ChatGPT

OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux

Oct 4, 2026 · 37:23

Lenny's Podcast interviews Tibo Sottiaux, OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT and Codex, who argues always-on agents like OpenAI's new Dots will replace today's apps since most actions on the internet will soon be taken by agents. He explains Dots works 24/7 across devices with no model picker, that Codex and ChatGPT Work will merge for ChatGPT's 1.2 billion users, and that agent loops and graphs are a passing phase versus systems that learn. He details the open ecosystem—Sign in with ChatGPT at 16 partners, plugin revenue share—where plugin discovery runs on retention, not SEO. His Dot warned him five minutes before a DevDay demo that production was down; he says typing fast matters less while taste and 120+ ex-founders define hiring. He cites OpenAI's safety spend and the withheld 6.1 Astra model.

How to run your product team like a research lab | Dan Shipper (Every)

Sep 24, 2026 · 18:32

Dan Shipper, co-founder and CEO of Every, argues product orgs should add a small labs team exploring frontier AI like Astra 6 and Fable 5.1 while the product team executes, because exploring and executing pull in opposite directions. Labs teams of one or two people—messy "pirates" with "architects"—should dogfood, run parallel experiments, and expect to discard 90%, recouping ROI through content and early adopter programs. Anthropic Labs produced Claude Code and skills this way, and OpenAI's Codex, launched February 2026, merged into ChatGPT's 800 million daily users. Every's "Kate Bench" shows the pipeline: an AI copy editor trained on editor-in-chief Kate's edits cut her work 12% in a month. He advises weekly pipeline reviews and criteria—recurring usage, 10x better, affordable.

90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellis

Sep 20, 2026 · 1:36:53

Peter Sellis, the first product manager at Snapchat (where he spent seven years) and former Head of Product at Discord, argues the median product manager is probably bad because the best ones exit to found startups or become executives, skewing the profession's power distribution. He explains why he designs teams like terrorist organizations—with clear ideology and single-threaded decision owners—why Snap's ads business underperformed due to a young user base, a camera-first format, and a messaging core, and how growth comes from the core product, as with Discord refocusing on multiplayer gaming. He also covers managing Nikita Bier, Snap's recovery from the 2018 redesign, systems thinking, OpenAI's ads opportunity, and his three oxymorons of great PMs.

How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)

Sep 8, 2026 · 1:22:43

Roman Ugarte, who leads product for Grok Bot at SpaceXAI, tells Lenny Rachitsky how a small, isolated team built Grok Bot from scratch in one month and launched it publicly just three weeks later. He explains why they built it separately instead of inside Cursor and why the team manually onboarded 200–300 users, including a coffee shop owner, to check blind spots. Two early decisions made it work, he argues: giving every bot its own cloud computer instead of sharing yours, and a 'colleague-pilled' philosophy that hides internal mechanics so delegating feels like trusting a real teammate. He also covers unshipping features pre-launch, natural-language automations, and argues Cursor outlasted OpenAI and Anthropic by reinventing itself every six months—moats are discovered, not planned.

AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead)

Aug 30, 2026 · 1:21:45

Tara Seshan, OpenAI's product lead for Codex and ChatGPT Work, tells Lenny Rachitsky that AI is entering a third era of persistent AI coworkers, where human judgment and ambition—not execution—become the differentiator. She explains why OpenAI builds for model capabilities two to three months out, citing memes like 'Is this maximally accelerated?' and 'Are you mainlining it yet?' as the product-development test. She says the PM job now centers on sharp hypothesis testing and elevating others' ambitions, and describes ChatGPT's Chat, Work, and Codex modes converging on a single box that picks the right harness. She also distinguishes writing as thinking (never automate) from writing as reporting (automate), and shares Sutter Hill's lesson that product marketing fit can precede building.

Chatbots are not the final interface: OpenAI’s Head of Design on what’s next | Ian Silber

Aug 16, 2026 · 1:12:05

Ian Silber, head of product design at OpenAI, tells Lenny that designers' anxiety about AI comes from unclear expectations and a design process that still takes time even as engineers 10x, but insists this is the best time in history to be a designer because AI is already an incredible designer and anyone can make ideas real in minutes. He explains OpenAI hires for curiosity, prototyping and systems thinking rather than AI backgrounds, and steers designers to "just do less" by reusing systems and focusing on durable experiences. He defends the chat interface as the right way to span a wide spectrum of intelligence, and shares that ChatGPT's future involves proactivity, voice, and one universal input that works for novices and power users alike. He credits failure at Instagram with IGTV before Reels, and urges struggling designers to embrace exploration and focus on outcomes rather than process.