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.
Dan Feng outlines Maven Clinic's transformation into an AI-native company, driven by the realization that "building is cheap and arguing is expensive" in the AI era. This shift has reshaped planning to short, iterative sprints, revolutionized software development with AI coding tools, forced adaptive changes in code review processes, and necessitated a nuanced, multi-layered approach to ensuring reliability in generative AI systems.
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.
Dianne Penn, Head of Product for Anthropic’s AI Research and Labs teams, discusses Anthropic's journey, the evolving AI landscape, and the changing role of product management. She highlights the importance of adaptability, 'evals as the new PRDs,' and how Anthropic's focus on alignment and safety makes Claude a more effective 'thinking partner' by enabling it to push back on user ideas.
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.
A Q&A with Anthropic's Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar on how Claude Code and agentic AI are fundamentally changing software development, from workflow shifts and engineering norms to safety, model trust, and team collaboration. The discussion covers the rapid evolution of coding agents, the rise of proactive agents like Claude Tag, new approaches to code review and system prompt optimization, and Anthropic's robust safety measures including Auto Mode.