Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare · Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth summary

Key takeaways

Anthropic has rapidly scaled from $1 billion to $19 billion in ARR, demonstrating unprecedented growth in the AI sector.
The focus on activation and automating growth experiments is crucial for scaling AI products.
A strong company culture prioritizing mission, transparency, and shared values drives commitment and passion among employees.
Personal experiences, such as overcoming challenges, can provide valuable lessons in resilience and adaptability.
Engagement and user experience are critical for product success, emphasizing the need for effective onboarding and user support.

Summary

Unprecedented Growth at Anthropic

Amol Avasare, head of growth at Anthropic, discusses the company's remarkable journey from $1 billion to over $19 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just 14 months, noting that this growth trajectory is unprecedented in history. He emphasizes that despite starting as one of the smallest players in the AI space without significant funding or first-mover advantage, Anthropic has achieved this growth through strategic focus and innovation.

Innovative Growth Strategies

Amol explains how the growth team at Anthropococuses on automating growth experiments and implementing unique strategies such as CASH (Claude Accelerates Sustainable Hypergrowth). He points out that a significant portion of their growth is driven by the research team and that the company's strategy of thinking log-linearly rather than linearly guides their growth efforts.

The Role of Activation in AI Products

The importance of activation is highlighted as a critical challenge in AI products. Amol elaborates on how Anthropic approaches user engagement and onboarding, utilizing feedback and improving user experience to enhance activation and retention rates. He shares insights on how they prioritize user guidance to ensure that users derive maximum benefit from their product.

Embracing Constraints and Cultural Values

Amol shares insights into Anthropoc’s corporate culture, emphasizing that it is built around a strong sense of mission and values, focusing on AI safety. He mentions that the company’s leadership promotes transparency, open discussions, and encourages every employee to be passionately involved in the company’s mission, thus fostering a collaborative environment.

Personal Journey and Resilience

Amol opens up about his personal journey, highlighting the challenges he faced with a traumatic brain injury he sustained during training in Muay Thai. He talks about the lengthy recovery process, and how this experience shaped his perspective towards work, productivity, and life. He shares lessons on adaptability and maintaining a healthy mindset in the face of challenges.

Show notes

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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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run

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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

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Where to find Amol Avasare:

• X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare

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

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

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

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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

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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

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