Best of the Pod: Vercel's Guillermo Rauch on AI and the Future of Coding

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Aug 13, 2025

In this insightful discussion, Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel, shares his vision on the future of coding in an AI-dominated landscape. He argues that coding is evolving beyond mere programming into a holistic approach that emphasizes ideation and design. Guillermo discusses the transition from a knowledge economy to an allocation economy, stressing the importance of meta skills for today's developers. He also explores innovative tools and practices enhancing user experience and the necessity for coders to adapt to AI advancements.

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INSIGHT

Focus On Meta-Skills Over Narrow Coding

Guillermo argues that machines take over narrow skills, so developers should nurture meta-skills instead.
He emphasizes high-level conceptual thinking and spotting what will be possible next to stay valuable.

ANECDOTE

Spotting Early Technical Waves

Guillermo recounts building Socket.io when WebSocket was nascent and messy, spotting an early wave.
He explains he built a simple, opinionated tool to bridge that gap and make real-time web practical.

ADVICE

Build Frameworks From Real Products

Put product outcomes before frameworks and dogfood your own tools as customer zero.
Extract infrastructure from real demos only after you’ve validated product workflows.

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Read Dan Shipper's essay on the allocation economy: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-knowledge-economy-is-over-welcome-to-the-allocation-economy

Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation.

But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore.

Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together.

Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel, the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow’s tools to their fullest extent.

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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Episode start
00:01:33 - Introduction
00:03:18 - How to spot trends early
00:07:34 - Why you should be your own customer
00:14:55 - How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition
00:17:29 - Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder
00:20:50 - AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy
00:28:34 - How Vercel's copilot compares with other coding agents
00:40:35 - Guillermo's advice on having better taste
00:42:46 - The future of AI agents is specialized
00:47:50 - How AI startups can compete with big tech

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Guillermo Rauch: @rauchg
Vercel: https://vercel.com/
Last week’s episode with Nabeel Hyatt: https://every.to/podcast/the-venture-capitalist-who-only-makes-two-bets-a-year
Dan’s essay about the allocation economy: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-knowledge-economy-is-over-welcome-to-the-allocation-economy