Eddie Kim is the co-founder and CTO of the payroll and HR platform Gusto, which just crossed $1 billion in revenue and serves more than 500,000 small businesses. Recently he did something most CTOs don’t: he went back to writing code. With three other engineers and one designer, Eddie built Gusto Cofounder, a net-new AI product, from zero code to a tier-one launch in 10 weeks. He walks through how that team actually worked, why they threw out nearly every process, and how anyone can copy the approach. What you’ll learn: 1. The trash-can method: how to write, review, and delete a full PR as a product decision instead of a planning doc 2. The two-tool agent stack behind Gusto Cofounder 3. The exact “perma-Zoom” setup that replaced standups, retros, and Slack threads for 10 weeks 4. How a designer with no engineering background hit the 94th percentile for shipping code 5. The eval-first workflow Eddie uses to fix real customer bugs with Claude Code 6. How a non-technical leader can prototype an idea to win buy-in, then carry it all the way to production-quality code — Brought to you by: Magic Patterns [https://magicpatterns.com/howiai]—Prototypes that look like your product Jira Product Discovery [https://atlassian.com/howiai]—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Intro: five people, 10 weeks (02:38) The origins of Cofounder (08:32) Inside the 10-week build process (12:50) Building with no PMs (14:38) The “trash can” method (17:15) The stack architecture (19:10) Shipping to production from day one (22:03) How a designer became a top engineer (29:05) Demo: Cofounder over text and Slack (31:45) Demo: running a real payroll (36:26) Live coding with evals in Claude Code (39:39) Recap: prototype, small team, permission (43:17) Lightning round (48:44) Where to find Eddie and Cofounder — Tools referenced: • Gusto Cofounder (early access/waitlist): https://gusto.com/cofounder [https://gusto.com/cofounder] • Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai/code [https://claude.ai/code] • Cloudflare Workers: https://workers.cloudflare.com/ [https://workers.cloudflare.com/] • Vercel AI SDK: https://sdk.vercel.ai/ [https://sdk.vercel.ai/] • DX (engineering analytics): https://getdx.com/ [https://getdx.com/] • Wispr Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai [https://wisprflow.ai/] • OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/ [https://openclaw.ai/] — Other references: • Gusto (the main product, “Gusto Classic”): https://gusto.com [https://gusto.com/] • Mindbody (referenced as customer data source): https://www.mindbodyonline.com/ [https://www.mindbodyonline.com/] — Where to find Eddie Kim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edawerd/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/edawerd/] — Where to find Claire Vo: ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ [https://www.chatprd.ai/] Website: https://clairevo.com/ [https://clairevo.com/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/] X: https://x.com/clairevo [https://x.com/clairevo] — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/ [https://penname.co/]. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co.