Anthropic’s $1B to $19B growth run: how Claude became the fastest-growing AI product in history | Amol Avasare

Description

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 Krieger2. 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 productive4. Why activation is the single highest-leverage growth problem in AI5. Why Anthropic indexes 70/30 toward big bets (the opposite of most growth teams)6. How he uses Cowork to detect team misalignment in Slack7. How the company’s focus on AI coding created a research flywheel that accelerated their models—Brought to you by:WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUsVanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI—Episode transcript: 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—Where to find Amol Avasare:• X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: 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)