Before founding Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, was a self-taught teenager in Argentina earning his first dollars online to help his family.

From early open-source work to remote freelancing, this episode traces how his drive to figure things out led to solving web performance at scale.

We also get into:

• how his dad instilled a mindset of pushing tech boundaries

• what growing up during Argentina’s economic swings taught him

• why he sees Minecraft as a healthy game for his kids

• why he believes speed without direction is meaningless

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD

Connect with us here:

1. Guillermo Rauch- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/

2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

00:00 Intro 02:00 Early Years 04:50 Parenting, First Experiences with Computers 07:40 Screen Time Rules 11:40 Video Games & Developing Programming Skills 15:30 Freelance Coding & Earning in U.S. Dollars 19:40 High School 24:10 Startup Offer 30:30 Silicon Valley & First Acquisition 41:45 Founding Vercel 54:40 AI Wave: v0, Agents & “Token Factories” 01:14:28 Vercel's Success and Client Impact 01:20:58 The Role of AI in Development 01:40:49 Iterating Towards Greatness 01:52:27 Balancing Luck and Skill

Ep 271: Whitney Cummings & The Non-Proposal