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Sander Schulhoff is the OG prompt engineer. He created the very first prompt engineering guide on the internet (two months before ChatGPT's release) and recently wrote the most comprehensive study of prompt engineering ever conducted (co-authored with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Princeton, and Stanford), analyzing over 1,500 academic papers and covering more than 200 prompting techniques. He also partners with OpenAI to run what was the first and is the largest AI red teaming competition, HackAPrompt, which helps discover the most state-of-the-art prompt injection techniques (i.e. ways to get LLMS to do things it shouldn't). Sander teaches AI red teaming on Maven, advises AI companies on security, and has educated millions of people on the most state-of-the-art prompt engineering techniques.In this episode, you'll learn:1. The 5 most effective prompt engineering techniques2. Why “role prompting” and threatening the AI no longer works—and what to do instead3. The two types of prompt engineering: conversational and product/system prompts4. A primer on prompt injection and AI red teaming—including real jailbreak tactics that are still fooling top models5. Why AI agents and robots will be the next major security threat6. How to get started in AI red teaming and prompt engineering7. Practical defense to put in place for your AI products—Brought to you by:Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experimentsStripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenueVanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security—Where to find Sander Schulhoff:• X: https://x.com/sanderschulhoff• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sander-schulhoff/• Website: https://sanderschulhoff.com/• AI Red Teaming and AI Security Masterclass on Maven: https://bit.ly/44lLSbC• Free Lightning Lesson “How to Secure Your AI System” on 6/24: https://bit.ly/4ld9vZL—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Sander Schulhoff(04:29) The importance of prompt engineering(06:30) Real-world applications and examples(10:54) Basic prompt engineering techniques(23:46) Advanced prompt engineering techniques(29:00) The role of context and additional information(39:24) Ensembling techniques and thought generation(49:48) Conversational techniques for better results(50:46) Introduction to prompt injection(52:27) AI red teaming and competitions(54:23) The growing importance of AI security(01:02:45) Techniques to bypass AI safeguards(01:05:21) Challenges in AI security and future outlook(01:18:33) Misalignment and AI's potential risks(01:25:03) Final thoughts and lightning round—Referenced:• Reid Hoffman's tweet about using AI agents: https://x.com/reidhoffman/status/1930416063616884822• AI Engineer World's Fair: https://www.ai.engineer/• What Is Artificial Social Intelligence?: https://learnprompting.org/blog/asi• Devin: https://devin.ai/• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• Inside Devin: The world's first autonomous AI engineer that's set to write 50% of its company's code by end of year | Scott Wu (CEO and co-founder of Cognition): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-devin-scott-wu• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder & CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• Technique #3: Examples in Prompts: From Zero-Shot to Few-Shot: https://learnprompting.org/docs/basics/few_shot?srsltid=AfmBOor2owyGXtzJZ8n0fJVCctM7UPZgZmH-mBuxRW4t9-kkaMd3LJVv• The Prompt Report: Insights from the Most Comprehensive Study of Prompting Ever Done: https://learnprompting.org/blog/the_prompt_report?srsltid=AfmBOoo7CRNNCtavzhyLbCMxc0LDmkSUakJ4P8XBaITbE6GXL1i2SvA0• State-of-the-Art Prompting for AI Agents | Y Combinator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL82mGde6wo• Use XML tags to structure your prompts: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/use-xml-tags• Role Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/basics/roles?srsltid=AfmBOor2jcxJQvWBZyFa030Qt0fIIov3hSiWvI9VFyjO-Qp478EPJIU7• Is Role Prompting Effective?: https://learnprompting.org/blog/role_prompting?srsltid=AfmBOooiiyLD-0CsCYZ4m3SDhYOmtTyaTzeDo0FvK_i1x1gLM8MJS-Sn• Introduction to Decomposition Prompting Techniques: https://learnprompting.org/docs/advanced/decomposition/introduction?srsltid=AfmBOoojJmTQgBlmSlGYQ8kl-JPpVUlLKkL4YcFGS5u54JyeumUwlcBI• LLM Self-Evaluation: https://learnprompting.org/docs/reliability/lm_self_eval• Philip Resnik on X: https://x.com/psresnik• Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next• Introduction to Ensembling Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/advanced/ensembling/introduction?srsltid=AfmBOooGSyqsrjnEbXSYoKpG0ZlpT278NHQA6Fd8gMvNTJlWu7-qEYzh• Random forest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_forest• Chain-of-Thought Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/intermediate/chain_of_thought?srsltid=AfmBOoqwE7SXlluy2sx_QY_VOKduyBplWtIWKEJaD6FkJW3TqeKPSJfx• Prompt Injecting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/prompt_hacking/injection?srsltid=AfmBOoqGgqbfXStrD6vlw5jy8HhEaESgGo2e57jyWL8lkZKktt_P6Zvn• Announcing HackAPrompt 2.0: The World's Largest AI Red-Teaming Hackathon: https://learnprompting.org/blog/announce-hackaprompt-2?srsltid=AfmBOopXKsHxy4aUtsvPCUtEu7x74NCAEnlTIdNzo7nfMDVwZ9ilTlkp• Infant with rare, incurable disease is first to successfully receive personalized gene therapy treatment: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/infant-rare-incurable-disease-first-successfully-receive-personalized-gene-therapy-treatment• Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1 million developers in four months: The untold story of Windsurf | Varun Mohan (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-untold-story-of-windsurf-varun-mohan• Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/chats/rcxhzvKgZvz8ajUrKdBtX• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot• Defensive Measures: https://learnprompting.org/docs/prompt_hacking/defensive_measures/introduction• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama• Three Laws of Robotics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics• Anthropic's new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/anthropics-new-ai-model-turns-to-blackmail-when-engineers-try-to-take-it-offline/• Palisade Research: https://palisaderesearch.org/• When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds: https://time.com/7259395/ai-chess-cheating-palisade-research/• A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/health/chatgpt-ai-doctors-diagnosis.html• 1883 on Paramount+: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/1883/• Black Mirror on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888• Daylight Computer: https://daylightcomputer.com/• Theodore Roosevelt's quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/622252-i-wish-to-preach-not-the-doctrine-of-ignoble-ease• HackAPrompt 2.0: https://www.hackaprompt.com/—Recommended books:• Ender's Game: https://www.amazon.com/Enders-Ender-Quintet-Orson-Scott/dp/0812550706• The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey: https://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darkest/dp/0767913736—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Bob Baxley is a design leader who has shaped products used by billions at Apple, Pinterest, Yahoo, and ThoughtSpot. During his eight years at Apple, he led design for the online store and the App Store, and witnessed the iPhone's transformative launch while working under Steve Jobs. A student of history turned software craftsman, Bob discovered his calling after exploring photography, filmmaking, and music, ultimately recognizing software as the most powerful creative medium of our time. Bob champions the moral obligation designers have to reduce frustration in people's daily digital interactions.What you'll learn:• Why design should report to engineering, not product• The “Beatles principle”—why the best products come from teams of 4 to 6, not 40 to 60• How to create design tenets vs. principles (with real examples)• The counterintuitive reason to delay drawing or prototyping as long as possible• Why software is fundamentally a medium, like film or music (not just a tool)• Why Bob “bounced off the culture” at Pinterest, and lessons from failure• The lunar landing story that teaches us about championing radical ideas• How to evaluate if a company truly values design before joining• The moral obligation of software makers to build great products—This entire episode is brought to you by Stripe—helping companies of all sizes grow revenue.—Where to find Bob Baxley:• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baxley/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbaxley/• Website: http://www.bobbaxley.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Bob Baxley(03:52) Apple's lasting culture(06:15) Navigating unique company cultures(13:19) Finding a company that truly values your role(15:46) What is design?(17:17) How to help founders understand the value of design(23:08) How to align product managers and designers(26:31) Design reporting to engineering(30:54) Integrating engineers early in the design process(33:43) The maker mindset(35:14) Challenging the assumption that design is time-intensive(38:04) Design tenets vs. design principles(45:25) The moral obligation of great design(51:48) Understanding software as a medium(01:01:20) Reducing ambiguity for product teams(01:07:04) Giving designers space for creativity(01:08:48) The "primal mark" concept(01:12:05) AI prototyping tools: benefits and risks(01:17:00) AI as a life coach(01:21:22) Life lessons from the Apollo program(01:28:24) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Steve Jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs• Walt Disney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/• X: https://x.com/• Uber: https://www.uber.com/• Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/• Slack: https://slack.com/• Ed Catmull on X: https://x.com/edcatmull• John Lasseter on X: https://x.com/johnlasseter5• Apple patented a pizza box, for pizzas: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/16/15646154/apple-pizza-box-patent-come-on• Humane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc.• Jony Ive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive• Tony Fadell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyfadell/• Hiroki Asai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiroki-asai-a44137110/• Tim Cook on X: https://x.com/tim_cook• ThoughtSpot: https://www.thoughtspot.com/• Ben Silbermann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silbermann/• Ajeet Singh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajeetsinghmann/• Honeywell: https://www.honeywell.com• IDEO: https://www.ideo.com/• Nutanix: https://www.nutanix.com/• Lego: https://www.lego.com/• Leica: https://leica-camera.com/• Porsche: https://www.porsche.com/• Patagonia: https://www.patagonia.com• Brian Eno's website: https://www.brian-eno.net/• Scenius: why creatives are stronger together: https://thecreativelife.net/scenius/• The Beatles website: https://www.thebeatles.com/• Disneyland: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/destinations/disneyland/• Tomorrowland: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/destinations/disneyland/tomorrowland/• Unconventional product lessons from Binance, N26, Google, more | Mayur Kamat (CPO at N26, ex-Binance Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/unorthodox-product-lessons-from-n26-and-more• Larry Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page• Sergey Brin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin• Design Principles: https://principles.design/• Tableau: https://www.tableau.com/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Target self-checkout: https://corporate.target.com/press/fact-sheet/2024/03/checkout-improvements• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• eBay: https://www.ebay.com/• Williams Sonoma: https://www.williams-sonoma.com/• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/• Monument to a Dead Child | Raw Data: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/monument-to-a-dead-child/id1042137974• Toast: https://pos.toasttab.com/• The Primal Mark: How the Beginning Shapes the End in the Development of Creative Ideas: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/primal-mark-how-beginning-shapes-end-development-creative-ideas• The Plant: https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/The_Plant• Microsoft CPO: If you aren't prototyping with AI you're doing it wrong | Aparna Chennapragada: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/microsoft-cpo-on-ai• How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? | Jerry Colonna (CEO of Reboot, executive coach, former VC): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/jerry-colonna• Joff Redfern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mejoff/• John C. Houbolt: https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/john-c-houbolt/• The Apollo program: https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/• Archive clip: JFK at Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962—“We choose to go to the moon”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqlziZV63k• Alan Shepard: https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-alan-shepard/• Blue Origin: https://www.blueorigin.com/• Yuri Gagarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin• Wernher von Braun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun• Yuri Kondratyuk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kondratyuk• John Houbolt's memo: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/text-of-john-houbolts-letter-proposing-lunar-orbit-rendezvous-for-apollo• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx• Lawrence of Arabia on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Peter-OToole/dp/B0088OINTU• Leica M6: https://leica-camera.com/en-US/photography/cameras/m/m6• Habitica: https://habitica.com/static/home• Andor on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-faba988a-a9f5-45f2-a074-0775a7d6f67a• Edward Tufte quote: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1449650/Edward-Tufte-Good-design-is-clear-thinking-made-visible-bad-design-is-stupidity-made• Ansel Adams quote: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ansel_adams_106035• It Takes a Village to Determine the Origins of an African Proverb: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/30/487925796/it-takes-a-village-to-determine-the-origins-of-an-african-proverb• Henry Modisett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrymodisett/• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/• Golden State Warriors: https://www.nba.com/warriors/• Steph Curry: https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3975/stephen-curry—Recommended books:• From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism: https://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/dp/0226817423• Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less: https://www.amazon.com/Hare-Brain-Tortoise-Mind-Intelligence/dp/0060955414• The Elements of Typographic Style: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469• Time and the Art of Living: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Art-Living-Robert-Grudin/dp/0062503553/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Episode 711: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talks to Guillermo Rauch ( https://x.com/rauchg ) about building Vercel plus 7 business ideas to start in AI. — Show Notes: (0:00) Dropout to job offer from Facebook (3:38) Genius vs accident (21:04) Building Vercel (25:26) AI startup ideas (31:38) IDEA: V0 for Video Games (33:09) IDEA: Doom CAPTCHA (40:04) IDEA: AI Typeform (46:54) IDEA: AI Camera (54:06) IDEA: Auto Complete (58:51) IDEA: Granular V0 — Links: • Guillermo Rauch - https://rauchg.com/ • Vercel - https://vercel.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam's List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Today's guest is Guillermo Rauch, who is CEO and founder of Vercel.With Guillermo, we talked about his journey in tech, from a small-town in Argentina, to successful open-source developer, to CEO of a billion-dollar company. Then we covered the unique Vercel model, which combines open-source and commercial work. And finally, we discussed the future of AI, engineers, open-source and software engineering at large.01:29 Introduction02:04 What is Vercel?04:40 Vercel's "secret sauce"06:46 Guillermo's journey in tech10:31 Vercel vs Complexity12:07 Helping solo engineers and great teams17:38 The importance of JavaScript20:23 TypeScript and JavaScript22:11 Satisfying both open source and market landscape28:18 For the open-source engineers32:35 The last frameworks36:55 AI current limitations38:59 The best framework for AI43:48 100 milliseconds48:34 Does Guillermo still code?52:10 The founder mode53:59 AI will make us full stack—You can also find this at:•
Krithika Shankarraman was the first marketing hire at OpenAI and Stripe and led marketing at Retool. At OpenAI, she established marketing foundations for ChatGPT for consumers and enterprises, as well as their developer API platform. While at Stripe, she spent over eight years building and scaling their marketing function from scratch. An engineer turned marketer, Krithika brings a uniquely analytical approach to marketing. She currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at Thrive Capital, where she helps portfolio companies on all things marketing.What you will learn:1. Why do most marketing playbooks often fail, and what's a better way?2. Which marketing lever should I pull first?3. Why is trying to be better than competitors usually a losing strategy?4. How do I craft positioning that actually converts?5. What makes messaging stick with developers, enterprises, and consumers?6. What pricing experiments actually move revenue?7. What is working at OpenAI really like?8. Why does consistency and quality matter more than speed?—Brought to you by:Eppo — Run reliable, impactful experimentsAirtable ProductCentral—Launch to new heights with a unified system for product developmentLinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business—Where to find Krithika Shankarraman:• X: https://x.com/krithix• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krithix/• Website: https://krithix.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Krithika(04:22) Early marketing lessons from OpenAI(11:17) Diagnosing marketing needs(15:06) The DATE framework and why being cheaper is a race to the bottom(17:11) Marketing strategies at Retool(22:29) Insights from marketing at Stripe(32:33) The importance of consistent marketing communication(39:55) Criteria for hiring a marketing expert(41:43) “Capital M” vs. “lowercase m” marketing(43:05) ChatGPT vs. Claude: market dominance(45:31) The future of AI and its societal impact(47:09) Work-life balance(48:41) Transitioning to Thrive(52:35) Career advice for marketers(55:00) The importance of taste and creativity in the AI era(01:00:04) AI product pricing(01:03:21) AI tools in marketing(01:05:17) Failure corner(01:08:46) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• OpenAI: https://openai.com/• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Retool: https://retool.com/• Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/• Sam Altman talks about his business model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLnyjxgFxew• The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan• Pricing your SaaS product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy• Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/• Stripe Connect: https://stripe.com/connect• John Collison on X: https://x.com/collision• Patrick Collison on X: https://x.com/patrickc• Cristina Cordova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinajcordova/• Hackpad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackpad• Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history | Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-wiz-raaz-herzberg• Wiz: https://www.wiz.io/• Thrive Capital: https://thrivecap.com/• Brian Chesky's new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach• Claude: https://claude.ai/new• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Lessons from scaling Stripe | Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-scaling-stripe-tactics• Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• Tobi Lütke's leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook• OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai• April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/april-dunford-on-product-positioning• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/• Some people think AI writing has a tell—the em dash. Writers disagree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/04/09/ai-em-dash-writing-punctuation-chatgpt/—Recommended books:• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It: https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005• Circe: https://www.amazon.com/Circe-Madeline-Miller/dp/0316556327/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Aparna Chennapragada is the chief product officer of experiences and devices at Microsoft, where she oversees AI product strategy for their productivity tools and work on agents. Previously, she was the CPO at Robinhood, spent 12 years at Google, and is also on the board of eBay and Capital One.What you'll learn:1. How “prompt sets are the new PRDs” and why prototyping with AI is now essential for effective product development2. The three key characteristics of AI agents: autonomy (delegation of tasks), complexity (handling multi-step challenges), and natural interaction (conversing beyond simple chat)3. Why NLX (natural language experience) is the new UX, requiring deliberate design principles for conversational interfaces4. Why the PM role isn't dying in the AI era—it's evolving to emphasize tastemaking and editing5. How living “one year in the future” can be operationalized with programs like Microsoft's Frontier6. How even traditional enterprises can balance cutting-edge AI adoption with appropriate governance through dual-track approaches7. Insights on leadership differences between Microsoft's Satya Nadella (known for multi-level thinking and early trendspotting) and Google's Sundar Pichai (mastery of complex ecosystems)8. The vision for human and AI collaboration in the workplace, where people and agents achieve outcomes greater than either could alone9. A practical framework for evaluating zero-to-one product opportunities—Brought to you by:Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experimentsPragmatic Institute—Industry‑recognized product, marketing, and AI training and certificationsCoda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Where to find Aparna Chennapragada:• X: https://x.com/aparnacd• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aparnacd/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Aparna Chennapragada(04:28) Aparna's stand-up comedy journey(07:29) Transition to Microsoft and enterprise insights(10:00) The Frontier program and AI integration(13:28) Understanding AI agents(17:59) NLX is the new UX(22:28) The future of product development(31:16) Building a custom Chrome extension(35:45) Leadership styles of Satya and Sundar(37:47) Counterintuitive lessons in product building(41:20) Inflection points for successful products(45:16) GitHub Copilot and code generation(48:34) Excel's enduring success(50:27) Pivotal career moments(54:55) The future of human-agent collaboration(56:25) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Google Lens: https://lens.google/• Saturday Night Live: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live• Reid Hoffman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/• Robinhood: https://robinhood.com/• eBay: https://www.ebay.com/• Capital One: https://www.capitalone.com/• Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/• Aparna's LinkedIn post about enterprise vs. consumer: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aparnacd_every-enterprise-user-feature-has-a-shadow-activity-7321176091610542080-8X-E/• The Epic Split: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_Split• AI Frontiers: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/ai-frontiers/• OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai• Deepseek: https://www.deepseek.com/• Satya Nadella on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/• Tobi Lütke's leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook• Tobi Lütke's post on X about reflexive AI: https://x.com/tobi/status/1909251946235437514• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot• Sundar Pichai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundarpichai/• South Park “Underwear Gnomes” episode: https://southpark.cc.com/episodes/13y790/south-park-gnomes-season-2-ep-17• Google Home: https://home.google.com/welcome/• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• v0: https://v0.dev/• Bolt: https://bolt.net/• Lovable: https://lovable.dev/• Replit: https://replit.com/• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad• Microsoft Excel World Championship: https://fmworldcup.com/microsoft-excel-world-championship/• Google Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Now• Hacks on Max: https://www.max.com/shows/hacks/67e940b7-aab2-46ce-a62b-c7308cde9de7• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/• Alan Kay quote: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/alan_kay_100831• Sindhu Vee's website: https://sindhuvee.com/• Nate Bargatze's website: https://natebargatze.com/—Recommended book:• A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains: https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Intelligence-Evolution-Breakthroughs/dp/0063286351—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin—the world's first autonomous AI software engineer. Unlike other AI coding tools, Devin works like an autonomous engineer that you can interact with through Slack, Linear, and GitHub, just like with a remote engineer. With Scott's background in competitive programming and a previous AI-powered startup, Lunchclub, teaching AI to code has become his ultimate passion.What you'll learn:1. How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition's pull requests, and they are on track to hit 50% by year's end2. How each engineer on Cognition's 15-person engineering team works with about five Devins each3. How Devin has evolved from a “high school CS student” to a “junior engineer” over the past year4. Why engineering will shift from “bricklayers” to “architects”5. Why AI tools will lead to more engineering jobs rather than fewer6. How Devin creates its own wiki to understand and document complex codebases7. The eight pivots Cognition went through before landing on their current approach8. The cultural shifts required to successfully adopt AI engineers—Brought to you by:Enterpret—Transform customer feedback into product growthParagon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers wantAttio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups—Where to find Scott Wu:• X: https://x.com/scottwu46• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Scott Wu and Devin(09:13) Scaling and future prospects(10:23) Devin's origin story(17:26) The idea of Devin as a person(22:19) How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition's pull requests(25:17) Important skills in the AI era(30:21) How Cognition's engineering team works with Devin's(34:37) Live demo(42:20) Devin's codebase integration(44:50) Automation with Linear(46:53) What Devin does best(52:56) The future of AI in software engineering(57:13) Moats and stickiness in AI(01:01:57) The tech that enables Devin(01:04:14) AI will be the biggest technology shift of our lives(01:07:25) Adopting Devin in your company(01:15:13) Startup wisdom and hiring practices(01:22:32) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Devin: https://devin.ai/• GitHub: https://github.com/• Linear: https://linear.app/• Waymo: https://waymo.com/• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• Anysphere: https://anysphere.inc/• Bolt: https://bolt.new/• StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/• Cognition: https://cognition.ai/• v0: https://v0.dev/• Vercel: https://vercel.com/• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons• Assembly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language• Pascal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)• Python: https://www.python.org/• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox• Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/• Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/bending-the-universe-in-your-favor• OpenAI's CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/• COBOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL• Fortran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran• Magic the Gathering: https://magic.wizards.com/en• Aura frames: https://auraframes.com/• AirPods: https://www.apple.com/airpods/• Steven Hao on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638/• Walden Yan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waldenyan/—Recommended books:• How to Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034• The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Making/dp/052555999X• The Great Gatsby: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Guillermo Rauch is the founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 (one of the most popular AI app building tools), and the mind behind foundational JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Socket.io. An open source pioneer and legendary engineer, Guillermo has built tools that power some of the internet's most innovative products, including Midjourney, Grok, and Notion. His mission is to democratize product creation, expanding the pool of potential builders from 5 million developers to over 100 million people worldwide. In this episode, you'll learn:1. How AI will radically speed up product development—and the three critical skills PMs and engineers should master now to stay ahead2. Why the future of building apps is shifting toward prompts instead of code, and how that affects traditional product teams3. Specific ways to improve your design “taste,” plus practical tips to consistently create beautiful, user-loved products4. How Guillermo built a powerful app in under two hours for $20 (while flying and using plane Wi-Fi) that would normally take weeks and thousands of dollars in engineering time5. The exact strategies Vercel uses internally to leverage AI tools like v0 and Cursor, enabling their team of 600 to ship faster and better than ever before6. Guillermo's actionable advice on increasing your product quality through rapid iteration, real-world user feedback, and creating intentional “exposure hours” for your team—Brought to you by:• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Vanta — Automate compliance. Simplify security• LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business—Where to find Guillermo Rauch:• X: https://x.com/rauchg• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/• Website: https://rauchg.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Guillermo Rauch(04:43) v0's mission(07:03) The impact and growth of v0(15:54) The future of product development with AI(19:05) Empowering engineers and product builders(24:01) Skills for the future: coding, math, and eloquence(35:05) v0 in action: real-world applications(36:40) Tips for using v0 effectively(45:46) Core skills for building AI apps(49:44) Live demo(59:45) Understanding how AI thinks(01:04:35) AI integration and future prospects(01:07:22) Building taste(01:13:43) Limitations of v0(01:16:54) Improving the design of your product(01:20:09) The secret to product quality(01:22:35) Vercel's AI-driven development(01:25:43) Guillermo's vision for the future—Referenced:• v0: https://v0.dev/• Vercel: https://vercel.com/• GitHub: https://github.com/• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• Next.js Framework: https://nextjs.org/• Claude: https://claude.ai/new• Grok: https://x.ai/• Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com• SocketIO: https://socket.io/• Notion's lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-notion-ivan-zhao• Notion: https://www.notion.com/• Automattic: https://automattic.com/• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder & CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons• v0 Community: https://v0.dev/chat/community• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Git Commit: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/saving-changes/git-commit• What are Artifacts and how do I use them?: https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/9487310-what-are-artifacts-and-how-do-i-use-them• Design Engineering at Vercel: https://vercel.com/blog/design-engineering-at-vercel• CSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS• Tailwind: https://tailwindcss.com/• Wordcel / Shape Rotator / Mathcel: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel• Steve Jobs's Ultimate Lesson for Companies: https://hbr.org/2011/08/steve-jobss-ultimate-lesson-fo• Bloom Hackathon: https://bloom.build/• Expenses Should Do Themselves | Saquon Barkley x Ramp (Super Bowl Ad): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Tgsy7D0Jg• Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup of all time | Geoff Charles (VP of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/velocity-over-everything-how-ramp• JavaScript: https://www.javascript.com/• React: https://react.dev/• Mapbox: https://www.mapbox.com/• Leaflet: https://leafletjs.com/• Escape hatches: https://react.dev/learn/escape-hatches• Supreme: https://supreme.com/• Shadcn: https://ui.shadcn.com/• Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/• Fortune: https://fortune.com/• Semafor: https://www.semafor.com/• AI SDK: https://sdk.vercel.ai/• DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Vercel templates: https://vercel.com/templates• GC AI: https://getgc.ai/• OpenEvidence: https://www.openevidence.com/• Paris Fashion Week: https://www.fhcm.paris/en/paris-fashion-week• Guillermo's post on X about making great products: https://x.com/rauchg/status/1887314115066274254• Everybody Can Cook billboard: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evilrabbit_activity-7242975574242037760-uRW9/• Ratatouille: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Nikita Shamgunov is the founder of Neon, an open-source serverless Postgres company. Before Neon, Nikita co-founded MemSQL, now SingleStore, which is valued at over a billion dollars. He has also worked as a VC at Khosla Ventures and held engineering roles at Meta and Microsoft. Nikita is known for his strategic thinking and transparency about his decision-making process.We discuss:The importance of storytelling and providing a clear narrative for your companyWhen to introduce a sales team and how to build a sales and marketing "machine"Pricing strategies, including pricing for storage and compute in the data and analytics spaceThe evolution of revenue models in DevTools: from selling seats and storage/compute to selling tokensLessons learned from hiring MongoDB's VP of Engineering, focusing on improving reliability and building strong team management processesThe benefits of using a high-quality recruiting firm and avoiding the pitfalls of bad hiresBalancing competitiveness with respect for competitors to maintain credibility, particularly in the developer tools marketThe idea of “developing your taste” in product development, inspired by Guillermo Rauch from VercelHow modern dev tools can monetize through seats, storage/compute, or tokens, with tokens currently being the most profitableWhy Nikita advises DevTools founders to understand the business model framework and align it with their strategyThis episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. Links:NeonSingleStore Khosla Ventures Fusion Talent
Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we're joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web development platforms. There are now more than 6 million Vercel users, 80,000 active teams, and users have grown 200% year-over-year. The company also crossed $100m in annualized revenue last May, and Guillermo shared with us that they've been growing at 80% since, and were recently valued at $3.25 billion.This is also a particularly interesting moment for Vercel. Last year they launched a new product, “v0”, which lets anyone create and deploy a working website simply by describing it in English and letting AI take care of the rest. Guillermo shares its origin story within the company (and insanely that it reached $2m ARR in the first 14 days!), and how it's changed their entire thinking about what's possible now with AI products.We also cover:How to build a business around an open source project (Next.js)How they balance both being a fast and nimble platform for startups with being a reliable platform for enterprisesGuillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scaleLinks:VercelV0.devNext.jsSponsors:Vanta
Guillermo Rauch is the founder of Vercel. Vercel is a cloud infra platform so easy to use that it's almost become a category: “I'm building the Vercel of X”. Vercel also recently launched v0 which is potentially the next evolution of web development - type what you want and it builds it and deploys it for you. He's also the creator Next.js, socket.io and a ton of other open source tools and startups. Plus he's a prolific investor in DevTools. I've missed a ton of his achievements here but essentially, he's the king of DevTools and you probably know him already.What we talk about- Why Guillermo bets on people who ship- What AI has in common with Prettier- v0 puts design first- Saying ‘not yet' is a boss move- Why Guillermo thinks devs won't lose their jobs- How you can learn product building- Why you should be careful when hiring from rocketships - not everyone was in the control room- The value of people having a full stack skill set. And why communication is more important than ever- Why it's so important to explain what you do in simple terms- Tools Guillermo is excited about right nowLinks:- Guillermo Rauch - Vercel - v0 - NextJS- Socket.IO - Browserbase - LiveKit- LanguineThis episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation. But he doesn't think of himself as a coder anymore. Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together. Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel, the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow's tools to their fullest extent. Here are a few takeaways: One of the most important keys to his success is taste—and developing taste is all about paying better attention to everything you experience day to day. He's great at recognizing bleeding-edge technologies with extremely practical applications but that have bad user experiences. If you can learn to recognize those and build with them, you might build the next NextJs or SocketIO. He's already seeing enterprises use Vercel's AI coding copilot v0 to replace all of their programming—they just send v0 demos back and forth to iterate on new prototypes. Why prototype cultures are becoming common in AI—and the benefits of written cultures like Amazon vs. prototype cultures like Apple for different kinds of companies. For developers building frameworks, always put the product first; a framework in isolation without a “customer zero” is never going to be a good tool. The theory of “recursive founder mode”—if you want to build a scalable business, you have to scale yourself by creating an atmosphere that nurtures talent and ambition. AI tools are shifting software toward consumption-based billing models, making us capital allocators who decide how much compute the AI consumes. The future of AI is agents with the taste, knowledge, and tools to perform specialized tasks. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It's usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: Introduction: 00:01:33 How to spot trends early: 00:03:18 Why you should be your own customer: 00:07:34 How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition: 00:14:55 Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder: 00:17:29 AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy: 00:20:50 How Vercel's copilot compares with other coding agents: 00:28:34 Guillermo's advice on having better taste: 00:40:35 The future of AI agents is specialized: 00:42:46 How AI startups can compete with big tech: 00:47:50 Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Guillermo Rauch: @rauchg Vercel: https://vercel.com/ Our episode with Nabeel Hyatt: "
Are incumbent media networks losing ground? Kamala stuck to broadcast media, while Trump bypassed traditional filters and reached audiences as an influencer, taking his message to Rogan and Fridman. Among concerns over echo chambers and AI-controlled narratives, there's a flip side—more people now have a platform, giving everyone a voice. Guillermo Rauch of Vercel says “everyone needs to be empowered to create.” The more people who can build their own platforms and apps, the more we decentralize the conversation. Tune in as we break down the election aftermath and the future of content in a post-AI world. We're also on ↓ X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/moreorlesspod Connect with us here: 1) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit 2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin 3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin 4) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
Gonto (Martin Gontovnikas) was the 6th employee at Auth0 and helped them grow fast and sell for $6.5billion to Okta. Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.We discuss:What Auth0 did to become so valuable so fastWhat the best founders do (Guillermo Rauch)Different is better than better People follow people not brandsWhy bleeding edge mattersResourcesWhy Technical SDRs are the Future of DevToolshttps://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/product-advocates-technical-sdrsGonto's website https://gon.to/Gonto's Twitter https://twitter.com/mgontoHypergrowth Partners https://www.hypergrowthpartners.com/Code to Market https://codetomarket.fm/Guillermo Rauch https://x.com/rauchgThis episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Guillermo Rauch, CEO & Founder of Vercel, joins host Lukas Biewald for a wide ranging discussion on how AI is changing web development and front end engineering. They discuss how Vercel's v0 expert AI agent is generating code and UI based on simple ChatGPT-like prompts, the importance of releasing daily for AI applications, and the changing landscape of frontier model performance between open and closed models.Listen on Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcastsListen on Spotify: http://wandb.me/spotify Subscribe to Weights & Biases: https://bit.ly/45BCkYzGet our podcasts on these platforms:Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcastsSpotify: http://wandb.me/spotifyGoogle: http://wandb.me/gd_googleYouTube: http://wandb.me/youtubeConnect with Guillermo Rauch:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/ https://x.com/rauchgFollow Weights & Biases:https://twitter.com/weights_biases https://www.linkedin.com/company/wandb Join the Weights & Biases Discord Server:https://discord.gg/CkZKRNnaf3
Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs.Takeaways:- Any modern cloud-native app is a nexus of services that all work together to create a coherent interface for the user. For example, Auth0 handles login, Stripe handles billing, React is used for the interface, among many more services all working in concert. Vercel helps ensure that the user has an amazing experience no matter what services are all working together on the back end.- Guillermo tells the story of open source Unix winning out over proprietary versions of Linux, even though the proprietary versions had an early lead. He suggests that over the long term, open source will win, more often than not, and that the same story will likely play out when it comes to AI models, with open source models winning out in the end.- When it comes to investing, Guillermo loves to bet on someone who has been obsessed with a topic for years and years. He recounts the story of the Auth0 team who had written books and given talks and spent years of their lives just on logging in and logging out. He also says that he prefers a leadership team that lives and breathes a company's problem space. He says that he's allergic to the idea of a professional leadership team swooping in at a certain stage.- Rauch was born and raised in Argentina. He says that he has a sense of urgency and that tomorrow is not promised that stems from his childhood experience growing up in Argentina. He tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg keeping the Sun Microsystems logo on the back of the Facebook sign at their headquarters when they moved in to cultivate a sense that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.- Guillermo believes in giving his team leads radical ownership of their products. He provides the leads with frameworks that explain clear principles for how they build products at Vercel but beyond that he gives the leads a long leash and a sense of ownership over the product.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup
This week we have Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel, and the creator of Next.js. We talk about the road to Vercel, how web development is changing, and how Vercel is helping developers build better products. We also talk about AI and generative UI, and how it might change the future of software development. https://github.com/rauchg https://rauchg.com/ https://github.com/rauchg/Socket.IO https://vercel.com/ Episode sponsored By CodeCrafters (https://codecrafters.io/devtoolsfm) 40% Discount! Become a paid subscriber our patreon, spotify, or apple podcasts for the full episode. https://www.patreon.com/devtoolsfm https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/devtoolsfm/subscribe https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/devtools-fm/id1566647758 https://www.youtube.com/@devtoolsfm/membership
Join host Craig Smith on episode #169 of Eye on AI as we sit down with Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel, a company that optimizes frontend deployment, making web projects faster to execute and easier to scale. In this episode, we explore the intersection of AI and web development, showcasing how Vercel is pioneering the integration of generative AI technologies to revolutionize web experiences. Guillermo Rauch shares his vision on the future of web development, emphasizing the significance of JavaScript, the evolution of the web, and the critical role of Vercel in facilitating developers to seamlessly deploy AI-driven applications. We delve into the architectural innovations at Vercel, the democratization of AI, and the synergy of combining diverse AI models for superior functionalities as well. Guillermo's perspectives provide a glimpse into the future of interactive web experiences, powered by AI. This episode is a must-listen for developers, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in the cutting-edge of AI and web development. Don't forget to rate us on Apple Podcast and Spotify if you enjoyed this episode! This episode is sponsored by Netsuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, streamlining accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more. Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance - absolutely free at https://netsuite.com/EYEONAI Stay Updated: Craig Smith Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigss Eye on A.I. Twitter: https://twitter.com/EyeOn_AI (00:00) Preview and Introduction (03:01) Guillermo's Background and Next.js Creation (08:19) Vercel's Operation on AWS and Alternative Solutions (13:12) Combining Different AI Models for Enhanced Outputs (17:25) The Evolution of AI and Focus on User Experience (22:46) Introduction to Copilot and AI Integration in Coding (26:33) The Future of AI Technologies (31:41) Generative AI Applications and Vercel's Role (33:14) Flexibility and Framework Support on Vercel (38:11) Vercel's Architectural Approach (41:02) Trends in Generative AI and App Development (47:54) Supporting Applications with World Models (50:54) Vercel's Growth and Expansion in Serving AI Companies (55:20) Flexibility in Model Integration and Future Directions (57:28) Closing Remarks and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Promo
Today's bonus episode follows the 2 part episode with Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel - a Series D startup that provides the developer experience and infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized Web. AI is currently disrupting how we approach building UI by increasing the speed at which we're able to articulate an idea and build the first model. These prototypes also enable us to get to the feedback stages much earlier in the process and with much less waste. This is an absolute gamechanger in how we approach building UI, and a lack of AI integration in this use case will cause a ton of waste. Check out the full episode to learn more on how AI is changing the way we build UI!Don't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
This episode continues the conversation with Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel - a Series D startup that provides the developer experience and infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized Web.Eric and Guillermo discuss the benefits of using AI as part of the support structure for your SaaS product. Guillermo makes a great point that AI is more trustworthy when it comes to data privacy, however, AI does hallucinate from time to time and requires monitoring.Open source has become standard practice in many verticals, but AI is not one of them. Guillermo is excited for projects that are doing open source AI, however, since model quality is dependent on data quality, open source AI might not be a sustainable option.Guillermo believes that every business will become AI powered, it's just a matter of time. Right now, developers delegate tasks to AI co-pilots, and this trend will continue to grow as we better understand how to utilize AI and better tools become available. Similar developments can be seen across other business functions, including go-to-market teams.The new wave of cloud technology has shown that there's been a market shift from enterprises buying products for large teams to individual consumers looking for products that fit their workflow. This means that companies that are solely focused on enterprise sales and have made their product inaccessible to individual users are losing out on a rising amount of market share, which in the current economic landscape cannot be ignored.Tune in to the full episode to learn about the current gap in AI technology!HIGHLIGHTS:00:00 Are AI Tools Trustworthy Yet?09:57 When Will AI Tools Become Open Source?15:12 What's the Future of AI App Development?18:32 How Cloud Technology Demand Has Changed20:46 Should You Dumb Down Your Software? Connect with Guillermo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/Check out Vercel - https://vercel.com/contact/sales Don't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
In this episode, Eric is joined by Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel - a Series D startup that provides the developer experience and infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized Web.At the start of his career, Guillermo taught himself Javascript which led him to receive international job offers at the age of 17. He quickly realized that his true passion was in building companies, more specifically creating tools that increase productivity for developers. Guillermo chose to focus on Javascript due the web apps that were developed by Google and Amazon and how they transformed both the user and the developer experience. Having the ability to peel back and look at how popular web apps work inspired him to share the way these apps work with others - which is how Vercel came to be.When asked about the meaning of AI in app development, Guillermo mentions that he recently arrived at the term “AI Native UX”, which means that products and apps get developed with an emphasis on utilizing AI to its maximum capacity. He considers that to be the new north star to unlock for Vercel clients, and something that the industry as a whole should focus on.Listen to the full episode to learn more on how AI is changing app development!00:00 Guillermo's Path to Entrepreneurship. 02:24 Why Javascript?05:32 The Advancement of Cloud Technology09:17 Where Will AI Take Developers?16:32 Implementing AI Correctly19:25 AI Driven User ExperienceConnect with Guillermo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/Check out Vercel - https://vercel.comDon't forget to subscribe to the Chaos to Clarity Podcast for more invaluable episodes to help you grow your business and stay ahead of the curve!To reach out to Eric, visit FullCycleProduct.com
Guillermo Rauch, Founder and CEO of Vercel, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how he decided to focus on building a front-end tool that is fast, reliable, and focuses on the developer experience. Guillermo explains how he discovered that Javascript was the language that set online offerings apart, and also reveals the advice he gives to founders on how to build an effective landing page. Corey and Guillermo discuss the effects of generative AI on developer experience, and Guillermo explains why Vercel had a higher standard for accuracy when rolling out their new AI product for developers, v0. About GuillermoGuillermo Rauch is Founder and CEO of Vercel, where he leads the company's mission to enable developers to create at the moment of inspiration. Prior to founding Vercel, Guillermo co-founded LearnBoost and Cloudup where he served the company as CTO through its acquisition by Automattic in 2013. Originally from Argentina,Guillermo has been a developer since the age of ten and is passionate about contributing to the open source community. He has created a number of JavaScript projects including socket.io, Mongoose.js, Now, and Next.js.Links Referenced: Vercel: https://vercel.com/ v0.dev: https://v0.dev Personal website: https://rauchg.com Personal twitter: https://twitter.com/rauchg TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I don't talk a lot about front-end on this show, primarily because I am very bad at front-end, and in long-standing tech tradition, if I'm not good at something, apparently I'm legally obligated to be dismissive of it and not give it any attention. Strangely enough, I spent the last week beating on some front-end projects, and now I'm not just dismissive, I'm angry about it. Here to basically suffer the outpouring of frustration and confusion is Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel, but also the creator of Next.js. Guillermo, thank you for joining me.Guillermo: Great to be here. Thanks for setting me up with that awesome intro.Corey: It's true, if I were talking to someone who looked at what I've done, and for some Godforsaken reason, they wanted to follow in my footsteps, well, that path has been closed, so learning a bunch of Perl early on and translating it all to bad bash scripts and the rest, and then maybe picking up Python isn't really the way that I would advise someone getting started today. The de facto lingua franca of the internet is JavaScript, whether we like it or not, and I would strongly suggest that be someone's first language despite the fact that I'm bad at it, I don't understand it, and therefore it makes me angry.Guillermo: Yeah, it's so funny because it sounds like my story. And my personal journey was, when I was a kid, I had a—I knew I wanted to hack around with computers, and reverse engineer them, and improve them, and just create my own things, and I had these options for what programming language I could go with. And I tried it all: PHP, Perl, [Mod PHP 00:02:12], [Mod Perl 00:02:13], Apache, LAMP, cgi-bin folders, all the whole nine yards. And regardless of what back-end technology I used, I encountered this striking fact, which was… the thing that can make your product really stand out in a web browser is typically involving JavaScript in some fashion. So, when Google came out with suggestions as you would type in a search box, my young kid Argentinian brain blew up. I was like, “Holy crap, they can suggest, they can read my mind, and they can render suggestions without a full page refresh? What is that magic?”And then more products like that came out. Google Docs, Gmail Chat, Facebook's real time newsfeed, all the great things on the internet seemed to have this common point of, there's this layer of interactivity, real-time data, customization, personalization, and it seems uniquely enabled by the front-end. So, I just went all in. I taught myself how to code, I taught myself—I became a front-end engineering expert, I joined some of the early projects that shaped the ecosystem. Like, there was this library called MooTools, and a lot of folks might not have heard that name. It's in the annals of JavaScript history.And later on, you know, what I realized is, what if front-end can actually be the starting point of how you develop the best applications, right, rather than this thing that people, like, reluctantly frown upon, like yourself. I mention that as an opportunity rather than a diss because when you create a great front-end experience, now the data has proven you run a better business, you run a more dynamic business, probably are running an AI-powered business, like, all of the AI products on the planet today are using this technology to stream text in front of your eyes in real time and do all this awesome things. So yeah, I became obsessed with front-end, and I founded this company Vercel, which is a front-end cloud. So, you come here to basically build the best products. Now, you don't have to build the back-end, so you can use back-ends that are off the shelf, you can connect to your existing back-ends, and we piggyback on the world's best infrastructure to make this possible, but we offer developers a very streamlined path to create these awesome products on the internet.Corey: I have to say that I have been impressed when I've used Vercel for a number of projects. And what impresses me is less the infrastructure powering it, less the look at how performance it is and all the stuff that most people talk about, but as mentioned, I am not good at front-end or frankly programming at all. And so, many products in this space fall into the very pernicious trap of, “Oh, well, everyone who's using this is at least this tall on the board of how smart you are to get on the amusement park ride.” So, I feel that when I'm coming at this from a—someone who is not a stranger to computers but is definitely new to this entire ecosystem, everything just made sense in a way that remarkably few products can pull off. I don't know if you would call that user experience, developer experience, or what the terminology you bias for there is, but it is a transformational difference.Guillermo: Thank you. I think it's a combination of things. So, developer experience has definitely always been a focus for me. I was that weird person that obsessed about the CLI parameters of the tool, and the output of the tool, and just like how it feels for the engineer. I did combine that with—and I think this is where Vercel really stands out—I did combine that with a world-class infrastructure bit because what I realized after creating lots and lots of very popular open-source projects—like, one is called Socket.io, and other one called Mongoose—DX, or developer experience, in the absence of an enticing carrot for the business doesn't work. Maybe it has some short term adoption, maybe it has raving fans on Twitter or X [laugh], but at the end of the day, you have to deliver something that's tangible to the end-user and to the business.So I think Vercel focusing on the front-end has found a magical combination there of I can make the developer lives easier. Being a developer myself, I just tremendously empathize with that, but it can also make more profit for the business. When they make your website faster and render more dynamic data that serve as better recommendations for a product on e-commerce or in a marketing channel, I can help you roll out more experiments, then they make your business better, and I think that's one of the magical combinations there.The other thing, frankly, is that we'd started doing fewer things. So, when you come to Vercel, you typically come with a framework that you've already chosen. It could be Next.js, it could be View, [unintelligible 00:07:18], there's 35-plus frameworks. But we basically told the market, you have to use one of these developer tools in order to guide your development.And what companies were doing before—I mean, this almost seems obvious in retrospect, that we would optimize for her certain patterns and certain tools—but what the market was doing before was rolling out your own frameworks. Like, every company was, basically—React, for example, is a very popular way of building interfaces, and our framework actually is built on top of React. But when I would go to and talk to all these principal engineers that all these companies, they were saying, oh yeah, “We're creating our own framework. We're creating our own tools.” And I think that to me now feels almost like a zero interest rate phenomenon. Like, what business do you have in creating frameworks, tools, and bespoke infra when you're really in the business of creating delightful experiences for your customers?Corey: What I think is lost on a lot of folks is that if you are trying to learn something new and use a tool, and the developer experience is bad, the takeaway—at least for me and a lot of people that I talk to is not, “Oh, this tool has terrible ergonomics. That's it's problem.” Instead, the takeaway is very much, “Oh, I'm dumb because I don't understand this thing.” And I know intellectually that I am not usually the dumbest person in the world when it comes to a particular tool or technology, but I keep forgetting that on a visceral level. It's, “I just wish I was smart enough to understand that.”No, I don't. I wish it was presented in a way that was more understandable and the documentation was better. When you're just starting out and building something in your spare time, the infrastructure cost is basically nothing, but your time is the expensive part in it. So, if you have to spend three hours to track down something just because it wasn't clearly explained, the burden of adopting that tool is challenging. I would argue that one of the reasons that AWS sees some of the success that it does is not necessarily because it's great so much as because everyone knows how it breaks. That's important.I'm not saying their infrastructure isn't world-class—please, don't come at me in the comments on this one—but I am saying that we know where its sharp edges are, and that means that we're more comfortable building with it. But the idea of learning a brand-new cloud with different sharp edges in other areas. That's terrifying. I'd rather stick with the devil I know.Guillermo: Exactly. I just think that you're not going to be able to make a difference for customers in 2023 by creating another bespoke cloud that is general purpose, it doesn't really optimize around anything, and you have to learn all the sharp edges from scratch. I think we saw that with the rise of cloud-native companies like Stripe and Twilio where they were going after these amazingly huge markets like financial infrastructure or communications infrastructure, but the angle was, “Here's this awesome developer experience.” And that's what we're doing with Vercel for the front-end and for building products, right? There has to be an opinionated developer experience that guides you to success.And I agree with you that there's really, these days in the developer communities, zero tolerance for sharp edges, and we've spent a lot of time in—even documentation, like, it used to be that your startup would make or break it by whether you had great documentation. I think in the age of frameworks, I would even dare say that documentation, of course, is extremely important, but if I can have the tool itself guide you to success, at that point, you're not even reading documentation. We're now seeing this with AI and, like, generative AI for code. At Vercel, we're investing in generative AI for user interfaces. Do you actually need to read documentation at that point? So, I think we're optimizing for the absolute minimal amount of friction required to be successful with these platforms.Corey: I think that there's a truth in that of meeting customers in where they are. Your documentation can be spectacular, but people don't generally read the encyclopedia for fun either. And the idea of that is that—at least ideally—I should not need to go diving into the documentation, and so many tools get this wrong, where, “Oh, I want to set up a new project,” and it bombards you with 50 questions, and each one of these feels pretty… momentous. Like, what one-way door am I passing through that I don't realize the consequences of until I'm 12 hours into this thing, and then have to backtrack significantly. I like, personally, things that bias for having a golden path, but also make it easy to both deviate from it, as well as get back onto it. Because there's more than one way to do it is sort of the old Perl motto. That is true in spades in anything approaching the JavaScript universe.Guillermo: Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts on that. On the first point, I completely agree that the golden path of the product cannot be documentation-mediated. One of the things that I've become obsessive about—and this is an advice that I share with a lot of other startup founders is, when it comes to your landing page, the primary call to action has to be this golden path to success, like, 2, 3, 4 clicks later, I have to have something tangible. That was our inspiration.And when we made it the primary call to action for Vercel is deploy now. Start now. Get it out now. Ship it now. And the way that you test out the platform is by deploying a template. What do we do is we create a Git repo for you, it sets up the entire CI/CD pipeline, and then at that point, you already have something working, something in the cloud, you spent zero time reading documentation, and you can start iterating.And even though that might not be the final thing you do in Vercel, I always hear the stories of CTOs that are now deploying Vercel at really large scale, and they always tell me, “I started with your hobby tier, I started with free tier, I deployed a template, I hacked on a product during the weekend.” Now, a lot of our AI examples are very popular in this crowd. And yeah, there's a golden path that requires zero documentation. Now, you also mentioned that, what about complexity? This is an enterprise-grade platform. What about escape hatches? What about flexibility? And that's where our platform also shines because we have the entire power of a Turing-complete language, which is JavaScript and TypeScript, to customize every aspect of the platform.And you have a framework that actually answered a lot of the problems that came with serverless solutions in the past, which is that you couldn't run any of that on your local machine. The beauty of Vercel and Next.js is we kind of pioneered this concept that we called ‘Framework Defined Infrastructure.' You start with the framework, the framework has this awesome property that you can install on your computer, it has a dev command—like, it literally runs on your computer—but then when you push it to the cloud, it now defines the infrastructure. It creates all of the resources that are highly optimal.This creates—basically converts what was a single node system on your computer to a globally distributed system, which is a very complex and difficult engineering challenge, but Vercel completely automates it away. And now for folks that are looking for, like, more advanced solutions, they can now start poking into the outputs of that compilation process and say, “Okay, I can now have an influence or I can reconfigure some aspects of this pipeline.” And of course, if you don't think about those escape hatches, then the product just ends up being limiting and frustrating, so we had to think really hard about meeting both ends of the spectrum.Corey: In my own experimentations early on with Chat-Gippity—which is how I insist on pronouncing ChatGPT—a lot of what I found was that it was a lot more productive for me to, instead of asking just the question and getting the answer was, write a Python script to—Guillermo: Yes.Corey: Query this API to get me that answer. Because often it would be wrong. Sometimes very convincingly wrong, and I can at least examine it in various ways and make changes to it and iterate forward, whereas when everything is just a black box, that gets very hard to do. The idea of building something that can be iterated on is key.Guillermo: I love that. The way that Vercel actually first introduced itself to the world was this idea of immutable deployments and immutable infrastructure. And immutable sounds like a horrible word because I want to mutate things, but it was inspired by this idea of functional programming where, like, each iteration to the state, each data change, can be tracked. So, every time you deploy in Vercel, you get this unique URL that represents a point-in-time infrastructure deployment. You can go back in time, you can revert, you can use this as a way of collaborating with other engineers in your team, so you can send these hyperlinks around to your front-end projects.And it gives you a lot of confidence. Now, you can iterate knowing that before things go out, there's a lot of scrutiny, there's a lot of QA, there's a lot of testing processes that you can kick off against this serverless infrastructure that was created for each deployment. The conclusion for us so far has been that our role in the world is to increase iteration velocity. So, iteration speed is the faster horse of the cloud, right? Like, instead of getting a car, you get a faster horse.When you say, “Okay, I made the build pipeline 10% faster,” or, “I brought the TLS termination 10% closer to the visitor, and, like, I have more [pops 00:17:10],” things like that. That to me, is the speed. You can do those things, and they're awesome, but if you don't have a direction—which is velocity—then you don't know what you're building next. You don't know if your customers are happy. You don't know if you're delivering value. So, we built an entire platform that optimizes around, what should you ship next? What is the friction involved in getting your next iteration out? Is launching an experiment on your homepage, for example, is that a costly endeavor? Does it take you weeks? Does it take you months?One of the initial inspirations for just starting Vercel and making deployments really easy was, how difficult is it for the average company to change in their footer of their website is this copyright 2022? And you have—it's a new year. You have to bump it to copyright 2023. How long do you think it takes that engineer to, A, run the stack locally, so they can actually see the change; deploy it, but deploy to what we call the preview environment, so they can grab that URL and send [it to 00:18:15], Corey, and say, “Corey, does it look good? I updated [laugh] I updated the year in the footer.”And then you tell me, “Looks good, let's ship it to production.” Or you tell me, “No, no, no, it's risky. Let's divide it into two cohorts: 50% of traffic gets 2022, 50% of traffic gets 2023.” Obviously, this is a joke, but consider the implications of how difficult it is and the average organization to actually do this thing.Corey: Oh, I find things like that all the time, especially on microservices that I built to handle some of my internal workflows here, and I haven't touched in two or three years. And okay, now it's time for me to update them to reflect some minor change. And first, I wind up in the screaming node warnings and I have to update things so that they actually work in a reasonable way. And, on some level, making a one-line change can take half a day. Now, in the real world, when people are working on these apps day-in and day-out, it gets a lot easier to roll those changes in over time, but coming back to something unmaintained, that becomes a project the longer you let it sit.Part of me wishes that there were easier ways around it, but there are trade-offs in almost any decision you make. If you're building something from the beginning of, well, I want to be able to automatically update the copyright year, you can even borderline make that something that automatically happens based upon the global time, whereas when you're trying to retrofit it afterwards, yeah, it becomes a project.Guillermo: Yeah, and now think, that's just a simple example of changing a string. That might be difficult for a product engineering in any organization. Or it may be slow, or it may be not as streamlined, or maybe it works really well for the first project that that company created. What about every incremental project thereafter?So, now I said—let's stop talking about a string, right? Let's think about you're about an e-commerce website where what we hear from our customers on average, like, 10% of revenue flows through the homepage. Now, I have to change a primary component that renders on the hero of the page, and I have to collaborate with every department in the organization. I have to collaborate with the design team, I have to collaborate with marketing, I have to collaborate with the business owners to track the analytics appropriately. So, what is the cost of every incremental experiment that you want to put in production?The other thing that's particularly interesting about front-end as it relates to cloud infrastructure is, scaling up front-end is a very difficult thing. What ends up happening is most front-ends are actually static websites. They're cached at the edge—or they're literally statically generated—and then they push all of the dynamism to the client side. So, you end up with this spaghetti of script tags on the client, you end up accumulating a lot of tech debt in the [shipping 00:20:56] huge bundles of JavaScript to the client to try to recover some dynamism, to try and run these experiments. So, everyone is in this, kind of, mess of the yes, maybe we can experiment, but we kind of offloaded the rendering work to the client. That in turn makes me—basically, I'm making the website slower for the visitor. I'm making them do the rendering work.And I'm trying to sell them something. I'm trying to speed up some processes. It's my responsibility to make it fast. So, what we ended up finding out is that yes, the cloud moved this forward a lot in terms of having these awesome building blocks, these awesome infrastructure primitives, but both in the developer experience, just changing something about your web product and also the end-user experiences, that web product renders really fast, those things really didn't happen with this first chapter of the cloud. And I think we're entering a new generation of higher-level clouds like Vercel that are optimizing for these things.Corey: I think that there's a historical focus on things that have not happened before. And that was painful and terrible, so we're not going to be focusing on what's happening in the future, we're going to build a process or a framework or something that winds up preventing that thing that hurt us from hurting us again. Now, that's great in moderation, but at some point—we see this at large companies from time-to-time—where you have so much process that is ossified scar tissue, basically, that it becomes almost impossible to get things done. Because oh, I want to make that—for example, that one-line change to a copyright date, well, here's the 5000 ways deploys have screwed us before, so we need to have three humans sign off on the one-line change, and a bunch of other stuff before it ever sees the light of day. Now, I'm exaggerating slightly, just as you are, but that feels like it acts as a serious brake on innovation.On the exact opposite side, where we see massive acceleration has been around the world of generative AI. Yes, it is massively hyped in a bunch of ways. I don't think it is going to be a defined way that changes the nature of humanity the way that some of these people are going after, but it's also clearly more than a parlor trick.Guillermo: I'm kind of in that camp. So, like you, I've been writing code for many years. I'm pretty astonished by the AI's ability to enhance my output. And of course, now I'm not writing code full time, so there is a sense of, okay because I don't have time, because I'm doing a million things, any minute I have seems like AI has just made it so much more worthwhile and I can squeeze so much more productivity out of it. But one of the areas that I'm really excited about is this idea of generative UI, which is not just autocompleting code in a text editor, but is the idea that you can use natural language to describe an interface and have the AI generate that interface.So, Vercel created this product called v0—you can check it out at v0.dev—where to me, it's really astonishing that you can get these incredibly high quality user interfaces, and basically all you have to do is input [laugh] a few English words. I have this personal experience of, I've been learning JavaScript and perfecting all my knowledge around it for, like, 20 or so years. I created Next.js.And Next.js itself powers a lot of these AI products. Like the front-end of ChatGPT is built on Next.js. And I used v0 to create… to basically recreate my blog. Like, I created rauchg.com, I deployed it on Vercel, but every pixel of that UI, I handcrafted.And as we were working on v0, I said okay, “I'm going to challenge myself to put myself back in the shoes of, like, I'm going to redesign this and I'm going to start over with just human language.” Not only did I arrive to the right look and feel of what I wanted to get, the code that it produced was better than I would have written by hand. Concretely, it was more accessible. So, there were areas of the UI where, like, some icons were rendered where I had not filled in those gaps. I just didn't know how to do that. The AI did. So, I really believe that AI will transform our lives as [laugh] programmers, at least I think, in many other areas in very profound ways.Corey: This is very similar to a project that I've been embarked on for the last few days where I described the app I wanted into Chat-Gippity and follow the instructions, and first, it round up point—sending me down a rabbit hole of the wrong Framework version that had been deprecated, and whatnot, and then I brought it all into VS Code where Jif-Ub Copilot, it kept switching back and forth between actively helpful, and ooh, the response matches publicly available code, so I'm not going to tell you the answer, despite the fact that feature has never been enabled on my account. So yeah, of course, it matches publicly available code. This is quite literally the React tutorial starter project. And it became incredibly frustrating, but it also would keep generating things in bursts, so my code is not at all legible or well organized or consistent for that matter. But it's still better than anything I'd be able to write myself. I'm looking forward to using v0 or something like it to see how that stacks up for some of my ridiculous generation ideas for these things.Guillermo: Yeah, you touched on a very important point is, the code has to work. The code has to be shippable. I think a lot of AI products have gotten by by giving you an approximation of the result, right? Like, they hallucinate sometimes, they get something wrong. It's still very helpful because sometimes it's sending you the right direction.But for us, the bar is that these things have to produce code that's useful, and that you can ship, and that you can iterate on. So, going back to that idea of iteration velocity, we call it v0 because we wanted it to be the first version. We still very much believe there is humans in the loop and folks will be iterating a lot on the initial draft that this thing is giving you, but it's so much better than starting with an empty code editor, [laugh] right? Like, and this applies, by the way to, like, not just new projects, but I always talk about, like, our customers have a few really important landing pages, key pages, maybe it's the product detail page in e-commerce, maybe it's your homepage and, like, your key product pages for a marketing website. Maybe it's where—and the checkout, for example, extremely important.But then there's a lot of incremental UIs that you have to add every single day. The banner for [laugh] accepting cookies or not, the consent management dialog. There's a lot of things that the worst case scenario is that you offload them again to some third-party script, to some iframe of sorts because you really don't have the bandwidth, time, or resources to build it yourself. And then you sacrifice speed, you sacrifice brand fidelity. And again because we're the front-end cloud, we're obsessed with your ability to ship UI that's native to your product, that is a streamline, that works really well. So, I think AI is going to have a significant effect there where a lot of things where you were sending someone to some other website because you just didn't have the bandwidth to create that UI, you can now own the experience end to end.Corey: That is no small thing. A last question I have, before we wind up calling this episode is, there was a period of time—I don't know if we're still in it or not—where it felt like every time I got up to get a cup of coffee and came back, there would be three JavaScript frameworks that launched during that interim. So, Next.js was at 1.1 of those when someone got up to get a cup of coffee. But that's shown a staying power that is, frankly, remarkable. Why? I don't know enough about the ecosystem to have an opinion on that, but I noticed when things stand out, and Next does.Guillermo: Yeah, I think it's a number of factors. Number one, we, as an industry I think, we coalesced, and we found the right engine to build our car. And that engine became React. Most folks building UI today are choosing React or a similar engine, but React has really become the gold standard for a lot of engineers. Now, what ended up happening next is that people realized I want a car. I want the full product. I need to drive. I don't want to assemble this freaking car every single time I have a new project.And Next.js filled a very important gap in the world where what you were looking for was not a library; what you were looking for is a framework that has opinions, but those opinions are very in line with how the web is supposed to work. We took a page from, basically, the beginnings of the web. We make a lot of jokes that in many ways, our inspiration was PHP, where server rendering is the default, where it's very expressive, it's very easy to reach for data. It just works for a lot of people. Again, that's the old [stack 00:30:03] in the olden days.And so, it obviously didn't quite work, but the inspiration was, can we make something that is a streamline for creating web interfaces at scale? At scale. And to your point, there's also a sense of, like, maybe it doesn't make sense anymore to build all this infrastructure from scratch every single time I started a project. So, Next filled in that gap. The other thing we did really well, I think, is that we gave people a universal model for how to use not just the server side, but also the client side strategically.So, I'll give you an example. When you go to ChatGPT, a lot of things on the screen are server rendered, but when you start doing interactions as a user, that requires for something like you'd say, “Hey Dali, generate an image.” That stuff requires a lot of optimistic UI. It requires features that are more like what a mobile native application can do. So, we can give folks the best of both worlds: the speed, interactivity, and fluidity of a native app, but we had those, sort of, fundamentals of how a website should work that even Perl and PHP had gotten right, once upon a time. So, I think we found that right blend of utility and flexibility, and folks love it, and I think, yeah, we're excited to continue to help steward this project as a standard for building on the web.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk about a lot of the genesis of this stuff and how you view it, which I think gives us a pretty decent idea of how you're going to approach the evolution of what you've built. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Guillermo: So, head to vercel.com to learn about our platform. You can check out v0.dev, which we'll be opening broadly to the public soon, if you want to get started with this idea of generative UI. And myself, I'm always tweeting on X, twitter.com or x.com/rauchg to find me.Corey: One of these days we'll be able to kick that habit, I hope [laugh].Guillermo: [laugh]. Yeah.Corey: Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Guillermo: Thank you.Corey: Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel, and creator of Next.js. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that will be almost impossible for you to submit because that podcast platform did not pay attention to user experience.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business, and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started. Vercel: https://vercel.com/ v0.dev: https://v0.dev Personal website: https://rauchg.com Personal twitter: https://twitter.com/rauchg TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I don't talk a lot about front-end on this show, primarily because I am very bad at front-end, and in long-standing tech tradition, if I'm not good at something, apparently I'm legally obligated to be dismissive of it and not give it any attention. Strangely enough, I spent the last week beating on some front-end projects, and now I'm not just dismissive, I'm angry about it. Here to basically suffer the outpouring of frustration and confusion is Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel, but also the creator of Next.js. Guillermo, thank you for joining me.Guillermo: Great to be here. Thanks for setting me up with that awesome intro.Corey: It's true, if I were talking to someone who looked at what I've done, and for some Godforsaken reason, they wanted to follow in my footsteps, well, that path has been closed, so learning a bunch of Perl early on and translating it all to bad bash scripts and the rest, and then maybe picking up Python isn't really the way that I would advise someone getting started today. The de facto lingua franca of the internet is JavaScript, whether we like it or not, and I would strongly suggest that be someone's first language despite the fact that I'm bad at it, I don't understand it, and therefore it makes me angry.Guillermo: Yeah, it's so funny because it sounds like my story. And my personal journey was, when I was a kid, I had a—I knew I wanted to hack around with computers, and reverse engineer them, and improve them, and just create my own things, and I had these options for what programming language I could go with. And I tried it all: PHP, Perl, [Mod PHP 00:02:12], [Mod Perl 00:02:13], Apache, LAMP, cgi-bin folders, all the whole nine yards. And regardless of what back-end technology I used, I encountered this striking fact, which was… the thing that can make your product really stand out in a web browser is typically involving JavaScript in some fashion. So, when Google came out with suggestions as you would type in a search box, my young kid Argentinian brain blew up. I was like, “Holy crap, they can suggest, they can read my mind, and they can render suggestions without a full page refresh? What is that magic?”And then more products like that came out. Google Docs, Gmail Chat, Facebook's real time newsfeed, all the great things on the internet seemed to have this common point of, there's this layer of interactivity, real-time data, customization, personalization, and it seems uniquely enabled by the front-end. So, I just went all in. I taught myself how to code, I taught myself—I became a front-end engineering expert, I joined some of the early projects that shaped the ecosystem. Like, there was this library called MooTools, and a lot of folks might not have heard that name. It's in the annals of JavaScript history.And later on, you know, what I realized is, what if front-end can actually be the starting point of how you develop the best applications, right, rather than this thing that people, like, reluctantly frown upon, like yourself. I mention that as an opportunity rather than a dis because when you create a great front-end experience, now the data has proven you run a better business, you run a more dynamic business, probably are running an AI-powered business, like, all of the AI products on the planet today are using this technology to stream text in front of your eyes in real time and do all this awesome things. So yeah, I became obsessed with front-end, and I founded this company Vercel, which is a front-end cloud. So, you come here to basically build the best products. Now, you don't have to build the back-end, so you can use back-ends that are off the shelf, you can connect to your existing back-ends, and we piggyback on the world's best infrastructure to make this possible, but we offer developers a very streamlined path to create these awesome products on the internet.Corey: I have to say that I have been impressed when I've used Vercel for a number of projects. And what impresses me is less the infrastructure powering it, less the look at how performance it is and all the stuff that most people talk about, but as mentioned, I am not good at front-end or frankly programming at all. And so, many products in this space fall into the very pernicious trap of, “Oh, well, everyone who's using this is at least this tall on the board of how smart you are to get on the amusement park ride.” So, I feel that when I'm coming at this from a—someone who is not a stranger to computers but is definitely new to this entire ecosystem, everything just made sense in a way that remarkably few products can pull off. I don't know if you would call that user experience, developer experience, or what the terminology you bias for there is, but it is a transformational difference.Guillermo: Thank you. I think it's a combination of things. So, developer experience has definitely always been a focus for me. I was that weird person that obsessed about the CLI parameters of the tool, and the output of the tool, and just like how it feels for the engineer. I did combine that with—and I think this is where Vercel really stands out—I did combine that with a world-class infrastructure bit because what I realized after creating lots and lots of very popular open-source projects—like, one is called Socket.io, and other one called Mongoose—DX, or developer experience, in the absence of an enticing carrot for the business doesn't work. Maybe it has some short term adoption, maybe it has raving fans on Twitter or X [laugh], but at the end of the day, you have to deliver something that's tangible to the end-user and to the business.[unintelligible 00:06:33] Vercel focusing on the front-end has found a magical combination there of I can make the developer lives easier. Being a developer myself, I just tremendously empathize with that, but it can also make more profit for the business. When they make your website faster and render more dynamic data that serve as better recommendations for a product on e-commerce or in a marketing channel, I can help you roll out more experiments, then they make your business better, and I think that's one of the magical combinations there.The other thing, frankly, is that we'd started doing fewer things. So, when you come to Vercel, you typically come with a framework that you've already chosen. It could be Next.js, it could be View, [unintelligible 00:07:18], there's 35-plus frameworks. But we basically told the market, you have to use one of these developer tools in order to guide your development.And what companies were doing before—I mean, this almost seems obvious in retrospect, that we would optimize for her certain patterns and certain tools—but what the market was doing before was rolling out your own frameworks. Like, every company was, basically—React, for example, is a very popular way of building interfaces, and our framework actually is built on top of React. But when I would go to and talk to all these principal engineers that all these companies, they were saying, oh yeah, “We're creating our own framework. We're creating our own tools.” And I think that to me now feels almost like a zero interest rate phenomenon. Like, what business do you have in creating frameworks, tools, and bespoke infra when you're really in the business of creating delightful experiences for your customers?Corey: What I think is lost on a lot of folks is that if you are trying to learn something new and use a tool, and the developer experience is bad, the takeaway—at least for me and a lot of people that I talk to is not, “Oh, this tool has terrible ergonomics. That's it's problem.” Instead, the takeaway is very much, “Oh, I'm dumb because I don't understand this thing.” And I know intellectually that I am not usually the dumbest person in the world when it comes to a particular tool or technology, but I keep forgetting that on a visceral level. It's, “I just wish I was smart enough to understand that.”No, I don't. I wish it was presented in a way that was more understandable and the documentation was better. When you're just starting out and building something in your spare time, the infrastructure cost is basically nothing, but your time is the expensive part in it. So, if you have to spend three hours to track down something just because it wasn't clearly explained, the burden of adopting that tool is challenging. I would argue that one of the reasons that AWS sees some of the success that it does is not necessarily because it's great so much as because everyone knows how it breaks. That's important.I'm not saying their infrastructure isn't world-class—please, don't come at me in the comments on this one—but I am saying that we know where its sharp edges are, and that means that we're more comfortable building with it. But the idea of learning a brand-new cloud with different sharp edges in other areas. That's terrifying. I'd rather stick with the devil I know.Guillermo: Exactly. I just think that you're not going to be able to make a difference for customers in 2023 by creating another bespoke cloud that is general purpose, it doesn't really optimize around anything, and you have to learn all the sharp edges from scratch. I think we saw that with the rise of cloud-native companies like Stripe and Twilio where they were going after these amazingly huge markets like financial infrastructure or communications infrastructure, but the angle was, “Here's this awesome developer experience.” And that's what we're doing with Vercel for the front-end and for building products, right? There has to be an opinionated developer experience that guides you to success.And I agree with you that there's really, these days in the developer communities, zero tolerance for sharp edges, and we've spent a lot of time in—even documentation, like, it used to be that your startup would make or break it by whether you had great documentation. I think in the age of frameworks, I would even dare say that documentation, of course, is extremely important, but if I can have the tool itself guide you to success, at that point, you're not even reading documentation. We're now seeing this with AI and, like, generative AI for code. At Vercel, we're investing in generative AI for user interfaces. Do you actually need to read documentation at that point? So, I think we're optimizing for the absolute minimal amount of friction required to be successful with these platforms.Corey: I think that there's a truth in that of meeting customers in where they are. Your documentation can be spectacular, but people don't generally read the encyclopedia for fun either. And the idea of that is that—at least ideally—I should not need to go diving into the documentation, and so many tools get this wrong, where, “Oh, I want to set up a new project,” and it bombards you with 50 questions, and each one of these feels pretty… momentous. Like, what one-way door am I passing through that I don't realize the consequences of until I'm 12 hours into this thing, and then have to backtrack significantly. I like, personally, things that bias for having a golden path, but also make it easy to both deviate from it, as well as get back onto it. Because there's more than one way to do it is sort of the old Perl motto. That is true in spades in anything approaching the JavaScript universe.Guillermo: Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts on that. On the first point, I completely agree that the golden path of the product cannot be documentation-mediated. One of the things that I've become obsessive about—and this is an advice that I share with a lot of other startup founders is, when it comes to your landing page, the primary call to action has to be this golden path to success, like, 2, 3, 4 clicks later, I have to have something tangible. That was our inspiration.And when we made it the primary call to action for Vercel is deploy now. Start now. Get it out now. Ship it now. And the way that you test out the platform is by deploying a template. What do we do is we create a Git repo for you, it sets up the entire CI/CD pipeline, and then at that point, you already have something working, something in the cloud, you spent zero time reading documentation, and you can start iterating.And even though that might not be the final thing you do in Vercel, I always hear the stories of CTOs that are now deploying Vercel at really large scale, and they always tell me, “I started with your hobby tier, I started with free tier, I deployed a template, I hacked on a product during the weekend.” Now, a lot of our AI examples are very popular in this crowd. And yeah, there's a golden path that requires zero documentation. Now, you also mentioned that, what about complexity? This is an enterprise-grade platform. What about escape hatches? What about flexibility? And that's where our platform also shines because we have the entire power of a Turing-complete language, which is JavaScript and TypeScript, to customize every aspect of the platform.And you have a framework that actually answered a lot of the problems that came with serverless solutions in the past, which is that you couldn't run any of that on your local machine. The beauty of Vercel and Next.js is we kind of pioneered this concept that we called ‘Framework Defined Infrastructure.' You start with the framework, the framework has this awesome property that you can install on your computer, it has a dev command—like, it literally runs on your computer—but then when you push it to the cloud, it now defines the infrastructure. It creates all of the resources that are highly optimal.This creates—basically converts what was a single node system on your computer to a globally distributed system, which is a very complex and difficult engineering challenge, but Vercel completely automates it away. And now for folks that are looking for, like, more advanced solutions, they can now start poking into the outputs of that compilation process and say, “Okay, I can now have an influence or I can reconfigure some aspects of this pipeline.” And of course, if you don't think about those escape hatches, then the product just ends up being limiting and frustrating, so we had to think really hard about meeting both ends of the spectrum.Corey: In my own experimentations early on with Chat-Gippity—which is how I insist on pronouncing ChatGPT—a lot of what I found was that it was a lot more productive for me to, instead of asking just the question and getting the answer was, write a Python script to—Guillermo: Yes.Corey: Query this API to get me that answer. Because often it would be wrong. Sometimes very convincingly wrong, and I can at least examine it in various ways and make changes to it and iterate forward, whereas when everything is just a black box, that gets very hard to do. The idea of building something that can be iterated on is key.Guillermo: I love that. The way that Vercel actually first introduced itself to the world was this idea of immutable deployments and immutable infrastructure. And immutable sounds like a horrible word because I want to mutate things, but it was inspired by this idea of functional programming where, like, each iteration to the state, each data change, can be tracked. So, every time you deploy in Vercel, you get this unique URL that represents a point-in-time infrastructure deployment. You can go back in time, you can revert, you can use this as a way of collaborating with other engineers in your team, so you can send these hyperlinks around to your front-end projects.And it gives you a lot of confidence. Now, you can iterate knowing that before things go out, there's a lot of scrutiny, there's a lot of QA, there's a lot of testing processes that you can kick off against this serverless infrastructure that was created for each deployment. The conclusion for us so far has been that our role in the world is to increase iteration velocity. So, iteration speed is the faster horse of the cloud, right? Like, instead of getting a car, you get a faster horse.When you say, “Okay, I made the build pipeline 10% faster,” or, “I brought the TLS termination 10% closer to the visitor, and, like, I have more [pops 00:17:10],” things like that. That to me, is the speed. You can do those things, and they're awesome, but if you don't have a direction—which is velocity—then you don't know what you're building next. You don't know if your customers are happy. You don't know if you're delivering value. So, we built an entire platform that optimizes around, what should you ship next? What is the friction involved in getting your next iteration out? Is launching an experiment on your homepage, for example, is that a costly endeavor? Does it take you weeks? Does it take you months?One of the initial inspirations for just starting Vercel and making deployments really easy was, how difficult is it for the average company to change in their footer of their website is this copyright 2022? And you have—it's a new year. You have to bump it to copyright 2023. How long do you think it takes that engineer to, A, run the stack locally, so they can actually see the change; deploy it, but deploy to what we call the preview environment, so they can grab that URL and send [it to 00:18:15], Corey, and say, “Corey, does it look good? I updated [laugh] I updated the year in the footer.”And then you tell me, “Looks good, let's ship it to production.” Or you tell me, “No, no, no, it's risky. Let's divide it into two cohorts: 50% of traffic gets 2022, 50% of traffic gets 2023.” Obviously, this is a joke, but consider the implications of how difficult it is and the average organization to actually do this thing.[midroll 00:18:41]Corey: Oh, I find things like that all the time, especially on microservices that I built to handle some of my internal workflows here, and I haven't touched in two or three years. And okay, now it's time for me to update them to reflect some minor change. And first, I wind up in the screaming node warnings and I have to update things so that they actually work in a reasonable way. And, on some level, making a one-line change can take half a day. Now, in the real world, when people are working on these apps day-in and day-out, it gets a lot easier to roll those changes in over time, but coming back to something unmaintained, that becomes a project the longer you let it sit.Part of me wishes that there were easier ways around it, but there are trade-offs in almost any decision you make. If you're building something from the beginning of, well, I want to be able to automatically update the copyright year, you can even borderline make that something that automatically happens based upon the global time, whereas when you're trying to retrofit it afterwards, yeah, it becomes a project.Guillermo: Yeah, and now think, that's just a simple example of changing a string. That might be difficult for a product engineering in any organization. Or it may be slow, or it may be not as streamlined, or maybe it works really well for the first project that that company created. What about every incremental project thereafter?So, now I said—let's stop talking about a string, right? Let's think about you're about an e-commerce website where what we hear from our customers on average, like, 10% of revenue flows through the homepage. Now, I have to change a primary component that renders on the hero of the page, and I have to collaborate with every department in the organization. I have to collaborate with the design team, I have to collaborate with marketing, I have to collaborate with the business owners to track the analytics appropriately. So, what is the cost of every incremental experiment that you want to put in production?The other thing that's particularly interesting about front-end as it relates to cloud infrastructure is, scaling up front-end is a very difficult thing. What ends up happening is most front-ends are actually static websites. They're cached at the edge—or they're literally statically generated—and then they push all of the dynamism to the client side. So, you end up with this spaghetti of script tags on the client, you end up accumulating a lot of tech debt in the [shipping 00:20:56] huge bundles of JavaScript to the client to try to recover some dynamism, to try and run these experiments. So, everyone is in this, kind of, mess of the yes, maybe we can experiment, but we kind of offloaded the rendering work to the client. That in turn makes me—basically, I'm making the website slower for the visitor. I'm making them do the rendering work.And I'm trying to sell them something. I'm trying to speed up some processes. It's my responsibility to make it fast. So, what we ended up finding out is that yes, the cloud moved this forward a lot in terms of having these awesome building blocks, these awesome infrastructure primitives, but both in the developer experience, just changing something about your web product and also the end-user experiences, that web product renders really fast, those things really didn't happen with this first chapter of the cloud. And I think we're entering a new generation of higher-level clouds like Vercel that are optimizing for these things.Corey: I think that there's a historical focus on things that have not happened before. And that was painful and terrible, so we're not going to be focusing on what's happening in the future, we're going to build a process or a framework or something that winds up preventing that thing that hurt us from hurting us again. Now, that's great in moderation, but at some point—we see this at large companies from time-to-time—where you have so much process that is ossified scar tissue, basically, that it becomes almost impossible to get things done. Because oh, I want to make that—for example, that one-line change to a copyright date, well, here's the 5000 ways deploys have screwed us before, so we need to have three humans sign off on the one-line change, and a bunch of other stuff before it ever sees the light of day. Now, I'm exaggerating slightly, just as you are, but that feels like it acts as a serious brake on innovation.On the exact opposite side, where we see massive acceleration has been around the world of generative AI. Yes, it is massively hyped in a bunch of ways. I don't think it is going to be a defined way that changes the nature of humanity the way that some of these people are going after, but it's also clearly more than a parlor trick.Guillermo: I'm kind of in that camp. So, like you, I've been writing code for many years. I'm pretty astonished by the AI's ability to enhance my output. And of course, now I'm not writing code full time, so there is a sense of, okay because I don't have time, because I'm doing a million things, any minute I have seems like AI has just made it so much more worthwhile and I can squeeze so much more productivity out of it. But one of the areas that I'm really excited about is this idea of generative UI, which is not just autocompleting code in a text editor, but is the idea that you can use natural language to describe an interface and have the AI generate that interface.So, Vercel created this product called v0—you can check it out at v0.dev—where to me, it's really astonishing that you can get these incredibly high quality user interfaces, and basically all you have to do is input [laugh] a few English words. I have this personal experience of, I've been learning JavaScript and perfecting all my knowledge around it for, like, 20 or so years. I created Next.js.And Next.js itself powers a lot of these AI products. Like the front-end of ChatGPT is built on Next.js. And I used v0 to create… to basically recreate my blog. Like, I created rauchg.com, I deployed it on Vercel, but every pixel of that UI, I handcrafted.And as we were working on v0, I said okay, “I'm going to challenge myself to put myself back in the shoes of, like, I'm going to redesign this and I'm going to start over with just human language.” Not only did I arrive to the right look and feel of what I wanted to get, the code that it produced was better than I would have written by hand. Concretely, it was more accessible. So, there were areas of the UI where, like, some icons were rendered where I had not filled in those gaps. I just didn't know how to do that. The AI did. So, I really believe that AI will transform our lives as [laugh] programmers, at least I think, in many other areas in very profound ways.Corey: This is very similar to a project that I've been embarked on for the last few days where I described the app I wanted into Chat-Gippity and follow the instructions, and first, it round up point—sending me down a rabbit hole of the wrong Framework version that had been deprecated, and whatnot, and then I brought it all into VS Code where Jif-Ub Copilot, it kept switching back and forth between actively helpful, and ooh, the response matches publicly available code, so I'm not going to tell you the answer, despite the fact that feature has never been enabled on my account. So yeah, of course, it matches publicly available code. This is quite literally the React tutorial starter project. And it became incredibly frustrating, but it also would keep generating things in bursts, so my code is not at all legible or well organized or consistent for that matter. But it's still better than anything I'd be able to write myself. I'm looking forward to using v0 or something like it to see how that stacks up for some of my ridiculous generation ideas for these things.Guillermo: Yeah, you touched on a very important point is, the code has to work. The code has to be shippable. I think a lot of AI products have gotten by by giving you an approximation of the result, right? Like, they hallucinate sometimes, they get something wrong. It's still very helpful because sometimes it's sending you the right direction.But for us, the bar is that these things have to produce code that's useful, and that you can ship, and that you can iterate on. So, going back to that idea of iteration velocity, we call it v0 because we wanted it to be the first version. We still very much believe there is humans in the loop and folks will be iterating a lot on the initial draft that this thing is giving you, but it's so much better than starting with an empty code editor, [laugh] right? Like, and this applies, by the way to, like, not just new projects, but I always talk about, like, our customers have a few really important landing pages, key pages, maybe it's the product detail page in e-commerce, maybe it's your homepage and, like, your key product pages for a marketing website. Maybe it's where—and the checkout, for example, extremely important.But then there's a lot of incremental UIs that you have to add every single day. The banner for [laugh] accepting cookies or not, the consent management dialog. There's a lot of things that the worst case scenario is that you offload them again to some third-party script, to some iframe of sorts because you really don't have the bandwidth, time, or resources to build it yourself. And then you sacrifice speed, you sacrifice brand fidelity. And again because we're the front-end cloud, we're obsessed with your ability to ship UI that's native to your product, that is a streamline, that works really well. So, I think AI is going to have a significant effect there where a lot of things where you were sending someone to some other website because you just didn't have the bandwidth to create that UI, you can now own the experience end to end.Corey: That is no small thing. A last question I have, before we wind up calling this episode is, there was a period of time—I don't know if we're still in it or not—where it felt like every time I got up to get a cup of coffee and came back, there would be three JavaScript frameworks that launched during that interim. So, Next.js was at 1.1 of those when someone got up to get a cup of coffee. But that's shown a staying power that is, frankly, remarkable. Why? I don't know enough about the ecosystem to have an opinion on that, but I noticed when things stand out, and Next does.Guillermo: Yeah, I think it's a number of factors. Number one, we, as an industry I think, we coalesced, and we found the right engine to build our car. And that engine became React. Most folks building UI today are choosing React or a similar engine, but React has really become the gold standard for a lot of engineers. Now, what ended up happening next is that people realized I want a car. I want the full product. I need to drive. I don't want to assemble this freaking car every single time I have a new project.And Next.js filled a very important gap in the world where what you were looking for was not a library; what you were looking for is a framework that has opinions, but those opinions are very in line with how the web is supposed to work. We took a page from, basically, the beginnings of the web. We make a lot of jokes that in many ways, our inspiration was PHP, where server rendering is the default, where it's very expressive, it's very easy to reach for data. It just works for a lot of people. Again, that's the old [stack 00:30:03] in the olden days.And so, it obviously didn't quite work, but the inspiration was, can we make something that is a streamline for creating web interfaces at scale? At scale. And to your point, there's also a sense of, like, maybe it doesn't make sense anymore to build all this infrastructure from scratch every single time I started a project. So, Next filled in that gap. The other thing we did really well, I think, is that we gave people a universal model for how to use not just the server side, but also the client side strategically.So, I'll give you an example. When you go to ChatGPT, a lot of things on the screen are server rendered, but when you start doing interactions as a user, that requires for something like you'd say, “Hey Dali, generate an image.” That stuff requires a lot of optimistic UI. It requires features that are more like what a mobile native application can do. So, we can give folks the best of both worlds: the speed, interactivity, and fluidity of a native app, but we had those, sort of, fundamentals of how a website should work that even Perl and PHP had gotten right, once upon a time. So, I think we found that right blend of utility and flexibility, and folks love it, and I think, yeah, we're excited to continue to help steward this project as a standard for building on the web.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to
In this episode, Nathan chats with Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel, to discuss how AI might shape the future of code, software 2.0, and the open source question in AI. If you need an ecommerce platform, check out our sponsor Shopify: https://shopify.com/cognitive for a $1/month trial period. SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive With the onset of AI, it's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Train ML models on the cloud's highest performing NVIDIA GPU clusters. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a FREE test drive of OCI at oracle.com/cognitive NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive and download your own customized KPI checklist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. X/SOCIAL @labenz (Nathan) @rauchg (Guillermo) @CogRev_Podcast TIMESTAMPS (00:00:00) - Introductory comments (00:03:43) - Rauch's background in open source software like Mootools and Next.js (00:04:27) - Overview of Vercel and the front-end cloud concept (00:06:15) - Productivity gains from Vercel's front-end infrastructure (00:14:50) - Sponsors: Shopify | Omneky (00:21:00) - Rauch getting inspired by GitHub Copilot code auto-completion (00:24:00) - Launching Vercel's own AI product vZero: production-ready UI code from natural language prompts (00:29:17) - Sponsors: Oracle | Netsuite (00:30:00) - Transition to discussing the future of software development (00:34:12) - vZero surpassing Rauch's own hand-coded website on accessibility (00:51:00) - Discussion about focusing on the full stack beyond just the AI model (00:54:00) - Concept of Software 2.0 using data and AI instead of classical code (00:56:00) - Maintaining software 1.0 while aggressively expanding into 2.0 paradigm (00:56:12) - Philosophical support for open source and skepticism about risks (00:57:12) - How open source software tends to quickly improve over time (00:57:47) - Prediction that AI may "ossify" existing software 1.0 technologies (01:01:12) - AI enabling more grassroots innovation like Mark Zuckerberg originally did (01:07:00) - Concerns about regulatory suppression of open source AI progress (01:03:00) - Unpredictability of new risks that could emerge like impersonation (01:11:00) - Rejecting AI doom narratives but staying vigilant on capabilities (01:12:00) - Concluding thoughts on embracing AI progress with appropriate caution
Guillermo Rauch is the founder & CEO of Vercel, working on giving developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized web. In this conversation, we talk about whether artificial intelligence is going to replace jobs or create more of them, open-source vs closed-source, role of government & regulations, most over-hyped areas vs areas that need more attention, how value will accrue, and what Guillermo is doing with Vercel. ======================= Base is making it their mission to bring a billion people onchain. But what exactly is Base? It's an Ethereum L2 offering a seamless experience for both builders and users. With near-zero gas fees and rapid transaction speeds, Base is shaping the future of the onchain world. Base is a canvas for everyone, with hundreds of apps in the Base ecosystem, whether you're an emerging creator, a seasoned developer, or someone exploring the onchain space for the first time, Base is designed to bring your ideas to life. So, if you're looking for a platform where the future of onchain is being built daily, Base is your destination. Join in and make onchain the next online. Learn more at base.org and follow along on Twitter at @BuildOnBase to see cool things to do onchain, everyday. ======================= Trust and Will has simplified the process of creating and managing your will or trust online. They leverage a data-driven, design-first approach and amazing customer support to help you protect your legacy from the comfort of your home starting at just $159. Sign up today for 10% off using https://trustandwill.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/
Guillermo Rauch is the CEO of Vercel, a frontend-as-a-service product that was valued at $2.5b in 2021. Vercel serves customers like Uber, Notion and Zapier, and their React framework - Next.js - is used by over 500,000 developers and designers worldwide. Guillermo started his first company at age 11 in Buenos Aires and moved to San Francisco at age 18. In 2013, he sold his company Cloudup to Automattic (the company behind WordPress), and in 2015 he founded Vercel. — In today's episode we discuss: Guillermo's fascinating path into tech Learnings from building Cloudup and selling the company to Automattic (the company behind WordPress) Vercel's origin story and path to product market fit How to make an open source business successful Vercel's unique philosophy on developer experience Insights and predictions on the future of AI — Referenced: Algolia: https://www.algolia.com/ Apache Zookeeper: https://zookeeper.apache.org/ Apache Kafka: https://kafka.apache.org/ AWS: https://www.aws.training/ C++: https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/definition/C Clerk: https://clerk-tech.com/ Cloudup: https://cloudup.com/ Commerce Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/commerce/ Contentful: https://www.contentful.com/ Debian: https://www.debian.org/ Fintool: https://www.fintool.com/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/ IRC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat KDE: https://kde.org/ Linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux Mozilla: https://www.mozilla.org MooTools (UI library): https://mootools.net/ Next.js: https://nextjs.org/ React Native: https://reactnative.dev/ Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/ Redpanda: https://redpanda.com/ Resend: https://resend.com/ Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com Servo: https://servo.org/ Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/ Socket.io: https://socket.io/ Symphony: https://symphony.com/ Trilio: https://trilio.io/ Twilio: https://www.twilio.com Vercel: https://vercel.com/ V0.dev: https://v0.dev/ — Where to find Guillermo: Twitter/x: https://twitter.com/rauchg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/ Personal website: https://rauchg.com/ — Where to find Todd Jackson: Twitter: https://twitter.com/tjack LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0 — Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast — Timestamps: (02:35) Becoming an “internet celebrity” at age 11 (08:30) Guillermo's first company: Cloudup (11:09) Biggest learnings from Cloudup and WordPress (15:06) The insights behind starting Vercel (17:11) Sources of validation for Vercel (20:29) How Vercel formed its V1 product (23:25) Navigating the early reactions from competitors and users (25:58) The paradox of developers and how it impacted Next.js (31:20) Advice on finding product market fit (34:48) The forces behind a trend towards "Front-end Cloud” (38:35) Why people now pay so much attention to the front-end (40:06) How to make an open source business successful (44:54) Insights on product positioning and category creation (48:52) Vercel's journey through becoming multi-product (51:44) Guillermo's take on the future of AI (53:43) Heuristics for building better product experiences (55:49) AI insights from Vercel's customers (57:37) How AI might change engineering in the next 10-20 years (62:43) Guillermo's favorite advice (65:45) Guillermo's advice to himself of 10 years ago
Guillermo Rauch is the founder and CEO of Vercel, a cloud platform that powers some of the biggest names on the internet, like Patreon, Ebay, Netflix and Adobe. Guillermo has an incredible founder story– he began coding at age 10, dropped out of high school and moved from his native Argentina to San Francisco as a teenager. He's also the creator of several major open source projects and a dual threat CEO who runs his own solo VC firm, Rauch Capital. In this episode of World of DaaS, Guillermo and Auren discuss the future of web development, the significance of user experience, and the rise of developer-first companies. They also explore the world of open-source business models and AI's impact on data interactions.Guillermo also shares his unique personal journey and some thought-provoking insights on health, the immigrant experience and conspiracy theories. World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph & Flex Capital. For more episodes, visit safegraph.com/podcasts.You can find Auren Hoffman on Twitter at @auren and Guillermo on Twitter at @rauchg.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO @ Vercel, giving developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized Web. To date, Guillermo has raised $312M from Accel, Bedrock, Greenoaks, GV and more. Prior to founding Vercel, Guillermo co-founded LearnBoost and Cloudup where he served the company as CTO through its acquisition by Automattic in 2013. In Today's Episode with Guillermo Rauch We Discuss: 1. From Argentina to SF: The Boy Making Money Online: How did Guillermo first get into computers and start making money online? Does Guillermo still believe the US and SF offers the same opportunities it did when he came? Did Guillermo feel the weight of responsibility of providing for his family at a young age? 2. Timing, Markets and Narrative Violations: Why does Guillermo believe it does not matter being first but being right? Why does Guillermo believe the most important thing for a company is market selection? Why does Guillermo believe it is crucial that founders and companies have "narrative violations"? 3. The Future of AI: What model will win in the future; open or closed? Where does the value accrue; startups or incumbents? How will the SaaS business model change in a world of AI? 4. Silicon Valley's Most Successful Angel You Did Not Know: What are some of Guillermo's biggest lessons from angel investing? What is his single biggest miss? How has it changed how he thinks? What have been his biggest hits? How did they impact how he thinks about what it takes to win?
No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Technology | Startups
Everything digital is increasingly intermediated through web user experiences, and now AI development can be frontend-first, too. Just ask Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel, the company behind Next.js. In this episode of No Priors, hosts Sarah Guo and Elad Gil speak to Guillermo about their AI SDK and AI templates, and why Vercel is focused on making it easy for every frontend engineer to build with AI. They also discuss what applications Guillermo's most excited about, how to prepare for the world of bots, whether the winds are changing in web architectures, and why he believes in the AI-fueled 100X engineer. Prior to Vercel, Guillermo co-founded several startups and created the JavaScript library, Socket.io, which allows for real-time bi-directional communication between web clients and servers. Show Links: Guillermo Rauch - CEO & Founder of Vercel | LinkedIn Vercel Vercel AI Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @rauchg Show Notes: (0:00:00) - Vercel's AI Strategy and Future Plans (0:10:36) - AI Frameworks, Observability, and Bot Mitigation (0:17:24) - Crawling the Web and Architecture Changes (0:27:54) - AI's Impact on Web Personalization
In this repeat episode picked by host Sean Rayment, Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel, returns to PodRocket to talk about all the new Next 13 features, how Next has changed since its inception, and the future of the framework as it continues to grow. Links https://twitter.com/rauchg https://github.com/rauchg https://rauchg.com https://vercel.com https://nextjs.org Tell us what you think of PodRocket We want to hear from you! We want to know what you love and hate about the podcast. What do you want to hear more about? Who do you want to see on the show? Our producers want to know, and if you talk with us, we'll send you a $25 gift card! If you're interested, schedule a call with us (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/contact-us) or you can email producer Kate Trahan at kate@logrocket.com (mailto:kate@logrocket.com) Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Guillermo Rauch.
¿Por qué no te habré hecho caso? con Santiago Siri y Hernán Zin
Esta semana un fallo importante en Estados Unidos sienta precedente para el blockchain: la sentencia de la SEC que determina que Ripple, un token cripto, no es un Security. ¿Qué implica eso para cripto? Además, Santi y Mauro analizan el nuevo hackeo que vivió la Argentina con la mafia del Hentai y te contamos sobre el nuevo desembarco argentino en Wall Street: Vercel, fundada por Guillermo Rauch. Por otro lado, Santi Siri, familiar nada más y nada menos que de Santiago de Liniers, habla del origen de la rivalidad histórica de Argentina contra los ingleses. Además, hablamos de la Scaloneta en Aerolíneas y Santi Siri en Silicon Valley, y mucho más. Una producción de Fiera Podcasts.
In this episode, we speak with Guillermo Rauch, Founder and CEO of Vercel, the frontend cloud that gives developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized web. Founded in 2015, the company has raised over $300 million dollars and is backed by GGV Capital, Accel, Bedrock Capital, CRV, and other notable investors. Vercel unlocks developer potential and enables users to go from idea to global application in seconds. Vercel enables customers like Under Armour, Nintendo, The Washington Post, and Zapier to build delightful user experiences on the Web. I am your host RJ Lumba. We hope you enjoy the show. If you like the episode, click to subscribe.
Este episodio 154 invitamos a Nahuel Lema, un emprendedor argentino que es Cofundador y Staff Engineer de Coderhouse. Nahuel, junto con sus cofundadores Christian Patiño y Pablo Ferreiro, entró a Coderhouse en 2014, una exitosa plataforma de educación en línea que ofrece cursos en vivo sobre programación, diseño, datos, marketing y más. Desde entonces, la plataforma ha experimentado un crecimiento fenomenal. Con su enfoque único en cursos asequibles y efectivos, Coderhouse ha logrado captar la atención de inversores destacados, como Y Combinator, David Vélez, Guillermo Rauch y Hugo Barra. Nahuel y su equipo han logrado combinar la accesibilidad de los MOOCs en línea con la efectividad de los bootcamps, obteniendo una alta tasa de finalización de cursos de más del 90%. Además de su trabajo en Coderhouse, Nahuel también se destaca como mentor de emprendedores en Growth Rockstars de Dylan Rosemberg, compartiendo su experiencia y conocimientos con la próxima generación de líderes empresariales. ¡Nahuel y Coderhouse están ofreciendo 10% en todos sus cursos para todos nuestros oyentes! Beneficio: 10% OFF adicional sobre Plan CoderBeca en todos los cursos y carreras. Código: THENETWORKCODER T&C: Válido desde el 30/05/2023 hasta el 31/12/2023 23:59 inclusive. Acumulable con otras promociones. Válido para todas las carreras y/o cursos brindados por CODERHOUSE, excepto Servicios de Desarrollo Profesional, Membresías y Masters. La promoción consiste en una bonificación del 10% sobre el precio de la CoderBeca. El código de descuento puede usarse ilimitadamente, pero sólo una vez por carrera y/o curso. Válido en Latinoamérica. Gracias a nuestros sponsors: xtrim: ¡El nombre de tu empresa en la camiseta de los árbitros! Participa en www.SponsorConectado.com Pardux: Expandir tu negocio por Latinoamérica nunca fue tan fácil. https://www.pardux.com/ Farmacéutica La Santé: Tu Generico, Tu Vida. www.lasanteecuador.com Anubis Crypto: Aprende a invertir en criptomonedas con Anubis Academy. https://www.grupoanubis.com/ Facturero Movil: Con Facturero Móvil podrás crear documentos electrónicos autorizados por el SRI, sin contratos y desde 10 dólares. www.factureromovil.com
NextJS es una tecnología open source de desarrollo web utilizada por compañías gigantes como TikTok, Netflix y Notion para crear aplicaciones veloces y escalables globalmente y fue creada por un emprendedor argentino.Guillermo Rauch empezó su carrera como desarrollador de software a los 11 años y a los 21 vendió su primera compañía a Wordpress.Hoy, Guillermo es fundador y CEO de Vercel, una plataforma para desarrollo front end en la nube desde donde lidera NextJs. Vercel ha crecido exponencialmente y multiplicado sus ventas por 25 veces en los últimos 3 años.Hablamos sobre cuál fue su proceso para crear un producto disruptivo como NextJS y cómo balancear las responsabilidades de ser CEO con seguir involucrado en producto.También, hablamos sobre cómo está evolucionando la programación a raíz del surgimiento de inteligencia artificial y cuál es la mentalidad adecuada para adaptarse a los cambios tecnológicos.--La manera más sencilla de ayudarnos a crecer es dejando una reseña en Spotify o Apple Podcasts: https://ratethispodcast.com/startupeableEste episodio es presentado por:Talently Hire te conecta en 72 horas con desarrolladores de software con al menos 3 años de experiencia. Conoce más en https://talently.tech/hire/---Notas del episodio: https://startupeable.com/vercel/---Para más contenido síguenos en
Ravi Parikh is now on his second startup venture. After having built a very successful first company, he is now working to streamline development for other businesses, so they can move faster, and focus on what matters most. The company, Airplane, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Andrew Ofstad, Jaren Glover, Thrive Capital, and Guillermo Rauch.
Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
Vercel is an open-source platform that helps front-end developers build and ship dynamic web applications leveraging Jamstack (https://jamstack.org/). Last valued at $2.5B, Vercel was founded in 2015 by CEO Guillermo Rauch and now serves over 30,000 companies. In this episode, guest host Wei Lien Dang (General Partner at Unusual Ventures) interviews Vercel CEO and Founder Guillermo Rauch about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we cover: (1:24) How Guillermo came up with idea for creating Vercel (7:31) How Guillermo identified the opportunity for dynamic front-end development by analyzing gaps within the existing technology and infrastructure (12:43) Why he decided to pursue the open source path for Vercel (17:16) How Vercel drove adoption and built an early enthusiastic user base (24:25) The use cases and aha! moments for early adopters using Vercel (30:18) How Vercel built a go-to-market strategy aimed at developers (33:31) Vercel's content marketing strategy for developers which includes details about how their technology works (34:56) Guillermo's perspective on the current open source ecosystem and market (36:45) How to build a commercially viable business using open source technologies Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in open source software, developer tools and cybersecurity. Previously the co-founder of Stackrox, Wei can be reached at wei@unusual.vc and Twitter: https://twitter.com/weiliendang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiliendang/ Guillermo Rauch is the CEO and founder of Vercel. He was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He's the creator of several popular Node.JS open-source libraries like socket.io, mongoose and slackin. Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Starting an open-source company: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/start-an-open-source-software-company Developing open-source customers: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/developing-open-source-customers Building open-source GTM: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/open-source-gtm
Guillermo Rauch is the CEO and Founder of Vercel. In this episode, Guillermo discusses growing up around Buenos Aires, Argentina, family, childhood, business and technology in his teenage years, entrepreneurship, community, San Francisco, advice to entrepreneurs and his younger self, and so much more!
Vercel is the platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration. Vercel's Edge Functions enable you to deliver dynamic, personalized content with the lightweight Edge Runtime. Guillermo Rauch is the CEO at Vercel and he joins us today. This episode is hosted by Mike Bifulco. To The post Building Delightful User Experiences with Guillermo Rauch appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
Vercel is the platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration. Vercel’s Edge Functions enable you to deliver dynamic, personalized content with the lightweight Edge Runtime. Guillermo Rauch is the CEO at Vercel and he joins us today. This episode is hosted by Mike Bifulco. To The post Building Delightful User Experiences with Guillermo Rauch appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
We talk about how Next is bringing image components, server components, and in-house analytics via split bee—and bundling them all together with Turbopack, powered by Rust, our Developer Survey most loved language of 2022.Guillermo Rauch is the CEO and cofounder of Vercel and cocreator of Next.js, an open-source React framework that helps developers build fast, lightweight web applications. The most recent version is Next.js 13. You can find Guillermo on LinkedIn.We previously talked with Guillermo about the security risks of laziness, how Next.js mixes static site and SPA functions, and the front-end trends that get him excited. Kelsey Hightower is the Principal Developer Advocate at Google Cloud. Find him on Twitter or GitHub, or read about his very personal history with Kubernetes.Kelsey has also distinguished himself on our podcast before. Kyle Mitofsky is a Senior Software Engineer at Stack Overflow. Find him on Twitter or GitHub.
Links https://twitter.com/rauchg https://github.com/rauchg https://rauchg.com https://vercel.com https://nextjs.org Tell us what you think of PodRocket We want to hear from you! We want to know what you love and hate about the podcast. What do you want to hear more about? Who do you want to see on the show? Our producers want to know, and if you talk with us, we'll send you a $25 gift card! If you're interested, schedule a call with us (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/contact-us) or you can email producer Kate Trahan at kate@logrocket.com (mailto:kate@logrocket.com) Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Guillermo Rauch.
We got the chance to sit down with Guillermo Ruach, Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel and co-creator of Next.JS, about the news coming out of today's conference. The most interesting was a new product called Turbopack. You can read more about it here.
Welcome to PodRocket, LogRocket's podcast created to bring you in-depth interviews with experienced engineers like Guillermo Rauch, updates on new releases like Node 18 with Beth Griggs, and conference talks with speakers like Jenn Creighton. So follow PodRocket and tell your friends; we have a lot more coming your way. Links https://podrocket.logrocket.com/ https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr)
In this episode we speak to Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel, a platform for globally distributed applications. We discuss the meaning of “developer experience”, how complexity is managed to help developers get started quickly but still be able to scale multiple systems, the role of monorepos and monolithic application architectures, and how to think about globally deployed serverless databases.About Guillermo RauchGuillermo Rauch is CEO of Vercel. Before starting Vercel in November 2015, Guillermo was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He is the creator of several popular Node.js open source libraries like Socket.io, Mongoose and Slackin. Prior to Node.js, he was a core developer of the MooTools frontend toolkit. Passionate about open source as an education medium, he is a former mentor of an Open Source Engineering class organized and pioneered by Stanford, with students from Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, Columbia and others.Other things mentioned:VercelNextJSTurbo RepoCopilotNeovimEdge functionsSvelteKitMacBook Pro M1NotionSlackGitHubLet us know what you think on Twitter:https://twitter.com/consoledotdevhttps://twitter.com/davidmyttonhttps://twitter.com/rauchg Or by email: hello@console.devAbout ConsoleConsole is the place developers go to find the best tools. Our weekly newsletter picks out the most interesting tools and new releases. We keep track of everything - dev tools, devops, cloud, and APIs - so you don't have to. Sign up for free at: https://console.devRecorded: 2022-04-27.
Starting with Vercel CEO, Guillermo Rauch on 9th June 2022, in season 3 of the Console DevTools Podcast we'll be speaking to 10 interesting people currently working in devtools about a specific technical topic. Upcoming guests:Dev Infra, with Guillermo Rauch (Vercel)BPF, with Liz Rice (Isovalent)OSS & Investing, with Joseph Jacks (OSS Capital)Privacy Engineering, with Cate Huston (DuckDuckGo)Security & Software Supply Chain, with Feross Aboukhadijeh (Socket)Data science, with Ines Montani (Explosion)Containers & Tests, with Sergei Egorov (Atomic Jar)VR, with Elena Kokkinara (Inflight VR)WASM, with Connor Hicks (Suborbital)Engineering Leadership, with Meri Williams (LabGenius, LeadDev & Kindred)Join David for our first episode, on 9th June 2022. In the meantime, subscribe to the Console newsletter for weekly reviews of the best 2-3 devtools.Follow us on Twitter:https://twitter.com/consoledotdevhttps://twitter.com/davidmytton
Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO of Vercel, a cloud platform provider used to develop, preview, and ship frontend websites and applications using their Next.js open-source framework. Originally from Argentina, Guillermo taught himself JavaScript at just eleven years old and has developed multiple open-source libraries since then. He would go on to co-found LearnBoost and Cloudup, both of which were acquired by Automattic in 2013. Since the founding of Vercel in 2015, the company has already achieved Unicorn status, with GGV being a proud investor and having led a very successful $150M Series D round. Vercel now services more than 25,000 customers worldwide, including major companies like Uber and Facebook. In this episode, Guillermo talks about using open-source software to build communities and the importance of maintaining a developer-oriented approach. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Investor, Oren Yunger.
Guillermo Rauch is originally from Argentina. He has always been involved in the open source world, starting out working in Linux and native tooling. After a while, he feel in love with the web and the front end web system, working in the early days of AJAX, JS Animation and jQuery competition. When I asked him what he does for fun, he laughed - because he really enjoys what is does professionally on the web .On a personal level though, he has three kiddos so he stays pretty busu. He is into fitness, and does calisthenics and gymnastics. Beyond that, he is into coffee - though I don't know many tech people who aren't into coffee.Having been a JS person, he saw an opportunity to build out the frontend layer of the web. To put that in context, think about what Stripe, Twilio, etc. have done for the industry with their foundational, developer first API's. He decided to create a framework that had no opinion about how you got your data. Along side of this, he created the optimal ecosystem for developers to build very fast - specifically, to develop, preview, and ship.This is the creation story of Next.js and Vercel.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://vercel.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillermo-rauch-b834b917b/https://nextjs.org/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Guillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO, Vercel Guillermo is the Founder & CEO of Vercel, the company behind the open-source project Next.js. Next.js is a React framework used by frontend developers to build websites in a Jamstack format. Next.js has 79K stars on GitHub and a Discord community with over 33K members. Vercel has raised over $300M from GGV, Accel, Google Ventures, and Bedrock Capital. In this episode, we discuss Guillermo's extensive experience in open-source, early architectural decisions to set up for scale, what a great “developer experience” really means, creating a complex distributed system that appears simple from the user's perspective, Vercel's culture of excellence, and advice for open-source founders early in their journey.
Guillermo Rauch is originally from Argentina. He has always been involved in the open source world, starting out working in Linux and native tooling. After a while, he feel in love with the web and the front end web system, working in the early days of AJAX, JS Animation and jQuery competition. When I asked him what he does for fun, he laughed - because he really enjoys what is does professionally on the web .On a personal level though, he has three kiddos so he stays pretty busu. He is into fitness, and does calisthenics and gymnastics. Beyond that, he is into coffee - though I don't know many tech people who aren't into coffee.Having been a JS person, he saw an opportunity to build out the frontend layer of the web. To put that in context, think about what Stripe, Twilio, etc. have done for the industry with their foundational, developer first API's. He decided to create a framework that had no opinion about how you got your data. Along side of this, he created the optimal ecosystem for developers to build very fast - specifically, to develop, preview, and ship.This is the creation story of Next.js and Vercel.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://vercel.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillermo-rauch-b834b917b/https://nextjs.org/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Guillermo Rauch, founder of Vercel, shares his experience growing up in Argentina and how access to the Internet led him to the US. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.