Organizing Research and Product Development at Runway

Anastasis Germanidis is the Co-Founder & CTO at Runway, an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment, and human creativity. Runway has raised $237m and was one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential companies” in 2023. Runway has been a persistent viral sensation in recent years, and is behind many of the most famous AI demos online.

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In today’s episode we discuss:

• The origins of Runway
• The limitations of being “customer-driven” when building in AI
• How Runway balances research development with product development
• How goal-setting and planning is different for AI products
• Advice for early-stage AI founders

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Referenced:

• Containerization: https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/containerization/
• Docker: https://www.docker.com/
• Green screen tool by Runway: https://runwayml.com/green-screen/
• Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/
• Hugging Face Spaces: https://huggingface.co/spaces
• Hugging Face Model Hub: https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/models-the-hub
• Replicate: https://replicate.com/
• Runway Gen-1: https://research.runwayml.com/gen1
• Runway Gen-2: https://research.runwayml.com/gen2
• Runway’s 30 AI Magic Tools: https://runwayml.com/ai-magic-tools/

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Where to find Anastasis Germanidis:

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/agermanidis
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agermanidis
• Personal website: https://agermanidis.com/
• Personal blog: https://blog.agermanidis.com/

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Where to find Todd Jackson:

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tjack
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0

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Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:23) The unique story of how Runway's co-founders met

(08:27) The origins of Runway

(09:28) Forming the initial product

(13:55) Turning Runway into a company

(14:41)Approach to initial market segments

(18:53) Early-adopters

(21:20) The limitations of being “customer-driven”

(25:54) Forming a vocal community

(27:08) Fostering community

(29:05) The progression of Runway's tech and use-cases

(33:08) How they picked users for early release

(34:00) Expanding past the first 100 users of Gen-2

(35:33) Runway’s approach to safety and content moderation

(36:44) Balancing product development and research development

(43:51) Runway's org structure

(45:08) Goal-setting amidst constant change in AI

(46:50) Why Runway doesn't plan very far ahead

(50:26) Advice to early-stage AI founders

(53:11) Will AI replace video editors?

(55:04) When Runway had the most momentum

(56:49) Anastasis' #1 piece of advice