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Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare

Overview

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Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Apr 05
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Apr 05
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

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 MasterC...

Highlights

Amol Avasare, Head of Growth at Anthropic, shares hard-won insights from leading one of the most extraordinary growth runs in tech history—scaling from $1B to over $19B in ARR in just 14 months—while navigating personal adversity, redefining growth infrastructure, and pioneering AI-native operating systems.
00:00
Anthropic grew from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in 14 months
03:18
Amol landed his role at Anthropic by cold-emailing the CPO before there was even a growth team
08:33
The 19-billion figure is outdated, and internally, log-linear charts are preferred as the growth is so rapid
10:46
It's the hardest job I've had
12:16
About 70% of time is spent on 'success disasters' dealing with challenges from rapid growth
14:02
Activation, especially early product experience, is crucial for long-term retention, and its importance has grown exponentially
18:05
They focused on quality rather than metrics, which led to a significant uplift in onboarding completion
20:57
Adding the right friction can lead to higher conversion and funnel completion
25:10
Anthropic's growth team indexes more toward larger swings, with a ratio of around 70/30 or 50/50 in favor of bigger bets.
27:06
A 1% win is significant at Anthropic's scale, but the focus is on exponential growth rather than micro-optimizations
36:27
A difficult meeting with the head of design revealed that aligning people remains hard—even with AGI
38:24
AI can generate, implement, and test growth ideas with human approval
46:44
A two-week project can be handled without a PM
47:19
The best use of PMs' time depends on the company's situation: ship features when engineers are scarce, but guide and up-level when engineers are abundant
51:13
Most shipped products lack a PRD because PRDs are outdated and add unnecessary bureaucracy
58:10
Claude proactively looking at data can reduce false positive and negative rates, giving more confidence
1:03:34
AI can reduce cross-functional coordination toil, which was not possible six months ago
1:09:11
Anthropic had a Claude chatbot before ChatGPT but didn't launch it for safety reasons
1:12:12
Anthropic delayed Claude's release due to safety risks, prioritizing public benefit over commercial timing
1:18:15
One should identify their competitive advantages and double-down on them, ignoring weaknesses
1:22:53
Anthropic's culture is its secret sauce, created by leadership's investment and characterized by deep mission alignment and transparency
1:35:12
The experience was painful but taught him valuable skills that made his current career possible
1:45:53
True freedom is being content when not getting what you want
1:46:50
A beaded pillow used in a Japanese hotel can naturally adjust height while sleeping

Chapters

Introduction to Amol and Anthropic’s growth
00:00
The story of cold emailing Mike Krieger to get the job
03:15
What it’s like leading growth at the fastest-growing company ever
08:28
What the growth team actually does at Anthropic
10:46
The concept of “success disasters”
12:16
Why activation is the biggest challenge in AI products
13:55
Improving Mercury’s onboarding experience
18:05
The importance of adding the right kind of friction
20:57
Anthropic’s org structure
25:10
Why Anthropic focuses on big bets over micro-optimizations
27:06
Automating growth experiments with Claude (CASH)
33:34
How AI is starting to identify what experiments to run
38:20
The future of PM, engineering, and design roles
41:07
Why you might need more PMs as engineers get more productive
47:19
How Amol uses AI to prototype ideas and skip PRDs
51:13
Amol’s morning routine: AI analyzes 20 to 25 charts automatically
58:10
Getting coaching from an AI version of your manager
1:03:31
How Anthropic’s focus on coding and B2B drove their success
1:06:27
Balancing growth with AI safety as a core mission
1:12:10
Advice for thriving in an AI-first future
1:18:09
Anthropic’s culture and the “notebook channels” on Slack
1:22:53
Failure corner: Shutting down his startup after raising money
1:35:12
The traumatic brain injury that changed everything
1:38:25
Lightning round
1:46:49

Transcript

Lenny Rachitsky: A lot of companies claim to be the fastest growing companies of all time. Anthropic actually is. You guys were at a billion ARR at the start of 2025. The last number I've seen is 19 billion ARR. That's one to $19 billion in 14 months. Amo...