#160 CEO Grammarly, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury: Better, Not More

Guest: Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, CEO of Grammarly

Driven by generative tools like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence is hot — but Grammarly CEO Rahul Roy-Chowdhury wishes that “AI” stood for something else: “Augmented Intelligence.” A longtime Googler and lifelong believer in using technology to make peoples’ lives better at scale, Roy-Chowdhury now leads a company well-positioned to do exactly that. “In the early days, Grammarly was all about the rules of language,” he says. “Now, with generative AI, we can actually help people across a much broader swath of communication tasks.”

In this episode, Rahul and Joubin discuss digital distraction, responsible AI, John Oliver, Ali Ghodsi, the hype cycle, fragmentation, being kind to yourself, Amp It Up, intentional strategy, candid dialogue, Google Chrome, and Dancing with the Butterfly.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in India (01:05)
• Meaningful, impactful work (07:12)
• The potential of AI (13:09)
• Invisible AI (19:53)
• Would Grammarly go public? (23:51)
• What drives the business (28:19)
• Too many emails (31:05)
• Being an introvert CEO (35:11)
• How Rahul got the top job (37:36)
• Insecurity (39:48)
• Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman (41:57)
• Rahul’s decision-making framework (45:40)
• “I deprecated the thing I built” (54:12)
• The dino game (56:28)
• The book on Rahul’s desk (59:49)
• Who Grammarly is hiring and what “grit” means to Rahul (01:01:06)

Links:

• Connect with Rahul
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm