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Benedict Evans is an independent analyst and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he spent years as their in-house “thinker” tracking the most important technology trends. For the past six years, he’s been publishing deeply researched presentations on where tech is heading, most recently focused on AI’s transformation of the economy. His work is read by founders, investors, and operators trying to make sense of a noisy field. His most controversial opinion: AI is as big a deal as the internet or mobile—and only as big.

In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:

1. Why we’re in “1997” for AI—early, exciting, and deeply uncertain about what comes next

2. Where value will actually accrue in the AI stack

3. The anti-AI backlash, and where it may lead

4. The surprising boom in consulting and professional services at AI companies

5. Why distribution is becoming the ultimate moat as software gets easier to build

6. Why the right question about your job isn’t “What percent can AI do?” but “Is this a task or a job?”

7. Why things will probably be okay—and what you need to do to prepare

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Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny

Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI: https://vanta.com/lenny

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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-rational-conversation-on-where

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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

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Where to find Benedict Evans:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans

• Newsletter: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter

• Website: https://www.ben-evans.com

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Benedict Evans

(02:19) What people aren’t pricing in about AI’s impact

(06:24) Why we’re in the 1997 moment of AI

(09:44) The unexpected boom in professional services and consultants

(17:44) Why distribution is becoming the ultimate moat

(23:17) The coming job transformation: what’s real vs. panic

(27:33) Why AGI definitions keep shifting

(38:11) Where value will accrue: models vs. applications

(42:55) Distribution wars: Google, Meta, Apple, and OpenAI

(48:12) The anti-AI sentiment and backlash

(53:11) How to raise kids in an AI future

(58:27) What jobs to steer toward or away from

(59:20) The question nobody’s asking about AI

(1:06:25) How to be successful in this coming future

(1:08:43) AI corner

(1:11:43) Lightning round

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Referenced: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-rational-conversation-on-where

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Mark Pincus founded Zynga—the company behind Words With Friends, FarmVille, and Zynga Poker—and has arguably created more hit consumer products than anyone in history. At Zynga, eight of 10 major game launches became massive hits, reaching over a billion players. Over the past five years, Mark has been synthesizing everything he’s learned about building successful consumer products and turning it into a book, Life at the Speed of Play, which comes out on June 23. This is the first interview he’s done about the book.

In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:

1. His “Proven, Better, New” framework: copy what’s proven, make it better so that 10 out of 10 people say “f*ck yes, I’ll use this”—then add something new

2. Why being less ambitious is the path to the most ambitious ideas

3. His rule of thumb that your instincts are right 95% of the time, but your ideas are wrong 75% of the time

4. “Kill hope before hope kills you”

5. How to raise kids in the age of AI

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Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more

Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI

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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-common-pattern-behind-successful

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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

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Where to find Mark Pincus:

• X: https://x.com/markpinc

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markpincus

• Website: https://www.lifeatthespeedofplay.com

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Mark Pincus

(02:46) The Proven Better New framework overview

(07:29) Earning the right to innovate

(08:30) What “better” really means

(12:03) Quick summary of the framework

(12:40) Examples of the framework in action

(13:30) How to use proven correctly on your platform

(15:13) The moral arbitrage of copying

(23:55) Be less ambitious

(28:25) The Bolt.new story and staying humble

(33:15) Kill hope before hope kills you

(37:00) Using AI as a failure machine

(40:08) Why Zynga’s games succeeded (it wasn’t virality)

(48:36) The future of consumer social apps

(57:05) How to know if your product is a B+

(1:01:25) Distribution in the age of AI

(1:15:39) Make everyone a CEO

(1:18:18) Stay close to the metal

(1:21:35) Why Mark says micromanagement is beautiful

(1:23:35) The expert witness

(1:25:05) The number one job of a CEO is to be right

(1:26:35) What Mark is teaching his five kids

(1:35:14) Mark’s “why”

(1:37:08) Mark’s new book: Life at The Speed of Play

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Referenced:

• Tribe.net: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe.net

• Zynga: https://www.zynga.com

• Sid Meier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier

• Electronic Arts: https://www.ea.com

• CityVille: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityVille

• Words With Friends: https://wordswithfriends.com/

• Scrabble: https://playscrabble.com

• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com

• TED Radio Hour, MIT Media Lab founder, 1984 TED talk.: https://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_5_predictions_from_1984

• Peter Thiel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterthiel

• FarmVille: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille

• Craig Newmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Newmark

• How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps (co-founder of TBH, Gas, advisor, investor): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-consistently-go-viral-nikita-bier

• Angry Birds: https://www.angrybirds.com/

• OMGPop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMGPop

• Draw Something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_Something

• Slack founder: Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/slack-founder-stewart-butterfield

• Brian Chesky’s new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach

• Garry Tan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrytan

• Brian Armstrong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong

• Jason Citron on X: https://x.com/jasoncitron

• Stanislav Vishnevskiy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svishnevskiy

• Jeff Bezos on X: https://x.com/JeffBezos

• Andy Jassy on X: https://x.com/ajassy

• Niantic: https://nianticlabs.com

• Pokémon Go: https://pokemongo.com

• Bing Gordon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/binggordon

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Recommended book:

• Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love!: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Speed-Play-Launch-Products/dp/0063352575/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Fiona Fung leads the teams behind Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic (overseeing Boris Cherny and the entire engineering and PM team). Before Anthropic, she spent 11 years at Microsoft building Visual Studio and TypeScript and then moved to Meta, where she started Facebook Marketplace (now generating over $100 billion in GMV annually), worked on Meta’s first smart glasses and AR glasses, and led infrastructure, growth, integrity, and safety teams at Instagram. She’s been an engineer for over 25 years and has a unique perspective on how the role of building software is changing.

In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:

1. What she’s learned about running a team that’s shipping 8x more code than before

2. Which roles AI will transform next

3. Specific ways her team uses AI

4. How Claude “routines” have changed how she operates as a manager

5. The context-switching problem no one has solved yet

6. The biggest unsolved problem in AI

7. What keeps her up at night

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Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny

Mercury—Radically different banking, now with Command: https://mercury.com/

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Where to find Fiona Fung:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fionafung

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Fiona Fung

(02:31) How the engineering role has transformed over 25 years

(09:28) What an AI-pilled software team looks like in 2026

(12:26) Using Claude to manage and review team output

(14:40) The evolution of code review and verification

(16:55) Who to hire: creative builders and deep systems experts

(18:18) The shift to ambitious thinking

(19:40) The growth mindset required to thrive in AI-native teams

(25:52) Helping small businesses adopt AI tools

(31:46) How Anthropic spots latent demand and builds for it

(35:08) The next frontier: asynchronous work with AI routines

(38:06) Agency and accountability in AI-native teams

(39:40) The vibe shift from token-maxing to ROI measurement

(44:24) The “bad vs. sad” quality framework

(49:34) Why all managers start as ICs at Anthropic

(55:24) Preventing skill atrophy

(58:43) Managing context switching with 20 AI agents running

(1:00:08) How PM and data science roles are transforming

(1:03:40) The importance of dogfooding and using your own product

(1:08:36) Outstanding questions

(1:12:48) The future of engineering jobs and education

(1:17:59) What keeps Fiona up at night: team culture at scale

(1:22:53) From six-month roadmaps to JIT (just-in-time) monthly planning

(1:27:03) Lightning round

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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-the-most-ai-pilled-engineering

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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.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It is considered one of the best books of all time on negotiation. Instead of focusing on economic theory or game theory, it focuses on practical techniques and psychological insight. Voss uses anecdotes from his career as an international hostage negotiator for the FBI to enliven the narrative while alternating with everyday business negotiation scenarios. We are thrilled to be joined by author Chris Voss to discuss his book.

Follow us on Twitter @BusinessBooksCo and join our Amazon book club.

Edited by Giacomo Guatteri

Find out more at https://businessbooksandco.com

Today’s episode

There are hundreds of guides on writing PRDs with Claude. Dozens on running user interviews. Almost nothing on how a VP of product actually uses it.

Matt Wensing is VP of Product and Design at Customer.io. They crossed $100M ARR, just shipped an AI agent, and are one of the fastest growing companies in B2B SaaS right now. I asked him to show me his actual documents, his actual Slack threads, and the exact sessions where Claude helped him produce leadership grade output.

What he showed me changed how I think about AI for leaders. Claude has the instincts of a brilliant new hire, it wants to deliver before it fully understands what you need, and at the VP level that gap shows up fast. Matt has spent months figuring out how to manage it, and in this episode he shows you everything.

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Brought to you by:

LogRocket - Find the bugs killing your conversion before your users do. I ran a head-to-head eval to see if that's true.

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If you want access to my AI tool stack - Dovetail, Arize, Linear, Descript, Reforge Build, Relay.app, Magic Patterns, Speechify, Bolt.new and Mobbin - become an annual subscriber ($150), and grab Aakash’s bundle.

If you want access to my AI PM customizations - PM OS, Job Search OS, and Prompt Library - become a founding subscriber ($250).

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Key Takeaways:

1. Take inventory before you open Claude - Before building anything, list every piece of raw material you already have. Zoom recordings, strategy docs, past presentations. The quality of what you feed Claude determines the quality of what comes out.2. Pivot content, do not write from scratch - Claude's best use case is transformation, not creation. Give it two inputs and ask it to reorganize one into the shape of the other. Matt calls this matrix multiplication.3. Build slides first - Build the visual story first. Screenshot the finished slides and feed them back into the same Claude session. Ask it to write a talk track that adds depth using all the context it already has, not one that just repeats the slide.4. Kill eager suggestions immediately - The moment Claude asks if you want it to generate the next thing, say stop. You control the pace. A 200-iteration session with a great deliverable beats saying yes to the first draft every time.5. Start sessions in the abstract - If you reveal the domain too early, Claude pattern matches to the nearest template. Keep it abstract. Build a clean mental model first. Reveal the domain only when the framework holds up on its own.6. Layer complexity in slowly - Start with the simplest version of the framework. Let Claude stabilize on the basics before you add exceptions. Dumping everything in at once produces a lost in the woods experience for both of you.7. AI alignment decks always backfire - When you one-shot an alignment deck, you flatten the problem. Senior executives have spent months living with the real complexity. They feel the thinness immediately, even when they cannot say why.8. Decompose the problem before building anything - Challenge yourself to explode a nasty problem into all its pieces before you touch Claude. Put those observations into the context window first. Then assemble the solution.9. The Slack scanner keeps leaders close to the ground - Customer.io built an AI scanner that monitors dozens of Slack channels and surfaces threads where a product person should be involved. It runs continuously without overwhelming. 10. Chiefys audits your strategy docs automatically - Chiefys is a Slack bot that holds Customer.io's ratified company documents and checks new work against all of them. It flags contradictions and stale documents so nothing goes invisible after you ship something new.

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Related content

Podcasts

PM’s Guide to Claude - YouTube | Spotify | Apple

How to Become a Builder PM - YouTube | Spotify | Apple

We Built an AI Product Manager in 58 mins - YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Newsletters

How to Use Claude for Work

How to Build Product Strategy with Claude Code

The PM OS

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Where to find Matthew Wensing:

1:1 Video Consultation: https://intro.co/MattWensing

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wensing/

X: https://x.com/mattwensing

Where to find Aakash:

X: https://x.com/aakashgupta

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/

Newsletter: https://www.news.aakashg.com

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PS. Please subscribe on YouTube and follow on Apple & Spotify. It helps!

If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp at gmail.

Rod Johnson — the creator of Spring Framework and founder of Embabel — joins Simon Maple on the AI Native Dev Podcast to share his unfiltered take on where enterprise AI is actually heading.

In this episode, Rod breaks down why enterprises are making a huge mistake rewriting Java apps in Python, why vibe coding will destroy your codebase if left unchecked, and why this might be the last generation of frameworks that developers ever choose for themselves.

Rod also pulls back the curtain on Embabel — the new JVM-native agentic framework he's building — including how it borrows its planning algorithm from NPC AI in video games, why he's skeptical of MCP despite its hype, and the AI failure pattern he keeps seeing in large enterprises.

Whether you're a Java developer navigating the AI wave or a tech lead trying to figure out where to actually invest, this is essential listening.

Topics covered:
0:00 Intro — Rod Johnson, Spring creator, returns to building
5:16 PhD in 19th century Parisian piano music (yes, really)
6:15 What made Rod come back and build Embabel
7:36 "The universe would end before Python could execute inference"
13:08 The #1 enterprise AI failure pattern Rod keeps seeing
16:23 "You cannot vibe code serious software"
19:37 Why Embabel uses a video game NPC planning algorithm
27:47 Why Rod is an MCP skeptic
53:54 "This is the last wave of frameworks chosen by people"

Links:
🔗 Embabel: https://embabel.com

🎟 AI Native Dev London (June 1–2): https://ainativedev.io — use code POD30 for 30% off.

Subscribe for weekly conversations with the engineers and founders building the future of AI-native development.

Charity Majors spent a year telling engineers they needed to learn to code to stay relevant. Then, in about three months, that advice became obsolete. In this conversation, she talks about why engineers who built careers on beautiful, readable code are struggling more than anyone else, why junior developers might have a hidden advantage right now, and what it means that nobody has a headstart anymore. Everybody’s ignorance has been reset to 100.

This season of Still Burning is brought to you in partnership with WorkOS and Augment Code.

Angie Jones spent years as the "geek whisperer" — translating technical possibility into human progress. Then she led one of the most ambitious AI adoption programs in the industry, and the rug got pulled out. Now at the Agentic AI Foundation, she's working to make sure the standards powering the next era of software are built in the open, by everyone. Kent and Angie dig into the impossible bargain AI has handed engineers, what it really means to hire junior developers right now, and what scares her most about where we're all headed.

This season of Still Burning is sponsored by WorkOS and Augment Code.

Michael Grinich has an unusual vantage point, his company powers enterprise infrastructure for hundreds of companies, so he sees how the AI transition is actually playing out across the industry, not just in the headlines.What he's noticing: the whole ecosystem is accelerating, not just the AI companies. And most people are misreading what kind of moment this is. Kent and Michael talk about building when the marginal cost of software approaches zero, what the Red Queen theory tells us about AI competition, how engineering leadership is quietly changing, and what drew Michael to the itchy-brained compulsion to make things in the first place.

This season of Still Burning is sponsored by WorkOS and Augment Code.

Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the Oxide mechanical engineering team to talk the mechanical challenges of building a rack-scale computer, and--in particular--of scaling manufacturing from just a few racks to hundreds. NOTE: Keep an eye on the chapter art for the pictures under discussion.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide Colleagues Elliott Donlon, Brooks Willis, Doug Wibben, and Ben Williams.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Topic
• [@M:SS](link into recording) Leventhal's Conundrum
• PRs needed!

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!