2025-12-07 21:31:23
Edwin Chen is the founder and CEO of Surge AI, the company that teaches AI what’s good and bad, powering frontier labs with elite data, environments, and evaluations. Surge surpassed $1 billion in revenue with under 100 employees last year, completely bootstrapped—the fastest company in history to reach this milestone. Before founding Surge, Edwin was a research scientist at Google, Facebook, and Twitter and studied mathematics, computer science, and linguistics at MIT.
Listen on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
How Surge reached over $1 billion in revenue with fewer than 100 people by obsessing over quality
The story behind how Claude Code got so good at coding and writing
The problems with AI benchmarks and why they’re pushing AI in the wrong direction
How RL environments are the next frontier in AI training
Why Edwin believes we’re still a decade away from AGI
Why taste and human judgment shape which AI models become industry leaders
His contrarian approach to company building that rejects Silicon Valley’s “pivot and blitzscale” playbook
How AI models will become increasingly differentiated based on the values of the companies building them
Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.
WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs
Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace
• X: https://x.com/echen
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinzchen
• Surge’s blog: https://surgehq.ai/blog
• Surge: https://surgehq.ai
• Surge’s product page: https://surgehq.ai/products
• Claude Code: https://www.claude.com/product/claude-code
• Gemini 3: https://aistudio.google.com/models/gemini-3
• Sora: https://openai.com/sora
• Terrence Rohan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrencerohan
• Richard Sutton—Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/richard-sutton
• The Bitter Lesson: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
• Reinforcement learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning
• Grok: https://grok.com
• Warren Buffett on X: https://x.com/WarrenBuffett
• 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
• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
• Brian Armstrong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong
• Interstellar on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Interstellar-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/B00TU9UFTS
• Arrival on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Arrival-Amy-Adams/dp/B01M2C4NP8
• Travelers on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80105699
• Waymo: https://waymo.com
• Soda versus pop: https://flowingdata.com/2012/07/09/soda-versus-pop-on-twitter
• Stories of Your Life and Others: https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1101972122
• The Myth of Sisyphus: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Sisyphus-Vintage-International/dp/0525564454
• Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465086454
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
2025-12-07 01:01:25
👋 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of ✨ Community Wisdom ✨ a subscriber-only email, delivered every Saturday, highlighting the most helpful conversations in our members-only Slack community.
2025-12-04 21:32:07
Tomer Cohen is the longtime chief product officer at LinkedIn, where he’s pioneering the Full Stack Builder program, a radical new approach to product development that fully embraces what AI makes possible. Under his leadership, LinkedIn has scrapped its traditional Associate Product Manager program and replaced it with an Associate Product Builder program that teaches coding, design, and PM skills together. He’s also introduced a formal “Full Stack Builder” title and career ladder, enabling anyone from any function to take products from idea to launch. In this conversation, Tomer explains why product development has become too complex at most companies and how LinkedIn is building an AI-powered product team that can move faster, adapt more quickly, and do more with less.
Listen on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
How 70% of the skills needed for jobs will change by 2030
The broken traditional model: organizational bloat slows features to a six-month cycle
The Full Stack Builder model
Three pillars of making FSB work: platform, agents, and culture (culture matters most)
Building specialized agents that critique ideas and find vulnerabilities
Why off-the-shelf AI tools never work on enterprise code without customization
Top performers adopt AI tools fastest, contrary to expectations about leveling effects
Change management tactics: celebrating wins, making tools exclusive, updating performance reviews
Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.
Figma Make—A prompt-to-code tool for making ideas real
Miro—The AI Innovation Workspace where teams discover, plan, and ship breakthrough products
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomercohen
• Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-one-with-tomer-cohen/id1726672498
• How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-linkedin-became-interesting-tomer-cohen
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com
• Cursor: https://cursor.com
• 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
• Devin: https://devin.ai
• Figma: https://www.figma.com
• Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com
• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com
• 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
• Lovable: https://lovable.dev
• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika
• APB program at LinkedIn: https://careers.linkedin.com/pathways-programs/entry-level/apb
• Naval Ravikant on X: https://x.com/naval
• One Song podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93-one-song/id1201883177
• Song Exploder podcast: https://songexploder.net
• Grok on Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/support/grok
• Reid Hoffman on X: https://x.com/reidhoffman
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227
• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity: https://www.amazon.com/Outlive-Longevity-Peter-Attia-MD/dp/0593236599
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World: https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
2025-12-03 20:03:30
I put three cutting-edge AI models to the test in a head-to-head design competition. Using the exact same prompt, I challenged Google’s Gemini 3, Anthropic’s Opus 4.5, and OpenAI’s Codex 5.1 to redesign my blog page, evaluating them on visual design quality, user experience improvements, and SEO optimization capabilities. One model produced a beautiful, polished, production-ready redesign. One was fine. And one completely whiffed. If you’re trying to figure out where each model fits in your workflow—design, planning, back-end, or something else—this episode will save you a lot of trial and error.
How each AI model approaches the same design challenge differently
Why planning capabilities dramatically impact design quality
The specific visual and functional improvements each model made
Which model excels at front-end design versus back-end functionality
How to strategically choose the right AI model for different parts of your workflow
The importance of model-switching based on specific use cases
Blog design: https://www.chatprd.ai/blog
Listen or watch on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts
Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI
ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/
Website: https://clairevo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/
(00:00) Introduction to the AI design challenge
(01:25) The question: Which model is the better designer?
(03:08) The prompt used for all three models
(04:10) Gemini 3 Pro’s approach and results
(06:00) Opus 4.5’s approach and results
(10:54) Codex 5.1’s approach and disappointing results
(14:51) Comparing the three designs side by side
(16:03) Analyzing the change logs and SEO improvements from each model
(22:43) Final verdict
(23:00) Conclusion and next steps
• Gemini 3 Pro: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/
• Anthropic Opus 4.5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5
• OpenAI Codex 5.1: https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-5.1-codex
• Cursor: https://cursor.com/
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
2025-12-02 23:05:36
👋 Hey there, I’m Lenny. Each week, I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. For more: Lennybot | Lenny’s Podcast | How I AI | Lenny’s Reads | Fav AI/PM courses | Fav public speaking course
This Giving Tuesday, I’m partnering again with GiveDirectly and over two dozen other Substack writers to send cash to every family across three villages in rural Rwanda. If we’re successful, over 800 families in extreme poverty will each receive $1,100, no strings attached, to spend on what they need most. All donations today, December 2, 2025, will also be 1.5x matched (while funds last). Please donate 👇
I’m excited to welcome PostHog to the Lenny’s Newsletter Product Pass 🎉
All annual Lenny’s Newsletter subscribers now get one full year’s worth of PostHog Scale and 2x the free-tier credits, a $16,500 value. This deal is available to all annual subscribers, and brings the total value of the Product Pass to over $25,000. Simply absurd.
This is the first time PostHog has ever offered a deal like this, and you won’t find it anywhere else. Like all Product Pass deals, you must be a new PostHog customer to take advantage of the deal. See Product Pass terms here.
PostHog helps you build successful products by giving you literally every piece of SaaS that you need: analytics, experimentation, feature flags, session replay, error tracking, data warehouse, LLM analytics, surveys, and more—all in one platform. In the words of the founders, “We keep adding new capabilities at a pace that’s borderline unreasonable.”
The all-in-one platform strategy that PostHog is executing is really interesting to me. I rarely see it done this well, because it’s hard to do. But if you pull it off—like they are—you can build a generational business. Being able to follow an issue from a session recording, to its impact in analytics, to shipping a fix as a feature flag, to testing a variant, to collecting feedback with surveys—that’s the holy grail.
Side note: I stupidly had a chance to invest in PostHog early on and passed because I didn’t think this strategy would work 🤦. I’m just happy to get to work with them on this collaboration now.
Oh, they also just launched PostHog AI, which integrates with all of the products and lets you ask questions about your data, magically create dashboards, build surveys using natural language, summarize session replays, and more. More how-to videos here.
In addition to all the wonderful products PostHog offers, there’s so much to love about how the PostHog team operates:
Their website is 🤌
Their story is inspiring.
Their vibes are hilarious.
Their company blog is one of the most genuinely useful and high-signal-to-noise company blogs out there. A model for how to do content marketing. Some examples:
Over 300,000 companies use PostHog, including 65% of every YC batch, Lovable, Supabase, ElevenLabs, and even Y Combinator itself.
Twice the free credits gives you tons of room to scale (90% of their users never exceed their already-generous free tier), and the Scale add-on gives you all the features you need to grow: priority support, white labeling, unlimited projects, HIPAA BAA, SAML, SSO + advanced permissions, audit logs, extended session replay retention, and more. If you’re already a subscriber, redeem your free account here. Otherwise 👇
Increasingly, your Lenny’s Newsletter subscription is becoming your product builder’s starter pack: all the tools, guidance, and community you need to build, launch, and grow a world-class product (and career). For just $200-$350/year.
Have a fulfilling and productive week 🙏
If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, share it with a friend, and consider subscribing if you haven’t already. There are group discounts, gift options, and referral bonuses available.
Sincerely,
Lenny 👋
2025-12-02 00:03:01
Hey friends 👋,
Here’s a weekly recap of new podcast episodes across Lenny’s Podcast Network:
Every Monday, host Claire Vo shares a 30- to 45-minute episode with a new guest demoing a practical, impactful way they’ve learned to use AI in their work or life. No pontificating—just specific and actionable advice.
Brought to you by:
Google AI Product Lead Marily Nika breaks down the exact end-to-end AI workflow she uses to dramatically speed up her product development—from mining Reddit debates for user insights with Perplexity, to generating PRDs with custom GPTs, to building interactive prototypes with v0, and even creating stakeholder-ready product videos using Flow and Sora. Using a smart-fridge concept as the thread through it all, Marily shows how “tool hopping” across specialized AI apps creates a compounding effect that turns weeks of PM work into about 20 minutes.
Biggest takeaways:
Create “pro” and “against” AI agents to debate your product idea. Instead of getting biased, agreeable responses from AI, prompt it to create two agents with opposing viewpoints on your product. Have them debate for 20 rounds, then extract the minimum feature set needed to convince the skeptical agent. This technique uncovers potential objections and helps you find product-market fit faster.
“Tool hopping” an end-to-end AI product workflow. Marily’s process moves from Perplexity (market research) to custom GPTs (PRD generation) to v0 (prototyping) to Flow/Sora (video creation). Each tool’s output becomes the input for the next, creating a seamless workflow that transforms an idea into a complete product vision.
“PMs who use AI will replace those who don’t.” AI isn’t replacing product managers, but PMs who leverage AI tools will outperform those who don’t. The productivity gap between AI power-users and non-users is growing rapidly, making AI literacy essential for career advancement in product management.
▶️ Listen now on YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
More shows coming soon. . . 👀
If you’re enjoying these episodes, reply and let me know what you’d love to learn more about: AI workflows, hiring, growth, product strategy—anything.
Catch you next week,
Lenny
P.S. Want every new episode delivered the moment it drops? Hit “Follow” on your favorite podcast app.