The Mythical Man-Month Explained

My guest today is Bret Taylor. His resume is absurd. He built google maps--famously rewriting the whole thing in a weekend. He was the CTO of Facebook in critical years. He founded Quip. He was the chair of the board at Twitter. He was the co-CEO of Salesforce...the incredible list goes on. Now, Bret is the co-founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses, and he is the chairman of the board at OpenAI. We discuss the past, present, and future of AI agents: new programs that will begin doing incredible amounts of work for us humans in astonishing ways that are a thrill to talk about. Bret believes agents will become a meaningful part of the future and transform the ways in which we interact with technology. We discuss a strategic approach to AI integration, the different categories of agents and their scopes, and the essentials of craftsmanship. Please enjoy this discussion with Bret Taylor.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Show Notes:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(00:04:27) The Dynamics of Small Teams in Software Development

(00:05:46) Challenges of Large Teams and Bureaucracy

(00:06:27) The Google Maps Legendary Rewrite Story

(00:13:59) Introduction to AI Agents

(00:16:48) Types of AI Agents and Their Applications

(00:22:15) Building Robust AI Agents for Customer Experience

(00:33:28) The Future of AI Agents and Customer Interaction

(00:45:12) Impact of AI on Productivity and Inequality

(00:51:05) Technological Evolution and Societal Changes

(00:56:25) The Role of Multimodal Models in AI

(00:57:19) The Future of Human-Computer Interaction

(01:00:15) Building Companies in the AI Era

(01:05:36) OpenAI's Unique Structure and Mission

(01:11:22) Insights on Sales and Customer Success

(01:20:06) Balancing Ambition and Personal Life

(01:21:35) Preparing for the Agent Era

(01:26:20) The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done for Bret