Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth Audio Download

Cat Wu is Head of Product for Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic, building one of the most important AI products of this generation. Before joining Anthropic, Cat spent years as an engineer and briefly worked in VC. Today, she’s interviewing hundreds of product managers who are trying to break into AI—and seeing firsthand what separates those who thrive from those who fall behind. We discuss: 1. How Anthropic’s shipping cadence went from months to weeks to days 2. The emerging skills PMs need to develop right now 3. Why you need to build products that don’t yet fully work, so you’re ready when the next model closes the gap 4. Cat’s most underrated AI skill: asking the model to introspect on its own mistakes 5. Why Claude’s personality is core to its success 6. Why Anthropic’s mission alignment eliminates the friction that slows most large organizations 7. Why “just do things” is the most important principle for working at AI-native companies — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-half-of-product-managers-are-in-trouble — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Cat Wu: • X: https://x.com/_catwu • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cat-wu • Newsletter: https://catwu.substack.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 Cat Wu (01:29) Working with Boris Cherny (04:29) What Anthropic looks for when hiring PMs (06:18) How to help your teams move fast (08:58) How PRDs and roadmaps have evolved at Anthropic (10:28) The Mythos model and Anthropic’s shipping velocity (11:54) What happened with the Claude Code source code leak (12:53) Integrating with OpenClaw (14:19) How the PM team is structured at Anthropic (15:42) How engineer and PM roles are merging (17:54) Why product taste is the most valuable skill (20:10) Where human brains will continue to be useful (22:23) How to stay sane in constant chaos (24:16) What gets sacrificed when you ship so fast (27:47) The /powerup command (28:32) Why Anthropic has been so successful (32:28) When to use Claude Code vs. Desktop vs. Cowork (35:58) Tips for getting started with Cowork (38:44) Demo: Using Cowork to build slide decks overnight (41:48) Cat’s PM tech stack and internal tools (46:47) Which teams use the most tokens (51:15) The emerging skills PMs need for AI companies (55:00) Why building evals is underappreciated (58:44) Why Claude’s character and personality matter so much (1:00:44) How new models force product changes (1:05:11) The vision for Claude Code and Cowork (1:07:22) Advice for thriving in an AI-driven world (1:09:18) Why 95% automation isn’t good enough (1:11:58) Build apps you use every day, not prototypes (1:13:41) The divide between AI skeptics and believers (1:15:19) Lightning round — Referenced: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-anthropics-product-team-moves — 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. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Cat Wu is Head of Product for Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic, building one of the most important AI products of this generation. Before joining Anthropic, Cat spent years as an engineer and briefly worked in VC. Today, she’s interviewing hundreds of product managers who are trying to break into AI—and seeing firsthand what separates those who thrive from those who fall behind. We discuss: 1. How Anthropic’s shipping cadence went from months to weeks to days 2. The emerging skills PMs need to develop right now 3. Why you need to build products that don’t yet fully work, so you’re ready when the next model closes the gap 4. Cat’s most underrated AI skill: asking the model to introspect on its own mistakes 5. Why Claude’s personality is core to its success 6. Why Anthropic’s mission alignment eliminates the friction that slows most large organizations 7. Why “just do things” is the most important principle for working at AI-native companies — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-half-of-product-managers-are-in-trouble — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Cat Wu: • X: https://x.com/_catwu • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cat-wu • Newsletter: https://catwu.substack.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 Cat Wu (01:29) Working with Boris Cherny (04:29) What Anthropic looks for when hiring PMs (06:18) How to help your teams move fast (08:58) How PRDs and roadmaps have evolved at Anthropic (10:28) The Mythos model and Anthropic’s shipping velocity (11:54) What happened with the Claude Code source code leak (12:53) Integrating with OpenClaw (14:19) How the PM team is structured at Anthropic (15:42) How engineer and PM roles are merging (17:54) Why product taste is the most valuable skill (20:10) Where human brains will continue to be useful (22:23) How to stay sane in constant chaos (24:16) What gets sacrificed when you ship so fast (27:47) The /powerup command (28:32) Why Anthropic has been so successful (32:28) When to use Claude Code vs. Desktop vs. Cowork (35:58) Tips for getting started with Cowork (38:44) Demo: Using Cowork to build slide decks overnight (41:48) Cat’s PM tech stack and internal tools (46:47) Which teams use the most tokens (51:15) The emerging skills PMs need for AI companies (55:00) Why building evals is underappreciated (58:44) Why Claude’s character and personality matter so much (1:00:44) How new models force product changes (1:05:11) The vision for Claude Code and Cowork (1:07:22) Advice for thriving in an AI-driven world (1:09:18) Why 95% automation isn’t good enough (1:11:58) Build apps you use every day, not prototypes (1:13:41) The divide between AI skeptics and believers (1:15:19) Lightning round — Referenced: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-anthropics-product-team-moves — 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. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Amol Avasare is Head of Growth at Anthropic, which is going through the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history—scaling from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in just 14 months. Previously, Amol worked on the growth teams at Mercury and MasterClass. Before that he was a founder, and he cold emailed his way into the Anthropic role when no job listing existed. Most remarkably, he overcame a traumatic brain injury from a Muay Thai match that meant he couldn't work for nearly a year. In our in-depth discussion, Amol shares: 1. How Amol landed his role by cold emailing Anthropic’s CPO Mike Krieger 2. How Anthropic is automating growth experiments with Claude (their internal tool called “CASH”) 3. Why the ratio of PMs to engineers might need to flip (more PMs than engineers) as AI makes engineers exponentially more productive 4. Why activation is the single highest-leverage growth problem in AI 5. Why Anthropic indexes 70/30 toward big bets (the opposite of most growth teams) 6. How he uses Cowork to detect team misalignment in Slack 7. How the company’s focus on AI coding created a research flywheel that accelerated their models — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Amol Avasare: • X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare — 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 Amol and Anthropic’s growth (03:15) The story of cold emailing Mike Krieger to get the job (08:28) What it’s like leading growth at the fastest-growing company ever (10:46) What the growth team actually does at Anthropic (12:16) The concept of “success disasters” (13:55) Why activation is the biggest challenge in AI products (18:05) Improving Mercury’s onboarding experience (20:57) The importance of adding the right kind of friction (25:10) Anthropic’s org structure (27:06) Why Anthropic focuses on big bets over micro-optimizations (33:34) Automating growth experiments with Claude (CASH) (38:20) How AI is starting to identify what experiments to run (41:07) The future of PM, engineering, and design roles (47:19) Why you might need more PMs as engineers get more productive (51:13) How Amol uses AI to prototype ideas and skip PRDs (58:10) Amol’s morning routine: AI analyzes 20 to 25 charts automatically (1:03:31) Getting coaching from an AI version of your manager (1:06:27) How Anthropic’s focus on coding and B2B drove their success (1:12:10) Balancing growth with AI safety as a core mission (1:18:09) Advice for thriving in an AI-first future (1:22:53) Anthropic’s culture and the “notebook channels” on Slack (1:35:12) Failure corner: Shutting down his startup after raising money (1:38:25) The traumatic brain injury that changed everything (1:46:49) Lightning round — References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run — 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. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Amol Avasare is Head of Growth at Anthropic, which is going through the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history—scaling from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in just 14 months. Previously, Amol worked on the growth teams at Mercury and MasterClass. Before that he was a founder, and he cold emailed his way into the Anthropic role when no job listing existed. Most remarkably, he overcame a traumatic brain injury from a Muay Thai match that meant he couldn't work for nearly a year. In our in-depth discussion, Amol shares: 1. How Amol landed his role by cold emailing Anthropic’s CPO Mike Krieger 2. How Anthropic is automating growth experiments with Claude (their internal tool called “CASH”) 3. Why the ratio of PMs to engineers might need to flip (more PMs than engineers) as AI makes engineers exponentially more productive 4. Why activation is the single highest-leverage growth problem in AI 5. Why Anthropic indexes 70/30 toward big bets (the opposite of most growth teams) 6. How he uses Cowork to detect team misalignment in Slack 7. How the company’s focus on AI coding created a research flywheel that accelerated their models — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Amol Avasare: • X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare — 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 Amol and Anthropic’s growth (03:15) The story of cold emailing Mike Krieger to get the job (08:28) What it’s like leading growth at the fastest-growing company ever (10:46) What the growth team actually does at Anthropic (12:16) The concept of “success disasters” (13:55) Why activation is the biggest challenge in AI products (18:05) Improving Mercury’s onboarding experience (20:57) The importance of adding the right kind of friction (25:10) Anthropic’s org structure (27:06) Why Anthropic focuses on big bets over micro-optimizations (33:34) Automating growth experiments with Claude (CASH) (38:20) How AI is starting to identify what experiments to run (41:07) The future of PM, engineering, and design roles (47:19) Why you might need more PMs as engineers get more productive (51:13) How Amol uses AI to prototype ideas and skip PRDs (58:10) Amol’s morning routine: AI analyzes 20 to 25 charts automatically (1:03:31) Getting coaching from an AI version of your manager (1:06:27) How Anthropic’s focus on coding and B2B drove their success (1:12:10) Balancing growth with AI safety as a core mission (1:18:09) Advice for thriving in an AI-first future (1:22:53) Anthropic’s culture and the “notebook channels” on Slack (1:35:12) Failure corner: Shutting down his startup after raising money (1:38:25) The traumatic brain injury that changed everything (1:46:49) Lightning round — References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run — 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. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com