One thing I ask the team frequently is: let's say Claude 8 comes around — what changes in what users do, and what does that mean for how you're building today? Is it going to be forward compatible to that experience? Being ambitious is very broad, so grounding it in thinking about future model capabilities is a way to describe that.
Diane describes how she grounds the team's ambition by asking them to imagine what Claude 8 will enable users to do, and then work backwards to ensure what they're building today is forward compatible with that future. This turns abstract ambition into concrete product strategy. ✦ AI generated
Diane Penn · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-07-26 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 33:58
“I love just this meme of just be more ambitious comes up so often now which is so hard like it's easy to say that it's hard to actually just like how big can you and how that's so much of what AI now unlocks.”
One thing I ask the team frequently or how I think about when we're building a product is: let's say Claude 8 comes around — what changes in what users do, and then what does that mean for how you're building today? Is it going to be forward compatible to that experience, right? So like grounding it — I think being ambitious is very broad and so trying to ground it in some ways of describing that.
verbatim transcript · starts at 33:58
33:44ideas I think in order to be a a successful researcher >> I I love just this meme of just be more ambitious comes up so often now which is so hard like it's it's easy to say that it's hard to actually just like how big can you and how that's so much of what AI now unlocks. Just be more ambitious. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I think it's
34:05thinking through it once or twice and to end and then being I think stubborn about the uh area and maybe more uh loose around the exact like approach. Um it it is a question we challenge ourselves with. uh but the technology is moving so quickly and so how do you make sure what you're building is actually uh forward compatible and so it's also actually part of like I
34:39think the core product development loop to think bigger right uh one thing I ask the team frequently or how I think about when we're building a product is let's say claude 8 comes around what do what changes in what users do and then what should what does that mean for how you're building today? Is it going to be forward compatible to that experience, right? So like just grounding it's I
35:04think um being ambitious is very broad and so trying to like ground it in in some ways of describing describing that >> and also yeah everything heading in a direction that all is cohesive and makes sense versus just ambitious in a completely different direction. Speaking of ambition and cloud8, uh, Fable Mythos recently feels like hit this very new kind of tipping point with models where it used to be you have an awesome model,
35:32release it. Hey everyone, welcome. Opus45 is out, everyone can use it. Mythos went in a very different direction. It got blocked. There was a lot of scrutiny, a lot of concern about what it was capable of. Uh, all the companies had to go make sure it wasn't going to hack into all their systems. And it feels like now every model because they continue to get better will