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.
Here are a few takeaways:
One of the most important keys to his success is taste—and developing taste is all about paying better attention to everything you experience day to day.
He’s great at recognizing bleeding-edge technologies with extremely practical applications but that have bad user experiences. If you can learn to recognize those and build with them, you might build the next NextJs or SocketIO.
He’s already seeing enterprises use Vercel’s AI coding copilot v0 to replace all of their programming—they just send v0 demos back and forth to iterate on new prototypes.
Why prototype cultures are becoming common in AI—and the benefits of written cultures like Amazon vs. prototype cultures like Apple for different kinds of companies.
For developers building frameworks, always put the product first; a framework in isolation without a “customer zero” is never going to be a good tool.
The theory of “recursive founder mode”—if you want to build a scalable business, you have to scale yourself by creating an atmosphere that nurtures talent and ambition.
AI tools are shifting software toward consumption-based billing models, making us capital allocators who decide how much compute the AI consumes.
The future of AI is agents with the taste, knowledge, and tools to perform specialized tasks.
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Timestamps:
Introduction: 00:01:33
How to spot trends early: 00:03:18
Why you should be your own customer: 00:07:34
How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition: 00:14:55
Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder: 00:17:29
AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy: 00:20:50
How Vercel’s copilot compares with other coding agents: 00:28:34
Guillermo’s advice on having better taste: 00:40:35
The future of AI agents is specialized: 00:42:46
How AI startups can compete with big tech: 00:47:50
Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
AI and I 