Amol Avasare is Head of Growth at Anthropic, which is going through the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history—scaling from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in just 14 months. Previously, Amol worked on the growth teams at Mercury and MasterClass. Before that he was a founder, and he cold emailed his way into the Anthropic role when no job listing existed. Most remarkably, he overcame a traumatic brain injury from a Muay Thai match that meant he couldn't work for nearly a year.

In our in-depth discussion, Amol shares:

1. How Amol landed his role by cold emailing Anthropic’s CPO Mike Krieger

2. How Anthropic is automating growth experiments with Claude (their internal tool called “CASH”)

3. Why the ratio of PMs to engineers might need to flip (more PMs than engineers) as AI makes engineers exponentially more productive

4. Why activation is the single highest-leverage growth problem in AI

5. Why Anthropic indexes 70/30 toward big bets (the opposite of most growth teams)

6. How he uses Cowork to detect team misalignment in Slack

7. How the company’s focus on AI coding created a research flywheel that accelerated their models

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Where to find Amol Avasare:

• X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare

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

Referenced:

• How a traumatic brain injury made me a better PM—and person: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-a-traumatic-brain-injury-made

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

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com

• Canva: https://www.canva.com

• Palantir: https://www.palantir.com

• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com

• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next

• Claude Code: https://code.claude.com

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

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com

• Uber: https://www.uber.com

• DoorDash: https://www.doordash.com

• Anthropic co-founder on quitting OpenAI, AGI predictions, $100M talent wars, 20% unemployment, and the nightmare scenarios keeping him up at night | Ben Mann: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropic-co-founder-benjamin-mann

• Mercury: https://mercury.com

• MasterClass: https://www.masterclass.com

• Calm: https://www.calm.com

• Alexey Komissarouk’s website: https://alexeymk.com

• Alexey’s “Mastering Growth Engineering” course: https://www.reforge.com/courses/mastering-growth-engineering

• Claude Cowork: https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork

• Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity | Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/authenticity-and-curiosity-ami-vora

• Ami Vora’s Substack: https://amivora.substack.com

• Benepass: https://getbenepass.com

• Brex: https://www.brex.com

• Granola: https://www.granola.ai

• The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-design-process-is-dead

• Marc Andreessen: The real AI boom hasn’t even started yet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/marc-andreessen-the-real-ai-boom

• John Egan’s website: https://jwegan.com

• Workday: https://www.workday.com

• Figma: https://www.figma.com

• Spirit Rock: https://www.spiritrock.org

• This will make you a better decision-maker | Annie Duke (author of “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit,” former pro poker player): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-better-decisions-annie-duke

• Marty Supreme: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32916440

• Maruhachi Shinsui Maruhachi Pro: https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Maruhachi-Shinsui-Feather-Pillow-Blissful/dp/B081DNVD3K

Recommended books:

• The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Living-Unlocking-Science-Happiness/dp/0307347311

• Awareness: Conversations with the Masters: https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Opportunities-Reality-Anthony-Mello/dp/0385249373

• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216371

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.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:...