Krithika

Growth tactics from @OpenAI and @Stripe's first marketing hire @krithix At @OpenAI, Krithika established marketing foundations for ChatGPT for consumers and enterprises, as well as their developer API platform. While at @Stripe, she spent over eight years building and scaling their marketing function from scratch. She also led marketing at @Retool, and marketing teams at @Dropbox. An engineer turned marketer, Krithika brings a uniquely analytical approach to marketing. She currently serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at @ThriveCapital, where she helps portfolio companies with all things marketing. Listen now 👇 • YouTube: youtu.be/QaDsk4iH1aw • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2nmmPf… • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/len… Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @Get_Eppo — Run reliable, impactful experiments 🏆 @airtable ProductCentral — Launch to new heights with a unified system for product development: airtable.com/lenny 🏆 @LinkedInMktg — Reach professionals and drive results for your business: linkedin.com/podlenny

Thrive's newest engineering intern @JoshuaKushner coming in strong

We are pleased to announce the close of Thrive X. Exceeding $10 billion, Thrive X comprises $1 billion designated for early-stage investments and $9 billion designated for growth-stage investments. We do not view this as a milestone, but as a commitment to the long work ahead. We view Thrive as a company. Our product is partnership - the willingness to commit deeply to a small number of founders, and to stand with them through momentum and adversity. This is the discipline we bring to our work, and the responsibility we accept when founders partner with Thrive. We do not hedge. Concentration demands loyalty to the founders and missions we back. In this moment, exposure alone is not a strategy. Judgment without commitment is not enough. Advantage will accrue to those who choose deliberately, commit deeply, and endure through difficult moments. Thrive was founded to be an enabling technology for the world we want to see. We are deeply aware that we are not the main character. The founders that we are fortunate enough to partner with are the artists. Our role is to help create the conditions where great work can come to life. We take a long view grounded in the belief that category-defining companies tend to create structural compounding advantages over long arcs. This fund reflects the continuity of our approach and the ways our work has deepened alongside the founders we support. We are grateful for the trust our Limited Partners place in us, and for the opportunity to work alongside those who are building with purpose, integrity, and courage. thrivecap.com/thrive-x

Tempo’s testnet is live! Any company can now build on a payments-first chain designed for instant settlement, predictable fees, and a stablecoin-native experience. Tempo has been shaped with a wide group of partners validating real workloads including @AnthropicAI, @Coupang, @DeutscheBank, @DoorDash, @Lead_Bank, @mercury, @nubank, @OpenAI, @Revolut, @Shopify, @StanChart, and @Visa. Since our announcement, @brexHQ, @Coastal, @crossriverbank, @deel, @faire_wholesale, @Figure, @GustoHQ , @Kalshi, @Klarna, @Mastercard, @Payoneer, @withpersona, @tryramp, and @UBS have also joined as design partners. Dedicated payment lanes, stablecoin gas, deterministic finality, a built-in stable asset DEX, and programmable smart accounts are all live on testnet. If you’re building or modernizing payment flows, you can start integrating and testing today.

The average CEO cannot tell you the difference between an automation and an AI agent. This breakdown (h/t @wadefoster) makes it glaringly obvious. An automation is anything that requires no-trust decision making (if this, then that). An AI agent is anything that requires some-trust decision making. The most powerful workflows that I’m seeing businesses use today are neither pure automations nor pure agents. They’re agentic workflows. Agentic workflows get the leverage of AI (read: intelligent decision making) that deterministic software never offered. But they also have the predictability of automations, where the cost of error is too high. Knowledge work will continue to get pushed further right on this spectrum as the technology improves, but today living in the middle is often the sweet spot.

This is the category-defining profile of one of the most important figures and institutions in American business, investing, and technology. Joshua Kushner and Thrive Capital. Kushner and his partners speak, as do Sam Altman, Jony Ive, Demis Hassabis, and John Collison. It’s a story of the American dream. One that travels from the Holocaust in Eastern Europe through postwar Budapest, a refugee camp in Rome, Cold War New York and New Jersey, post-9/11 America, the recent history of venture capital, the AI revolution, wartime Israel, and Rick Rubin’s backyard. It tells, with fresh eyes and ears, what happened during the 2023 OpenAI coup attempt. It takes you inside critical moments at Stripe and GitHub. And it shows how Kushner’s team of émigré and provincial castaways built Thrive into a rampart for the American experiment. The ending will give you goosebumps. By @jeremysternla. Only in Colossus.

This is the category-defining profile of one of the most important figures and institutions in American business, investing, and technology. Joshua Kushner and Thrive Capital. Kushner and his partners speak, as do Sam Altman, Jony Ive, Demis Hassabis, and John Collison. It’s a story of the American dream. One that travels from the Holocaust in Eastern Europe through postwar Budapest, a refugee camp in Rome, Cold War New York and New Jersey, post-9/11 America, the recent history of venture capital, the AI revolution, wartime Israel, and Rick Rubin’s backyard. It tells, with fresh eyes and ears, what happened during the 2023 OpenAI coup attempt. It takes you inside critical moments at Stripe and GitHub. And it shows how Kushner’s team of émigré and provincial castaways built Thrive into a rampart for the American experiment. The ending will give you goosebumps. By @jeremysternla. Only in Colossus.

The @posthog copywriters are playing a different game lol