Guillermo Rauch on AI, Scaling Vercel, and The Future of Web Apps
Aug 16, 2024
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Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel, discusses the intersection of AI and web development with Ben Casnocha. He emphasizes the importance of seamless integration among services for an exceptional user experience. Guillermo argues for the long-term advantages of open-source AI models over proprietary ones. He shares insights about the entrepreneurial mindset shaped by his upbringing in Argentina, highlighting the balance of passion and discipline. The conversation also touches on the evolution of personalized AI in web apps and its impact on user interaction.
Vercel enables modern cloud-native applications by integrating various services seamlessly, enhancing user experience across platforms like ChatGPT.
The history of open-source successes suggests that community-driven AI models will likely outstrip proprietary systems in the long term.
Guillermo prefers investing in passionate teams with deep expertise in their problem space, exemplified by Auth0's commitment to login solutions.
Deep dives
Founding Story of Vercel
The founder of Vercel, Blanco, recounts his journey starting from Argentina, where he developed a passion for front-end engineering and open source. His early experiences, particularly with a project called MoodTools, led him to connect globally and relocate to the Bay Area. The inception of Vercel stemmed from his realization that enhancing front-end experiences significantly impacts customer retention and conversion rates for businesses. This culminated in the creation of Next.js, an open-source framework designed to simplify and expedite web application development.
Integration with the Startup Ecosystem
Vercel serves as the front-end cloud, facilitating seamless connections with various cloud services to create comprehensive web applications. For instance, when users interact with platforms like ChatGPT, they engage with a Next.js website that integrates multiple APIs for functions such as authentication and payment. This ecosystem allows startups to leverage Vercel's infrastructure and easily integrate their services, thereby reaching a vast network of developers. With Next.js now supporting over a million active developers, integrating with it provides significant advantages for startups looking to scale.
The Future of Open Source and AI
The discussion highlights the long-term advantages of open-source platforms over proprietary systems, evidenced by historical trends in software development. For instance, open-source initiatives like Linux have ultimately outperformed their closed counterparts due to community-driven development and adaptability. The conversation extends to AI, suggesting that while proprietary AI models may have immediate benefits, the community-driven innovation in open-source AI will likely prevail. This perspective encourages developers to adopt a diverse approach by not tying themselves to a single AI model, promoting flexibility and optionality in their projects.
The Role of Design Engineers
A new role has been emerging in the tech industry known as 'design engineer,' blending design and engineering skills to create superior user experiences. This role stems from the trend of developers wanting to expand their capabilities beyond traditional boundaries, facilitated by AI tools. As AI increasingly handles routine tasks, developers are freed to focus on more complex and creative challenges, allowing them to push the boundaries of what technology can achieve. Vercel embodies this blending of roles, showcasing how design engineers are redefining traditional tech roles to enhance product offerings.
Cultivating Urgency and Customer Obsession
A culture of urgency within Vercel emphasizes the importance of understanding and meeting customer needs promptly and efficiently. The founder believes that storytelling and real customer feedback are vital for instilling a sense of urgency among team members. By drawing on relatable customer experiences, employees can grasp the significance of reliability and performance in tech infrastructure. This approach helps ensure that all team members remain focused on delivering exceptional value and fostering an environment where technology and user experience continuously improve.
Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Takeaways:
- Any modern cloud-native app is a nexus of services that all work together to create a coherent interface for the user. For example, Auth0 handles login, Stripe handles billing, React is used for the interface, among many more services all working in concert. Vercel helps ensure that the user has an amazing experience no matter what services are all working together on the back end.
- Guillermo tells the story of open source Unix winning out over proprietary versions of Linux, even though the proprietary versions had an early lead. He suggests that over the long term, open source will win, more often than not, and that the same story will likely play out when it comes to AI models, with open source models winning out in the end.
- When it comes to investing, Guillermo loves to bet on someone who has been obsessed with a topic for years and years. He recounts the story of the Auth0 team who had written books and given talks and spent years of their lives just on logging in and logging out. He also says that he prefers a leadership team that lives and breathes a company’s problem space. He says that he's allergic to the idea of a professional leadership team swooping in at a certain stage.
- Rauch was born and raised in Argentina. He says that he has a sense of urgency and that tomorrow is not promised that stems from his childhood experience growing up in Argentina. He tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg keeping the Sun Microsystems logo on the back of the Facebook sign at their headquarters when they moved in to cultivate a sense that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.
- Guillermo believes in giving his team leads radical ownership of their products. He provides the leads with frameworks that explain clear principles for how they build products at Vercel but beyond that he gives the leads a long leash and a sense of ownership over the product.
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