Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:12:13 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:12:13] S1: Maybe a last question. So, I talked to Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, what to talk to you about. He had a bunch of suggestions, which I've integrated throughout our chat. One question he had for you is what's your plan post-AGI? What do you think you're going to be doing? What's your life like once we hit AGI? Whatever that means. [01:12:30] S0: So, before I joined Anthropic I was actually living in rural Japan. And it was a totally different lifestyle. I was the only engineer in the town. I was the only English speaker in the town. It was just a totally different vibe. A couple times a week I would bike to the farmer's market, and you bike by rice paddies and stuff. It was just a totally different speed. Just complete opposite of San Francisco. One of the things that I really liked is a way that we got to know our neighbors, and we built friendships is by trading pickles. So, in the town where we lived it was actually, like, everyone made miso, everyone made pickles. And so, I actually got decently good at making miso. And I made a bunch of batches, and this is something that I still make. Miso is this interesting thing where it teaches you to think on these long time skills that's just very different than engineering, because a batch of white miso takes, at least, three months to make. And a red miso is, like, two, three, four years. You just have to be very patient. [01:13:31] S1: Wow.
01:13:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:13:31] S1: Wow. [01:13:32] S0: You mix it up, and then you just let it sit. You have to be very, very patient. So, the thing that I love about it is just thinking in these long time skills. And, yeah. I think post-AGI or if I wasn't at Anthropic, I'd probably be making miso. [01:13:46] S1: I love this answer. Ben asked me to ask you about what's the deal with you and Miso. And so, I love that you answered it. Okay. So, the future might be just going deep into miso, getting really good at making miso. Amazing. Boris, this was incredible. I feel like we're brothers now from Ukraine. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Is there anything you wanted to leave listeners with? Anything you want to double down on?
01:14:18 · Boris Cherny, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:14:18] S0: Yeah. I think I would just underscore for Anthropic since the beginning, this idea of starting at coding, then getting to tool use, then getting to computer use has just been the way that we think about things. And this is the way that we know the models are going to develop, or the way that we want to build our models. And it's also the way that we get to learn about safety, study it, and improve it the most. So, everything that's happening right now around just Claude Code becoming this huge multi-billion dollar business, and now all of my friends use Claude Code, and they just text me about it all the time. So, this thing getting big. In some ways, it's a total surprise, because this isn't the ... We didn't know that it would be this product. We didn't know that it would start in a terminal, or anything like this. But, in some ways, it's just totally unsurprising, because this has been our belief as a company for a long time. At the same time, it just feels still very early. Like, most of the world still does not use Claude Code, most of the world still does not use AI. So, it just feels like this is 1% on, and there's so much more to go. [01:15:21] S1: Oh, man. That's insane to think, seeing the numbers that are coming out. You guys just raised a bazillion dollars. I think Claude Code alone is making $2 billion revenue. Anthropic, I think the number you guys put out, you're making $15 billion in revenue. It's insane to just think this is how early it still is, and just the numbers we're seeing.
01:15:21 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:15:21] S1: Oh, man. That's insane to think, seeing the numbers that are coming out. You guys just raised a bazillion dollars. I think Claude Code alone is making $2 billion revenue. Anthropic, I think the number you guys put out, you're making $15 billion in revenue. It's insane to just think this is how early it still is, and just the numbers we're seeing. [01:15:42] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And the way that Claude Code has kept growing is, honestly, just the users. Like, so many people use it. They're so passionate about it. They fall in love with the product, and then they tell us about stuff that doesn't work, stuff that they want. And so, the only reason that it keeps improving is because everyone is using it, everyone is talking about it, everyone keeps giving feedback. And this is just the single most important thing. And, for me, this is the way that I love to spend my days just talking to users, and making it better for them. [01:16:09] S1: And making miso. [01:16:11] S0: And making miso. Well, the miso is not super evolved. You've just got to wait. [01:16:14] S1: You've just got to wait. Well, Boris, with that, we've reached our very exciting lighting round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? [01:16:23] S0: Let's do it. [01:16:24] S1: First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:16:24 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:16:24] S1: First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:16:29] S0: I'm a big reader. I would start with a technical book. It is Functional Programming in Scala. This is the single best technical book I have ever read. It's very weird, because you're probably not going to use Scala. And I don't know how much this matters in the future now, but there's this just elegance to functional programming and thinking in types, and this is just the way that I code, and the way that I can't stop thinking about coding. [01:16:29] S1: Wow. [01:16:51] S0: So, you could think of it as a historical artifact. You could think of it as- [01:16:51] S1: A deep cut. [01:16:54] S0: ... something that will level you up. [01:16:56] S1: I love this. A never before mentioned book. My favorite.
01:16:56 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:16:56] S1: I love this. A never before mentioned book. My favorite. [01:16:59] S0: Oh, amazing. Amazing. Okay. Second one is Accelerando by Stross. My big genre is sci-fi. Probably sci-fi and fiction. Accelerando is just this incredible book. And it's just so fast-paced. The pace gets faster and faster and faster. And I just feel like it captures the essence of this moment that we're in more than any other book that I've read, just the speed of it. And it starts as a lift-off is starting to happening, and is starting to approach the singularity. And it ends with this collective lobster consciousness orbiting Jupiter. And this happens over the span of a few decades or something. So, the pace is just incredible. I really love it. Maybe I'll do one more book. The Wandering Earth. Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin. So, he's the guy that did Three Body Problem. I think a lot of people know him for that. Actually I think Three Body Problem was awesome, but I actually liked his short stories even more. So, Wandering Earth is one of the short story collections, and he just has some really, really amazing stories. And it's also just quite interesting to see Chinese sci-fi, because it has a very different perspective than western sci-fi, and the way that, at least, he, as a writer, thinks about it. So, it's just really, really interesting to read, and just beautifully written. [01:18:15] S1: It's so interesting how sci-fi has prepared us to think about where things are going. It creates these [inaudible 01:18:21] models of like, "Okay. I see. I've read about this sort of world."