Mike Krieger, a former CPO at Anthropic, details his transition to an IC role to build directly with AI, advocating for "unreasonable" asks like porting entire codebases. He shares lessons from Instagram on scaling and highlights Anthropic's internal use of Claude as a proactive teammate, flexible lab structure, and critical insights on AI product design, vertical applications, and mental health in the fast-paced AI industry.
Aditya Khandelwal argues that scaling AI agent adoption within engineering teams is a leadership challenge, not an individual contributor problem. He highlights common pitfalls like agent "babysitting" and "slop," and provides a playbook emphasizing progressive disclosure, high-value automation, robust feedback loops, and a critical mindset shift to successfully integrate agents into team workflows.
Tom Verrilli, CPO at Whatnot, discusses his controversial stance that "we regret product management exists," advocating for a leaner, more hands-on PM approach. He delves into how Whatnot structures its product team, its rigorous hiring process focused on deep systems thinking and IC work, and the transformative impact of AI on product and data science functions. Verrilli also shares mental models for balancing strategy and iteration, navigating the CPO-founder relationship, and key lessons from his time at Twitter, emphasizing the importance of core PM skills in an AI-driven world.
Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel shares his journey, emphasizing the company's evolution from a DevOps insight to a public tech giant. He discusses the resilience required to overcome early rejections, his hands-on leadership style focused on raw customer feedback, and how Datadog is rapidly adapting to the AI revolution by prioritizing automation and faster iteration in product development and internal processes. Pomel also offers candid advice on co-founder relationships and the critical importance of moving quickly in both hiring and firing.
GitHub COO Kyle Daigle discusses the new era of AI agents from the inside. He covers how he uses AI for leadership, the shift from "mega-skills" to "micro-skills," and how GitHub is navigating a 14x growth in commits. The conversation goes deep on the evolution of Copilot, the future of PRs in an agent-driven world, the challenges of scaling, and Microsoft's vision for an ambient AI operating system.
Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup", discusses his new book, "Incorruptible". He argues that the modern doctrine of shareholder primacy is a value-destroying trap for founders and explains the legal and governance structures—from Public Benefit Corporations to industrial foundations—that can be used to build mission-controlled companies designed to last for generations, using historical examples like Costco and modern case studies like Anthropic.