Uncapped #20 | Guillermo Rauch from Vercel

August 6

1h 1m

Episode Description

Guillermo Rauch is the founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 which is one of the most popular AI app building tools that’s helping power the online presence of companies like Porsche, Under Armour and Nintendo. In May 2024, Vercel completed a $250M Series E at a $3.25B valuation and was recently named to the Forbes Cloud 100. Originally from Argentina, Guillermo became a self-taught developer at the age of ten, and has been a passionate contributor to the open-source community ever since. He is the mind behind foundational JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Socket.io, and has built tools that power some of the internet’s most innovative products, including Midjourney, Grok, and Notion.

We covered:

Vercel’s early insights
State of affairs for codegen
Implications of AI for developers
Skills of the future
Product building taste

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:28) Prequel to Vercel

(4:32) Vercel’s early insights

(8:13) State of affairs for codegen

(17:18) Codegen evolution

(19:37) Perceived vs realized productivity

(27:53) Fault attribution

(31:56) Internet being a house of cards

(35:33) When codegen will be exceptional

(40:18) What kids should be learning

(47:42) Chasing the dragon vs listening to customers

(50:46) The next internet

(51:58) Reverse engineering success

(55:50) Making it work as a dad and CEO

(58:14) Taste in building product

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