AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead)

0:00 If you think about the first era of AI products as chat, the second era of these products working with agents, that third era that might come soon is how do you work with a persistent co worker who is able to get things done with you. hard to understand what is going to emerge in the future. You fail if you build for where the models are now, you fail if you build for where you think the models will be in a year. Both outcomes are equally wrong. Only way to build is two to three months. What if you had to most adapt to And adjust in how you operate as a PM in this world. Being prolific and empirical is way more important than being academic or theoretical. Rather than writing out some long reasoning duct, instead it's like, how do I get to something I can try out and test with users as fast as possible? It feels like not only are we able to be more ambitious, we almost need to be more. ambitious, which is not natural for a lot of people. Elevating others' ambitions or reminding them of what's possible here is a huge part of the product management role. I'm curious what's most surprised you about what it's actually like to work at OpenAI. I came into the company expecting that there was a treasure trove of open AI secret strategy. Actually OpenAI is open.

1:18 Today my guest is Tara Sation. Tar Lead's product for both Codec and ChatGPT work at OpenAI. I believe this is the fastest growing and arguably most important AI product for knowledge workers today. Tar works alongside Andrew Ambrosino. Who was a recent podcast guest, he's her end manager.

1:35 Prior to open AI, Tar spent six years at Stripe. Where she joined as one of the first five product managers, and for many of those years, she was named one of the top three Stripes across the entire organization of Stripe. She also led product at Watershed, was a founder and a teal fellow. And most importantly of all Taro was one of the three Lenny's newsletter fellows.

1:54 Which is a program that I ran a few years ago to highlight some of the most amazing up and coming product leaders. I am so excited to see Tar in this new incredibly important and impactful role. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny'sProductPass.com. For a free year. Of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Linese newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Tara Sation.

2:18 Nara, thank you so much. for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Lenny. I'm so glad to be here. It's so nice to see you. I'm even more glad.

2:30 So you've been at OpenAI for just about a year now, which in most places would be a very short amount of time. In AI time, that's like a lifetime. Yes. I imagine when you joined OpenAI, you had a sense of what it was gonna be like to work at a Frontier Lab. I'm curious what's most surprised you about what it's actually like to work at Open AI.

2:51 And ideally both good and bad stuff. So many things about working at OpenAI felt familiar to me because I had worked at other places that were, you know, high growth, high talent, high intensity. Hyper scaling mode places before. And so some of the things like oh my colleagues are so awesome or the urgency is really high.

3:10 Felt very familiar. The part to me that f actually felt the most surprising is that Many companies I've worked for, in fact, all the companies I've worked for in the past have been founder led. And OpenAI is actually founders led. Um which is that everyone inside the company, especially in their area

3:31 Is in essence kind of a f a founder to some extent. The level of like top down direction at OpenAI is extremely Limited relative to Places I've worked for prior. And so

3:45 I think when I first got to the company that was both delightful in that I had come from like a founding journey before and I was like, yes, I can continue to feel like the founder of this product area or this this uh team and you know the the distance between me and the market is very very thin you know and sometimes the larger company feel insulated from what users want or feel insulated from like what the market demands.

4:09 But actually it open AI that You do not at all. You are Doing it. everything it takes to get product market fit for your product akin to how a a founder might. But the the counter to this is that

4:20 Maybe the The more uh surprising side of this is I came into the company expecting that there was a treasure trove of like open AI secret strategy that I would be able to understand, akin to how, you know, at past companies you come in and you're like, ah yes, this is like the payments Bible, and this is how we think about uh payments and operations.

4:40 And actually open AI. Is open. Yeah. Like every Sort of

4:45 Thought that exists in terms of this is how the But the world should look like or this is how product should be built or this other model should operate. very very quickly becomes a part of the public product Or a part of like the public messaging.

5:00 And so that to me was incredibly um But Positively surprising and just like a change in my operating mode for sure. Telling us there's not like the secret room with the AGI running there with the master plan that has all the answers. Or at least I'm not in that room for sure. But um I I think the the piece that is really inspiring to me is that

5:23 So much of what open AI does immediately becomes something that users can touch and feel in the product, and that cycle is faster than anywhere else. I've seen. This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, Work OS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common?

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6:49 В а маркетин о маркетизмор сломовing. you have the chance to actually like Do some grand strategy esque work. Because it's more predictable. Or you can at least like understand all of the pieces.

7:01 Like as an example, payments is a certainly a dynamic market to some extent, but it's also an established market. And you're able to say, Ah yes, if like I take this bet, my competitor might take this other bet or a reason from first principles very rigorously through what all the next actions might be. And in fact, um The nature of that market. mandates that you do that. Like winners will think more rigorously than everybody else. And if you aren't thinking rigorously, it shows up as sort of like carelessness'cause a lot of those decisions that you made could have been predicted.

7:33 But in this market, it's so hard to understand. Like What is going to emerge in the in the future. It's very emergent. It's very fast changing. It's really dynamic. And most importantly, it's like Very, very important to stay tied to the research.

7:48 And so Actually being prolific and being um More like empirical. is way more important than being um like maybe more academic or theoretical. And

8:00 I think lots of the past companies I've worked at have been very academic. and theoretical places and it was a real switch to go from rather than writing out some like long reasoning doc almost like a PhD thesis of what I think should be the plan for the next like N amount of time. Instead, it's like, how do I get to something I can try out and test with users as fast as possible? And so yeah, that that switch from theoretical to empirical felt very jarring at first. I was like, Oh, am I not doing my

8:29 Due diligence here? Am I not being thoughtful enough? Like shouldn't I be like thinking through all of this? in a ton of rigor, but actually you gotta you gotta try stuff and learn as much as possible. And what that means is the thinking you need to do is being as pointed as possible about what your core hypothesis is. And that hypothesis definition is the most important thing, like what is actually Uh to use the um Shishir Maholtrow p phrase like the eigen question.

8:55 What is like that specific most important thing to test? And everything else, like any other grand strategy you concoct, is not relevant. I'd love to hear more about that,'cause that's really interesting. As almost like here's the thing of The PM role that is not changing. So much is changing. The world is changing. But like there's still this piece that is uh even more important.

9:14 Speak more to that of what what specifically that uh you think people need to focus more on. Yeah, there were so mu there's so many trappings around the PM role of like, you know, running um like execution on time and and writing all these specific docs and presentations, et cetera. But the core of it has always been about What is like the most essential question you need to ask about your product? Like what is the thing that will determine whether your product works or doesn't work. How do you test that?

9:40 How do you look at the results and how do you feed that back into a loop? of like refining your hypothesis and running it again. Like that that truly has always been the PM job. Um, and that involves, of course, like trying to understand users, trying to understand the market, trying to understand the actual technology you're building. Pulling those three things together to make the most sharp hypothesis you can.

10:01 And then Making the test. As fast and effective as possible. And I think that is Натоли на чаї.

10:09 But it's become the most important thing. uh the company to be able to do. Like EMs are like thinking this way, engineers are thinking this way, like data scientists are thinking this way, designers are thinking this way, like everyone has sort of moved. Two.

10:24 focus their efforts on this really, really important like problem definition and and testing loop, like what are we actually doing and how do we know if it's working? Bang. And from a PM standpoint, like It's great because PMs have always been really focused on trying to get that stuff right. Um, that has always been the core of the job. And actually, many of the other just trappings of the job have like fallen away. And that remains like the

10:48 key thing to get right every time. You mentioned this idea of a loop. And there's a lot of talk these days. Like loops were so hot, I don't know, a few weeks ago on Twitter. And it feels like it continues to be

11:00 Uh Topic of discussion for knowledge work broadly. And the way I understand a loop, essentially, AI, here's what success looks like. go off and build and figure it out until you this is what this you achieve success. How do you think about just this idea of loops?

11:16 Expanding from just software engineering to product management to all knowledge work. Do you think that's gonna be a a thing? I do think that increasingly the future of work will look more like steering than rowing. In the sense that there will be agents that you'll you'll be able to work with that do a lot of the rowing, and your role increasingly becomes steering the ship in the right direction and pointing it in the right direction.

11:40 And to that point I think that That steering micro higher and higher and higher level. The steering used to be at the level of I wrote this line of code, press tab. to oh wait now I'm directing something a little bit more comprehensive to maybe the goal level. maybe to like an even higher level. I think the steering will continue to

12:00 um maybe go up layers of abstraction. Well ultimately I think it's still on a person to be able to find like Which direction are we pointing this in? And given feedback and additional data. Where do I want to take this thing next?

12:12 Some of steering, I think, is about Certainly like what the data tells you. But a lot of it is about making opinionated call. I think sometimes that we underrate like that power of like intuition or Even um

12:28 positive like determinism of what we want the future to be like. Like picturing hey, I would like the product to look this way, not because the converse is not an equally viable strategy, but because I would like the world to look like the direction that I would I'm pushing it in. And that I think will always remain a

12:46 uh opinion at least right now that is like required from a person. And so I think that Loops are awesome. Running Like running agents and increasingly, increasingly

12:57 larger loops where they're doing more and more of that rowing for you is great. But right now it you really still need to to steer. And I think work will also look like steering with other people over a group of agents that you guys work with together.

13:12 um bringing in other teammates into that like interaction between you and the agent where it's rowing and you're steering feels also incredibly valuable. That's such an interesting way of describing it. There's also Like there's two thoughts here that come up. One is If everybody has access to the same tools.

13:29 The thing that will separate you is this. Is the hu is human the person, basically. Otherwise We're all just gonna be building the same thing. You could use it. You could everyone could be asking, How do we win? What do we do? And then The thing that almost unfair advantage almost is the human brain. Yeah, I I think it it reminds me a lot of fashion, actually, in in some ways.

13:45 Like There are certainly functional clothes that everybody can wear and uh gets gets the job done. But so much about what you wear, at least or how I think about what I wear, is about what statement I want to make about my individuality or what h how I want to reflect to the rest of the world. And a lot of what makes that compelling is how it contrasts with other people's expression.

14:06 Like the shirt I make makes a statement only because it is maybe different than what everybody else is doing or different than some cohort of people are doing, or makes a statement about my group membership or something of that kind. And I think a lot of the Products that we build. feel similarly Opinion it and artistic.

14:23 Like Patrick Calls and has this really nice statement, or maybe it was John Calls and has this really nice statement about software, which is that software is not like real estate. You don't like put money in and get value out. It is a little bit more like filmmaking, where you can put a lot of money into a film, but that doesn't guarantee that the film is successful. Or good. There is some like autour statement or is some opinionation and artistry that goes along with it. And I think that relies on you having something interesting to say or your team having something interesting to say about your product. There's something um Marty Kagan is big on. Which is this idea that

14:59 When you have an idea for product or feature. rarely is that idea the thing that ends up being there's this whole process you go through to kind of figure out what the hell actually. It should be. And it feels like that's kind of what you're saying here, is like you need to go through that process as a human.

15:13 To understand what it really is and what people actually want. It's never gonna be like, Okay, got it, go build this thing, I got it from the beginning. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And that loop those loops are moving faster and faster and faster. And so your ability to like form those intuitions.

15:27 Get the information you need to form those intuitions and then use that. with people and agents. To put that into action is Is the key. I'm curious.

15:37 what you think the next shift will be in how we work just broadly as knowledge workers. It feels like not only do you have access to the most advanced tools that'll some people that other people don't get Also, you work around the most AI pill, AI forward people. In the world. How are people

15:54 working internally that you think will become kind of a more normal way we all work. using these AI tools in the next, I don't know, three to six months. Yeah, I think there's there's two aspects to this. One is continuing to work with agents at higher and higher levels of abstraction. So letting the agent do more and more for you independently.

16:15 Coming in, providing that steering. and then letting the agent continue to cook. Like let the agent cook and provide details at higher in order of orders of abstraction feels like the way. people are increasingly thinking about agents that are persistent, that feel like teammates, that feel like coworkers, where you can work with them. The way I might work with someone on my team, which is they do a whole bunch of work, I provide input and then they Do work again.

16:41 different cadences, look at each other's in progress work and provide more and more feedback. It feels like that that co worker model Is the way that things are certainly going feels like a much more natural interface for us to be able to work with agents. And we already see a lot of that internally as well. The second is that A lot of my work with agents thus far has been

17:03 One on one. I work with my agent, maybe it spawns some sub agents to get some tasks done, but it's me and my agent together. And that is potentially divorced from what my colleagues are doing with their agents. And so there was a time where everyone internally was just like sending their codex threads, screenshots of their codex threads to each other on Slack.

17:25 We're like, okay, well I wanted to share with you how I got to this number. Here's how I got to this number. Here's a screenshot of of what I did. But that's also not quite the most natural way for someone to Collaborate together. And so as more and more work gets done with our agence

17:41 Shouldn't we be able to get work done with our agents together? Um, and what is the most natural interface to make that happen. And those are some of the things that we are We're thinking about. Chat is what I'm picturing. Uh that makes so much sense. It's like okay, here's

17:54 Tara's agent, here's my agent. She did some work on some analysis. I'd be Hey, my agent, my news agent, go check, make sure. This is legit. And connects to the way I think about the world. Ideally, work feels like a multiplayer game.

18:06 where all of us together are getting stuff done steering our agents as our agents continue to take care of more and more of those like rowing tactical tasks. It's interesting how it's just been this like slow progression of trust. And um Just like awareness that this can be how we work. Just this like, okay, go work for longer. You can take on more. It's just

18:26 Like if you're There's been this talk of like the slow takeoff, the past takeoff scenarios. And everyone's afraid of this fast AI takeoff where it's like way too smart and now we're in big trouble. It feels very much like we're in the slow takeoff scenario. Which is good.

18:38 Where it's just like slowly iterating. Doesn't feel that slow, but in a sense. You know we're not like the some three hundred IQ A AI, like, you know. I mean the models are the models are incredibly smart, but I think a lot of the things that have enabled us to then

18:52 work with our agents together or have the agents take care of higher and higher order abstraction things. certainly are about the intelligence, their ability to perform long running tasks and how long they can stay on tasks, but also actually There are very meat and potatoes tactical things that make this possible. Like Agents working locally are really convenient because they have access to all the data that's on your machine. to make an agent successful in the cloud. There is a ton of cloud infrastructure that you have to build to make that possible. And just like access to your systems. Like how can agents talk to all these third party systems that have all of your data, just like a colleague

19:27 who you hire, who you like lock into a room, never give them access to like Google Docs and Slack and I don't know the company database would not be that useful to you. Similarly, like a cloud agent that is similarly isolated will will not be that effective. And so a huge part of making these agents useful and achieving some of these futures are are on the intelligence side, certainly, but a lot of it is also just really tactical. like data access like

19:52 cloud infrastructure and reliability. pieces that feel um Yeah, they feel much more prosaic than some of the the the broader intelligence questions, but matter in some ways just as much for end effectiveness. This touches on something else that has been coming up a bunch on this podcast, this word ambition. I know you think a lot about this too.

20:13 It feels like Not only are we able to be more ambitious. Because of these AI tools. We almost need to be more ambitious, which is not natural for a lot of people. Because

20:24 Everybody can now do all these easy things really easily. Like the easy stuff is super easy. Hard stuff is easy. And the thing that separates people now and companies now is just how ambitious they can be. Talk about what comes up when I talk about the the need and the kind of the

20:39 emergence of this need for ambition. Yeah, I think the people that we see who are most effective at using AI tools don't simply use it to automate rote tasks, but use it to expand the set of things that they are capable of doing. like back in the day you know before before all this uh before all this a i stuff The like unicorn person was someone who was a Really thought product sense.

21:02 person who also happened to be an engineer who may also have been a designer. That person was always the like unicorn hire because they were able to really flatten the lay of translation needed between all these functions and were able to like build something or ideate something really quickly and easily. themselves. And get it up and running.

21:22 And then we're able to like work with a team and collaborate with the team on it. And I think the Most compelling thing I've found. That Certainly I try to be able to do with these tools and I've seen some of my like most successful like colleagues be able to do with these tools.

21:37 is really expand the set of things that are quote unquote within their range of possibilities so that they can start realizing more and more of what's in their head. into the reality, the way that someone who was previously like Jack of all trades was able to do. We kind of all have that superpower now that I can like spin up a set of designs on something and I can like go build an initial prototype of it. And I can, you know figure out the right pricing model for it and model out all the scenarios, like really the set of possibilities of Widened.

22:06 Dramatically. And actually what that means in so many ways is that I have the ability to like be a to that point earlier about film like be more of an autour. as I try to get something done and like realize my vision maybe to higher fidelity. And

22:21 That to me is part of what can elevate your ambitions while pursuing New ideas and new products. Yeah. because all of these things are now within reach, because this new set of capabilities is now within your reach to be able to try and access. You're not really limited, your ambitions are no longer limited by like what you're capable of executing yourself, what you're capable of communicating.

22:44 It can be so much, so much wider. I think the hardest part about doing this is simply just expanding your thinking. actually the capabilities have expanded so dramatically. It is is really expanding your thinking of what's possible in an unreasonably short time frame. And to me, the best way of trying to do that is

23:01 Um Patrick Hallson has like on his website, Patrickhausen.com slash fast, I think, which is all of these projects that were unreasonably ambitious, that were executed in a really, really short time period. And what for me is now remarkable about that list of projects is that they All existed before these tools. made it possible for you to learn how to build something almost instantly or ask it

23:21 with one question, hey, can you summarise this very complicated text or this very complicated book for me? Um Immediately. Or can I try to do all of these things were previously impossible to me, but now I'm able to do? Like can I spin up a Can you make for me like a CAD model of this idea that I might have?

23:37 The really capabilities that were truly beyond my reach are now in my reach. And so if Those Fast projects were possible before with the capabilities we used to have. Shouldn't we just see an exponential increase of the number of those types of unreasonably quickly and effectively executed things?

23:55 Um with What AI has given us. To your point, the hardest part is just remembering to even To try. Just to be like, Oh yeah, well let me see if Codec can do this for me.

24:04 It's just like a new habit, a new like thing we have to build in our brain. Tyler Cowan has this statement on his site, which is that you most people underrate the impact of going to someone else and saying Hey, couldn't you What is like the more ambitious version of what you're doing, or couldn't you try this faster, or couldn't you try this at a 10x bigger scale?

24:24 And in some ways, again, when I think of like what what do PMs do that is incredibly effective now, or what can they do that is incredibly effective now? I think elevating others ambitions or reminding them of what's possible here. is a huge part of the product management role. Like when folks say, Hey, I I think that we can get this done in this way, or we can get this done by this timeline, or maybe this is the first version of it. Um

24:45 Part of your job now is to elevate everyone's ambitions. And say actually Isn't the possibility ceiling meaningfully higher? Like shouldn't we be more ambitious about what we're attempting here or like couldn't we try this faster? And I think that's a Yeah, it's a it's a great place to be. It's a great place to be in terms of what you can build.

25:03 What's possible and in terms of Um Yeah, how exciting the job becomes. That is so interesting. I remember uh Nick Curley was on the podcast who was maybe had the role before you.

25:14 Uh I think he's working on enterprise stuff now. Yeah, this uh meme internally is this maximally accelerated? Yes. There's like an emoji, I think, inside the Slack because it's maximally accelerated. Is this maximally accelerated? It's totally a open AI meme.

25:28 The other opening eye meme that uh Andrea and Brazino and I love to ask the team is like are you mainlining it yet? Which is like are you using this product all day every day to get your thing done? And I think that In combination with

25:43 Are we being as ambitious as possible, which is about like the scope and the scale of what you're trying to do? Are are is this maximally accelerated? Are we moving as fast as possible on it? And then are you mainlining it yet? Are you using it and are you bringing all your taste to bear on whether this thing works and is something that people really want and tightening that feedback loop as much as possible? Those to me are like The three memes of product development uh that we we just have to spread as much as possible now.

26:08 I love that. It's like the new dog fooding. Instead of the dog fooding, you gotta mainline it. Yeah, exactly. And that shows so Deeply in the the Tweets. This is mostly how we see your team communicate.

26:22 Of just like how obsessed they are with the product and are just constantly asking what can we do better. What's bugging you now? Here's the thing we're building. It's like It's very clear how to your point earlier that everyone is just the founder. Of their product.

26:35 And it it's very clear how they Exactly. As an external observer. Are there any other memes internally? Those are so interesting. Any other Uh

26:44 Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's other good cultural means. Certainly a a really important one is like feeling the AGI or just being conscious of of AGI coming. Um There are so many outcomes for for what it could look like or how one thinks but

27:03 A b huge part of What But most people at this company. is believing in that mission of A Gi being beneficial. And trying to do whatever it takes to make that possible, both realization of AGI and ensuring that it is beneficial for

27:17 For humanity. And in building products, another just constant refrain I have to keep in the back of my mind is Are we building for where the models are going to be in two to three months? You fail if you build for where the models are now. You fail if you build for where you think the models will be in a year. Like both outcomes are equally wrong. And I'm sure many people have have talked about this, but both outcomes are really equally wrong. If you're too early. You're wrong. If you build something that was like overly focused on a past model's capabilities, you're entirely wrong.

27:47 The only way to build is Two to three months. And having this meme of like models are gonna get way better. I need to think about the model capability as the center of this product. I need to get out of the way of the model in terms of the product. Constructs that I create. How do I ensure that this is right for the model in two to three months time?

28:05 How do you know what two or three months is like? It's like a Challenging understanding, uh, especially while when we're on this in exponential. Is it like it just a gut feeling? Is there anything the researchers give you a sense? How does that work? Yeah, certainly communicating really tightly with research on

28:20 where they think things are going is Incredibly important. Um like these things aren't Entirely a Like a black box in that you kind of know, Hey, we're focused on these particular things. Like we would like

28:33 Models be better at at coding in these specific ways or better at writing in these specific ways. Um So we we certainly have focused efforts on making the model better at specific capabilities. And so knowing where that is and ensuring that product development is as tied as possible to what research. has as its agenda and its roadmap is is really important.

28:54 A quote that I'll never forget is when Kevin Wheel was on the podcast. He was chief product officer at that time. Uh He said that this is the worst the models will ever be. And it sounds so simple, but it's just like It's hard to just like wrap your head around that.

29:10 That this is the worst they will ever be. Like it's such a cliche almost now to say that, but it's it's true. It's absurd. This is like Yeah, it's it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. No man. Okay. Um

29:23 I want to talk about Chat GPT the app, briefly. Uh okay, so I have it open right now. Yeah. Okay, so

29:30 Here's what I see in it. Chat GPT and then there's a drop down and there's Chat GPT and codex. And then there's this toggle, chat and work. Tar, what is going on? What are all these things?

29:41 Help us understand what each of these things are for. And where does this where do you think this goes? Is it gonna stay like this? What is there like a next step that you're imagining already? Our North Star here is that users do not need to make decisions between picking between all these different options. Ideally there is no there's no toggle here. That you go to the box.

30:01 You type in your task, like I would like to build a really awesome app that um I don't know. helps my podcast guests like do research before episodes or something. And it will Pick the right

30:14 harness, it'll pick the right model for you to be able to get that thing done. Ideally the The choice here is like not on our users to have to pick between all these different concepts and understand not only what are they trying to do, but understand the limitations and capabilities of our products. So that is certainly where we want to go.

30:32 In the in the near term, picking between chat GPT and Codex Is really a choice for Are you a Do you want to stay in sort of like more development oriented UI, or do you want to have the same power and capabilities in the chat GPT mode? And so if you're a codex user.

30:50 Keep using codex, you're not missing out on anything, like continue using it as much as possible. But if you're a chat GPT user who is like, what are these new agenda capabilities? You'd probably be in Chat GT mode. And then when you're in chat GPT, if you want to have conversations, if you want to search That's where chat mode is the right thing. It's the you know, same chat mode you know and love with better and better

31:11 models and newer and newer capabilities every time. But in work mode, that's where under the covers. This is codex. We've removed some of like the coding UI, like you don't you're not gonna see a work tree. pop up all of a sudden in in work mode, but it is the same power.

31:27 To get things done. to um for example, generate like a really complex financial model. That's all possible. in work mode, and we see people, especially I I mentioned our corporate finance team.

31:40 um use work mode to do incredible incredible things that were previously either manual or require deep expertise from one person on the team become things that the whole team can be able to execute or just elevate the ambitions of everyone on the team in terms of timeline or capabilities or frontier of what they can get done. Okay, that's really helpful. So there's kind of like these three modes currently. There's like the engineering mode, the chat mode, and then the do knowledge work mode.

32:06 And the knowledge work mode, it's actually codecs doing all that work, but people may not Know what Codex is, maybe not maybe maybe afraid of it. Is there anything in that work mode that's not just codex? Because that's actually really interesting. Is it like is there like additional harness tweaks to make it feel a little different, or is it just the same thing with a little different UI? It's it's really at the UI level. Um so work mode and codex mode. If you go to codex and ask it to generate a

32:30 Amazing financial model to price your product or something like that. Or like Tell me w predict my revenue for the next six months or something like that. Codec will do as good a job as work mode. It's like really about Whilst it's doing so, what kind of UI do you want to see in the chain of thought? What kind of technical detail do you want exposed to you? the it's like incredible it's similarly powerful. And so code you just aren't missing out on anything.

32:52 by not switching modes. In fact, we do not want them to like stay in codex and do all the stuff you want to do in codex. And we will show you the appropriate UI based on the things you asked for. truly our North Star is to like merge all these things. So that users don't have to make any of these decisions. the separation is really more about how can we

33:10 Meet people where they are. as much as possible in terms of the products that they use, in terms of their familiarity with concepts, and make sure that We are enabling everyone to take advantage of Working with agents, which has transformed entirely the way every single developer works. We should do the same thing with knowledge work.

33:29 It makes sense. Uh There's just like because things move so fast. Like it would I imagine somebody's like, Let's try codex. This is gonna be awesome. And then it takes off and there's ten million monthly active users.

33:41 And then they're like, Wait, what are we doing here? We got Chat GPT, we got codec, how do we So it makes sense why these things, you know, like it's not gonna feel obvious and perfect for a while because you have to kind of adjust as things work and things don't work. And there's these kind of transition periods of like okay, cool, now let's get people moving towards this vision of

33:58 The super app, let's say. Um okay. I imagine one of the hardest parts of your job is balancing This hundred billion MAU product, chat GPT.

34:12 maybe the most successful consumer product in history. With Codex, which is this new thing and other new things that you guys want to try. How do you think about that? Just I don't know, just balancing these very innovative, fast moving teams and product with this like, okay, there's a billion people using this. We can't change this dramatically.

34:30 Yeah, I think One of the most interesting things here is that we we One of the goals of launching work in ChatGPT web and launching it in the desktop app and bringing these things together.

34:43 Was said Look at those billion people who are using chat GPT and bring them more and more of the Agent's power. Like, if you think about the first era of AI products as chat.

34:56 The second era of these products It is. Clearly working with agents and you know, primarily has been coding agents. We'd like to bring it to more More domains, certainly, like knowledge work.

35:09 And that is part of the goal of giving all these billion chat users, the power of work. Certainly the product challenge that is that's on us is how do we not only bring it to them, but make it natural and easy to adopt, make it not a decision they have to explicitly make. We can just help them do the right thing. How do we take decomplexify it? So they don't need to think about

35:29 Things like harnesses, which feel like crazy concepts for uh a billion consumers to understand. So that that is primarily the The challenge. And then of course like that third era that that might come soon is how do you work with A like persistent Coworker.

35:44 Who is able to get things done with you. maybe collaboratively with other people. And so part of this challenge in the near term. Is

35:54 We're introducing agents to a billion people who may not have experienced them yet. How do we do so in the easiest, most natural, and most usable way possible? Certainly there's a lot more for us to do to to make that happen. But part of this is also A lesson I've had. maybe contrasting like pre-AI era or past product experience with this one. Which is

36:17 at previous companies like Polish was king. Uh getting every UI interaction or getting every little thing completely right. Was way more important than shipping something early. Because time

36:30 didn't make as much of a difference in terms of the outcome. And so as such, like If every corner wasn't like perfectly polished and Everything was wasn't exactly correct. You might as well not ship it.

36:43 But I think what's been really compelling And interesting about this era and this product experience has been getting the product in the hands of users when you have so much conviction that hey it's transformative. Like is way better than perfect.

36:57 And that urgency and that uh introduction of that product is is so important. So we have a lot to do to make it more usable and easier. For chat users, certainly especially for folks who are not maybe even using it for productivity, but using it for

37:12 Thank you Consumer tasks. But um yeah, done is better than perfect. And then we have so much more to do. Yeah, I remember when uh this app first launched, there was a lot of

37:22 Uh. Seeing how quickly the team iterated and respond to the feedback is exactly what what I'm hearing here is Get it out, figure out what the hell's what peop what's not working, how people are using it, iterate quickly. Feels like that's the the model now. And of course there are things that you can continue to iterate and get that feedback prior to launching, and there's a lot that we can and should always do better. But um iterating as quickly as possible and listening to the right signals.

37:49 Yes. regardless of whether that's pre launch, post launch, ideally pre launch, um is is the is the key thing. This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking now with spend. I've been a Mercury customer for so many years now, I switched all my business banking to Mercury, and honestly, I could not be happier. It's what online banking feels like when it's built by product people, not by bankers. And now with spend, you can give your team individual card, set spending limits per person or per team.

38:19 And have expense receipts automatically pulled in. From Gmail or over text. You can even give your AI agents their own cards with their own limits and policies. Most founders start out the same way. One card used by everybody at the company.

38:32 It works until it stops working. Someone goes over, a receipt disappears, you spend two days trying to figure out who spent what and why. Spend is expense management built directly into Mercury. All your team's cards. budget and reimbursements. all live in the same place as your business thinking.

38:49 No chasing, no manual reviews, no end of month scramble. The result is a team that can move fast and a founder who is no longer the bottleneck. Learn more and get signed up at Mercury.com. Mercury is a FinTech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided to Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. The IO card is issued by Patriot Bank NA member FDIC pursuant to a license from MasterCard International, Incorporated. Something I've noticed on Twitter.

39:16 Is there's definitely been this vibe shift. From Claude Code to Codex in the past few months. Used to be everyone was cloud code this, cloud code that. More recently, it just feels like people are leaning now towards codex. At least on Twitter, which is a bubble, but where a lot of tech people are.

39:34 I'm curious what's shifted internally in the past, I don't know, three to six months, other than Tara joining and shaping up The ship. Uh, is there anything that you can share that's just like okay, we figured this thing out, we shifted this, we Cut this thing. What what helped? shift the vibes and

39:50 uh help codex become as successful as it as is becoming. You know, I think there's like this phrase which is uh before enlightenment uh Carry wood or carry water, chop wood, post Enlightenment, uh Carry Water, Chop Wood sort of thing. And actually with the Codex app

40:07 Um The team who initially got it up and running and were working on it. Uh were super again, user focused, tight iteration loop, really dog fooded the thing, like mainlined the app. As much as possible to get Get everything right.

40:22 Folks started to realize that was happening. on externally and on Twitter and users started to really notice. But the team was always really focused on users really focused on that iteration. And it was merely the And to some extent like the market catch up.

40:40 That was the change. And that process has not changed internally. Everyone's still Constantly uses the app. Everyone in the who's building it obviously is a developer, using it for development and is constantly

40:53 Fixing not only their own problems, but trying to listen to other people in the company's problems and user problems. Actually what's sort of remarkable is that the mode of operating hasn't changed. It's always been the same thing I had mentioned earlier, like Are we like are we elevating our ambition sufficiently? Are we maximally accelerating progress? And are we mainlining it as much as possible? And I think

41:15 It's great that uh users and folks on Twitter have noticed, but that that operation, like the full credit to the team, like that hasn't changed. What's really interesting about this answer is it's Is the very human. Part of it.

41:29 It's you, it's Andrew, it's Tebow, it's the team just like being obsessed. With the the customer or the product. And it's not like it's not like AI was the answer. It's the humans that made the difference. Yeah, I'll I'll give the the team deserves like full full credit here. The everyone on the team is incredibly thoughtful and independent and to the point of like

41:50 There are, you know, many founders at OpenAI, like almost everyone on that team, like the desktop team especially, like ask like founders And cares about every piece and every detail and when they notice an area that should be better, they Go build it.

42:04 very independently and and get the thing up and running and If it doesn't test well internally, like if people aren't using it, if people don't find it useful, they'll iterate on it. And then finally like ship it externally. But that loop is Full credit to like

42:17 People on the team and and individuals for making that happen. Something you touched on is this idea of roles overlapping this idea of like, you know, engineers are doing a PME work, you're doing probably shipping prototypes and building maybe shipping to production. I don't know. Just It feels like that also creates a lot of challenges.

42:34 I hear from a lot of people, like what is my job now as a as a designer? What am I what am I responsible for? What am I not responsible for? As a marketer. What am I what am I doing? Is that something you notice? Is that something that You're dealing with Um just any thoughts along those lines. I think the thing I've always liked the most about working at startups

42:52 And Sometimes I've started at a startup that accidentally grew into a large company, but largely primarily working at startups, is that there are very few boundaries around your role. That like everything and nothing is your responsibility, ultimately you're accountable for success. Actually like stripe was very, very much this way where there are no boundaries around what a engineer could do versus a product manager could do versus a designer could do. Everyone could do anything.

43:17 And so actually it kind of feels like I've always really loved that mentality and now finally capability is catch up to that. But The thing I really care about is that someone needs to look after the Or have

43:33 Poor accountability. For is this product. being used by users? Is it something that people want? Is it Uh High quality, is it effective?

43:43 And whether that person is like an engineer or a designer or a PM or whomever, like someone is the DRI. And then whatever work needs to be done to make that possible. you know, certainly people can pick it up based on their affinity, based on their capability, but I like a team that doesn't really mind.

44:01 what the boundaries are between individual roles, but everyone's just sort of focused on making the outcome happen. The converse of this is I also really love like the craft aspects of like being a PM. Like there are so many aspects to PM craft that I know folks like Shreyus or maybe Marty Kagan or Shashir, like all these people have really espoused that I think are

44:22 are wonderful and sometimes Um maybe some of these questions or Come from the same. We I I so love the craft of my domain. By taking this more fluid approach to

44:34 Teamwork and collaboration to get something done, do I lose out on getting better and polishing my craft? And I truly don't have an answer for that question. I think it's like something we're all experiencing together. Which is some pieces of our craft are actually getting Abstracted by models being able to do it really effectively, maybe better than

44:52 than individuals can and your craft moves from you know, being able to do that very specific task you did in the past to now applying it to some other part of the product or the discipline. But Yeah, that that is still a question I'm thinking about, which is

45:08 How do I balance my desire to be part of a team and use these tools and feel so Um compelled by how effective one can be now with all these Products with my love of like the

45:21 Yeah, it's it's really fun. Handwriting. code for an engineer all the time and one doesn't really do that anymore. Yeah, that's where I was gonna go. It's just like Unbelievable how different the engineer role is now.

45:34 Yeah. It's like you used to write code all day. That was your job and that is no longer your job. Yeah. And that happens so quickly. Like, I'm going to do it. I I see people mourn like the flow state of writing code manually yourself versus now what what one does. But I think it is a Um

45:52 Yeah, it's a it's a it's a tough transition. Yeah. And you know, some people love it, some people don't. And that's a whole other topic. Kind of along those lines, something I like to ask people at the frontier of AI is

46:03 Where do you think human brains will continue to be? Valuable. In the future. It's impossible to predict long term we'll will we need humans. Hopefully.

46:13 But I'd say in the ne I don't know, the next couple of years just like where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable? I think humans will continue being most valuable as a Certainly as a um Like an entity of accountability. So who ultimately owns the outcome here?

46:29 In some ways you can think of your agent that you're working with as like your your report. Um, ultimately who owns like what's what was the end product? Was it high quality? Was it the thing that you wanted it to do and say like that. That will certainly remain a a person, at least at least for now.

46:46 And especially in industries and places that are Um highly regulated or require like a direct human interface, like that that makes a ton of sense to me. I think the human brain is also really valuable for expression. I'd mentioned earlier that analogy of

47:03 Uh, software is not like real estate. It is more like a film where you could put money and a great film does not come out. Like the greatest films are not the ones with the biggest budgets. And given that there's a certain There's a certain artistry and opinionation and expression in building software where you feel like there is some authorship by a by a person or a group of people and that part remains to me so human Like what you choose to build and how it feels. feels like such a such a human

47:32 Question. Um I also think the human brain continues to be valuable in like how we care. for each other and relate to one another. Um, that piece of my work has remained so

47:44 Human and remained actually has actually become more important than ever. The part where you talk to other people on your team and collectively figure out how you can be enthusiastic about

47:54 A area how you learn and work together, how you elevate each other's ambitions. All of that feels And remain such a human thing to do. Yeah, I think the human brain will will continue to be so valuable in that regard. That said, I, you know, can't predict

48:12 What'll happen with the models. But those pieces feel to me to be Incredibly, incredibly human. Mm-hmm. I love that answer. There's this idea that you talked about this idea of the this overhang of what AI is capable of and what we're actually

48:26 Uh doing with it. People always Like it feels like one of the biggest gaps is like okay, what should I do with it? I'm curious. What are some ways that

48:35 You use AI in your work. That may inspire people like Oh wow, I didn't think about using it that Like there's kind of two buckets here. One is just like what's like The most

48:44 how your PM job has changed most thanks to AI, that you're just like, Okay, now I use AI for this stuff. And then what's like is there any like super interesting creative uses of AI recently that you're like, Oh yeah, should try this. One of the most important exciting ways that I use AI in work is Um actually build sites.

49:02 all the time now. I don't know if you've tried building sites in the case. Sites is a really fun, amazing product. Um you can basically build a site, certainly in work as a presentational artifact, but I also build sites for literally anything. I build a site um For the team as like a as a game. Um, where we all played a game together using a site because sites have a database. Uh you can build site. I actually built a site because I went on a backpacking trip recently. I built a site of the route that like tracked the elevation of everywhere we were going. Everyone on our our trip like inputted all their food. Um it was like super fast and effective.

49:38 Sites kind of realize the dream of like malleable personal software that Alan Kay, you know, flagged in the in the sixties of like the true personal computer is one that has personal software. In some ways, sites. Ar like the tangible way to make that possible. We'd all once dreamed of like making personal software, and certainly people with tools like Notion, et cetera, try with all these blocks to configure what that could be. But with the site, it is literally a prompt. I literally with a prompt say, like build me this exact tool that I need to get this thing done and it

50:09 Just Does it. Um they're shareable. Uh they can use they can auto update, you can use like internal data to build like a dashboard, for example, with lots of metrics. And rather than like painstakingly laboring over

50:24 Some sort of like slide deck. A site is just a way more dynamic surface for presentation. How do you use a site? Do you have to do anything special or you tell me create a site. Can codex be like create a site that um is a I don't know, isn't mafia game for my team and I will just do it.

50:40 And like like I'm thinking capital Site, but doesn't matter, I imagine. He just knows what sites are. Mm-hmm. So it's yeah,'cause it used to be here's a here's some source code, go figure out where to deploy it. Yeah. And what you're saying here is it just hosts it for you and choose whether it's public, you can choose whether it's with your team or choose whether it's private to you. Uh they're great. They've The

51:01 Easy reach of building a site all the time has Changed. what my day to day looks like, which often in in previous worlds used to look like creating lots of artifacts like docs and cheats and whatever it might be. Now I just make sites all the time.

51:16 And you could do that through, I imagine, work or Can you do it through through all the surfaces? Codex, work, change, teacher. You can do it through codex. You can do it in the web. You can do it on mobile. Okay. I just kicked off uh create a site about Terra Seychon.

51:30 Great. I've been asked. Tara station station like station. Station. Okay, cool. Okay, cool. Um Site. Okay, any other quick tips? Uh while we're on this topic for Pcause that was a great tip. Because I don't think a lot of people know about sites. That's um very useful. Yeah, sites are awesome. Um the other thing I really love is using visualize in codecs. Have you used slash visualize?

51:53 No. Oh, slash visualize is incredibly exciting. Ask, you can just do slash visualize, visualize my chat GPT usage until now or something like that. And it will pull in like all the things that you've done and create like an amazing visualization for it. The number of times that I've been thinking about How do I not only pull in a bunch of charts and data, but present them in a way that is understandable and useful for the story I'm trying to tell has been infinite. And Visualize makes that incredibly simple. It is like surprisingly delightful to use Visualize.

52:25 It's just like it's just these are such good examples of there's so much power here we don't even know about or understand, and that's the challenge you have here. Help us help us know all these things. That's why podcasts like this are also useful. Can't put it all in the product. Uh, I'm gonna go in a totally different direction. I'm gonna talk about writing. I asked uh Bree Wolfson, who knows you well. What to ask you?

52:46 Uh funny enough, she suggested questions for the previous podcast uh conversation I did with Adam Group. And a word from cursor. Uh so she said, Okay, you should ask her about writing slash thinking. A terror brief is iconic. Help us understand just uh what

53:02 makes your writing your briefs iconic. And any tips that might be helpful for people that are maybe trying to get better at writing and writing Documents. I really strongly believe that I do two types of writing at work. One is writing as thinking. And the other is writing is reporting.

53:20 Writing is thinking is me writing a like a brief about why we should build a certain product or why we should take a certain strategy or why Like maybe a a spicy take. Um, but writing is reporting is things like oh I'm summarizing the status of What our team has been up to this week, and I'm sending over a report about it, or this is our plan for this particular launch or announcement, or something like that. Writing is reporting I happily automate.

53:45 Or I use I use the models all the time to make that a As simple as it can be. But writing as thinking is something I never will automate. I really strongly believe that the At least for me, the act of going through and

54:00 outlining something Turning it into some level of prose. Cutting it and editing it. continuing to iterate on it is one of the most important steps for me to get My

54:11 Ideas in line. I think most people actually. Uh Well Paint with a really broad brush, like I will never use the models for writing, or I always use the models for writing. And actually, to me, like that brought both those broad brushes are wrong.

54:25 I think you should use the models as much as possible for writing as reporting. And In as much as you think with writing, as I really do, and I think a lot of people Do You should not use it. Yeah, you shouldn't replace your thinking with it.

54:38 But my briefs in the past, um, because I write so much um as a way of thinking uh is that I will write a I will like go into a whole write a brief for a new idea or a or a product. Spend a ton of time refining That particular idea.

54:55 shop it around with people and have them attack. The ideas in it as much as possible and poke holes. make it stronger and then take it to the next person and do the same thing. And so uh stripe this is something I did many many many many times over

55:10 Whether that was like to kick off a new product area. or to suggest a big change in direction. Or to analyze a problem then suggest like a path forward. And Stripe is incredibly oriented as a writing culture. And

55:25 There are many people like Jeff Weinstein who are also uh very into Writing and sharing briefs at Stripe. Stripe is one of the few places where like a brief will go viral. Um inside the company. And so Writing is thinking there is really prized, and that's where I did like the majority of Um

55:41 That writing work. Um I had open AI. I think I I still write I was thinking all the time.

55:50 Um But the shareable artifact Here is not really a long dock or a sort of proof of work in that way.

56:00 And Partially because times have changed and A long dock is not a signal that you thought through something because you can easily produce a long dock. That indicates that you haven't.

56:11 And so actually the the point maybe one of the biggest changes I've experienced personally in my day to day, which It has been a big J maybe jarring change. Is I used to Think in a document and then

56:24 Do some translation of that into a presentational artifact, and that would be my indication that I thought through a problem and this is what we're gonna do, and the team moves in that direction. And now I am way more on mocks not docs. Or prototypes, not docs. And if I have something that people can try and interact with, or even better, I have like results. where we tried this, we ran an A B, here's like the results, this is why I think we should like go in this direction.

56:47 That is a way better communication tool. Then Like the the dock itself. And so I still write Hundreds of docs.

56:56 All the time. But I do it for me. Um, and I no longer do it for other people, really. Like that no longer is the best way to To talk and communicate. That is probably the biggest change I've experienced personally in um this era versus the previous era.

57:10 It is so interesting. I really liked your tip of getting tons of feedback on a doc, like, you know, it sounds obvious, but You know, you can get to an iconic Doc slash brief by just

57:22 Cheating almost and getting lots of feedback on it as you're iterating to make it stronger and stronger and stronger. versus like cool, here it is first time and It's really gonna be previously had a manager who told me that the right thing to always do is write a doc to seventy percent completion. And then take it to the people that you need buy in from. And get it from seventy percent to a hundred percent.

57:40 And that still is like a thing that I I do all the time. Because very few great people want to interact with like a perfectly polished finished idea, like a perfectly polished idea, their new ideas just like bounce off of it.

57:53 versus something that has more crags and more um rough edges that they too can polish with you together. And I think that um like bringing people into the process that way, where like a doc is like an underlying artifact for that. is one of the best ways to collaborate that I found. How do you think about uh AI brain rot?

58:11 And starting to over rely on AI. That's just the challenge everybody's gonna have. Why not? Use this magic to help Look at something.

58:20 And then we start to lose our ability to write read long documents. Is there anything you do that you Are trying to avoid that. Yeah, I think this writing as thinking discipline is one of the main pieces. That I employ in my day to day to make sure I'm not

58:35 overly atrophy my my thinking abilities. I think I will again outsource all writing is reporting as much as possible to the model, but Writing is thinking I have to do myself. And I have this like personal

58:49 Um, belief that if I'm going to make someone read My document, I have to at least read it first that number of times. Um Or I I think about this in meetings too, that if I'm gonna call a meeting with with a set of people, I need to have Prepped.

59:03 the collective amount of time that people are going to spend in that meeting before the meeting. And so when it comes to like keeping my thinking sharp, like I do that writing for the document myself. First and make sure I've invested. Like the collective amount of time I expect people to read it, at least in writing it and producing it, and I don't really rely on the model either for

59:24 Polishing my prose, which I don't think it it really It really does. Or um Especially not in like generating the the first version. But I do the I do, of course, have the model help me a lot when it's like summarization or like translation of content from one format to the other all the time.

59:42 Uh. Right the Idea the brief the plan yourself as a human, write it yourself. Don't start with AI.

59:51 Don't and as and even don't use it to improve the on the writing. Just keep that all human. Yeah, at least at least for me, I start myself and I end myself. I might use AI in the middle to research. specific elements or drop in some data or go pull some data or help. Yeah, push back on some ideas, but

1:00:11 Start yourself, end yourself. With a piece of writing and that doesn't deteriorate your thinking. Okay. One last uh Question I want to ask about Sutter Hill. You had this very unusual career step you went to

1:00:22 You're a PM PM founder person and then just like okay, EIR, et cetera, Hill Ventures. Which is a iconic V C uh People can look it up. A lot of amazing companies came out of Sutter Hill. It was it has a very unique way of approaching.

1:00:36 Found where basically they incubate companies, Snowflake as an example. Um What was that what was that about? What did you learn from that experience? Sutter Hill is an iconic firm and is intentionally a very illegible firm. Like if you go to the Sutter Hill website, you will see nothing. On the website. It is a sp a firm that doesn't operate loudly. It tries to operate as

1:00:58 under the radar as possible as modestly as possible Yet is somehow responsible for some of the most iconic successes that Silicon Valley has seen. And they have this very unusual incubation model, which Mike Spizer who is the like one of the amazing partners there. started and um

1:01:17 has rolled out success. After success. I think the thing that was most iconic to me about Sutter Hill is that People look at pro finding product market fit as a dark art. Or building like a tens of billion dollar company as a dark art.

1:01:30 Like, oh it's luck, oh it's chance, oh it's All these like things that must come together. Yet Mike Spicer has done it. Multiple times. And so there is there's like clearly a way to do it. There's clearly a roadmap for making that possible. There's like a set of things one can do to get this repeatably. It's not just luck.

1:01:49 It's not just a dark art. There is a There is a playbook, as it were. And that playbook lives inside. Of the firm Sutter Hill. And they have figured out how to be right a lot in terms of like calling shots and making bets.

1:02:03 And they've learned how to be right a lot in terms of the like daily compounding things that one does to create a successful company. whether that's how you set up your enterprise sales team, how you like position your product, how you like build the initial founding team. The recruiting at Sutter Hill is like an Unparalleled, excellent. thing they have a secret tool called Retical.

1:02:26 Where they have a map of, you know, everyone in uh that they've interacted with and the ten best people that those people have interacted with. Um that helps them be so so effective at this. Um, so I went to Sutter Hill because in some way my career has been about how do I try to find product market fit as many times as possible. Whether that was as a founder.

1:02:45 Or in starting new products at Stripe. Or in like joining a startup like Watershed. And so Sutter Hill is the place where they've figured out how to find product market fit on B2B products, and I wanted to learn. What I could from them. What'd you learn? What's one thing you took away from that experience other than they know how to do it? They they definitely know how to do it. I think um

1:03:04 One thing that was very surprising to me that I learned there is that product market fit is sure important. But actually I really underrated product marketing fit. The idea that the way you talk about the product and the way you market it can precede actually even building the product. It should probably come from some sort of bringing together of understanding the technology deeply.

1:03:25 And then understanding like the enterprise sales process. And then that product marketing fit, that narrative, that positioning. is actually even before you build the product experience the right thing to test. So you should go like pitch a hundred people, figure out how to refine that pitch as much as possible, get the marketing narrative of why this thing is transformative. Right, and then and only then go commit the okay, this is exactly the product shape.

1:03:49 And Mike's visor is like unbeatable. Uh this art. Previously I'd always kind of underrated PMM work. I was like, Oh, it's whatever. Like it's the glue between these functions, it's fine. And then I realized how transformative. That work done excellently.

1:04:05 Is to a company's outcome and in fact can be the element that makes a company successful. Amazing. Uh I so agree with that. Positioning. We talk a lot about that on this podcast. Mm-hmm. Okay, I'm gonna show you what uh sites got created real quick. It was running while we were talking. Check this out. Look at this. Oh man.

1:04:23 As like as like make it more awesome and they made it more awesome. Multiproduct. Beautiful. Look at this. This is like the design. Yeah, you got quotes. Big conviction, small teams.

1:04:35 Start the buyer. How do you feel about this being your website, your new website? I do think that the picture of me at maybe nineteen years old at the top is really funny. But yeah, otherwise I love love the site. Okay. I think that was that's my that was my badge photo from Stripe.

1:04:53 Oh well. Amazing. Yeah, I love that it built I already I'm shared it, but I love that it built the whole like little thing it's around your head. So cute. Uh Tara, is there anything else?

1:05:03 That you wanted to share. Anything else you wanna uh touch on before we get to our very exciting lightning round. Yeah, one thing that we've been thinking about a lot in product building, especially with ChatGPT work in this new era, is how knowledge work and coding are actually fundamentally different. And one of the surprising things we learned.

1:05:20 as a part of that is that coding is so output oriented that when you Um ask it to do a coding task, you can verify whether it did the task correctly or well via tests. you can try it out and see if it works. Like there is a way to validate it based on the output. But knowledge work is different in that

1:05:40 I can't simply look at the deck in the end and see the numbers. Oh, it's like 90% success or whatever in the deck, and actually believe that. I really need to think about. the process and the inputs and the reasoning and how it Went along the way. And so in terms of how that looks in the product. Like a lot of work

1:05:57 That we have done and have to continue to do. Is continue to adapt the product to knowledge work, which means way more focus on making chat GPT your collaborator. Allowing you to see all the in progress work. See it's citations and inputs. Help you go on the journey with

1:06:15 the model to get to that end output. such that you know in the end that oh wait, this thing is right, this thing is good, this thing is useful. And that shows up certainly in the UX of the product quite a bit. But also should show up in things like reasoning in the chain of thought. Like should I s should you see more citations along the way, for example, of how it

1:06:33 got to that end state and that data. um is the surface of a Thread which is so suited to coding, the right place for you to see all of that for knowledge work as well. There's so many Big important product questions.

1:06:46 And so as we think of Um maybe bringing in human collaborators into your work. we also need to think about how we can make the model more of a collaborator with you. as you get things done together.

1:06:58 That is such a good point. I'm imagining an exec meeting where you're trying to pitch The exec on here's what it the plan is, here's The six here's what I think we should be doing. So much of that is helping them see

1:07:10 Here's the work I did to get there. Here's all the steps. And And so it makes sense that you need the AI to Show you that same sort of

1:07:20 uh work that it did. The proof of work, essentially. Versus engineering, where like, okay, I don't need to know all of the little architectural decisions you made, just What does it look like? Is it passing all the tests that we have? So that is a really good point, just how different those two models are. Um and also there's like the context. Does it have the context it needs to?

1:07:38 do the thing that you want it to do. Does it know does it can it see your email? Can it see all your Notion Docs. Mm-hmm. Uh such a point. So I see the challenge in your job. Make all this work is one product. Tricky tricky.

1:07:50 Uh Amazing. Anything else before we get there? Very exciting lightning round. Mr. Pitt. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Yes.

1:08:02 What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? One book I really recommend to people is Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I don't know if you've read it. It's about a the life of a man who is a New Yorker reporter, but how he fell in love with surfing. That's his passion. The thing I took away from the book is that

1:08:20 Uh, one can be deeply passionate and dedicated and have something be your life purpose without you being good at it. And it is about the art of like falling in love with surfing. And his striving for excellence and perfection whilst knowing that he will like never reach it. It is such a compelling and transformative story.

1:08:39 For For how I think one should continue to to live our lives. I I I really, really Love that book. Um Another book that I might recommend as a as like a book that people should read

1:08:54 Um I really love uh Anna Karenina. I've been rereading the classics lately, and I love Anna Karenina because it's like a book of layers. And I think that S a huge part of what we're gonna have to do in this new era is like transform ourselves or like take ourselves on a journey to do

1:09:13 different things than what we were used to. And when I think about that book. I think about when I was thirteen and I read it, I understood Basically the plot. when I read it at like seventeen I understood the European history dynamics and like the class warfare. And then when I read it at thirty, I was like oh this is like a story about like a woman and

1:09:31 uh humans. And it just reminds me of Like growth? And that it is possible to look at the same thing through multiple different lenses as you continue to grow. Um, which I think is kind of the challenge that's ahead all of us. And for all of us as we consider our careers as well.

1:09:47 It's interesting on both these like I could connect to AI in the time we're living in now too. Uh I also read recently read Anna Karin in it. What did you think? Amazing. I've never read it before. I saw it on a book list of like here's what the smartest people in the world have read and it's like a whole list of books and that was one that I hadn't read, so I'm like, I gotta read that.

1:10:05 Yeah. Uh It was amazing. Uh someone gave away the ending, which kind of made it less like surprising. I don't want to give anything away, no spoilers. Um And I also felt like it was very long in the but now I'm reading the Power Broker, which is like set the

1:10:18 Set the new precedent for a long. been reading it for m half my life at this point. I love the I love the power broker. Another thing I highly recommend to people is if If anyone follows the substack, um like Simon Hazel's substack. Where he does a slow read. of important books. So you did one of war and peace.

1:10:35 And he's doing one of Wolf Hall, I think, or he did one of Wolf Hall, which is the Hillary Mantel book. Like take it chapter by chapter. That's like the only way to read something like The Power Broker or War of Peace or even Anna Karinna. It's like chapter by chapter. Speaking of that, there's um someone I forget who told me this. There's a Uh ninety nine percent visible. Book club breakdown of the power broker.

1:10:56 Where it's thirteen episodes, an hour to each. And they go through a couple chapters of the book one at a time. And talk about it and have special guests like Pete Jij and AOC and Folks that lived in that area and they talk about every You know, the story. And it was so it's so fun to read and

1:11:12 Listen to their analysis of it. And then they have Robert Carrow come on a couple of times on the podcast. That's amazing. Yeah. Hot tip. Okay. We'll keep going with our very lightning round. Uh

1:11:22 Favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed, if you've had time to watch anything. Of course I watch the Odyssey. I found it. To be an incredible, incredible film. It is about AI.

1:11:33 as or my hot take is that it's about AI, um, or Christopher Nolan's view on how AI transforms society. Um Which I I loved and highly recommend watching The Odyssey. He is like the He's just an incredible director and has Bridged artistry and commercial success in a way that

1:11:51 I think no other modern director has like done. I also recently watched the film Rashomon. Um, that did for the first time did that technique of telling a story through multiple people's perspectives where you never know what was true in the end. Like that technique in Phil was pioneered by Krosawa.

1:12:11 And it Reminds me what one can do under constraints. That film was made in like the fifties. It was black and white. They're like you can you know there's a guy holding the camera. And yet it is so perfect. And it is

1:12:24 Such a Tasteful Innovative, amazing example of Creativity and What I'm reminded of watching that film is like I have a hundred times the power.

1:12:36 and tools that he had making that film in my iPhone. And like what's my excuse for not elevating my ambitions and making better stuff? All comes back. Ambition. uh On the Odyssey, I'm still trying to get tickets. It's so hard. I slept on it and now it's like impossible for like a month. There's no seats anywhere. Kevin Hawk got us tickets at ten PM at the Metreon earlier this week. It was so good.

1:12:58 Next time call me. I mean, I have like bots running on it. I have a person working on it. It's amazing. You're gonna love it and I can't wait to hear what you think after you see it. If you agree with me that it is about AI and the collapse of morality. Okay, no spoilers.

1:13:16 Uh hopefully by the time this comes out I have seen it. But if not. If anyone has hookups, please tell me. Uh and I'm trying to do like the IMAX full power Matron sort of thing. Yeah. Okay, next question. Uh

1:13:27 Favourite? Or interesting AI product. They've discovered. If ideally not uh open AI product, but you know, you can also go there if you want. Ooh, um

1:13:37 I mean, of course my favorite AI product is Change G T and using cool sights and visualized stuff in in codex, which is amazing. But outside of Open AI products. Um My favorite AI products are are products that my friends make for me. Cause now actually people can do that.

1:13:53 I think that's so cool. I'm such a huge fan of like the cozy software movement where you like make software tools for like five of your friends and you guys use it together. And so I have a friend named Sebastian who um made a really cool Uh A I app that turns anything into a podcast and puts it in your Like a l little podcast app for you, and he also made

1:14:14 A really great private social network for our friends. And It's called gats. is exactly what I think the future should be, which is people should make software that exactly meets their and their friends' needs. What does gas stand for? Is that some inside joke?

1:14:28 It Is not, or at least if it is an inside choke, I don't know it. But it is the place that I it's it's like private Twitter, maybe for like a a group of a small group of friends. And I I learn the most interesting things on that product. It's like a WhatsApp but not. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Uh the podcast app is interesting but I'm like I feel like the version I I would love is

1:14:50 It's actually like podcasts in your feed of podcasts. Yeah. And then in just new episodes get added of things you want to read or whatever. Yeah, that's a good thing. It's a it drops it in your Apple Podcast feed if you want. I want it's great. Help me help me subscribe to the site. Okay, amazing. Okay, two more questions.

1:15:08 Do you have a favorite life motto? that you find yourself coming back to often in work or in life. Uh, my life motto that I come back to all the time in work is actually Tony Morrison's Three takes on work. Let me like pull it up really quickly. Amazing. Um

1:15:22 Okay, it's four things. It's from her essay The Work You Do The Person You Are. The first one is Whatever the work is, do it well, not for the boss, but for yourself. The second is you make the job. It doesn't make you.

1:15:37 The third is your real life is with your family. And the fourth is you are not the work you do, you are the person that you are. I get singles. Exactly. Wow, so good.

1:15:49 And I think that's what you have pinned to your um your Twitter profile. Yeah'cause I'm I remember seeing that. So cool. Okay. Uh maybe we'll show that on the screen as we're talking about that. I love that. Uh I love that's a great way to remember something. Just stick it to the top of your Twitter because then every time I go to Twitter, oh there it is again. Mm-hmm. Uh okay, final question.

1:16:06 Uh, you were a Theel fellow back in the day. Teal fellow, teal or teal? Teal. Teal. Teal, yeah. What an alumni group. Holy moly. Just like so it's such a great Idea and program. Uh any story from that time that might be fun to share something that's like Oh wow, that was crazy.

1:16:23 I don't know, any other teal fellow that you're proud of? Any other What was the interview like? I don't know, anything along those lines. Yeah, I the two fellowship Was an inflection point in my life. I wouldn't be where I am without it. It

1:16:37 Maybe to the point of like there are key moments where you can tell people to elevate their ambitions and they do and that changes them. Like That was a moment where someone came to me and elevated my ambitions. And said, No, you can do this. You don't have to, you know, take the path that you were on. And truly I'm eternally grateful for for them being able to do that.

1:16:54 One of the teal fellows that I get to work with all the time now is Ari Weinstein. Who uh founded a company called Sky that was acquired by OpenAI. Um and prior to this he founded um and worked at Apple for a a while because they acquired his previous company. Ari is just one of the most creative thinkers I've ever seen. And is

1:17:15 Truly the expert on what are all the cool things you can do on a Mac. Um and so Ari leads a lot of our computer use stuff at OpenAI and he's like shipped a whole bunch of great Things for for computer use. Yeah, his his creativity and his like joy in what he does and his love of his craft really inspires me. And

1:17:36 Like Ari Ari's a cool guy. Um But I'm trying to think what is like a good story from that time that feels Uh as you think about it, I'll explain the TL Fellowship for people that don't know this and correct me if I'm wrong. Basically Peter Thiel's like

1:17:51 A People shouldn't go to college. Instead they should Just try building something that they want and And you get a hundred thousand dollars.

1:17:59 To not do college and instead just go follow your ambition. Is that roughly correct? Yeah, that is that is exactly right. Um And you're with nineteen other people at the time. It's like twenty people every year,'cause it's twenty under twenty. And how many years did it go on for? Is it still going on? I think it's still going, but I think it was like the constrained at the twenty number for like the first four or five years or something like that. Um

1:18:21 Yeah, I think a really crazy thing that happened my year is that I was the second every year of the fellowship. They decided to make it all a documentary on CNBC. And so our whole uh my pitch For the fellowship.

1:18:35 uh getting up on stage and presenting the idea I was going to do. All of that is unfortunately live on YouTube. So if you really want to see M As a nineteen year old doing something embarrassing, it's there. Um, of course, one of the most amazing and successful people who came out of that batch of the fellowship is Dylan Field, who is Not only uh

1:18:54 incredible talent, but also like a very kind Um And yeah, feel very lucky to to be able to work with those folks. Amazing. Yeah. It's interesting that Dylan's like the guy I think everyone thinks of when they think of Teal Phillips. Yeah. Yeah.

1:19:09 Yeah. Okay. Tara, this was incredible. Uh Is there anything you want to plug, anything you want to point people to? And how can listeners be useful to you? Anything I want to plug and point people to, maybe they should use the Chat GPT desktop app.

1:19:22 Um, they should use ChatGPT in the web and try work. It's like unfortunately a little toggle. Um, they can toggle over to it and try out work. Ask it to do some cool thing, ask it to build a site about you. Um, maybe to start or ask it to make a little visualize. uh block of your chat GPT usage. It's a really cool way to Start like experiencing the power. Of the stuff

1:19:46 very intimately and the l list of use cases they can do From that. You know. Or infinite and I'm happy to do it. Here's a better idea. Ask ask it to build a site to tell you what you could do with work. Great.

1:19:59 That will that will work. Solve all the problems. Okay. I interrupted you, I apologize. Uh what else were you gonna add or say? Yeah, my main plug is yeah, go go down with the ChatGBT app. Go use it on web.

1:20:12 even more transformatively, go try it on mobile. then take like a long subway ride or something like that or a muni ride. And when you pop out after having no service, the thing is done for you. That's the part that feels super duper magical. You're not like wandering around with your laptop open the entire time. You've Finally got these things running in the cloud. Doing real work.

1:20:31 Yeah, that last piece I was gonna bring up, but that's I think I'd really underappreciated element of the the product today. on mobile. It and it's most it's that that's just a mobile only feature, the cloud. No, it's everywhere. It's everywhere.

1:20:44 Okay, so amazing. So on your mobile app you can go to chat JPT Togglework. Ask it to do some work. And you don't need to actually have the It's not running locally, it's running in the cloud.

1:20:54 It'll go keep doing work until it's done and then you could check to it. So like it feels like really simple, but that's a Massively powerful thing. Okay. Uh Anything else, Tara, before we let you go?

1:21:07 No, that's it. Okay. Thanks, Lynn. This was awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Such a pleasure. Uh what a journey since the fellowship Back in back in the day, I'll talk about that more in the intro. Yeah. Uh All right. Well thanks for being here. Thank you. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

1:21:29 Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show. at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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