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Mike Krieger is the chief product officer of Anthropic and the co-founder of Instagram. After leaving Meta, he co-founded Artifact, an AI-powered news app that I absolutely loved, and joined Anthropic to lead product in 2024.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. How Anthropic uses AI to write 90-95% of code for some products and the surprising new bottlenecks this creates

2. Why embedding product managers with AI researchers yields 10x the impact of traditional product development

3. The three areas where product teams can still add massive value as AI gets smarter

4. How Anthropic plans to compete with OpenAI long-term

5. How to use Claude as your product strategy partner (with specific prompting techniques)

6. Why Mike shut down Artifact despite loving the product, and what founders can learn from it

7. Where AI startups should build to avoid getting killed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google

8. Why MCP (Model Context Protocol) might reshape how all software works

9. The counterintuitive product metrics that matter for AI

10. How to evaluate whether your company is maximizing AI’s potential or just scratching the surface

Some takeaways:

1. 90% of Claude’s code is now written by AI, and this has completely transformed how they build products. The bottlenecks have shifted from engineering (writing code) to decision-making (what to build) and merge queues (getting code into production). This is happening faster than anyone expected—Mike thinks most companies will reach this point within a year.

2. Claude Opus 4 has crossed a critical threshold where it has become a genuine thought partner for strategy. Mike now uses Claude as his go-to product strategy partner, and for the first time, it provides novel angles he hadn’t considered. This shift from “helpful but obvious” to “genuinely creative” happened just in the past month.

3. Anthropic isn’t trying to beat ChatGPT at consumer mindshare—instead, it’s doubling down on differentiation and focus. Anthropic is leaning into their strengths: developers love them, builders use them to create things, and they excel at agentic behavior and coding. Mike’s advice: “Embrace who you are and what you could be rather than who others are.”

4. Product teams working directly with AI researchers drive 10x more value than those just building UX on top of models. Mike has shifted almost all product resources to embed with research teams, working on post-training and fine-tuning rather than just using models off the shelf. If you’re building something anyone could build with public APIs, you’re missing the opportunity.

5. MCP (Model Context Protocol) might be the most important thing Anthropic has shipped. It’s already the fastest-growing standard in tech history, with Microsoft integrating it into Windows. The vision: everything becomes an MCP endpoint, making the entire digital world scriptable and composable by AI agents.

6. The skills to teach kids in an AI world: curiosity, scientific thinking, and maintaining independent thought. Mike’s daughter perfectly captured it: “You can ask Claude, but I know I’m right.” Don’t outsource all cognition to AI—maintain the ability to think independently and verify claims.

7. When building AI products, work at the edge of model capabilities and be willing to break things. The best companies using Anthropic’s APIs are those that pushed the limits with earlier models, hit walls, and then were ready when new capabilities emerged. Cursor and Lovable both took off when Claude 3.5 came out because they’d been testing the boundaries.

8. For AI startups worried about getting crushed by big companies, focus on three moats: deep domain expertise (like Harvey in legal), differentiated go-to-market with specific customer knowledge, and completely new interaction paradigms that incumbents can’t easily copy. Plus, don’t underestimate the power of true startup urgency.

9. The future of product metrics in AI isn’t engagement—it’s actual value delivered. When Claude helps Mike prototype something in 25 minutes that would have taken six hours, that’s the metric that matters. Traditional engagement metrics can be misleading, when one good conversation could be 2 messages or 200.

10. Mike’s previous startup, Artifact, failed despite being loved because mobile web is broken, news doesn’t spread virally, and remote work made pivots nearly impossible. The biggest lesson: know when to call it. They had “10 units of input for 1 unit of output”—the energy just wasn’t there. Sometimes shutting down is the right call to free everyone up for more impactful work.

Where to find Mike Krieger:

• X: https://x.com/mikeyk

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

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Mike Krieger

(04:25) What Mike has changed his mind about regarding AI capabilities

(07:43) How to avoid scary AI scenarios

(09:00) Skills kids will need in an AI world

(11:58) How product development changes when 90% of code is written by AI

(17:12) Claude helping with product strategy

(21:21) A new way of working

(24:00) The future value of product teams in an AI world

(27:23) Prompting tricks to get more out of Claude

(29:57) The Rick Rubin collaboration on “vibe coding”

(32:47) How Mike was recruited to Anthropic

(36:00) Why Mike shut down Artifact

(42:46) Anthropic vs. OpenAI

(47:16) Where AI founders should play to avoid getting squashed

(52:03) How companies can best leverage Anthropic’s models and APIs

(54:34) The role of MCPs (Model Context Protocols)

(58:30) Claude’s questions for Mike

(01:03:20) Claude’s heartfelt message to Mike

Referenced:

• Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/

• Claude Opus 4: https://www.anthropic.com/claude/opus

• Dario Amodei on X: https://x.com/darioamodei

• AI 2027: https://ai-2027.com/

• Tobi Lütke’s leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook

• Claude Shannon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon

• Information theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

• TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/

• Python: https://www.python.org/

• Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/

• Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/bending-the-universe-in-your-favor

• Announcing a brand-new podcast: “How I AI” with Claire Vo: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/announcing-a-brand-new-podcast-how

• A conversation with OpenAI’s CPO Kevin Weil, Anthropic’s CPO Mike Krieger, and Sarah Guo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxkvVZua28k

• Jack Clark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-clark-5a320317/

• Artifact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artifact_(app)

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

• Daniela Amodei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-amodei-790bb22a/

• Boris Cherny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcherny/

• Gunnar Gray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gunnargray/

• The Model Context Protocol: https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol

• 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

• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika

• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons

• Jimmy Kimmel Live: https://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive

• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app

• 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

• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/

• Menlo Ventures: https://menlovc.com/

• Harvey: https://www.harvey.ai/

• Manus: https://manus.im/

• Bench: https://www.bench-ai.com/

• Strategy Letter V: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

• Kevin Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkevinscott/

Recommended books:

• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951

• The Way of the Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding: https://www.thewayofcode.com/

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

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.