Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board

Description

Bret Taylor, co-founder of Sierra and Chair of the OpenAI board, joins John for a pint to discuss the rapid shift toward an agentic future. In this episode, Bret explains why outcome-based pricing is the future of software business models, and why he believes the atomic unit of AI productivity is a process, not a person. They cover why big companies struggle to adopt AI because they are “shipping their org charts.” Bret also discusses a new type of hyper-generalist, reflects on his experience with the OpenAI and Twitter boards, and explains why he believes we might see the end of the smartphone era.Timestamps(00:00:26) Coding(00:16:23) Sierra(00:27:14) Agentic UX(00:38:47) Building support agents(00:45:43) Co-developing with the models(00:50:08) SaaSpocalypse(01:00:50) Stripe Sessions(01:01:33) Outcome-based pricing(01:09:14) Is Sierra short AGI?(01:13:50) AI productivity(01:23:47) How to structure a tech business(01:30:25) Board drama(01:38:24) AI predictions