Apr 5, 2026 · 1h 52m · lennys-podcast
Head of Growth (Anthropic): Anthropic is automating its own growth
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Anthropic Head of Growth Amol Avasare reveals how the AI pioneer achieved historic hypergrowth by replacing standard playbooks with automated AI experimentation, exponential product bets, and mission-driven safety principles. He also shares actionable frameworks on the evolving product triad and personal lessons on resilience from his career journey.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Lenny holds 25.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Lenny as informed peer 3.3 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 1.3 Lenny pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Lenny, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 21:01 Challenging standard frictionless growth doctrine
Amol firmly pushes back against the conventional product dogma that cutting onboarding friction is always optimal, arguing that targeted friction significantly improves user conversion and retention.
Hardest push from Lenny ▶ 11:20 Probing the necessity of a growth team for a hypergrowth productLenny pushes back on what a growth leader actually contributes when the company possesses a runaway hit product that seems to sell itself.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:00 Amol details how Claude automates growth loopsAmol educates Lenny on Project CASH, revealing how Claude identifies opportunities, writes code, conducts testing, and analyzes experiment data autonomously.
Lenny holds their own ▶ 49:45 Lenny synthesizes strategic PM leverage over coding PRsLenny demonstrates his deep domain mastery by articulating the counterintuitive shift where PMs provide the most leverage through strategic direction rather than coding features directly.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Lenny as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Lenny pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landing the Role: Cold Emailing Mike Krieger | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Lenny opens by asking about Amol's unorthodox path to Anthropic. Amol explains his cold emailing methodology and how he targeted Mike Krieger's personal inbox, offering novel recruiting insights to Lenny. | |
| Sponsor Break: WorkOS Enterprise Solutions | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This segment consists of a standard sponsor ad read for WorkOS followed by Lenny introducing the sheer revenue metrics of Anthropic. | |
| Managing Growth: Success Disasters vs Proactive Strategy | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Lenny probes what a growth lead actually does when the underlying product sells itself like a 'micro god.' Amol educates him on the concept of 'success disasters' taking up 70% of team bandwidth. | |
| AI Activation and the Capability Overhang Dilemma | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Amol articulates the concept of capability overhang, explaining why AI activation differs fundamentally from SaaS due to the rapid obsolescence of onboarding optimization experiments. | |
| Onboarding Quality: Lessons from Mercury and MasterClass | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Amol reframes conventional growth dogma by arguing that introducing friction into onboarding significantly increases activation and conversion when used to personalize value propositions. | |
| Automating Competitive Analysis with Cowork Extension | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Lenny brings up how PMs use AI for competitive teardowns, and Amol explains how the Cowork Chrome extension directly automates competitive flow analyses. | |
| The Exponential Value Paradigm in AI Growth | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Lenny notes that even a 1% win is massive at Anthropic's scale. Amol explains why Anthropic eschews micro-optimizations in favor of massive product swings due to the exponential value growth of foundation models. | |
| Structuring Multi-Product Growth Pods | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Amol outlines Anthropic's growth structure, explaining why multi-product AI companies must organize pods around specific audiences rather than generic funnel stages. | |
| Project CA$H: Automating Growth with Claude | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Amol introduces Project CASH, detailing how Claude autonomously formulates hypotheses, generates code, tests UX changes, and analyzes experiment data to automate growth cycles. | |
| Engineering Acceleration and the Two-Week PM Rule | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Amol describes how engineering acceleration via Claude Code creates a PM bottleneck, leading to Anthropic's 'two-week rule' where engineers PM short projects themselves. | |
| Strategic Leverage vs Coding for Product Managers | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Lenny synthesizes the counterintuitive takeaway that PMs should provide strategic leverage rather than coding PRs. Amol agrees, emphasizing scale differences between small and large orgs. | |
| Scrappy Execution and Detecting Misalignment via Slack MCP | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Amol shares an advanced workflow where Cowork uses the Slack MCP on a recurring schedule to scan workspace chatter and flag cross-functional misalignment before projects launch. | |
| Sponsor Break: Automated Compliance with Vanta | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Following the Vanta sponsor read, Amol breaks down how he uses automated agents for executive coaching, metric monitoring, and mimicking his manager's feedback. | |
| Foundational Focus: B2B Strategy and the Research Loop | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Lenny and Amol discuss Anthropic's foundational focus on B2B and coding. Amol reveals that coding was prioritized early on specifically to accelerate internal research loops. | |
| AI Safety and Leaving Money on the Table | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Amol explains why Anthropic's PBC corporate structure empowers growth teams to willingly leave money on the table to preserve safety, quality, and user trust. | |
| Thriving in the AI Era: Interdisciplinary Superpowers | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Amol offers tactical career advice for the AI era, emphasizing interdisciplinary skillsets, adaptability, and shedding legacy product playbooks. | |
| Inside Anthropic's Culture: Notebook Channels and Radical Openness | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Amol explains Anthropic's cultural mechanisms, including personal notebook Slack channels where employees openly debate leadership and scale organizational beliefs. | |
| Navigating AI Risks and Driving the Race to the Top | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Amol addresses external criticism regarding Anthropic's safety warnings, explaining that driving the race to the top requires being a credible, market-leading competitor. | |
| Failure Corner: Lessons from Shutting Down a Startup | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | In Failure Corner, Amol recounts the emotional and professional toll of shutting down his mental health startup, and how keeping investor trust was critical. | |
| Overcoming Brain Trauma: Freedom Through Constraints | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Lenny brings up Amol's traumatic brain injury post. Amol details his nine-month physical recovery and the mindset of finding freedom through constraints. | |
| Lightning Round: Books, Mantras, and the Japanese Pillow | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | A friendly lightning round covering book recommendations, Australian idioms, Japanese bead pillows, and college football. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Mike Krieger told Avasare he was his only cold-email PM hire
“He said, I'm the only PM that he's hired from cold email.”
Anthropic revenue grew from $100M in 2023 to roughly $10B in 2025
“That, that 10 X year on year revenue growth trend has been there since the beginning. I think, twenty-twenty-three was zero to a hundred mil. Twenty-twenty-four was hundred to one. Last year was one to roughly 10.”
Anthropic surpassed $19B in revenue by the end of February 2026
“The nineteen billion number you quoted is from the end of Feb, so that is also out of date.”
Avasare spends 70 percent of his time firefighting Anthropic success disasters
“I think then the, probably the big differences is I would say that like roughly 70% of what I spend my time on is, is what we internally refer to as success disasters. And that is where like things have gone so well that other things are breaking now.”
Avasare: Capability overhang is one of the AI industry's biggest problems
“One of the biggest Problems in the industry is capability overhang, where the models are just getting better so quickly. And it, the real challenge is on the product side of how do we start to diffuse those benefits to people”
Avasare: Anthropic growth team allocates 50% to 70% to large swings
“Probably the things that are maybe different is that we, I think that we index a lot more towards larger swings as opposed to smaller optimizations. Like if I think about a traditional growth team, I would have probably done maybe 60, 70% of my time on small t…”
Avasare predicts Anthropic will deliver 1,000x more product value by 2028
“The product value that we will deliver in two years time is probably like a thousand X, a hundred to a thousand X what it is today.”
Anthropic Project CA$H is automating growth experimentation using Claude
“We are starting to look at how do we automate growth, which I think is like a really interesting area. So our growth platform team we have, we're very lucky. We have like Alexei Komisaroka who teaches growth engineering at Reforge, and he's just like the guy o…”
Claude automated growth experiments win at the rate of junior PMs
“It's delivering results, right? Like, and it's like, you can push it, press play with it. And it's like, it ultimately prints money where I'd say that the win rate is like, I would expect a senior PM to do better. Like I would say like, this is like a junior P…”
Avasare: PM roles will not disappear anytime soon despite AI automation
“I think that that, that one is, is going to mean that, like, in my eyes, the work with PMs is, like, not going away, actually, and anytime soon, and that, that piece, especially for larger projects, you don't need to do as much of it for smaller stuff, right? …”
Avasare: Engineers gain more AI leverage than PMs or designers
“It's clear that while PMs and designers are getting more leverage from AI, engineering is getting the most. Leverage right now. I look at tools like Cloud Code and like they, the amount of leverage engineers are getting from them is higher than I think the amo…”
Anthropic engineers act as product managers for projects under two weeks
“The frame that we have is that if a project is less than, is two weeks of engineering time or less, then the engineer is on the hook to Effectively be the PM for that. And so that means things like talking to security, talking to legal, talking to cross-functi…”
Anthropic ships up to 80 percent of product features without a PRD
“Probably 70, 70%, maybe 6070, 80% of what we ship does not have a PRD.”
Avasare: PRDs are largely outdated for high-performing product teams
“By and large, I think PIDs are just outdated at this point. And you can just kick things off with a good team without, without needing to do that sort of thing.”
Anthropic uses Claude to scan Slack weekly and detect project misalignments
“With Cowork, you have this, the Slack MCP, and you can tell Cowork you can tell Cowork to say, basically, look across Slack. You know, the projects that I'm working on. These are the things that are top of mind. Go and find me areas of potential misalignment r…”
Avasare: Claude Cowork handles room bookings, email filtering, and Brex expenses
“And so I get called to book my meeting rooms. Like I don't book meeting rooms. Claude archives, sort of my email first pass at clearing out my inbox. I don't do any of my reimbursements and Expenses. Claude will go to Benapas and like file the reimbursements. …”
Avasare uses Claude to simulate weekly executive coaching from his manager
“I basically you know, one of my manager, Ami Vora was, I think, a podcast guest of yours, right? So I say, hey, based on what you know of Ami, both publicly, she's written extensively about product, and then internally, and then our discussions, what is everyt…”
Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann wrote a 2021 memo urging AI coding focus
“Something that Ben Mann is one of our founders on the vodcast had written. It's dated in 2021. I think a few months after they started the company and it was like, here's why we should just focus on AI coding. And this is like, you know, this is like five year…”
Anthropic built a chatbot before ChatGPT but withheld it over safety
“Anthropic had a version of Claude. We had a chatbot before ChatGPT was launched, and we had ultimately chosen not to launch it for safety reasons. I think the team didn't want to kick off Effectively like an AI global arms race”
Avasare: Anthropic repeatedly took commercial hits to delay releases over safety
“And so for us, that top line objective of this just like, this needs to go well for humanity. That is something that we are happy to take a significant commercial hit for. And we've done that time and time again, right? So like we have, you know, like back the…”
Avasare: Product-minded engineers and design-capable PMs are indispensable unicorns
“In this world of engineers are mini PMs that the engineer who is like highly product minded is a unicorn is an absolute unicorn. I think the same thing is true for PMs where it's like, okay, now, you know, this, in this ratio of the designers really stressed a…”
New Anthropic hires must discard up to 70 percent of past playbooks
“One of the biggest things you come into Anthropic is you need to understand that probably, yeah, 50, 60, 70% of how you operate in the past, just throw it out the door. It's not going to be relevant.”
Anthropic uses open Slack notebook channels as public internal Twitter feeds
“Everyone has these notebook channels where you kind of have like your own like Twitter feed in a way where you're just, Talking about your thoughts about things, and so you can go and, like, join the Slack channel, the notebook channels of people on research a…”
Anthropic softens public AI risk warnings because internal beliefs sound extreme
“I think we actually believe in this stuff more strongly than we say externally, so, like, it is just such a Key part of how we think internally that sometimes like we just like re, you know, reword your statements because it's like, people might just think we'…”
Avasare: AI labs must lead commercially to influence industry safety standards
“If you're in the game and you're a leading player and what you're doing is working, you can influence people in, who are also in the game to take the right actions. And so that is like the core of it. Like if we just pack up and go home, you have no influence …”