Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:07:16 · Amol Avasare
[01:07:16] S1: Yeah. I think it's a foundational part of the company. I think it's been there from the very, very early days. And it really comes from leadership and I think they've just done a phenomenal job of distilling that. I saw this doc come up recently. I don't know where it was shared. It was something that Ben Mann, as one of our founders that you had on the podcast, had written. It's dated in 2021, I think a few months after they started the company. And it was like, "Here's why we should just focus on AI coding." And this was like, five years ago. This was long before anyone knew what the actual market opportunities were around this. And I think this is just like a deep focus that we have had internally from the start on the importance of coding and B2B. I think there's two lenses to it. It's like maybe a view of, "Okay, that this is going to be commercially beneficial to tackle, and then also, the side of it around accelerating research." So I'd say it's a pretty mainstream view now. I've now heard people from various labs talking about this, the importance of coding to accelerate research. But that has just been a very firm view that we have been laser focused on internally of, "Okay, if you have the best models, that's going to accelerate your researches and that's going to accelerate the research loop." And I think that's something that Dario has seen very clearly for a number of years. So I would say that that's probably one of a lot. I think a lot comes from Dario. I think a lot comes from leadership and just our DNA. I think the second though is probably just necessity, where it's now changed. We're a more well-known company, raised lots of money, blah, blah, blah. But historically, we're very much the smallest, least well-funded player in this space. In many ways, it's a complete miracle that I think, we've gotten to the stage that we have. We didn't have the free cash flow or the distribution of a Meta or Google. We didn't have the first mover advantage of an OpenAI. And so what do you do? I think there's this broader principle I have just around life of like, the freedom through constraints, that when you have a bunch of constraints applied on you, whether that's in personal life or at work, I think that it can bring a lot of freedom because it just frees up all this excess choice.
01:09:40 · Amol Avasare, Lenny Rachitsky
So you're like, "Okay, this is clearly the path." And I think for us, it's like, "Okay, you don't have a ton of funding, you're a small player, you don't have distribution." You just have to really pick a very narrow focus, and even for a very generalizable technology, to maximize your chances of getting to escape velocity. And I think that that's also just related to how history played out, right? So it was well before my time, but Anthropic had a version of Claude. We had a chatbot before ChatGPT was launched. And we had ultimately chosen not to launch it for safety reasons. I think the team didn't want to kick off effectively like an AI global arms race. And ChatGPT launched and they got insane traction and that just naturally sort of pulled them towards consumer. There's another world where if Anthropic had launched Claude first, maybe did the other way around even with all that focused stuff. So who knows? It's always hard to say, looking back at some of these things. [01:10:42] S0: Wow, I didn't know that. I think also, people just don't realize how far behind Anthropic was. Right now, it's like, of course, they're amazing. But like, I just remember when people were talking about Anthropic, we were raising money. I was like, "There's no way they're going to compete with OpenAI at this point. It's so over." Just like, "They're so far ahead." And it shows the power of focus and just, I guess, I don't know, all the things you all did. It is absurd how far you all have come and how successful and how things have changed so quickly.
01:10:42 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:10:42] S0: Wow, I didn't know that. I think also, people just don't realize how far behind Anthropic was. Right now, it's like, of course, they're amazing. But like, I just remember when people were talking about Anthropic, we were raising money. I was like, "There's no way they're going to compete with OpenAI at this point. It's so over." Just like, "They're so far ahead." And it shows the power of focus and just, I guess, I don't know, all the things you all did. It is absurd how far you all have come and how successful and how things have changed so quickly. [01:11:14] S1: Yeah. And I would say, I very much agree. I think a lot of that comes down to our leadership team. We have a number of people who've worked at, call it the best companies you know in the world, very senior people. And I think almost uniformly, everyone was like, "This is the strongest leadership team out of any of those companies." And so I think a lot comes from them, and then we're just very lucky to have incredible people. I think that helps a lot as well. [01:11:41] S0: On the coding piece, just to make sure that part is clear, I never thought about this, that the reason that the bet was so deep on coding is not just that's a huge TAM, but it's that this is a feedback loop that will accelerate us further and further. So if we get the best at coding, coding will help us do research, it'll help us build better models and it'll accelerate faster and faster.
01:11:41 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:11:41] S0: On the coding piece, just to make sure that part is clear, I never thought about this, that the reason that the bet was so deep on coding is not just that's a huge TAM, but it's that this is a feedback loop that will accelerate us further and further. So if we get the best at coding, coding will help us do research, it'll help us build better models and it'll accelerate faster and faster. [01:12:02] S1: Yeah, that's correct. And this is something I checked. Dario has talked about this publicly, so I'm fine to [inaudible 01:12:07]. [01:12:08] S0: Okay, it makes sense. The safety piece is really interesting. So I want to spend a little time here. So famously, Anthropic, I think the official name of Anthropic is Anthropic, an AI safety research company. As a growth person, there's this balance I imagine you strike between growing and the mission being, don't grow at all costs. Our goal is AI safety and alignment. How do you balance those two things? How does that impact your job?
01:12:37 · Amol Avasare
[01:12:37] S1: Look, I think it's something we take very, very seriously, and it is the whole reason the company exists. And if you think about, it's all the way from... It's why they left to start the company. It's deep in our corporate structure itself. So historically, everyone raising money is like, "Go create a Delaware C Corp." And that's the structure you do. And with a corporation, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize returns for shareholders, maximize shareholder value. And from the beginning, they went a different way. We then created a public benefit corporation, PBC, which allows you to legally say that maximizing shareholder value is not the overarching umbrella goal of this company and you can optimize for public benefits. So really, I think it starts from there and it ladders down from there. For us, our purpose, our mission ultimately, is just to make sure that the transition to powerful AI goes well and is net beneficial for humanity. I think internally, we are very excited and I think, honestly, we're very, very optimistic about where this can go, but we also understand what the risks are. And so for us, that top line objective of, " This needs to go well for humanity. This just needs to go well for humanity," that is something that we are happy to take a significant commercial hit for. And we've done that time and time again, right? So we have it like back then, okay, you had Claude, but you don't want to release it because you're like, there's these safety risks. And so there's time and time again that I've seen, we've been happy to take that hit and it's actually worked out well for us in other ways. From like a growth lens, I look at it as like, growth teams can often push the boundaries of what is good user X, UX, et cetera, because they're trying to very, very much eke out metrics at times. When I think about if a controversial test is brought to me, I sort of look at it as like, there's two types of tests that are controversial. One is when that test is so controversial that you just should not run the thing, because the results don't matter because you would not ship it for a combination of brand and sort of customer friendliness and values. And then the second is where it's like, it's controversial. I don't like it. I certainly don't love it, but it's not like a red line.
01:15:02 · Amol Avasare
And so you're like, if someone comes to you with conviction and is like, "I have a really good hypothesis around this," and you're like, "I don't love it, but you can run the test and see what impact it has." And if it's a high level of cringe or ick, then I want to see a high level of return for the result for that. I kind of think about everything and like, is it in one or is it in two? And for every company, that one and two is different. I think for us, AI safety is very much in one. I think that it's like, "Yeah, that's why we exist. Yeah, it's fine. We're just not going to do this thing." I think then, there's other things that fall into two, where you're like, heightened sensitivity, but we can try it and see what happens. I think zooming out though, Lenny, one of the biggest mistakes I feel like I see growth teams make, and particularly just hardcore growth practitioners, is just trying to squeeze every last dollar. I think this is like a general principle also in life. If you're a founder raising money, you're just trying to squeeze that last dollar. You don't want to do that because you want people to come back next time as well, is my view. And I think in growth, I think it's really important that you just need to be okay leaving money on the table. And that's a core principle for us as a growth team, where we are very comfortable for going metric impact in order to prioritize safety, in order to protect our brand, in order to hold a high quality bar and to maintain a great user experience. And if you look beyond the short term and like, "Okay, what are the numbers for this quarter?" And you zoom out and you think about what are the very best products out there, you realize this is how they all operate. And that's actually the thing that's going to drive more growth long-term as well. And so I think that actually ties back to safety, where as the risks get higher and the stakes get higher, I think the fact that we are taking a stance and safety is critical to what we do, is actually going to become a significant, it's going to be a significant competitive advantage for us that I think is going to help us in the long run.