Building One with Tomer Cohen

What if you could build breakthrough companies systematically?

In this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen sits down with Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the company-building platform behind more than 100 companies, including Moderna.

Noubar has spent nearly four decades building at the edge of science. His approach starts with a deceptively simple question: “What if?”

At Flagship, teams explore roughly 100 of these questions each year. The most promising become proto-companies, which are then actively stress-tested — and sometimes killed — before becoming full-fledged companies.

It’s a radically different approach to innovation: don’t start with what already exists and incrementally improve it. Move beyond the boundaries of what we know and work backwards from what might be possible.

Tomer and Noubar discuss:

• How Flagship developed a repeatable system for creating companies from scratch
• Why the most interesting opportunities can exist beyond the edge of expertise
• Noubar’s philosophy of “paranoid optimism” and “urgency-oriented patience”
• Why Flagship prototypes companies, not just products
• How a “what if” question eventually led to Moderna
• Why platforms can become product-generation engines
• How little we still understand about the human body — and why drug development remains so difficult
• Why Noubar believes AI could fundamentally transform the process of scientific discovery
• His idea of “polyintelligence” — bringing together human, machine, and nature’s intelligence
• Why breakthrough innovation is about “taking the fiction out of science fiction”

It’s a conversation about science, company building, AI, and what it takes to pursue ideas that initially sound unreasonable.

Listen to the full episode of Building One with Noubar Afeyan.

Netflix feels remarkably simple.

Open the app. Find something to watch. Press play.

But creating that experience is anything but simple.

On this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen sits down with Elizabeth Stone, Netflix's Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer, to explore how one of the world's most iconic consumer products continues to evolve while staying remarkably intuitive.

Netflix is no longer just movies and TV. It's live events, games, podcasts, mobile experiences, and AI-powered personalization. Elizabeth shares how Netflix is expanding into entirely new forms of entertainment—without making the product feel more complicated for its members.

Before joining Netflix, Elizabeth built products across healthcare, transportation, and finance. That unique perspective shapes how she thinks about product strategy, organizational design, and solving complex problems at scale.

In this episode, Tomer and Elizabeth discuss:

Whether you're building consumer products, leading cross-functional teams, or thinking about the future of AI and entertainment, this conversation offers a rare look inside the product philosophy behind one of the world's most influential technology companies.

Some builders don't just create breakthrough products.

They create entirely new ways of thinking about how innovation happens.

In this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen sits down with Astro Teller, Co-founder and Captain of Moonshots at X, Google's legendary moonshot factory.

Astro has helped build one of the world's most remarkable innovation engines—an organization responsible for projects like Waymo, Google Brain, Wing, Taara, Google Glass, Loon, and many more.

But this conversation isn't just about ambitious technology.

It's about building a system that makes ambitious technology more likely.

At X, innovation isn't treated as inspiration or creative genius. It's treated as a discipline. Teams are rewarded for disproving their own ideas, attacking the hardest assumptions first, and learning faster than everyone else. Success isn't measured by how long a project survives—but by how quickly you discover whether it deserves to.

In this episode, Tomer and Astro discuss:

If you've ever wondered why some organizations consistently produce world-changing products while others struggle to innovate, this conversation offers one of the clearest frameworks you'll hear.

It's a masterclass on building not just products—but the systems that build products.

What happens when AI enters a world where being wrong isn’t an inconvenience — it’s a liability?

In this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen sits down with Gabe Pereyra, co-founder of Harvey, to explore what it actually takes to build AI for one of the most complex and high-stakes industries in the world: legal.

Harvey works with leading law firms and enterprises to draft, analyze, and reason through complex legal work — contracts, filings, cases, and internal workflows where precision, accountability, and trust are non-negotiable.

On paper, legal is a perfect domain for AI.
It’s language-heavy. Logic-heavy. High value.

In reality, it’s one of the hardest.

Every word matters.
Every output has consequences.
And “almost right” doesn’t count.

In this conversation, Tomer and Gabe discuss:

Gabe also shares his journey from aspiring professional soccer player to finance, AI research, and eventually co-founding Harvey — along with the contrarian thinking that led him to bet early on the future of AI.

This episode is about what it takes to move AI from impressive demos into real-world systems — where the stakes are high, trust is fragile, and the tolerance for error is near zero.

Every builder’s journey is non-linear.

What looks like a straight path in hindsight is often shaped by setbacks, pivots, and unexpected opportunities along the way.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen sits down with Guy Raz — creator and host of How I Built This — to explore what he’s learned from interviewing hundreds of founders, and from building his own media company.

Before becoming one of the most recognizable voices in podcasting, Guy was a journalist and foreign correspondent — covering wars, filing stories on deadline, and learning how to operate with urgency and resourcefulness.

That experience shaped his approach to building: prioritize progress over perfection, and improve through repetition.

In this conversation, Tomer and Guy discuss:

Guy also shares how he thinks about value creation — and why the best builders aim to create an experience where the user feels they received more than they gave.

This episode is about craft, resilience, and the human side of building.

Because in the end, the goal isn’t just to build products.

It’s to build belief.

There’s a moment every builder remembers.

You type a few lines of code.
The computer responds.
And suddenly you realize: I can build things.

For decades, that moment was reserved for a small group of people who knew how to code. Turning an idea into working software required technical expertise, time, and often a full engineering team.

AI is changing that equation.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen speaks with Anton Osika, co-founder and CEO of Lovable — a company building tools designed to dramatically reduce the friction between having an idea and turning it into working software.

Lovable allows people to describe what they want to build and generate functional applications far faster than before. But Anton’s ambition goes beyond helping developers move faster. His vision is to expand who gets to build in the first place.

From founders launching companies without technical co-founders to teams inside enterprises building their own internal tools, Anton believes AI is transforming software from a specialized craft into a much more accessible economic tool.

Tomer and Anton discuss:

This conversation explores what happens when the barriers to building start to fall — and what it means for the future of entrepreneurship and product creation.

Because when building becomes easier, something bigger happens:

More builders.

What if the biggest problem in healthcare isn’t diagnosis — it’s capacity?

On this episode of Building One, Tomer Cohen sits down with Dr. Thomas Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Heidi, to unpack what it actually takes to build AI for one of the most complex, regulated, and human industries in the world.

Before starting Heidi, Tom was a vascular surgeon. He saw firsthand how some of the most highly trained people on the planet were spending their days on low-value administrative work.

Heidi began by listening to real patient visits and drafting clinical notes. Today, it’s expanding into the vast — and invisible — work around care: follow-ups, calls, scheduling, and coordination.

In this conversation, we explore:

Everyone talks about AI’s potential.

This episode is about delivering it — in the real world, where trust is fragile, stakes are high, and a 5% edit can break the magic.

Some products don’t just succeed — they shape culture. The Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster didn’t merely define new sounds; they became creative tools that generations of musicians built their identities around. Stewarding products with that kind of legacy requires a rare balance of respect for the past and clarity about the future.

Few leaders understand that balance better than Justin Norvell, President of Americas at Fender. As the company continues to evolve, Justin helps guide one of the most influential names in music through changing expectations — where musicians want not just great instruments, but better ways to learn, create, and stay connected to their craft.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen sits down with Justin Norvell to explore how iconic products endure, how product thinking applies far beyond software, and why deeply understanding your users is the throughline of great product leadership.

Tomer and Justin discuss:

This conversation is for builders working inside established companies, leaders navigating transformation, and anyone interested in how enduring products are built — whether they live in code, hardware, or culture.

Follow & learn more:

Follow Tomer Cohen on LinkedIn and check out his newsletter, Building LinkedIn

Follow Justin Norvell on LinkedIn

Breakout products rarely hinge on a single moment of luck. They’re shaped by countless decisions — what to prioritize, what to cut, and how deeply you understand the people you’re building for. Few builders have navigated those decisions at the scale of Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and now Chief Product Officer at Anthropic.

Instagram reshaped how billions communicate visually. Today, Mike is helping redefine how we interact with technology again — this time through one of the world’s leading AI assistants. At first glance, building a global social network and building Claude might seem worlds apart. In practice, the parallels run deep.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen talks with Mike about scaling, knowing when to pivot, and why the rise of AI is transforming the craft of product-building.

Tomer and Mike discuss:

This conversation is for anyone building products, leading teams, or shaping AI-powered experiences — and for every builder who believes that great products come from clarity, intuition, and the willingness to evolve.

Follow ⁠Tomer Cohen⁠ on LinkedIn and check out his newsletter, ⁠Building LinkedIn⁠.

Follow Mike Krieger on Linkedin.

When product teams talk about “a single source of truth,” they’re usually describing an aspiration — a kind of digital nirvana where everyone works from the same context. In engineering, that problem was solved years ago. In design, it took a fundamental mindset shift.

Few people understand that shift better than Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma. When Figma launched in 2012, the idea of multiple people editing the same file, watching every keystroke in real time, felt radical. Today, Figma is used by more than 95% of the Fortune 500, powering collaboration across designers, engineers, and product teams worldwide.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen talks with Yuhki about what it takes to build products for builders and what he’s learned from his product roles at Microsoft, Google, and Uber.

Tomer and Yuhki discuss:

This conversation is for anyone building products, leading teams, or shaping tools, and for every builder who believes clarity and collaboration are the real drivers of great work.

Follow Yuhki Yamashita on LinkedIn.

Follow Tomer Cohen on LinkedIn and check out his newsletter, Building LinkedIn.