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

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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 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 — Brought to you by: WorkOS [https://workos.com/lenny]—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs Vanta [https://vanta.com/lenny]—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run [https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run] — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 [https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0] — Where to find Amol Avasare: • X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare [https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare] • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare] — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com [https://www.lennysnewsletter.com] • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan [https://twitter.com/lennysan] • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/] — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction to Amol and Anthropic’s growth (03:15) The story of cold emailing Mike Krieger to get the job (08:28) What it’s like leading growth at the fastest-growing company ever (10:46) What the growth team actually does at Anthropic (12:16) The concept of “success disasters” (13:55) Why activation is the biggest challenge in AI products (18:05) Improving Mercury’s onboarding experience (20:57) The importance of adding the right kind of friction (25:10) Anthropic’s org structure (27:06) Why Anthropic focuses on big bets over micro-optimizations (33:34) Automating growth experiments with Claude (CASH) (38:20) How AI is starting to identify what experiments to run (41:07) The future of PM, engineering, and design roles (47:19) Why you might need more PMs as engineers get more productive (51:13) How Amol uses AI to prototype ideas and skip PRDs (58:10) Amol’s morning routine: AI analyzes 20 to 25 charts automatically (1:03:31) Getting coaching from an AI version of your manager (1:06:27) How Anthropic’s focus on coding and B2B drove their success (1:12:10) Balancing growth with AI safety as a core mission (1:18:09) Advice for thriving in an AI-first future (1:22:53) Anthropic’s culture and the “notebook channels” on Slack (1:35:12) Failure corner: Shutting down his startup after raising money (1:38:25) The traumatic brain injury that changed everything (1:46:49) Lightning round — References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run [https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run] — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/ [https://penname.co/]. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com [podcast@lennyrachitsky.com]. — Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com [https://www.lennysnewsletter.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-no-free-preview-language]

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...