The AI landscape is shifting every week. Startups are racing to challenge the status quo, and investors are closely watching the space. 

Peter Deng, a visionary product leader turned investor, joins the podcast. Peter helped shape Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and ChatGPT, driving major launches like ChatGPT Enterprise, voice, and memory at OpenAI. 

He is now a General Partner at Felicis, where he backs founders building AI-native companies. In this episode, Peter shares how investors evaluate AI startups today, what separates lasting businesses from surface-level integrations, and what founders must rethink to build companies that hold up over time.

Cam's notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

Key Quotes

“There are so many people solving problems that have been solved before, but with old technology, and now they’re solving them with AI in a way that’s ten, a hundred times better.”

“There are a lot of problems that these big model companies are not solving, and that’s where startups are doing really, really well.”

“AI has to be core to the product. Otherwise it’s just not interesting.”

Timestamps

01:12 The Prompt Challenge

01:51 Building a Childhood Boat

03:56 Cultural Differences at Meta and OpenAI

05:45 Joining OpenAI After Launch

08:01 Shipping Products at Lightning Speed

08:39 Using AI as a Thought Partner

10:24 Making AI More Human

11:33 Design Principles and Affordances

13:20 Creative Friction with AI

16:06 The Model is the Product

18:29 OpenAI's Expanding Ecosystem

20:58 AI Native Startups

23:44 Advice for AI Founders

24:53 Foundational Models vs Products

27:02 Social Media Meets AI

29:59 Using ChatGPT Daily

32:36 Advice for AI Founders

35:27 AI and Human Creativity

39:27 The Future of Work

42:41 AI in Ten Years

44:24 All Star Creative Team

47:12 Designer Reveal

50:31 Closing Thoughts

Links

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/

Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/

Peter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterxdeng/ 

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Allie K. Miller has a rare superpower: she makes the cutting edge of AI feel clear, practical, and genuinely fun. Recently named to TIME’s list of the most influential people in AI, Allie has become one of the internet’s most trusted guides—breaking down new models, tools, and workflows for millions, from curious beginners to seasoned builders. In this episode, she joins Cameron Adams to unpack what’s coming next: agentic browsers, “AI-first” reinvention, and why productivity alone can be a trap. Along the way, she shares a simple prompt structure that unlocks better outputs, how to turn fear into agency, and why creativity is often the fastest on-ramp to adoption. Plus: a delightfully weird prediction about how we’ll perceive the world.

Cam's notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

Key Quotes

"If they just keep their current workflows in three years, they'll be completely behind the ball."

"There is a world in which, with some sort of brain computer interface or new sort of AR overlay to the world, we could see things that are completely imperceptible to humans today."

"Productivity is a trap. AI can enable you to do better work and it can enable you to do new work that you weren't able to do before."

Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction
01:45 - The Prompt
04:07 - Creative All Hands
13:39 - Use AI to simulate future scenarios when convincing teams to change.
15:30 - Let small teams move ahead instead of waiting for company-wide adoption.
17:37 - Use AI to enable work that was previously impractical to do manually.
20:23 - Use creative AI tasks as an entry point before work use cases.
23:32 - Encourage skeptics to try AI even if they expect to dislike it.
24:40 - Ask permission before introducing AI into group conversations.
26:21 - Try this prompt structure: who you are, your objective, then context.
28:07 - Add goals, fears, constraints, and resources to improve AI responses.
31:29 - Photograph handwritten notes or post-its and upload them as AI context.
43:29 - Use AI to analyze patterns across multiple past conversations.
52:10 - Turn one detailed input into multiple formats like decks or videos.
1:01:08 - Design Reveal
1:02:48 - Key Takeaways

Links

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/

Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/

Allie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alliekmiller/

Link to Allie, Tisha and AI’s Creative Collaboration: https://promptedpodcast.com/episode-9

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Natalie Piucco, Field CTO at Google Cloud, joins Cameron Adams for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, innovation, and what it really takes to lead through constant change. From her childhood on a banana farm to launching AI-powered products at Google, Natalie shares how creativity, trust, and learning shape high-performing teams.

They explore why AI is a fundamentally creative technology, how psychological safety unlocks faster learning, and why we shouldn’t wait to “feel ready” before exploring what problems we can solve with AI. Natalie also unpacks the art of the possible, from creative simulation and education to agentic AI, and explains why the future belongs to high-agency creative generalists. 

“AI can’t hold the brush, but it can inspire the strokes.”

“The future belongs to high-agency creative generalists who can turn vague ideas into momentum.”

00:00 - Introduction

01:31 - The Prompt

03:47 - Creative All Hands

07:09 - Create psychological safety so your team can admit what they don't know.

08:25 - Train everyone in Design Thinking. It's low cost and unlocks creativity.

12:09 - Use NotebookLM to turn long documents into podcasts you can learn from.

13:49 - AI is an adult-permission slip to do things differently.

17:55 - Add an AI meeting assistant to every call so you can focus on people.

19:45 - Before doing any task, pause and ask: could AI do this?

24:11 - Define where risk-taking lives in your company. Creativity requires it.

25:25 - Don't just adopt AI tools. Help people build mental models for using them.

28:00 - Use the Progress Principle: count testing, feedback, and killing ideas as wins.

32:09 - Look for AI opportunities in boring, repetitive work like tax or compliance.

37:00 - Start your AI experiments with a clear challenge and the metrics associated with that.

38:07 - Price every problem. What does it cost in money, time, or customers?

40:46 - Use the Moonshot Framework: huge problem, radical solution, breakthrough tech in three circles.

43:32 - Build community and in-person connection. AI makes human trust more valuable.

44:00 - All Star Creative Team

46:30 - Design Reveal

49:21 - Rapid Fire

Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/
Natalie Piucco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-piucco-7238403b/
Prompted Newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/

Link to Natalie, Harriet and AI’s creative collaboration: https://promptedpodcast.com/episode-8 
The Leonardo.ai, Google, James Gulliver Hancock collaboration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymSfyF3UezU

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How does one of the world’s fastest-growing companies approach international scale? How is localizing AI different than localizing any other product? 

Managing Director of OpenAI International, Oliver Jay, joins Cameron to answer these questions and give us a window into  what it takes to deploy AI models globally. Drawing on his experience at Dropbox, Asana, and now OpenAI, Oliver explains why AI adoption follows familiar product-led growth principles but moves dramatically faster, how OpenAI works with governments through its OpenAI for Countries program, and why voice, education, and workforce upskilling must coincide to make  AI accessible worldwide.

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

“ The models are at the point where you will see an explosion of voice native applications. I think voice changes everything.”

“At this scale,  you really do need to work side by side with governments to ensure that countries are ready for what's coming.”

01:12 - The Prompt

03:51 - Creative All Hands

06:24 - When demand is global, execute in parallel, not sequential country rollouts.

07:07 - Familiar interfaces (like chat) can unlock adoption faster than capability alone.

07:56 - Start your day by asking AI to preview meetings and prep.

10:15 - Scale globally with bottoms-up product work and top-down government partnerships.

12:38 - The risk of not having enough compute far outweighs the risk of having too much.

13:38 - Upskilling needs systems: academy, certification, and job matching loops.

16:02 - Watch usage patterns by country, product breakthroughs can start anywhere.

16:48 - Design educational AI like a tutor: prompt, challenge, and guide, don't solve.

19:13 - Teach models language principles, and they generalize beyond training languages.

23:22 - Voice can replace keyboards as the gateway to digital opportunity.

26:23 - Traditional teams can lead innovation when AI removes their biggest bottlenecks.

27:55 - Show customers real prototypes fast. Codex can build demos in minutes.

43:48 - All Star Creative Team

45:20 - Design Reveal

47:16 - Rapid Fire

49:02 - Key Takeaways
 

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter
Cameron Adams on LinkedIn
Oliver Jay on LinkedIn

Link to Oliver, Yvonne, and AI's creative collaboration: https://promptedpodcast.com/episode-7 

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Nic Scoble-Williams, Deloitte’s Global Future of Work and Agentic Workforce Leader, joins Cam to share how AI is reshaping creativity, leadership, and the way we design work. She breaks down what it means to be a futurist, how to ask better questions, and why human imagination is the new competitive advantage. She also dives into different cultural approaches to AI-use around the world, and what we can all learn from each other. 

Guest Quote

“It's still all about the power of humans. Humans bringing the judgment; humans bringing the emotion; humans making it real in the realities of society, of our human interactions.”

“The new competitive edge is about human advantage. We have AI level in the playing field. Everyone who's competing, they've got the same access to the technology.”

“Questions are a really powerful, important currency in this future that we are navigating today.”

Timestamps

00:45  The childhood lesson that shaped Nic’s fearless approach to possibility

04:00 What a futurist actually does: curiosity, challenge, and connection

05:00 How global forces intersect to reveal the real signals of the future

06:00 Why great questions start with “I don’t know what I don’t know”

07:00 How to give AI the right context to reduce blind spots

08:45 The three challenges companies face when adopting AI

11:40 Using questions to challenge AI and spot hallucinations

15:00 How culture shapes AI adoption across Japan, China, Europe, and the US

20:15 The 7-Eleven case study: elevating human roles through AI redesign

24:00 The real blockers to AI value: safety, leadership, and human skills

29:00 The imagination deficit and why creativity must become core infrastructure

38:55 Why humanity becomes the new competitive advantage in an AI-powered world

47:28 Cam’s key takeaways

Links

See Nic, Clouds and AI’s creation: https://promptedpodcast.com/#episode-6

 Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/

 Nic Scoble-Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-scoble-williams/

 Prompted Newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/

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Anthropic’s Head of Product Design Joel Lewenstein joins Cam Adams to explore the evolving relationship between humans and AI—how we build it, test it, and trust it.

Joel unpacks how his team designs Claude’s character and behaviors to earn users’ trust, and why the best AI products feel less like tools and more like collaborators. He shares how friction can fuel creativity, how Anthropic’s “AI vending machine” experiment helps them learn about human-AI interaction, and why designing for safety and alignment is as much an ethical mission as a product challenge.

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

• “Claude is a sense-making tool for me…  I vomit into a document and I know it doesn't make any sense … And then Claude helps me make frameworks and concepts that I can then use in our day-to-day to guide the work.”
   
• “ What I did in a pre AI era was I would excitedly write a doc that I just was sure was perfect. I would show it to someone and they would just point out the obvious flaw, the obvious gap…Claude is my first reader on almost literally anything that I make now, and I just find that tremendously helpful”
   
• “ A lot of what we think about is how to build, how to train Claude, how to use the research methodologies to make Claude an entity that you really do want to be that vulnerable with. Something that is open-minded, curious, non-judgmental, non-simplistic and non reductive, and embraces the nuance and complexity of your life and of the world.”

00:30 — Welcome + Intro to Joel Lewenstein, Head of Product Design at Anthropic
01:45 — How a childhood coding game sparked Joel’s love of creative systems
05:19 — Why Joel uses Claude as his “first reader” for every idea
06:09 — Designing for trust, safety, and vulnerability
09:29 — The AI-powered vending machine experiment
11:21 — Why good friction makes better collaborators
15:07 — Volcanoes vs. Skyscrapers: the metaphor behind Anthropic’s design process
17:32 — How Anthropic uses Claude to build Claude
20:06 — Is Claude creative—or just trying to be creative?
24:16 — The future of teams and AI collaboration
28:43 — The real skill of the AI era: asking better questions
32:12 — Why prompt engineering still matters
36:45 —  Designer reveal: Joel, Bella and AI’s collaboration
39:02 — Rapid fire: songs, kids, and AI-powered beer gardens

Links

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter: promptedwithcam.substack.com
See Joel, Bella and AI's creation: https://promptedpodcast.com/#episode-5  
Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/?skipRedirect=true

 Joel Lewenstein on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-lewenstein/

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OpenAI Head of Revenue Ashley Kramer joins Cam Adams to discuss how her revenue team is using AI to get ahead. She unpacks how her team bridges research and real-world results, turning powerful models into tools that transform how people work. Ashley also explains how the most boring AI use cases can spark the most valuable“aha” moments, and how OpenAI customers are scaling AI adoption from the top down.

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

Key Quotes

“Sometimes the boring, simple thing is the biggest aha moment for a customer.”

“You can’t scale headcount forever—but you can scale with AI.”

 “There has been this fear for a while of will AI replace me? And the answer is not if you know how to leverage it properly, it will really take you to the next level.”

Timestamps

00:14 — Meet Ashley Kramer, Head of Revenue at OpenAI

01:16 — The 1999 World Cup moment that shaped her leadership mindset

04:00 — The airplane story that changed how she saw AI’s potential

07:00 — From GitLab to OpenAI: chasing the next frontier

08:08 — Bridging research and real-world value

09:42 — How OpenAI turns breakthroughs into business impact

11:40 — Inside OpenAI’s research-led growth model

14:35 — What OpenAI learns from enterprise partners like Moderna

15:00 — Why small wins drive big AI adoption

20:25 — AI success stories (Moderna’s approach)

22:26 — Building “Ashley Comms GPT” to streamline communication

25:18 — Coaching sales teams with AI avatars and voice agents

27:31 — How experimentation fuels OpenAI’s best ideas

28:55 — The “make it stronger” lesson on prompting

30:30 — Why creativity is still underused in ChatGPT

33:08 — How creatives are evolving with AI tools

34:22 — Making the world AI fluent: training and certifications

35:45 — What’s next for OpenAI’s growth

36:48 — Ashley’s All Star Creative Team

38:40 — Designer Reveal

40:24 — Rapid-fire 

42:00 — Cam’s Key Takeaways

Links
Check out Ashley, Emily, and AI's creation 

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter

Cam on LinkedIn

Ashley on LinkedIn

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Box Cofounder and CEO Aaron Levie joins Cameron Adams to explore how AI is transforming creativity, scale, and ambition inside organizations. Aaron shares how teams can turn data into a superpower, reinvent their ways of working, and unlock new opportunities to multiply their impact, all while keeping human creativity and judgment at the center. He also discusses how startups can now compete at scale from day one and how abundance thinking should shape what comes next.

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com  

“If you're in any creative role, the impact and leverage you have is truly 10 to a hundred times more than it was five or 10 years ago.”

“A three or five person company now has the impact of a 50 person company.”

“We should just start to think about this more as a technology for delivering abundance.”

00:40 — Welcome + Intro to Aaron Levie
01:25 — The Prompt: Magic Camp and the spark of creativity
05:41 — What “being human” means in the age of intelligent tools
16:47 — Why intentional workflow design is essential
17:37 — The rise of prompt-driven companies
19:04 — Data is back: turning unstructured information into an advantage
28:02 — Abundance thinking and removing long-standing bottlenecks
28:31 — Creativity in every corner of the enterprise
30:47 — Failing fast and building a culture of experimentation
32:44 — Being more ambitious with what you ask AI to do
36:14 — Starting Box today: how AI changes what’s possible
40:05 — Differentiation and the importance of human spirit
41:48 — All-star creative team picks
42:56 — Magic Camp designer reveal
44:44 — Rapid-fire questions

Links

See Japes, Aaron and AI’s creative collaboration 
Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter

Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/

Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/

Aaron on X: https://x.com/levie

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HubSpot Cofounder and CTO, Dharmesh Shah, joins Cameron Adams to explore how AI agents are reshaping work, leadership, and creativity. From culture-as-a-product to tech-powered parenting, Dharmesh shares insights into why he’s still betting on humans, even in the age of powerful AI tools. From building culture as a product to tech-powered parenting, Dharmesh shares insights into why he’s still betting on humans,  even in the age of powerful AI tools.

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

Key Quotes: 

“Culture is the product you build for your team.”

“I think of an AI agent as a very adept intern… But when they show up for their first day of work, they don’t know about your business, they don’t know about your policies, they don’t know about their teammates. They don’t know anything other than all the external training that they’ve had.”

“In a way, creativity is combining primitives that already exist in novel and unique ways… AI is good at connecting the dots ”

“Money is still on the humans. I’m sorry. Humans powered by AI — if they want to use AI, fine — but I want someone that’s got that taste.”

Timestamps 

00:40 Welcome + Intro to Dharmesh

01:28 The Prompt: The Casio keyboard that changed Dharmesh’s life

03:47 The spark behind Agent.ai and its growth to 2M users

06:13 Dharmesh’s process for building agents 

07:04 Can AI truly be creative? 

11:47 Hybrid teams: will agents ever be true teammates?

15:12 The “adept intern” analogy and why onboarding matters

17:57 How AI amplifies creativity across writing, design, and music

20:01 Meta prompting: Dharmesh’s trick for better results

23:56 Culture is a product — lessons from HubSpot

28:19 Tech-powered parenting and raising the next generation with AI

32:00 Sorry, Must Pass: Dharmesh’s philosophy on focus

33:15 Outcome-based pricing: can you charge for creativity?

37:10 Money still on the humans — why taste and judgment matter

40:04 All-star creative team picks

43:00 Designer reveal with Paolo

44:52 Rapid-fire questions

Links
See Paolo, Dharmesh and AI’s creative collaboration 
Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter

Cam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/

Dharmesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmesh/

Agents.ai 

Simple.ai Newsletter

MetaPrompt.com

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Designer, illustrator, and creative entrepreneur Pablo Stanley joins Cameron Adams, to explore how AI is transforming creativity. From vibe coding and cultivating taste to the rise of hyper-personalized content, they dive into how AI is reshaping the creative process. Pablo shares his thoughts on the role of taste, the importance of friction and how he uses vibe coding to bring prototypes to life. 

Cam’s notes on Substack: promptedwithcam.substack.com

Key Quotes: 

“AI can do a lot of stuff. It can do volume and it can do it really quick and can give you all the different options, but taste will allow you to know what to ask from it.”

“We’re on the sidelines looking at the robot surf and saying like, no, you’re doing the surfing wrong, but the robot is doing the surfing. It’s the fun part, you know?”

“I wish sometimes that LLMs…potentially have a slider or something that’s the friction slider…at the moment, it feels like it’s all the way up and it’s always…just like a yes man, and it’s always saying, yes, you’re the best.”

“Taste is a skill that you have to develop. It’s a skill that comes with privilege too.”

Timestamps 

00:44 Welcome + Intro to Pablo

02:03 The prompt - from Pablo’s head, to the page, to AI 

05:47 From six-finger hands to stunning renders: how fast AI has improved

06:23 Low-risk projects and AI experimentation

08:50 Building Lummi & real team workflows (language, contracts, ops)

15:28 “AI makes volume, taste makes value” — the privilege of developing taste

18:56 Hyper-personalized feeds, Minority Report vibes, and brand content

23:03 Creative friction: do we need a “friction slider” for AI feedback?

27:44 Vibe coding: creating fast prototypes (+ Taco cameo 🐶)

35:07 All-Star Creative Team

37:41 Designer Reveal: Check out Alvin, Pablo and AI’s collaboration 

39:45 Rapid-fire questions

Links: 

Cam on LinkedIn

Pablo on LinkedIn

See Pablo’s sketch and Alvin, Pablo and AI’s creative collaboration

Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter

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