No Figma. No Jira. No docs. How Gusto built a new product line with Claude Code | Eddie Kim (CTO)

June 29

51 mins

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Episode Description

Eddie Kim is the co-founder and CTO of the payroll and HR platform Gusto, which just crossed $1 billion in revenue and serves more than 500,000 small businesses. Recently he did something most CTOs don’t: he went back to writing code. With three other engineers and one designer, Eddie built Gusto Cofounder, a net-new AI product, from zero code to a tier-one launch in 10 weeks. He walks through how that team actually worked, why they threw out nearly every process, and how anyone can copy the approach.

What you’ll learn:

The trash-can method: how to write, review, and delete a full PR as a product decision instead of a planning doc
The two-tool agent stack behind Gusto Cofounder
The exact “perma-Zoom” setup that replaced standups, retros, and Slack threads for 10 weeks
How a designer with no engineering background hit the 94th percentile for shipping code
The eval-first workflow Eddie uses to fix real customer bugs with Claude Code
How a non-technical leader can prototype an idea to win buy-in, then carry it all the way to production-quality code

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Brought to you by:

Magic Patterns—Prototypes that look like your product

Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro: five people, 10 weeks

(02:38) The origins of Cofounder

(08:32) Inside the 10-week build process

(12:50) Building with no PMs

(14:38) The “trash can” method

(17:15) The stack architecture