What's a way to make a dent in this problem?
00:30:07 · Fiona Fung
[00:30:07] S1: For all of us, especially to your listeners, are probably very AI-pilled. If there's anyone either in their community or their family that has like... I would start with what has something that you really have felt has made a meaningful life change for you with the AI tools and then seeing if that is a conversation starter for... Because for me, AI is a tool. Again, it's the whole light in the dark. I totally understand the frustrating part as well. But for me, I'm also felt like knowledge is power. Have to learn how to use the tools because it could actually be the light part of that light and dark equation. So I think that's something that I would love everybody's help with, whether it's a community member or even if there's a business you really like and you think, "Hey, have you ever..." It's a little awkward to start. I remember when I first reached out to my friends, I'm like, because I don't talk about what I do with them a lot, but I'm like, "Hey, I kind of work in AI. Can I..." It's even unnatural for me to do it because I'm like, "Hey, can I show you what Cowork is possible?" But we ended up having a lot of fun. So yeah, I would love for, like that conversation starter would be great of, yeah, because I just want to make sure we keep sharing the knowledge and making the tool equitable because if not, I'm concerned that the divide grows larger and larger.
00:31:29 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:31:29] S0: Me too. I find that sharing use cases, as you said, is so powerful. I was just using Cowork the other day to fill out my son's camp forms and just sharing that on Twitter, just like a lot of people are like, "Oh wow, I didn't think about that." Yeah. It's just like these little things you don't think about that Cowork and Claude Code can do. Kind of along those lines, speaking of Cowork, if you think about it, Anthropic has been super early on uncovering these really big opportunities ahead of everyone else. For example, coding. So far ahead, like realizing this is a huge market. Whether it was intentional or not, it was just like, whoa, that's maybe the biggest new business opportunity in history. And then Cowork is a great example, just leaning into knowledge work. Let's just solve all knowledge work. Why not? So far ahead of everyone else. Another element is it feels like a focus on the personality of the model, something you all were very early on, just how important that is, not just for the experience, but just also the intelligence and success of the model. What is it that you think Anthropic and the teams do differently that allows you to uncover these opportunities and then just go big on them before other labs, let's say?
00:32:43 · Fiona Fung
[00:32:43] S1: Well, I haven't worked in any other labs, so I'm not sure how labs operate, but I will share like, yeah, with... And actually on the Claude Code team as well and Cowork, we also keep an eye on latent demand. Now, we're very fortunate with coding as a use case because so many ads that we were like our own first customers and we're able to do really rapid feedback. But latent demand has been like a, for example, like Cowork we noticing a lot of folks that were not necessarily coders were using Claude Code. Can we make that experience better? I think that's actually even outside of Anthropic, that served me well in all the different products I've worked on. And actually it's funny you mentioned the Claude for my passion with small business. After I had a few of those visits, we ended up now launching Claude for Small Business, which is really cool because I, and it totally didn't come from me, so I'm not taking credit, but I noticed it too of like when I was working because they were asking me, "Oh, does it have this plugin or at this plugin?" I'm like, "I think it does." And then we have to go and search for it. So actually now Claude for Small Business bundles it all up. So inside Cowork, you just have this little toggle and there was a wonderful team that's been doing Cowork sessions with small businesses that probably found, "Hey, we could have an efficiency gain here or make the experience better." And so I would say always, not only for products that you're on, like making sure you're always listening to feedback and always iterating, trying to make a delightful, reliable, high quality experience, but then also keeping an eye out for, "Oh, what are these other use cases that are popping up? And can we also make that experience better?" It's interesting. In software, I've learned that customers will use your product in ways that you did not intend for good or for bad. And so the best way is really, it's all about the iteration, learn and keep close to the feedback.
00:34:40 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[00:34:40] S0: Weight and demand. That term's come up a bunch on this podcast. There's some there. Might be some there. So essentially, it's just watching closely for behavior that you may not have expected or that it's just kind of emerging and then just going big on that essentially, exploring it, building something awesome. [00:34:57] S1: Yeah. And having a hypothesis for, hey, because actually when you see people jumping through hoops to make something work, can you actually make that an even like, a smoother and better experience? [00:35:08] S0: Yeah. Coming back to the way that your teams operate, you guys are so at the edge of what's possible and the role of just engineering has changed so much. I'm curious what you think is the next kind of frontier of how engineering in particular is going to change. Is it like fleets of agents? Is it something else? Just what's the next big shift to how engineers operate that either you're already working on or implementing or just is starting to happen?